Biden could pardon leaker of Trump’s tax records

The former IRS employee has been sentenced to five years for unauthorized disclosures of wealthy Americans’ filings

The administration of outgoing US President Joe Biden is formally considering commuting the sentence of Charles Littlejohn, according to the Justice Department’s pardon database. The former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employee has been convicted for illegally disclosing the tax records of wealthy Americans, including those of US President-elect Donald Trump.

Littlejohn’s pending clemency comes as Biden, who is set to leave the White House on January 20, has issued a record number of pardons and commutations, including ones for his son, Hunter Biden, for tax evasion and firearms violations.

In the case centered around what has been called the biggest theft ever in Internal Revenue Service (IRS) history, Littlejohn was sentenced to the maximum of five years in prison late last month after pleading guilty in October, 2024. The former IRS contractor admitted to stealing the tax records of “thousands” of high-ranking US citizens and leaking them to two media outlets, the New York Times and ProPublica.

In September, 2020, The New York Times published a story which revealed that Trump had only paid $750 in federal income taxes in both 2016 and 2017, and in most years paid nothing due to losing more money than he earned. In 2021, ProPublica released a series of articles which reflected the data shared by Littlejohn.

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Biden sets clemency record

Neither of the organizations which used the leaked data in a series of articles before and after the 2020 election, has been accused of wrongdoing. In September 2023, when the malpractice was disclosed by the US Department of Justice (DOJ), the New York Times’ then-editor affirmed the right of the press “to publish newsworthy information that was legally obtained by reporters” in an editor’s note. Meanwhile, a ProPublica spokesperson told CNN that the outlet “doesn’t know the identity of the source who provided this trove of information on the taxes paid by the wealthiest Americans.”

When congressional Democrats publicly released some of Trump’s tax records in late 2022, the president-elect, who had declined to publicly release his returns, citing an IRS audit, said the filings proved how successful he had been as a real estate developer.

“The Trump tax returns once again show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use tax depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises,” he said in a statement.