IRS consultant pleads guilty in massive leak of wealthy Americans' tax returns

An IRS contractor pled guilty Thursday to leaking the private tax information of former President Donald Trump and thousands of other wealthy Americans to the news media.

Charles Littlejohn, 38, of Washington, D.C., faces a maximum of five years in prison, the Department of Justice said. Sentencing is slated for late January.

The agency did not identify the news organizations that received the information, though it’s apparent it is referring to ProPublica, which said it was given a massive trove of tax records and ran a series of stories detailing the tax practices of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and other wealthy people; and to the New York Times, which reported on Trump’s tax returns.

The government says Littlejohn stole the information on two separate occasions, though provides few specifics about how he was twice able to evade safeguards designed to protect taxpayer privacy.

Nor did the Justice Department say how he was caught.

In a news release, it says Littlejohn used “broad search parameters designed to conceal the true purpose of his queries.”

“He then evaded IRS protocols established to detect and prevent large downloads or uploads from IRS devices or systems,” the government said. “Littlejohn then saved the tax returns to multiple personal storage devices, including an iPod.”

The government says he also obstructed its investigation by deleting and destroying evidence.

More than 150 people had their private tax information published by the news media as a result of the leak. Data on thousands of others were given to ProPublica but not published.

“The authorized theft and disclosure of tax return information by government employees or contractors is a serious breach of the public’s trust,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Nicole Argentieri.