What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried to help himself to $10 billion of taxpayer money.

Trump sued the IRS for $10 billion today, claiming that the agency was negligent because a contractor in leaked his tax returns over a period of time in 2019 and 2020. Those leaks became the basis for a number of New York Times and ProPublica stories that, while damning, didn't add much to what was already known about Trump's long history of tax cheating.

These are the specific articles that the lawsuit cites:

• Long-Concealed Records Show Trump’s Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance (NYT, Sept. 27, 2020) 
• 18 Revelations From a Trove of Trump Tax Records (NYT, Sept. 27, 2020) 
• Here Are the Key Numbers From Trump’s Tax Returns (NYT, Dec. 21, 2022) 
• Trump Tax Returns Undermine His Image as a Successful Entrepreneur (NYT, Dec. 30, 2022)
• Key Takeaways From Trump’s Tax Returns (NYT, Dec. 30, 2022)
• Trump’s Taxes: Red Flags, Big Losses and a Windfall From His Father (NYT, Dec. 21, 2022)
• Live Updates: I.R.S. Didn’t Audit Trump for 2 Years in Office, House Committee Says (NYT, Dec. 21, 2022) 
• Trump Paid $750 in Federal Income Taxes in 2017. Here’s the Math. (NYT, Sept. 29, 2020) 
• Never-Before-Seen Trump Tax Documents Show Major Inconsistencies (ProPublica, Oct. 26, 2019)
• Meet the Shadowy Accountants Who Do Trump's Taxes and Help Him Seem Richer Than He Is (ProPublica, May 6, 2020)

Bizarrely, Trump's filing also claims that all of the above stories are false, even though they are based on leaks of his actual tax returns. 

In other words, Trump says he should be paid $10 billion dollars as a private citizen for "negligence" that happened on his watch as President, and he wants political cronies he appointed to lead the IRS and Justice Department—and whom he can fire or overrule—to decide whether he should get it.

Trump is making a lot of money during his second for himself and his political allies this way. In addition to today's lawsuit, Trump is "asking" his own Department of Justice—which his former personal defense lawyers now run—for $230 million in an administrative process because, in short, the FBI investigated his ties to Russia and his outright theft of classified documents. His DOJ also "settled" a spurious claim for $5 million by the family of Ashli Babbitt, a woman who was shot during the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. 

That Trump is a tax cheat is beyond question: not only had it been exhaustively documented before the leaks described in this lawsuit, it was an element of his felony convictions in New York State. The Trump Organization was also found guilty of criminal tax fraud in 2022, and Trump's financial fixer and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg went to prison for it. That sort of thing is why Trump, who has been promising to release his tax returns since becoming a candidate in 2015, never has.
 

Why does this matter?

• Corruption doesn't get much more obvious than a president demanding $10 billion directly from the government branch he leads. 

• That $10 billion will come from the pockets of Americans who don't cheat on their taxes.