The court filing said the IRS and the Treasury Department did not have the safeguards in place to prevent the “unlawful conduct.”
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service, alleging the agencies leaked information from his tax returns to several media organizations.
Court records show that Trump; his sons, Donald J. Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization are seeking at least $10 billion in damages. The lawsuit was filed on Thursday in a federal court in Miami, noting that it was brought in his “personal capacity,” not as president of the United States.
The filing alleges that from May 2019 through at least September 2020, former IRS employee Charles Littlejohn “illegally obtained access to” and disclosed “tax returns and return information” to The New York Times, ProPublica and other “leftist media outlets.”
The lawsuit accuses the agency of causing “reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs’ public standing.”
Additionally, the court filing stated that the IRS and the Treasury Department lacked safeguards to “prevent Littlejohn’s unlawful conduct.”
In 2024, former IRS contractor Littlejohn, of Washington, D.C. — who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton — was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to leaking tax information about Trump and others to news outlets. Prosecutors said the leaks appeared to be “unparalleled in the IRS’s history.”
In court documents, prosecutors said Littlejohn had applied to work as a contractor to get Trump’s tax returns and carefully figured out how to search and extract tax data to avoid triggering suspicions internally.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Treasury Department cut its contract with Booz Allen.
The latest move is in line with the Trump administration’s efforts to exact retribution against perceived enemies of the president and his allies — despite Booz Allen’s recent contributions to Trump’s ballroom project, which is expected to cost more than $400 million.
Still, Booz Allen, which is a major defense and national security technology firm, maintains extensive government contracts with other agencies, including the Defense Department, Homeland Security and various intelligence agencies.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.