{"id":6393,"date":"2023-10-14T16:40:45","date_gmt":"2023-10-14T16:40:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=6393"},"modified":"2023-10-14T16:43:37","modified_gmt":"2023-10-14T16:43:37","slug":"ex-irs-contractor-who-leaked-trumps-tax-returns-pleads-guilty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=6393","title":{"rendered":"Ex-IRS Contractor Who Leaked Trump\u2019s Tax Returns Pleads Guilty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This post originally appeared at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/charles-littlejohn\/\">https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/charles-littlejohn\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" src=\"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/trump-raid.jpg\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Documents Trial Trump\u2019s Poll Numbers Spike After Indictment\" title=\"Charles Littlejohn\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Charles Littlejohn, 38, of Washington, D.C., pleaded guilty Thursday to disclosing tax return information without authorization.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A former IRS contractor accused of leaking former President Donald Trump\u2019s tax returns and disclosing tax return information for some of the nation\u2019s wealthiest people pleaded guilty Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Charles Littlejohn, 38, of Washington, D.C., pleaded guilty Thursday to disclosing tax return information without authorization. He faces up to five years in prison at a sentencing hearing set for Jan. 29, 2024.<\/p>\n<p>Littlejohn, while working at the IRS as a contractor, stole tax return information associated with Trump and others. Littlejohn accessed tax returns associated with Trump on an IRS database \u201cafter using broad search parameters designed to conceal the true purpose of his queries,\u201d according to the U.S. Department of Justice. He then evaded IRS protocols to detect and prevent large downloads or uploads from its systems.<\/p>\n<p>Prosecutors said Littlejohn then saved the tax returns to multiple personal storage devices, including an iPod, before contacting a news outlet. Between around August 2019 and October 2019, Littlejohn provided the news outlet with the tax return information associated with Trump. Littlejohn then stole additional tax return information related to Trump and provided it to the same news organization, which is not named in the indictment.<\/p>\n<p>In September 2020, The New York Times <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2020\/09\/27\/us\/donald-trump-taxes.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">published<\/a><\/strong> a series of articles about Trump\u2019s returns.<\/p>\n<p>In July and August 2020, prosecutors said Littlejohn separately stole tax return information for thousands of the nation\u2019s wealthiest people, again evading IRS detection. In November 2020, Littlejohn disclosed this tax return information to another unnamed news organization, which published more than 50 articles using the stolen data. Littlejohn then obstructed the forthcoming investigation into his conduct by deleting and destroying evidence of his disclosures, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n<p>ProPublica <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/series\/the-secret-irs-files\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">published<\/a><\/strong> a series of articles on wealthy taxpayers during the same time frame.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBy using his role as a government contractor to gain access to private tax information, steal that information, and disclose it publicly, Charles Littlejohn broke federal law and betrayed the public\u2019s trust,\u201d Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>Brett Rowland<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thecentersquare.com\/issues\/accountability\/article_24d8fade-6943-11ee-9803-03e8c89e4594.html?a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Go to Source<\/a><br \/>\nReposted with permission<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/charles-littlejohn\/ Charles Littlejohn, 38, of Washington, D.C., pleaded guilty Thursday&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":1370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wi-right-now"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6393"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6395,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6393\/revisions\/6395"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}