The basis for the lawsuit was a data leak that occurred in 2024, when former contractor of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, Charles Edward Littlejohn, transmitted information about Trump's taxes and other prominent individuals to The New York Times and ProPublica.
Based on this data, The New York Times reported in 2020 that Trump had not paid income tax for a long time. Littlejohn was sentenced in 2024 to five years in prison for violating Section 6103 of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code, which pertains to the confidentiality of tax data.
