NO CLASS

Your Money. His Militia. There's a Loophole.

May 25, 2026

Earlier in 2026, Trump filed a lawsuit claiming the federal government improperly leaked his tax returns to the media during his first presidency. The lawsuit argued that the IRS failed to protect confidential tax information that was leaked by a former contractor, Charles Littlejohn, who had already pled guilty and been sentenced to 5 years in prison for disclosing tax records of Trump and other wealthy Americans to media outlets.

The Settlement Agreement lays out the crime:

On January 29, 2026, Plaintiffs filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, stating that a former IRS employee/contractor, Charles Littlejohn had illegally obtained access to, and illegally disclosed, Plaintiffs’ tax returns and/or tax return information to media outlets in violation of the Internal Revenue Code and the Privacy Act.

Trump reportedly sought about $10 billion in damages. The Justice Department negotiated a settlement with the IRS and Treasury.

Instead of paying Trump directly, the administration announced a settlement agreement. According to DOJ statements, Trump would drop the lawsuit in exchange for a formal apology, protections related to future tax audits, and creation of a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

The plaintiffs were Donald Trump, The Trump Organization, Donald Trump Jr., and Eric Trump.

DOJ settled the case with the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit itself — not with a separate outside group but the DOJ said the fund would compensate people who claimed they were victims of politically motivated prosecutions, investigations, or “lawfare.”

How, you might ask, can a settlement for one lawsuit become a compensation mechanism for unrelated people? It can’t. Class action lawsuits represent many people harmed by the same event or company, i.e. BP Oil Spill or Exposure to Asbestos or other private individuals who had their tax information exposed.

January 6 defendants, or Trump allies investigated by DOJ, or other unrelated individuals did not suffer the same legal injury as Trump’s tax-return leak case.

There must be a proposed “class”

“A class action is not a political or administrative grouping — it’s a judge-certified legal structure requiring tightly connected claims.

A plaintiff can’t just say, “I was harmed by the government.” They must define a group, such as “All individuals prosecuted under policy X between 2018–2024” or “All taxpayers affected by Action Y.” Maybe they were all harmed by having their taxes revealed to the public, but that group has to show they were all harmed by the same government policy. That the policy that caused harm applied to all class members.

So, if a “fund” is paying broad categories of people without class certification, critics argue it is not operating like a court-supervised class action settlement, which is why the structure becomes a legal farce.

There are other requirements to be certified as a class, and almost all require common issues to predominate.

“Unrelated cases” are the problem. If some people are Jan. 6 defendants and others claim they were wrongfully detained and yet others claim they were victims of state sponsored terrorism, or any other case with different facts and legal claims, they usually cannot be one class.

They should share a specific legal injury caused by the same policy or action. In this instance they should all be victims of leaked tax documents.

Courts generally reject class certification when injuries differ too much. That’s called failing commonality.

While Charles Littlejohn was sentenced to five years in prison last January after pleading guilty to one count of disclosing tax return information without authorization, the IRS determined that the data breach affected roughly 406,000 taxpayers.

Littlejohn, leaked the returns of Trump, Elon Musk and other wealthy individuals to the New York Times and ProPublica.

Now that is a class action waiting to happen.

Remember, Charles Littlejohn pled guilty to ONE COUNT of disclosing tax return information without authorization, so that leaves 405,427 taxpayers whose taxpayer information was inappropriately disclosed by Mr. Littlejohn.

Also, there’s this:

January 6 felons can’t get a reward from taxpayers.

Section 4 of the 14^th Amendment of the United States Constitution states that neither the United States or any State shall assume or pay any debt of obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.

If the practical effect of this is rewarding or reimbursing people for participating in January 6, then taxpayer money is effectively supporting an insurrection after the fact, which Section 4 forbids. Legally speaking, I’m on my own here. The 14th Amendment hasn’t been litigated a whole lot since the Civil War, but I’ll bet I’m right.

So, maybe this “fund” might be a good old-fashioned taxpayer funded slush fund.

Trump’s billion-dollar personal stash of taxpayer dollars he can use to pay for political favors or rewards to whomever he chooses for whatever reason or no reason at all, or to create a billion-dollar MAGA private militia.

A panel of 5 “Commissioners” hand-picked by Todd Blanche and Trump would decide payouts with zero Congressional Oversight. (See Note below)

Thanks for reading Randi’s Substack! This post is public. Please share it.

But that doesn’t change the fact that Trump has no class.

Congress can restrict the funding to compensation for a court-approved class action lawsuit. Congress went home last week rather than take a vote, because they haven’t thought of this yet.

We vote in 6 months!

Randi’s Substack

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?