President Donald Trump has voluntarily dropped a $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, according to a court filing submitted on Monday. The filing states that the case has been dismissed but does not provide the terms of that dismissal.
The suit was originally filed in January by Trump, two of his sons and the Trump family business. In that filing the plaintiffs argued the IRS should have done more to stop a former contractor from disclosing the familys tax returns to media organizations during Trumps first term. The complaint sought $10 billion in damages.
The disclosure at the center of the litigation was attributed to Charles Littlejohn, identified as a former contractor for the IRS. Littlejohn provided tax return documents to multiple media outlets in 2019 and 2020, according to the earlier court pleadings. Reporting in 2020 indicated that the documents showed Trump paid little or no income taxes in many years.
The Monday filing announcing the voluntary dismissal does not say whether the parties negotiated a settlement or resolved their dispute in another way. The terms of dismissal and whether any agreement was reached were not immediately available.
Because the court record made public on Monday contains no additional explanatory material, key questions remain open. The filing confirms only that the plaintiffs have elected to discontinue the suit against the IRS; it does not supply information about any financial or procedural arrangements that may have led to that decision.
The case had centered on allegations that the IRS failed to secure confidential taxpayer records against disclosure by a contractor. Those allegations were tied to documents that subsequently appeared in news reports in 2019 and 2020.
At present, the public record is limited to the dismissal notice filed with the court and previously reported details regarding the source of the disclosures and the content reported by news organizations in 2020. No further procedural steps or court statements accompany the dismissal filing available so far.
Clear summary
A voluntary dismissal filed on Monday ends the $10 billion lawsuit President Trump, two of his sons and the Trump family business brought against the IRS in January. The suit alleged the agency failed to prevent a former contractor from providing the plaintiffs tax returns to media outlets in 2019 and 2020. The filing gives no information about settlement terms or whether the parties resolved the matter outside court.