President Donald Trump is suing the IRS and the Treasury Department for $10 billion, alleging they failed to take necessary steps to prevent a former IRS employee from leaking information. If Trump wins the lawsuit, the burden of payment falls on the American taxpayer.
The other plaintiffs include two of Trump’s sons — Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump — and the Trump Organization.
The lawsuit against the government is considered a major conflict of interest that could end with the president’s own appointees approving a federal payout to him.
While categorizations vary, common types of conflict of interest involve financial (monetary gain), relational/personal (family/friend bias), organizational/professional (dual roles, loyalty to another entity), and informational/ confidential (misusing sensitive data). These overlap, but generally, a conflict arises when personal interests could improperly influence professional duties, benefiting one over the other. According to the lawsuit, “Defendants have caused Plaintiffs 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,”the complaint says.
A legal remedy has already been provided for the leak. A former IRS contractor, Charles Littlejohn, was sentenced to five years in prison in 2024 after he pleaded guilty the year before to leaking Trump’s tax records to The New York Times.
The Times published exclusive reporting in 2020 that showed Trump had paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017.
Since that time, the Treasury Department cancelled its contracts with the company that employed the leaker, and the IRS has pledged to strengthen its data protection procedures in the wake of the incident. As president, Trump has the authority to ensure those new safeguards are as robust as possible.
In addition to the IRS suit, Trump, who will now face off in court with his own administration, based on past investigations into him by the Justice Department. The New York Times reported in October 2025 that Trump was seeking $230 million in damages from the Justice Department.
Regarding the lawsuit, Trump stated that he would be the one to approve the payout and said, “It’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself.” US Sen. Ron Wyden on the Senate Finance Committee, said in response to the president’s lawsuit that “Donald Trump is a cheat and a grifter to his core, and for him to abuse his office in an attempt to steal $10 billion from the American taxpayer is a shameless, disgusting act of corruption.”
Since he returned to office, Trump has filed numerous lawsuits, often for $10 billion. He sued the BBC last year for that amount, claiming defamation over edits to a clip of his speech on Jan. 6, 2021; he sued The Wall Street Journal and its parent company’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, for $10 billion; JPMorgan Chase and its CEO, Jamie Dimon, for $5 billion; as well as suing the New York Times and three of its reporters for defamation over coverage of his 2024 campaign, seeking $15 billion.
Known for filing lawsuits, from 1973 and until he was elected president in 2016, Trump and his businesses were involved in almost 4,100 legal cases in United States federal and state courts, including battles with casino patrons, golf clubs, million-dollar real estate lawsuits, personal defamation lawsuits, sexual abuse, and over 100 business tax disputes. Trump has filed a documented minimum of more 1,600 lawsuits, bringing the total numbers to at least 5,695 thus far in his lifetime.