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Yesterday in the Southern District of Florida Donald J. Trump, in his personal capacity, filed a lawsuit for $10 billion in damages related to the leak of his tax returns. The defendants? The Internal Revenue Service and the United States Department of the Treasury. I am not familiar enough with the relevant statutes to venture whether this claim is viable. Assuming it is, I am highly skeptical Trump and his co-plaintiffs could demonstrate $10 billion in actual damages (which is what the cited statutes allow them to recover plus costs and attorney fees). I also read both statutes as having a two year statute of limitations and the events giving rise to the liability occurred in 2019/2020 so it is not clear to me that the suit is viable on that basis.
The above may all be academic. My understanding of the relevant federal procedure is that judges are not going to raise issues like the statute of limitations or factual issues with alleged damages on their own initiative. Our system assumes the parties are adversarial, so the defendants would file a motion to dismiss citing the statute of limitations or contest any damage calculations they thought were incorrect. Of course, in this case, the plaintiff is also the boss of the defendant. With plenary power to fire them. Can Trump, as president, just order Scott Bessent (currently both the Secretary of the Treasury and Commissioner of the IRS) to settle the suit for the full amount? And fire him if he refuses? What is the precedent on presidents suing the government while they're president? Normally when one side of a lawsuit is not interested in pressing its case other entities that have a shared interest can intervene to do so, but it's not clear to me who is in that position here.
I guess (random layman thoughts) maybe there's an argument that federal courts don't have jurisdiction to hear this because the parties aren't actually in controversy as required by Article 3, since it's Trump suing himself? Just spitballing. Is there any legal mechanism, short of impeachment, to prevent Trump from gifting himself the full contents of the United States Treasury via lawsuit settlements?
You only are noticing this because it's Trump. Fed's sue the Federal Government, and the Federal Government just gives them handouts in the form of settlements all the time. Look up what ultimately happened with Peter Strzok. It's just another quasi-legal form of corruption, and making sure the made men of the deep state stay made.
People are going to be outraged that Trump is suing ostensibly his own government (by pretending not to know things) over a legitimate grievance, and then go back to ignoring the golden parachutes used up deep state cronies keep getting once the public (as much of the public that cared) has moved on from their crimes.
Having a functional long term memory, I actually recall what a singular, unprecedented, and highly illegal event it was having some "rogue" IRS agent leak Trump's tax returns. Dude who did it is currently in prison, and also, people other than Trump have sued. Some sued BAH who was dude's employer, some sued the IRS directly.
I feel like the situations are pretty different. Strzok was, as literally as possible, not-a-Fed when he sued the government. Part of his suit was alleging wrongful termination. He also was not the boss of the Attorney General, with authority to fire him if he didn't like the settlement terms. I am open to the possibility Trump has a viable claim but I am highly skeptical about how this process will play out, given he controls both sides of the litigation.
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