Here are some excerpts from a tweet thread I did this morning about this lawsuit that Trump filed yesterday against the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service:
1. Trump’s ridiculous $10B lawsuit against the Treasury Department and IRS rests on leaks from May 2019 through Sept 2020, when Trump was president and thus had formal responsibility over those agencies.
So Trump in personal capacity is suing agencies now in his charge for their failings when they were previously in his charge.
2. The two claims in Trump’s complaint also appear to have been filed after the limitations period on each has expired.
The first claim, under 26 USC 7431(a)(1), has to be brought “within 2 years after the date of discovery by the plaintiff of the unauthorized … disclosure.” The complaint acknowledges that provision governs.
Trump knew of the leaks back in 2020. The complaint feebly tries to get around this problem by contending that Trump and his fellow plaintiffs “were not able to bring an action against an unknowable, indeterminate defendant [i.e., Charles Littlejohn] to vindicate their rights” until they were notified of criminal charges against Littlejohn. But Littlejohn isn’t the defendant. Treasury and IRS are. And Trump knew back in 2020 that they had allowed the allegedly unlawful leaks.
So that claim is time-barred.
3. Trump’s second claim, under the Privacy Act, has a limitations period that expires “two years from the date on which the cause of action arises.” So the limitations period on that claim has also expired. (It would be really something if DOJ were to attempt to waive the limitations period.)
4. Seems to me that it wasn’t long ago that conservatives decried vexatious litigants and those who tried to fleece American taxpayers.
5. BTW, the ten billion dollars in damages that Trump seeks to extract from US taxpayers is only for supposed actual damages, and it’s just a floor (“at least 10,000,000,000.00”). He also seeks unspecified punitive damages on top of that.