In a significant legal action filed in a federal court in Florida, former President Donald J. Trump and his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, are suing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the U.S. Treasury Department for a sum exceeding $10 billion. This civil complaint, submitted on Thursday, targets the government agencies in their official capacities but names the IRS and Treasury themselves personally, rather than Trump acting in a presidential official capacity.
The lawsuit centers on allegations that the IRS and Treasury Department failed in their legal obligation to protect highly sensitive tax data belonging to President Trump and the Trump Organization. According to the complaint, this failure was exploited to leak confidential tax returns to the media during Trump's first term in office.
The leak is attributed to unauthorized disclosures made by Charles Littlejohn, a former contractor with the IRS who worked through the defense and intelligence consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. The complaint states that Littlejohn had unauthorized access to the tax returns and exploited deficiencies in the IRS’s security protocols, which, despite prior warnings, had not been effectively addressed.
Charles Littlejohn reportedly illicitly obtained tax return information and subsequently transmitted these returns, including those of the Trump family, to major publications such as The New York Times and ProPublica. These disclosures allowed sensitive tax information to be revealed to millions of readers across the nation.
Littlejohn was convicted in 2024 and sentenced to five years in prison for the unlawful disclosure of thousands of tax returns. His illegal actions extended beyond the Trump family, affecting many affluent individuals whose private financial records were exposed without authorization.
The Trump lawsuit holds the IRS liable for Littlejohn’s breaches on the grounds that the contractor possessed "staff-like access" to confidential tax return information, an access level that entailed a fiduciary responsibility for its protection. The legal team emphasized that longstanding security weaknesses, which the IRS had been repeatedly cautioned about but failed to remediate, enabled the unauthorized transmission of sensitive data.
In an official statement, Trump's legal representatives asserted that the leak was politically motivated, describing Littlejohn as a rogue employee who leaked private tax information to "left-wing news outlets." They maintain that these actions resulted in an illegal public disclosure that violated privacy and confidentiality standards, targeting the former president, his family members, and the Trump Organization.
Following the revelations and public outcry, the Treasury Department severed its contractual relationship with Booz Allen Hamilton earlier this week, canceling contracts valued at $21 million. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent specifically cited Booz Allen Hamilton’s failure to implement adequate safeguards to protect sensitive taxpayer data as the rationale behind this decision.
The wider controversy over Donald Trump’s tax returns has been a focal point since his initial campaign, as he broke with presidential tradition by declining to release his tax filings publicly during his first term. After an extended legal battle involving Congress’s House Ways and Means Committee, six years of Trump's tax returns were ultimately released in 2022 following a Supreme Court ruling.
This lawsuit adds another chapter to the ongoing saga surrounding the confidentiality and handling of Trump's tax information and presents further scrutiny on the procedures and controls governing the privacy of taxpayer data at the federal level.
Requests for comment from the IRS, Treasury Department, and Booz Allen Hamilton concerning the lawsuit and related issues have been submitted but no responses have been recorded at this time.
The case remains active, and further developments are anticipated as legal proceedings progress.