Medieval kings were said to have two bodies: A “body natural,” or mortal self, and a “body politic” that embodies the state. What if one sued the other? That’s the almost metaphysical experiment President Donald Trump is running with his $10 billion lawsuit against the federal government over the illegal disclosure of his tax returns in 2019 and 2020. The experiment might turn out to be harmless, but it shouldn’t be run at all.
While the $10 billion figure is absurd, the lawsuit itself is not. More than 15 years of Trump’s tax records were maliciously leaked to the press by an IRS contractor during his first term in office. Records belonging to thousands of other wealthy individuals, including The Post’s owner Jeff Bezos, were also leaked. The politically motivated contractor, Charles Littlejohn, was sentenced to five years in prison in 2024 after pleading guilty to just one criminal count during the Biden administration.
Congress has granted people whose tax returns are wrongfully disclosed the legal right to seek compensation. Tax records — like medical and educational records — are legally protected for good reasons. The problem is that Trump has complete control over the Justice Department that would need to defend against his suit. That short-circuits what is supposed to be an adversarial legal process.
In a worst-case scenario, Trump’s own appointees at the Justice Department could sign off on a multibillion-dollar payment to their boss in his private capacity. That would be fairly characterized as plunder. A Democratic Congress might consider it grounds for impeachment.
Trump says he would give any lawsuit winnings to charity, but that’s no consolation because it’s not enforceable. In any case, he could control which charities to endow.
If the U.S. government settled with Trump and his sons, who are also parties to the suit, for $10 million, that might not necessarily be excessive; after all, this was a serious breach. But the public has no reason to trust any settlement negotiated in this way.
Public officials trying to dictate the amount of their own private payouts is a bad look. Last year, Senate Republicans created a right for themselves to sue the federal government over the Biden Justice Department’s subpoena of their phone records. That prompted political backlash, including from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), leading to the impending repeal of the provision.
Hopefully Trump’s lawsuit is just meant to provoke. Otherwise, watch out. Pitting his administration against himself for his own advantage might be a neat legal trick. But the American “body politic” will persist long after Trump collects his winnings. And the political reckoning for brazen self-dealing can be severe.
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