The Department of Justice announced Friday that it has charged an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) consultant for allegedly disclosing tax return information without authorization. According to court documents, D.C.-based IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn stole tax return information related to a high-ranking government official and thousands of the nation’s wealthiest individuals and leaked it to two different news organizations. According to ABC News, the unnamed government official is former President Donald Trump. Starting in 2020, The New York Times obtained Trump’s tax returns and published a series of articles on his tax avoidance, chronic monetary losses, and how The Apprentice saved him financially. Littlejohn also appears to have shared the tax documents of billionaires such as Elon Musk and Warren Buffett with ProPublica, who published a story in 2021 detailing how little in income taxes the richest Americans paid in comparison to their overall wealth. If convicted, Littlejohn faces a maximum of five years in prison.
