Trump’s Lawsuit Against IRS Is Just Another Grift in a Long Line of Corruption

Donald Trump’s latest stunt—suing the IRS for $10 billion over leaked tax information—is the kind of brazen self-dealing that has defined his entire public life. As Mona Charen lays out in The Bulwark, this lawsuit is less a legal battle and more a grotesque abuse of power designed to intimidate and enrich, with taxpayers footing the bill.

The backstory is damning. Between 2018 and 2020, an IRS contractor leaked confidential tax returns to journalists, revealing that Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017, and zero in ten of the previous fifteen years. This exposed the former president’s long-standing pattern of dodging taxes while flaunting billionaire status. The contractor was caught, prosecuted, and sentenced to five years in prison. Yet Trump now claims “reputational and financial harm” and demands billions in damages—a sum so absurd it dwarfs the IRS’s annual budget and historic federal payouts.

Judge Kathleen Williams rightly flagged the absurdity: Trump is effectively suing himself, since as president he controlled the IRS and the Justice Department. This isn’t a lawsuit; it’s a taxpayer-funded shakedown.

This IRS case is just the tip of the iceberg. Trump’s other suits, including those targeting the Mueller investigation and the DOJ’s classified documents search at Mar-a-Lago, similarly blur lines between personal vendettas and official power. And then there’s the staggering crypto deal with a UAE royal nicknamed the “spy Sheikh,” which came just days before Trump’s 2021 inauguration and involved a $500 million investment in a company Trump co-founded. This deal raises urgent questions about foreign influence and quid pro quo pay-to-play schemes.

While Trump endlessly rails about Hunter Biden’s corruption, the reality is his own record is a master class in grift, nepotism, and authoritarian overreach. The good news, as Charen suggests, is that the public may finally be done turning a blind eye. The scale and brazenness of Trump’s corruption could be his undoing.

At Only Clowns Are Orange, we will keep shining a light on these abuses of power. Because when corruption reaches this level, accountability isn’t optional—it’s essential.