The Craziest Part About Trump’s Massive IRS Lawsuit

Donald Trump has sued the IRS and the Treasury Department after an agency contractor leaked his tax returns, revealing that he hadn’t paid income tax for a decade—but his lawsuit isn’t likely to stand up to scrutiny.

In court documents filed late Thursday, Trump demanded that the agencies cough up a minimum of $10 billion in damages that would be paid out on the taxpayer’s dime. But there are several issues with the suit itself that raise questions about whether the case can be litigated at all.

First, Trump, in a personal capacity, is suing the IRS and the Treasury for a breach that occurred between May 2019 and September 2020. The problem: The breach occurred during the first Trump administration, when Trump himself was in charge of governing those institutions.

Further still, the bulk of the 27-page complaint appears to have passed the statute of limitations. As Ed Whelan, the former deputy assistant attorney general during the George W. Bush administration, noted online, the first claim in Trump’s complaint must be brought “within two years after the date of discovery” by the offended party.

“Trump knew of the leaks back in 2020. The complaint feebly tries to get around this problem by contending that Trump and his fellow plaintiffs ‘were not able to bring an action against an unknowable, indeterminate defendant to vindicate their rights’ until they were notified of criminal charges against Littlejohn,” Whelan wrote, referring to Charles Littlejohn, the accused contractor.

Littlejohn is currently serving five years in prison for the breach, which he pleaded guilty to in 2023.

“But Littlejohn isn’t the defendant. Treasury and IRS are,” Whelan observed. “And Trump knew back in 2020 that they had allowed the allegedly unlawful leaks. So that claim is time-barred.”

Trump is suing the government in conjunction with his two sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., as well as the Trump Organization.

“Defendants have caused Plaintiffs reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs’ public standing,” the lawsuit states.

The second claim listed in the lawsuit, which relates to the privacy clause, similarly expired, according to Whelan.

“Seems to me that it wasn’t long ago that conservatives decried vexatious litigants and those who tried to fleece American taxpayers,” Whelan snarked.

The White House is gloating about the arrest of journalist Don Lemon, posting a picture of the former CNN correspondent with the message, “When life gives you lemons” and a chains emoji on X Friday morning.

Boasting about a Black journalist’s arrest with a chains emoji was certainly a choice, evoking racist imagery. Federal agents arrested Lemon Thursday night along with one other Black journalist, Georgia Fort, and two Black activists, Trahern Jeen Crews and Jamael Lydell Lundy. All of them were connected to the anti-ICE protest at a Minneapolis church earlier this month where an ICE agent was serving as pastor. A federal magistrate judge had rejected a criminal complaint against Lemon last week, reportedly enraging Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Three of the protest organizers were also arrested last week, with Bondi posting, “Listen loud and clear: WE DO NOT TOLERATE ATTACKS ON PLACES OF WORSHIP” and the White House sharing a doctored image of one of the organizers, civil rights attorney and Minneapolis activist Nekima Levy Armstrong, supposedly crying as she was arrested.

Arresting protesters and journalists is a flagrant violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution. The White House appears to be trying to intimidate anyone who opposes its racist immigration agenda—and even the journalists attempting to document it.

Lindsey Graham is so mad about his phone records being investigated that the South Carolina Republican might shut down the whole dadgum government.

On Thursday night, Graham refused to support a bill agreed upon by both Donald Trump and Senate Democrats that would have solidified 95 percent of the year’s funding for federal agencies.

The remaining five percent consists of the annual budget for the Department of Homeland Security. Following months’ worth of public outcry against the violent actions of ICE, Democrats successfully stripped DHS funding from the larger bill. The new bill allows for a two-week stopgap, giving Democrats time to formulate policy changes before they agree to fund DHS.

Graham is refusing to endorse the bill, not because of his love for DHS, but for a much dumber reason: he’s annoyed at a provision that repeals a law allowing senators to get payouts if they had their phone records seized by former special counsel Jack Smith.

As one of nine Republican lawmakers who had their records seized while Smith investigated Trump’s role in the Capitol riot, Graham would have been able to sue his own employer and potentially collect millions of dollars in taxpayer money under the provision—an idea he appeared to be very excited about. Now, that provision (which was criticized on both sides of the aisle as essentially legalized bribery) is gone, and Graham is reportedly pissed.

Graham will likely cave to his dear leader soon and agree to support the bill. But a government shutdown being caused by one of Trump’s biggest loyalists remains possible—and quite funny to think about.

Doug Burgum had a long resume before Donald Trump tapped him to be the secretary of the interior, but the credential that actually got him the job was apparently his wife, according to the president.

“I saw them riding horses in a video. And I said, ‘Who is that?’ I was talking about her, not him,” Trump said Thursday, seated at the Resolute Desk beside the couple. “They explained it, I said, ‘I’m gonna hire him,’ because anybody that has somebody like you to be with, it’s an amazing tribute.”

The reference to the video made Burgum’s wife, Kathryn Burgum, turn her face into her husband’s chest. Burgum served for eight years as North Dakota’s governor prior to entering Trump’s presidential cabinet.

It’s the second instance in recent weeks in which the president has opined about his colleagues’ wives.

At a GOP retreat on January 6, Trump told a collection of Republican lawmakers that House Majority Leader Steve Scalise has a “great wife,” recalling Jennifer Scalise’s affection for her husband after he was attacked by a gunman at a congressional baseball game in 2017.

“Another one who has a great wife, Jacquie, is Tom Emmer, right,” Trump also said at the time, referring to the House majority whip. “Look at you, you have a great wife.”

“She actually liked me at the beginning when we were having little fights,” he continued, recalling that he and Emmer used to regularly disagree. “But Jacquie was saying, ‘I’m telling you, he’s a great guy, he’s good. He’s going to be a great president, blah, blah, blah.’ She was fighting for me and now I love this guy. He’s great. Jacquie’s right about—she was right about both of us, I think, right.”

Luigi Mangione will not face the death penalty. 

Mangione, who is on trial for the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had his federal murder charges dismissed on technicality by a federal judge who determined that the shooting was not simultaneously committed during another act of violence. Prosecutors argued that stalking fulfilled that requirement, but the judge disagreed. 

U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett, a Biden appointee, left in place the stalking charges against Mangione, which would carry a maximum sentence of life in prison. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Thompson was killed in December 2024 on his way to an investor conference. Mangione, who has a history of severe back pain, noted in an alleged manifesto that the U.S. has the “most expensive healthcare system in the world” but “ranks #42 in life expectancy.”

“United [Healthcare] is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but [h]as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it,” he wrote. The U.S. actually ranks even lower in life expectancy at sixtieth in the world. It is by far the most expensive.

This is a massive blow for Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Justice Department, as they made a spectacle out of seeking the death penalty for Mangione. President Trump even claimed on Fox News that Mangione “shot someone in the back as clear as you’re looking at me.... He shot him right in the middle of the back — instantly dead.... This is a sickness. This really has to be studied and investigated.” All of what Trump is was only alleged, undermining federal prosecutors’ case.

So much posturing and tough talk, only to have their dreams of capital punishment deferred by a technicality. It seems like the DOJ will have to go back to the drawing board.

 Mangione’s attorneys have yet to comment.  

This story has been updated.