Former IRS contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn leaked the records of over 405,000 taxpayers, according to Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee. This confirms that the actual scale of leaked IRS tax returns was far greater than the 70,000 cases initially reported by the Biden administration.
Littlejohn is currently serving a five-year sentence after pleading guilty to the leaks.
“New disclosure reveals that the Biden IRS leaked taxpayer information of over 405,000 Americans — including President Trump’s,” the House Judiciary Committee wrote. “The IRS’s admission confirms the Committee’s suspicion and recent reports that show the scope of the leak was much broader than what the Biden Administration’s IRS initially led the public to believe.
“We found out that it’s actually over 405,000 taxpayers! This is a MASSIVE scandal.”
IRS informed those impacted by Littlejohn’s illegal actions, 89% of which business entities.
“Relying on data analysis by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) and the IRS, the IRS mailed notifications to 405,427 taxpayers whose taxpayer information was inappropriately disclosed by Mr. Littlejohn,” the IRS wrote in a Feb. 14 letter to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
Littlejohn used the IRS archive to access the tax returns of billionaires like Peter Thiel, Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos, as well as Donald Trump’s. He then leaked them to ProPublica and The New York Times.
In order to avoid detection, Littlejohn “uploaded the tax returns to a private website in order to avoid IRS protocols established to detect and prevent large downloads or uploads from IRS devices or systems,” the Justice Department said in a press release.
While some praised Littlejohn for exposing the unfairness in the system, others accused him of damaging the public’s trust in the IRS.
