Former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor Charles E. Littlejohn used authorized access obtained through IRS work to disclose tax information without permission. Between approximately August and October 2019, he provided 15 years of Donald Trump’s tax returns to The New York Times; articles published in September 2020 reported that Trump paid $750 in federal income tax in both 2016 and 2017 and paid no federal income tax in some other years. Littlejohn later supplied ProPublica with tax data on thousands of wealthy Americans, supporting a June 2021 series about extremely low effective tax payments. The disclosures exposed a major failure in controls over highly sensitive taxpayer information, although the IRS said it found no indication that the data left the two news organizations.
The reported scope has changed substantially: early accounts cited about 7,600 individuals, a 2024 report said more than 70,000 companies and people were affected, and acting IRS Commissioner Douglas O’Donnell later told House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan that 405,427 tax entities were compromised, approximately 89% of them businesses. Littlejohn pleaded guilty in October 2023 and was sentenced by Judge Ana C. Reyes in January 2024 to the statutory maximum of five years for unauthorized disclosures. The D.C. Circuit upheld the sentence in July 2026. Taxpayers and figures including Kelcy Warren, Kenneth Griffin, and Trump pursued lawsuits against contractors or federal agencies, while the Treasury Department canceled its Booz Allen contracts.
