Depending on who the person was who sent the returns to the NYT, they could be in legal or ethical trouble (i.e. if it was a current or former Trump accountant or attorney or someone from the IRS or any of the state taxing authorities).
But according to this, and opinions may differ, as long as the NYT didn’t participate in any illegal activity themselves in obtaining the pages of the three state tax returns, (say that one of their reporters actively encouraged or helped a government employee to break the law) since it could be deemed in the public interest and it was presumably given to them absent any request or pressure or payment on their part, based on prior case law, the NYT might be shielded from any lawsuits.
http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/trump-claims-the-new-york-times-illegally-published-his-taxes-we-investigate-if-thats-true/And I have to believe that the NYT ran this through their legal department before publishing.
And just pondering - since these returns were filed married-jointly and signed by Trump and his then wife Maples, could Marla Maples have released them to the NYT, would both tax payers be expected to authorize a release or only one of them, and if so would it be a violation of her NDA? Maples didn’t get that much of a divorce settlement and is no longer receiving any payments from Trump and their daughter Tiffany is now over 21, so what would Maples have to lose by doing so? And what could she gain by doing so? Revenge? Low on cash?
I saw the NYT reporter Susanne Craig on CNN a while ago and she answered “no comment” as to the questions did she know who sent the docs and are there others.