Of all President Donald Trump’s kleptocracy schemes, perhaps the most shameless are his financial legal claims against the same executive branch over which he presides. Now Trump is on the verge of settling one of these, a lawsuit he filed in January against the IRS seeking $10 billion in damages for the leak of his tax returns to The New York Times. With negotiators working both sides of the table, Trump is nearing a very generous agreement, which is to say a shameless fleecing of the American taxpayer.
Before proceeding, let’s catalog Trump’s three personal financial claims against his own administration.
The first two are administrative claims under the 1946 Federal Tort Claims Act that Trump filed with the Justice Department after his first term ended. An administrative claim is not a lawsuit against the government; it’s an attempt to extract financial compensation from the government under threat of litigation.
Trump’s first administrative claim, filed in 2023, concerned the FBI’s supposed tortious conduct in its Russiagate probe. Trump’s second administrative claim, filed in 2024, concerned the FBI’s supposed tortious conduct in its Mar-a-Lago document search. Trump sought $115 million for each of these claims—$230 milliion total—to cover compensatory and punitive damages. He continued to pursue them after he reentered the White House in January 2025, even though he was now negotiating with his own Justice Department. Neither claim is yet resolved.
