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President Donald Trump, the current chief executive of the United States government, has just himself filed a lawsuit against the Treasury Department for $10 billion due to the IRS leaking his tax returns back during his first term. President Donald Trump on January 29 filed a lawsuit against the IRS and the Treasury Department over leaks of his confidential tax returns during his first term in office. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. district Court of Southern District of Florida in, is seeking at least $10 billion in damages, alleging that the IRS and Treasury violated federal privacy laws. Trump brought the lawsuit in his personal capacity. His two eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. And Eric Trump, together with the Trump Organization, are also listed as plaintiffs in the filing, which, again, having the sitting US President sue the Treasury Department, might be the biggest example of the bully pulpit and practice that I've ever seen. Regardless, a little bit of background here. In case you don't Remember, during the 2016 presidential cycle, the campaign cycle, the media made a sticking point of the fact that Trump would not release his tax returns while he was on the campaign trail. And to be fair, that was a little bit unusual given the fact that since the 1970s, pretty much every major presidential candidate did release his or her tax returns. Now, Trump claimed that his returns were under an IRS audit and and that he would release them once that IRS audit was complete. And then this tax return controversy, it followed him from the campaign into his actual presidency, wherein one of the major lines of attack by the mainstream media against Trump, besides the Russiagate stuff, had to do with his taxes. And it's actually funny looking back on that period of time now, because it really was mentioned in the news all the time. Trump's taxes, what's in them, what's he hiding? Release the returns, and so on and so forth. But 10 years later, that literally came to nothing. All that airtime, all that newsprint media, and literally nothing. You'd never even think about it. However, what wound up happening was that during Trump's first year in office, his tax returns wound up getting leaked to the media by an IRS contractor. Now, that contractor's name was Mr. Charles Littlejohn. And here's how he did it. Quote, the former IRS employee allegedly stole tax return information from an IRS database by using broad search parameters designed to conceal the true purpose of his queries. Little John uploaded the data to a private website as a way to avoid IRS protocols, which the agency had put in place to detect and prevent large downloads from its devices or systems, and then saved the stolen tax returns to multiple personal storage devices, including an ipod, before disclosing them to the media. Mr. Little John, he then leaked the tax returns to several different news outlets, including the New York Times as well as ProPublica. And even though this excerpt from the article I read to you, it said allegedly, it is worth mentioning that Mr. Littlejohn is currently in prison for what he did in October of 2023. He pled guilty to one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax return information and he was sentenced to five years in federal prison where he is right now. However, Trump's lawsuit, it states that this fact, the fact that he's in prison is not satisfactory and that IRS failed to take the mandatory precautions to prevent the leak in the first place. Quote, the Treasury Department and IRS had a duty to safeguard and protect Trump's confidential tax returns and related tax return information from such unauthorized inspection and public disclosure. Accordingly, the Treasury Department and IRS were obligated to have appropriate technical, employee screening, security and monitoring systems to prevent Little John's unlawful conduct. They failed to take such a such mandatory precautions. And as a concrete example of what could have been done differently, in a practical sense, Trump's lawsuit states as follows. Quote, to illustrate, if the IRS had ensured that Mr. Littlejohn had all IRS based information in his possession connected to IRS approved cybersecurity programs, they would have detected that Mr. Littlejohn was removing plaintiff's taxpayer information from his devices, prevented Mr. Littlejohn from leaving his office of employment carrying taxpayer records with him for the purpose of disclosing them at a location in Gallaudet University, and detected and prohibited his use of a burner phone to orally disclose protected information. Trump's lawsuit then goes on to state that the security procedures at the IRS were so inadequate that it took three full years for the IRS to detect the breach of tax records. Here's what it says. Quote, this caused Trump, his sons and his organization 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. And as such, President Trump, his two sons, as well as the Trump Organization are seeking $10 billion in damages from the US Treasury. Now, if at this point you're thinking to yourself that while yes, it does seem that they have a case, I mean, after all his tax returns were for sure illegally leaked to the public, it does also seem like a big conflict of interest. I mean, you have the chief executive of the United States suing the Treasury Department, of which he is basically the boss, for $10 billion, and President Trump, he was actually asked about this very thing, about this conflict of interest in a recent interview, to which he responded that if he were to win this lawsuit, all of the $10 billion in damages would be donated. Take a listen.