President Donald Trump has filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, alleging that the agency unlawfully leaked his private tax returns in what his legal team calls a politically motivated violation of federal privacy laws.
The suit, filed Monday in federal court, accuses the IRS of failing to safeguard Trump’s confidential financial information, which was later published by The New York Times and ProPublica. Trump’s attorneys claim that a “rogue, politically motivated” IRS contractor deliberately accessed and disclosed sensitive records involving Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization.
At the center of the case is Charles Littlejohn, a former IRS contractor who pleaded guilty in 2023 to a single felony count of unauthorized disclosure of tax return information. Littlejohn admitted to stealing and leaking Trump’s tax records to The New York Times and disclosing the confidential tax data of thousands of wealthy individuals to ProPublica.
Littlejohn is currently serving a five-year federal prison sentence. According to the lawsuit, he testified during a 2024 deposition that the materials he leaked included detailed information about all of Trump’s business holdings. Trump’s legal team argues that the disclosures violated federal law, damaged his reputation, and breached the privacy rights of hundreds of thousands of taxpayers.
The complaint also contends that the IRS and Justice Department under the previous administration failed to pursue adequate charges against Littlejohn. Prosecutors in 2023 allowed him to plead guilty to a single felony count, despite publicly describing his actions as “unparalleled in the IRS’s history.”
That decision prompted sharp criticism from congressional Republicans, who accused the Biden-Harris Justice Department of offering an overly lenient plea deal. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan sent multiple oversight letters to then–Attorney General Pam Bondi’s predecessor, questioning why prosecutors did not pursue multiple felony counts given the scale of the leak.
In one letter, Jordan wrote that the Justice Department “failed to ensure full accountability for criminal conduct that was unprecedented in its scope and scale,” noting that the stolen data allegedly included tax returns and financial information for about 18,000 individuals and 73,000 businesses.
During Littlejohn’s sentencing, the federal judge overseeing the case reportedly called the plea deal “perplexing” and “troubling,” remarking that she had “no words” for the fact that he faced only one felony count despite the magnitude of his actions.
After President Trump returned to office, the IRS provided new information to Congress showing that more than 405,000 taxpayers were affected by the breach, roughly 89 percent of them business entities. The disclosure raised additional questions about the extent of the leak and whether it had been deliberately downplayed by the prior administration.
Trump’s lawsuit seeks $10 billion in damages, citing harm to his business interests, family members, and associates whose financial data were exposed. His legal team argues that the government failed to implement adequate internal safeguards and oversight to prevent the breach, and that the leak was politically motivated.
“The President and countless other Americans were victims of one of the most egregious data breaches in the history of the federal government,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement. “This was not an accident — it was a politically driven attack designed to embarrass and damage a sitting president and his family.”
The IRS has declined to comment on the ongoing litigation, citing agency policy.
The New York Times published an extensive series of reports between 2020 and 2021 detailing Trump’s tax history, including claims that he paid little federal income tax in certain years. ProPublica separately published an investigation based on leaked IRS data showing how some of the nation’s wealthiest individuals minimized their tax burdens.
Both outlets said at the time that they received the information from an anonymous source. Federal investigators later identified Littlejohn as the leaker after a multi-year probe.
Legal experts say Trump’s lawsuit faces significant hurdles, as federal agencies are typically protected from large civil liability claims unless Congress explicitly waives immunity. However, Trump’s attorneys argue that the case qualifies under the Privacy Act and federal tort statutes, citing intentional and grossly negligent misconduct by federal employees and contractors.
