President Donald Trump said he would donate any money he received in a $10 billion lawsuit that he filed against the U.S. Treasury and Internal Revenue Service over an unauthorized disclosure of his tax returns to the press during his first term in office.
"Any money that I win, I'll give it to charity, one hundred percent to charity, charities that will be approved by government or whatever," Trump said in an interview with NBC News.
The president suggested he could exert pressure over Attorney General Pam Bondi and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in the case, acknowledging there had "never been anything like it."
"What I would do? Tell them to pay me, but I'll give 100% of the money to charity," Trump said, floating the American Cancer Society as a potential beneficiary.
The president, who described the arrangement as "putting it back in the system," dismissed concerns he would be growing the deficit and maintained that such a penalty or settlement wouldn't be taking money out of the system because the government already financed charitable efforts.
"They give away a lot of money," Trump said.
The suit was filed last week in Miami federal court by Trump, his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization, which manages the president's real estate holdings. Trump had long criticized the IRS for allegedly working to undermine him for political purposes.
The case centers around a 2020 New York Times report on Trump's tax records based on leaked IRS data. Former IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn pleaded guilty in 2023 to stealing the president's tax data and leaking it to the Times. He also stole tax records for thousands of other wealthy Americans, including Ken Griffin, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, which he leaked to ProPublica.
The IRS and the Treasury "had a duty to safeguard and protect plaintiffs' confidential tax returns and related tax return information from such unauthorized inspection and public disclosure," Trump's lawyer, Alejandro Brito, said in the suit. "Accordingly, defendants were obligated to have appropriate technical, employee screening, security, and monitoring systems to prevent Littlejohn's unlawful conduct."
Trump has also indicated he was seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation from the U.S. Justice Department through an administrative claim process. He claims the department violated his rights with investigations into whether his 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia in connection with the 2016 election and his post-presidential retention of classified documents.
In the interview on Wednesday, Trump defended that effort, arguing that he also planned to donate any proceeds there to charity and that the impact to taxpayers was lessened because a jury trial was not involved.
