The former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) consultant accused of stealing and leaking tax return information associated with high-ranking government officials and wealthy individuals, including former President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty in federal court on Oct. 12.
Charles Littlejohn, 38, of Washington, D.C., pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax return and return information, the Department of Justice said.
He faces up to five years in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced in January 2024.
According to prosecutors, Mr. Littlejohn, who was employed as a government contractor at the IRS, stole tax returns from a number of unnamed individuals on two separate occasions between 2019 and 2020 via an IRS database using “broad search parameters designed to conceal the true purpose of his queries.”
He was able to evade IRS protocols put in place to detect and prevent large downloads or uploads from IRS devices or systems, saving the stolen tax returns to multiple personal storage devices, including an iPod, prosecutors said.
Later, Mr. Littlejohn got in contact with various news organizations and provided them with the tax return information, with one of the publications publishing more than 50 articles using the stolen data.
Mr. Littlejohn allegedly also obstructed the investigation into his conduct by deleting and destroying evidence of his disclosures.
It is unclear how Mr. Littlejohn’s behavior was caught by officials.
Tax Returns Leaked to Press
Prosecutors did not name the news organizations that were handed the stolen tax returns although they are widely believed to be ProPublica and The New York Times.
In June 2021, ProPublica published the private tax return information of some of America’s wealthiest billionaires including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, and Warren Buffett, among others. The leak came around the same that President Joe Biden was pushing a $1.8 trillion spending bill aimed at raising taxes on the wealthy.
ProPublica, in its report, said it was “not disclosing how it obtained the data, which was given to us in raw form, with no conditions or conclusions.”
A year earlier in September 2020, The New York Times published an article in which it claimed it had obtained the 2016 and 2017 tax records of President Trump, who was in office at the time, which it said revealed “struggling properties, vast write-offs, an audit battle and hundreds of millions in debt coming due.”
ProPublica later told The Epoch Times it “doesn’t know the identity of the source who provided this trove of information on the taxes paid by the wealthiest Americans.”
The New York Times has not commented on the stolen tax information.
Trump Lawyer Responds
“By using his role as a government contractor to gain access to private tax information, steal that information, and disclose it publicly, Charles Littlejohn broke federal law and betrayed the public’s trust,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in Thursday’s statement.
“In every case, the Department of Justice is committed to following the facts wherever they lead and holding accountable those who violate our laws,” the attorney general added.
Meanwhile, Nicole M. Argentieri, acting assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s Criminal Division said the department will continue to hold accountable those who illegally exploit their access to sensitive personal information.
Commenting on Mr. Littlejohn’s guilty plea Thursday, President Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba told reporters outside the court it was clear that U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes “does her job, takes it seriously and also takes the privacy rights of Americans very seriously, which is rare these days and something we need this country to get back to.”
However, Ms. Habba added that she does not believe Mr. Littlejohn acted alone in stealing the private tax information, and noted that President Trump’s information was published just months before he lost reelection to Joe Biden, which she said amounted to “election interference.”
“Unless we want to be a third-world country and end up like some of the atrocities that are happening right now in the world, we need to stop this now and allow the justice system to work the way it’s supposed to work and the laws to be respected by the people that should be respecting them, especially government agencies,” Ms. Habba said.
The Epoch Times contacted Mr. Littlejohn’s attorney, Lisa Manning, for further comment.
From The Epoch Times
