BidenJustice™

Leniency on Tap for Anti-Trump Leaker of Thousands of Tax Returns

Another apparent "sweetheart deal" negotiated by President Biden’s Justice Department in a politically charged case is drawing scrutiny.

Former IRS contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn, who stole and helped publicize the confidential tax records of Donald Trump and an estimated 7,500 other wealthy Americans, could face little or no jail time when he's sentenced later this month, because the DOJ allowed him to plead guilty to a single felony count.

In a new court filing, prosecutors acknowledge the plea deal “does not account for the fact that he leaked thousands of individuals’ tax returns. His [sentencing] range would be the same today if he had leaked only a single return.”

But instead of seeking prison time for each of his offenses – or even for the two separate mass thefts he committed, one in 2019 and another in 2020 – the DOJ is asking a federal judge to sentence Littlejohn to just 60 months, the maximum for a single offense under the statute. Some political leaders angry over the plea deal say he should get 60 years, not months, for his crime – the biggest heist of IRS taxpayer data in history.

Attorneys for Littlejohn, 38, argue he actually deserves an even lower sentence, closer to the presentencing report’s range of four to 10 months, in part because he leaked the reams of stolen private income-tax data to "reputable news organizations – the New York Times and ProPublica – that he knew would handle the information responsibly.” They say a 60-month term is “equivalent to a 15-level upward departure” from the range prosecutors originally agreed to in the plea deal, and such a wide departure would be unprecedented.

…. U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee who has a record of meting out lenient sentences, will decide his punishment on Jan. 29.

For me, this is the most striking, and egregious detail of his criminal behavior, and the one that would justify that 60 year sentence some are calling for:

According to recent court papers, Littlejohn rejoined Booz Allen in 2017 with the express purpose of getting assigned to the IRS and stealing Trump’s tax returns, which he downloaded in 2018.

Then in June 2020, he began conducting searches of the IRS database to pull historic tax data on the wealthiest taxpayers in the country. Specifically, he constructed a query designed to call up the top 500 taxpayers by income by year for the previous 15 years. After running the query, he stole the entire data set, put it on a flash drive and gave it to reporters at ProPublica, a left-leaning nonprofit funded by George Soros and other wealthy liberal donors. ProPublica, in turn, published nearly 50 articles using the purloined tax returns to show how the rich use loopholes in the tax code to avoid paying taxes. Congressional Democrats cited the series in their push for higher taxes on the wealthy.