Biden Administration Hid Theft of 400,000 IRS Tax Returns
Written by Chriss W. Street
ProPublica at the start of President Biden’s administration published ‘The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax,’ that leaked the personal tax IRS returns for Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett. But a lawsuit just revealed that that the total number of leaked IRS returns was 405,427.
Biden administration Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen repeatedly claimed that: “We don’t know what happened;” while IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig claimed that the IRS was looking into “allegations that the source of the information in that article came from the Internal Revenue Service.”
Pro Publica justified the IRS records leak of 2014-2018returns as proof Trump 45’s tax cuts were a taxpayer rip-off that only benefited billionaires:
“Republicans passed a massive tax cut that disproportionately benefited the wealthy, the country may be facing another swing of the pendulum, back toward a popular demand to raise taxes on the wealthy. In the face of growing inequality and with spending ambitions that rival those of Franklin D. Roosevelt or Johnson, the Biden administration has proposed a slate of changes. These include raising the tax rates on people making over $400,000 and bumping the top income tax rate from 37% to 39.6%, with a top rate for long-term capital gains to match that. The administration also wants to up the corporate tax rate and to increase the IRS’ budget.”
Pro Publica lamented that “President Barack Obama had proposed legislation in 2011 that would have raised income tax rates on people reporting over a million dollars a year. It didn’t pass.”
It was not admitted until a September 29, 2023 plea deal that the IRS had known at the time of publicationin 2021, that the tax record theft breach was from a Booz Allen contract consultant named Charles Littlejohn.
The Biden administration’s Department of Justice described the IRS tax return leak as a single count of unauthorized disclosure associated with “Public Official A” and provided it to “News Organization 1,” which then published several articles using the information.
Littlejohn was allowed to plead guilty in October 2023 to single count of unauthorized disclosure of tax returns and serve a maximum of five years in prison. But there were no disclosures of the number of returns stolen.
Liberal publications hailed Littlejohn as a hero when he surrendered to begin his sentence on May 1, 2024. According: to the American Prospect:
“Leniency is needed for a good kind of civil disobedience. As anyone following this case would recognize, Public Official A is President Donald J. Trump, and News Organization 1 is The New York Times.”
Many leftist publication claimed Littlejohn was a martyr that performed a public service, because Trump was “dangerous and a threat to democracy” and rich people tax returns contain information relevant to the voting public.
But just after President Trump 47 was inaugurated, a federal judge in a class action lawsuit against IRS and Booz Allen, finally ordered the U.S. Treasury to admit details regarding the IRS tax return thefts that had beenartfully concealed for 800 days as part of the Littlejohn plea deal.
Discovery in the class action suit also found that an IRS 2024 security audit had determined the IRS data remained as susceptible to theft. The audit revealed that at least 919 IRS employees still had “full, unmasked access to taxpayer data,” including 20 “researchers and student volunteers.”
The Trump administration has tasked the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to review Booz Allen’s civilian consulting contracts with federal agencies that average $11 billion annually over the last four years.
The Mountain Top Times will continue to update developments regarding this litigation.