The Daily Fuckup

Donald Trump’s lawyers asked a federal judge on Friday to put his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS on hold for 90 days while the parties keep talking about a possible settlement or other resolution. The request came in a Florida case accusing the IRS and Treasury Department of failing to stop the leak of Trump’s tax information to news organizations between 2018 and 2020.

The filing says the pause would not prejudice either side and would give the parties time to narrow or resolve the dispute. It is still only a request. No judge has granted the stay, and no settlement has been announced.

The lawsuit is unusual even by Trump standards. He filed it against agencies within the executive branch while serving as president, and the case includes Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and the Trump Organization as plaintiffs. The complaint says the leak caused reputational and financial harm and public embarrassment. It also seeks damages tied to the release of confidential tax records.

Legal experts and ethics watchdogs have said the case raises serious conflict-of-interest concerns because the president oversees the government defending the suit. In February, legal analysts noted that the lawsuit raises questions about whether the Justice Department can represent the public interest in a case where the plaintiff is also the head of the executive branch. A Senate Finance Committee Democratic statement later pressed the same point, arguing that the setup creates obvious concerns about how the government can respond to a damages claim from the president himself.

The underlying leak case stems from the prosecution of former IRS contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn, who was sentenced in 2024 to five years in prison after pleading guilty to leaking tax information about Trump and others to news outlets. The IRS has already said it will strengthen taxpayer-data protections, and Treasury has canceled contracts with the company that employed Littlejohn.

For now, the immediate question is procedural: whether the court will agree to pause the case while the sides continue talking. The larger question is whether a president can pursue a huge damages claim against agencies he controls without turning the government’s defense into a legal and political mess.