Trump’s Lawsuit Against the IRS Is Even More Outrageous Than It Seems

Trump wasn’t a sitting president then, and that wasn’t a lawsuit, but rather two administrative claims filed with the Justice department. An administrative claim bypasses the courts to seek settlement under threat of filing a lawsuit. The Russiagate claim was filed in 2023 and the Mar-a-Lago claim was filed in 2024. You can read a copy of the latter here.

The administrative claims were unresolved after Trump began his second term, and as recently as October The New York Times reported that they remained so and that Trump was demanding the Justice department pay him $230 million. In one respect, the administrative claims are even more kleptocratic than the IRS lawsuit: The decision about whether to settle, and for how much, resides entirely with Trump’s own Justice department.

“It looks bad,” Trump admitted in October. “I’m suing [sic] myself, right? So I don’t know. But that was a lawsuit [sic] that was very strong, very powerful.” It’s possible that Trump is suing the IRS for $10 billion to make his demand for a $230 million settlement seem reasonable.