Rick Scott sues contractor over leaked tax returns

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Sen. Rick Scott is suing a major government contractor for damages after his tax returns were leaked along with other prominent and wealthy figures, including President Donald Trump.

The Florida Republican on Monday filed a lawsuit against Booz Allen Hamilton, a management and technology consulting company, and a former employee of the contractor who was convicted of leaking the tax returns of Trump and other wealthy individuals to The New York Times and ProPublica.

“I am disgusted by the weaponization of government under President [Joe] Biden, and I look forward to Booz Allen being held accountable for its reckless failure to prevent its employee from unlawfully releasing the tax returns of thousands of people, including me and President Trump,” Scott posted on X about the lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed in the Middle District of Florida and comes almost two months after Trump filed a lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion. That lawsuit did not target Booz Allen or Charles Littlejohn — who was sentenced to five years in prison in 2024. But the Treasury Department canceled contracts with the company in January — a situation that Scott’s lawsuit said proved that the company was culpable.

Scott’s 23-page lawsuit, which was first reported by Axios, contends that Littlejohn’s access to IRS system was made possible “solely through Booz Allen and its federal contracts with the Department of the Treasury and the IRS.” The lawsuit cites previous incidents with the company that point to failures that “did not occur in a vacuum.”

“The unlawful disclosure of plaintiff’s tax return was not merely the result of an isolated act,” the lawsuit states. “It was enabled by systemic safeguard failures and negligent supervision within the contractor framework under which Booz Allen operated.”

Booz Allen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Scott attended Littlejohn's sentencing hearing back in 2024 and gave a victim impact statement where he criticized the terms of the deal reached between Littlejohn and federal authorities.

Scott is one of the wealthiest members of Congress, and his finances have repeatedly come under scrutiny since he first ran for office back in 2010. Before getting into politics, Scott ran Columbia/HCA — one of the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chains — but he resigned amid an ongoing federal investigation. After his departure, the company wound up paying $1.7 billion in fines and damages to resolve allegations of fraud. Scott was never charged and has denied any wrongdoing.

Scott used his personal money to help finance his campaigns for public office, including his 2010 run for Florida governor and his 2018 defeat of incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson.

His lawsuit against Booz Allen seeks compensatory damages for loss of privacy and economic losses, including security and monitoring costs as well as punitive damages.

Scott’s lawsuit contends that the harm to him and others is “ongoing” because news outlets continue to hold up to 15 years of “confidential taxpayer information” and that he and “his family are concerned that their personal information could appear in yet another news story sometime in the future.”