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If President Donald Trump is successful in his lawsuit to sue the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for $10 billion over the leak of his tax returns, U.S. taxpayers will be footing the bill, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed on Thursday.
In a hearing by the Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona) asked, “let’s say, for some reason, he actually wins that lawsuit, where would that $10 billion come from?”
Bessent stuttered, then said, when pushed: “It would come from Treasury…. The Treasury General Account,” referring to the account that tax payments flow into that the government uses for payments and other purposes.
“So, taxpayers,” Gallego said.
“Yes,” Bessent answered. “Part of the 440,000 taxpayers whose returns were leaked.”
“They’re not suing,” the senator clarified, adding, “If the president prevails in this lawsuit, he’s going to be able to pocket that money.”
The admission that Trump and his associates would be pilfering $10 billion from taxpayers and potentially using his power as president to do so is staggering, and only the latest instance of Trump’s rampant corruption and self-dealing as he slashes life-saving social programs for millions of Americans.
A recent analysis found that Trump and his family have made almost $4 billion off of his presidency so far, including about $1 billion from his crypto empire that he launched just ahead of his inauguration last January.
Trump may also come to a settlement with the IRS for a different amount of money as a result of the lawsuit.
Trump filed his lawsuit against the IRS last week, saying that the leak of his tax records in 2018 and 2020 caused him and the Trump Organization damages and “portrayed them in a false light.” The lawsuit also alleges it “negatively affected President Donald Trump and other Plaintiffs’ public standing,” despite Trump having faced little to no consequences for the tax leak and his current position as the president of the United States.
The leaks were only necessitated because Trump refused to voluntarily share his tax records during his first term in office, sparking concerns about transparency and tax rates for the rich. After his tax returns were leaked, outlets reported that he paid extremely little taxes for many years, including only $750 in federal income taxes the year that he was first elected.
The lawsuit is unprecedented and unlikely to be tried objectively, with experts pointing out the massive conflict of interest at the center of the case.
Government watchdogs and tax policy advocates have condemned the lawsuit.
“Trump, who is estimated to have wealth between $5 and $7 billion, now demands that American taxpayers give him $10 billion to compensate him for not being allowed to keep his tax avoidance a secret from them,” said The Institute for Economic Policy’s (ITEP) executive director Amy Hanauer in a statement last week.
“There is no precedent for a sitting president to sue the government agencies that report to him,” Hanauer went on. “Even if an unbiased judge rightly rejects Trump’s demands as preposterous, there is a great danger that the IRS would ‘agree’ to settle and pay out an enormous sum of taxpayer dollars to Trump.”
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