U.S. President Donald Trump in the White House in Washington, D.C., January 9, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
President Donald Trump is suing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for $10 billion in response to the leaking of his tax returns in 2020. The leak, reported by the New York Times, showed that he paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017 and, before that, paid no federal income taxes at all in ten out of 15 years.
The New Republic's Timothy Noah takes a close look at the lawsuit in an article published on February 2, laying out some reasons why it is even "more outrageous" than what is being reported.
"Last week," Noah explains, "Donald Trump filed suit against the Internal Revenue Service, demanding $10 billion in compensation for the unauthorized disclosure of his taxes in September 2020….. This is a story that, the more you dig into the details, the more outrageous it becomes. News coverage has actually failed to capture fully how very stupid this lawsuit is. I have now reviewed the relevant documents, and can attest that, even for Trump, this lawsuit is an outlier. It's bats—— crazy."
Noah notes that then-IRS employee Charles Littlejohn "downloaded Trump's tax information in October 2018 and gave it to The New York Timesin May 2019." Littlejohn, who pled guilty, is now serving a five-year sentence in federal prison.
"Trump's $10 billion, if he got it, would be the third-biggest civil judgment in United States history," Noah observes. "It would be the biggest civil judgment ever awarded to a plaintiff in a case where the defendant didn't kill at least one person…. The Trump Administration has requested $15 billion to fund the IRS this fiscal year. So yes, Trump wants to help himself to two-thirds of the IRS' annual budget. So, wow, the whole thing is pretty nuts."