1. United States
2. Colo.
3. Letter

As your constituent and a 30-year law enforcement officer, I am writing because your silence on the report that the Department of Justice is considering settling President Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS is unacceptable. This is not oversight. This is not leadership. This is standing by while a president attempts to fleece the U.S. Treasury. A president directing his own DOJ to negotiate a payout to himself using taxpayer money is the kind of self-dealing our system was designed to prevent. If any other public official tried to use the agencies they oversee to personally enrich themselves, both of you would call it corruption. And you would be right. These are not partisan talking points. They are straightforward applications of the tax code and its regulations. Yet you are standing by while a president attempts to use the Department of Justice to negotiate a personal payout from the very government he leads. Beyond the ethical and constitutional problems, the claim itself fails on basic statutory grounds: 1. It only applies to a government employee. 26 U.S.C. 7431(a)(1) allows a claim only when an officer or employee of the United States improperly discloses return information. If the disclosure was by anyone else, the statute does not apply. 2. The maximum statutory amount is 1000 dollars. Under 26 U.S.C. 7431(c), statutory damages are capped at $1,000 per act unless actual damages are proven. There is no legal basis for anything close to a $10 billion payout. 3. The statute of limitations is two years. 26 U.S.C. 7431(d) requires filing within two years of discovering the disclosure. Trump’s 2019 return information became public years before he filed his lawsuit. He only filed after he won reelection, which makes the claim not just time-barred but an obvious grift you are enabling through silence. I am asking each of you directly: Do you support using the DOJ to pursue a claim that fails on employee status, damages, and statute of limitations? Do you believe Congress has any obligation to stop a president from attempting to personally enrich himself with taxpayer funds? Colorado deserves an answer. Your constituents deserve an answer. And the Constitution demands one.