Oppose Trump's $10 Billion IRS Lawsuit as Unconstitutional Self-Dealing

I am writing to urge you to publicly oppose President Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS and take legislative action to prevent this unprecedented abuse of power. Trump is suing the executive branch he currently leads over a tax disclosure that occurred during his first term when he was also president. No U.S. president in American history has ever sued the executive branch they preside over. This lawsuit represents a fundamental violation of the separation of powers and constitutional governance. The facts reveal the absurdity of this claim. In October 2018, IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn downloaded Trump's tax information and provided it to The New York Times, which published a story on September 27, 2020. Littlejohn was prosecuted, pleaded guilty, and received a five-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Marion, Illinois, where he will serve until 2029. This sentence far exceeds federal guidelines of 10 months and the average tax fraud sentence of 16 months. Justice was already served. Trump's lawsuit demands two-thirds of the IRS's entire $15 billion annual budget. If successful, this would be the third-largest civil judgment in U.S. history and the largest ever awarded to a single plaintiff in a case not involving death. Yet Trump's net worth has more than tripled to $6.5 billion since the disclosure, making financial harm impossible to demonstrate. Ken Griffin's nearly identical lawsuit over the same breach was dismissed and settled in 2024 with no monetary compensation, only an IRS apology. The hypocrisy is staggering. Trump's complaint cites Treasury Inspector General warnings about IRS security deficiencies from 2010 to 2020, yet his own administration was responsible for addressing these publicly available warnings for four of those years. His lawsuit also seeks to establish Littlejohn as a joint employee of both his contracting firm and the IRS, directly contradicting Trump's own Labor Department regulations that narrowed joint employment definitions to benefit large corporations. Congress must act to prevent this kleptocratic self-dealing. I urge you to introduce or support legislation clarifying that sitting presidents cannot sue their own executive branch agencies for personal financial gain.