Federal authorities say the IRS consultant stole the tax return and tax information and leaked it to two unnamed media outlets between 2018 and 2020.
An Internal Revenue Service (IRS) consultant has been charged for allegedly stealing and leaking the tax returns of thousands of wealthy Americans, including one unnamed high-ranking government official believed to be former President Donald Trump.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the charges against Charles Littlejohn, a 38-year-old Washington resident, on Friday.
Mr. Littlejohn, who was employed as a government contractor at the IRS, stands accused of a multi-faceted scheme to steal and disseminate confidential tax return data between 2018 and 2020. His actions allegedly involved not only a “high-ranking government official,” cryptically known as “Public Official A,” but also thousands of the nation’s most affluent individuals.
The charges may, for the first time, link the tax return information disclosures of some of the nation’s richest men and President Trump by liberal organizations ProPublica and the New York Times.
“While working at the IRS as a government contractor, [Mr. Littlejohn] stole tax return information associated with a high-ranking government official (Public Official A) and disclosed it to a news organization (News Organization 1),” the DOJ said.
“Littlejohn also stole tax return information for thousands of the nation’s wealthiest individuals, and disclosed this tax return information to another news organization (News Organization 2).”
While President Trump’s name, the names of the wealthy taxpayers, and the two news organizations aren’t disclosed in the court documents, the events described match the timeframe of disclosures by ProPublica in 2021, and The New York Times in 2020.
In June 2021, ProPublica published the private and legally protected tax return information of billionaires such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, Peter Thiel, and others. This leak coincided with President Biden’s proposed $1.8 trillion spending bill, which aimed to raise taxes on the wealthy.
The previous fall, in September 2020, the New York Times reported that it had obtained the 2016 and 2017 tax records of President Trump, who was in office at the time.
