Every president since Richard Nixon has released his tax returns, but in February 2016, during his first presidential campaign, Donald Trump refused, claiming that he could not do so because he was being audited. (Note: The IRS has automatically audited every president’s tax returns since the 1970s, and no regulation exists that prohibits anyone, including the president, from releasing their returns anytime, even during an audit.) He has not released his tax returns to this day, but in the late 20-teens, an IRS contractor named Charles E. Littlejohn leaked 15 years of Trump’s tax returns and those of more than 7,500 of the country’s richest people to The New York Times and ProPublica. Littlejohn pleaded guilty to unauthorized release of tax records in October 2023 and was sentenced to the maximum 5 years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

Fast forward to January 29, 2026, when Donald Trump, his sons Eric and Don Junior, and the Trump Organization filed a $10 billion dollar lawsuit against the IRS for failing to prevent the tax return leaks. The suit claims that the leaks caused “reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs’ public standing.”

Whether or not Trump expected the case to go to trial, or expected to win if it did, is anybody’s guess. But any amount awarded by the courts would have gone straight into Trump and company’s pockets, and it would have come right out of ours, since our taxes fund the IRS.

Just think: the president sues a department that he ultimately controls. Does anyone really think the IRS would oppose his demands?

Fortunately, Trump decided to withdraw the lawsuit. That’s the good news. The bad news is that in return for dropping the suit, the Department of Justice, which the president also controls, and which is currently run by one of his former personal attorneys, has established a nearly $1.8 billion dollar fund “to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare.” (https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-anti-weaponization-fund.) The fund would be administered by a five-member commission appointed by the Attorney General; members could be dismissed by the president.

If it smells like a fish, folks, it IS a fish!

No one will be surprised if the convicted (and pardoned by Trump) January 6 rioters, whom the president has called “patriots,” get big payouts from this fund. But regardless of who benefits, the money they get will come from our tax dollars.

Donald Trump is picking our pockets, friends. And he’s not even trying to hide it.

MICHAEL HEYD

Montoursville

Submitted by Virtual Newsroom