Feds charge IRS contractor with leaking wealthy taxpayers’ information

Federal prosecutors announced charges Friday against Charles Littlejohn, an IRS contractor they accused of leaking the secret tax information of a major government official and thousands of wealthy Americans to the news media.

Court documents don’t reveal the name of the public official nor the news outlets, but the IRS had been searching for the culprit who leaked then-President Donald Trump’s tax information to The New York Times, and also the leaker of a “vast cache” of IRS information about wealthy Americans to ProPublica.

Mr. Littlejohn faces one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax information.

He was charged by way of a criminal information, which, like an indictment, initiates a criminal prosecution.

The document says Mr. Littlejohn worked at a consulting company from 2017 until 2021, where he had access to IRS tax returns.

“From in or about 2018 until in or about 2020, while Defendant was working on an IRS contract, he stole tax returns and return information associated with Public Official A and thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, including returns and return information dating back more than 15 years,” prosecutors said.

“He thereafter disclosed the tax information associated with Public Official A to News Organization 1 and the other tax information to News Organization 2. Both news organizations published numerous articles describing the tax information they obtained from the Defendant,” the information charged.

The document says the disclosures took place in “West Virginia and elsewhere.”

No lawyer for Mr. LIttlejohn was listed in court documents.

The Justice Department listed Mr. Littlejohn as a resident of the District of Columbia.

ProPublica called the leak of files it obtained 15 years of data on “thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people.” It called its report “the secret IRS files” and said they exposed “how the wealthiest avoid income tax.”