Day-to-day corruption in the Trump administration gets lost in the news when there’s so much to hear about the chaos of secret police, an economy rigged for billionaires, and the destruction of national institutions. Is all the chaos at least partly intended to make us look the other way?
If so, the redirection failed to work on U.S. Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, at least not Trump’s attempted redirection of $10 billion straight from the taxpayers, to his lackeys, to his own baggy pockets.
Last week, the sitting president sued the Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Treasury $10 billion over leaks of his tax records that occurred during his first term of office. In essence these federal agencies, whose independence from direct control by the executive branch has eroded down to doing whatever Donald Trump tells them to do, may be ordered by their boss to settle out of court for whatever amount is dictated.
To compound the ironies, the fault for which Trump is suing occurred during his own term with agency leaders he appointed himself. “Trump is in essence now suing the government for his own failures during his first term,” Wyden and Warren point out in their letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Attorney General Pam Bondi.
In the letter, the senators demand to know whether these agencies will do their job of defending the American taxpayer in this lawsuit, rather than act in the service of the plaintiff. They provide a deadline of Feb. 17 for the answer to this question and a list of others raised by this scheme.
The above summarizes a U.S. Senate Committee on Finance Newsroom post from Feb. 4, 2026: “Wyden, Warren Demand Answers as Trump Attempts to Steal $10B From Taxpayers in IRS Lawsuit.”