The Justice Department charged an Internal Revenue Service consultant on Friday with stealing the tax returns of former President Donald Trump and thousands of the most wealthy Americans and leaking the information to the media.
Charles Littlejohn, a 38-year-old from Washington, D.C., faces one felony criminal count for the unauthorized disclosure of tax returns and return information. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
The DOJ didn’t specify Trump by name in its charging documents, instead referring only to a “high-ranking government official” listed as “Public Official A.”
But the description of the case matches news reports from September 2020 that disclosed Trump’s tax returns from the years of 2016 and 2017, according to the Wall Street Journal.
A source familiar with the case also confirmed to CNN that the documents Littlejohn leaked were Trump’s tax returns.
The Wall Street Journal also connected Friday’s charges to ProPublica reports from 2021 about the leak of tax records for wealthy Americans.
According to the Journal, Littlejohn and his lawyer, Lisa Manning, declined to comment on the charges.