HOUSTON, United States

President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit on Thursday, suing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the US Treasury Department for $10 billion for leaking his tax returns to multiple news outlets.

The personal lawsuit filed by Trump, his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization states that "Defendants willfully, knowingly, and/or by gross negligence unlawfully accessed and inspected Plaintiffs' confidential tax return information" and "disclosed Plaintiffs' confidential tax return information in violation" of the law.

The president alleged that the IRS and the Treasury Department failed to take the necessary steps to prevent a former IRS employee from improperly disclosing his tax returns.

"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," said the complaint.

In 2024, former IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to leaking Trump’s tax records to The New York Times. The Times published a report in 2020 that showed the president had only paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017.

After the Times' report was published, Trump called the story "totally fake news" and "made up," adding that the information had been "illegally obtained."

Littlejohn also admitted in federal court to stealing tax records of thousands of other wealthy people in 2019 and 2020, including billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

The IRS in 2024 called Littlejohn's actions "unacceptable" and said that it had sent a statement to affected taxpayers saying that the agency had "taken aggressive action more generally to enhance data security, to ensure, to the fullest extent feasible, that nothing like the Littlejohn incident can happen in the future."

Trump will now face off in court with his own administration, previously telling reporters that he was seeking "a lot of money" in compensation from the federal government.

Trump has filed numerous multibillion-dollar lawsuits since he began his second term in office.

He sued the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) for $10 billion last year for defamation over edits to a clip of his speech on Jan 6, 2021, when protesters stormed the US Capitol after Trump had lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. The BBC said it would fight the suit and sought this month to get it dismissed.

The president also sued The Wall Street Journal and its parent company’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, for $10 billion regarding the newspaper’s reporting on a crude drawing that Trump was alleged to have sent to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003. A company spokesperson defended the reporting, saying they would "vigorously defend" against a lawsuit.

In addition, Trump sued the New York Times newspaper and three of its reporters for $15 billion for defamation over coverage of his 2024 campaign. He also sued JPMorgan Chase and its CEO, Jamie Dimon, for $5 billion, claiming the bank improperly closed his accounts for political reasons.

Both JPMorgan and The New York Times said the lawsuits had no merit.