Donald Trump is suing the Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion.
He filed the lawsuit on Thursday in a federal court in Miami. In the complaint, Trump claims the IRS was responsible for leaking his tax records to the media in September 2020. According to the lawsuit, the leak came from an IRS contractor, not Trump himself.
Those leaked documents showed that Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016, the year he won the presidency. They also showed that he paid no federal income tax at all in 10 out of the previous 15 years.
Trump says the leak caused serious damage. The lawsuit claims it hurt him and his family financially, embarrassed them publicly, damaged their business reputations, made them look bad unfairly, and negatively affected him as president.
Right.
Trump has always been unusual when it comes to taxes. Unlike every other modern presidential candidate and president, he refused to release his tax returns to the public. He also stands out for another reason: he has repeatedly sued the federal government including agencies that operate under his own administration.
He has also been unique in how he treated the Justice Department, often acting as if it were his personal legal team rather than an independent part of government. That kind of control hasn’t been seen since the Nixon era, before reforms were put in place to prevent exactly this kind of abuse.
So the obvious question is: how is this $10 billion lawsuit supposed to work?
If Trump wins, the money would come from taxpayers people like you and me. That means the government would be paying Trump. But who exactly would defend the government in this case? The Justice Department is supposed to represent the public, yet Trump has openly pressured and directed it for his own benefit.
If there were settlement talks, who would negotiate with Trump? And who would sign off on any deal? Trump himself?
The situation quickly becomes absurd. It turns into Trump negotiating with… Trump.
Imagine this scene.
Trump is sitting in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk. Across from him sits Donald Trump.
As president, Trump asks what he really wants out of the lawsuit.
As himself, Trump says he wants $10 billion.
The president says that’s ridiculous.
Trump insists it’s not, saying the IRS illegally leaked his tax returns.
The president says it’s not “his” IRS.
Trump asks whose IRS it is.
The president replies that it belongs to the American people including Trump himself.
Trump explodes, saying the IRS works for the president.
The president tries to explain that he can’t justify paying Trump $10 billion of public money.
Trump says he has no choice.
The president says he absolutely does have a choice and says no.
Trump shouts that nobody ever says no to him.
The president fires back that he’s the president of the United States.
Trump threatens to take the case to the Supreme Court.
The president laughs and says the court would rule for him.
Trump argues they’d rule for him instead.
They start shouting insults, ordering each other out of “their” office, until the argument turns into Trump fighting himself like the famous scene in Fight Club, where the main character realizes he has been battling his own reflection all along.
And then it ends.
The entire situation captures how surreal this lawsuit is. A former president suing the government for billions over information that revealed facts he never wanted the public to see, while expecting the same government to somehow pay him for it.
The piece was written by Robert Reich, a former U.S. labor secretary and public policy professor, who uses satire to underline just how strange and troubling — this lawsuit really is.
