Charles Littlejohn also allegedly stole tax information associated with some of the nation’s wealthiest people, the DOJ said in a federal complaint
A former consultant with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been charged with disclosing former President Trump’s tax returns to the New York Times while he was in office, federal prosecutors said Friday.
The Justice Department identified the suspect as Charles Littlejohn, 38, a Washington D.C. resident. In a federal complaint, the DOJ said Littlejohn disclosed the tax returns of “thousands of the nation’s wealthiest individuals” to news organizations and tax information associated with a “high-ranking government official” to a different news outlet.
Fox News was told the second news organization that received stolen tax information is Pro Publica, a New York City-based nonprofit investigative journalism group.
The returns dated back more than 15 years, court documents said. He allegedly stole the tax returns between 2018 and 2020, federal prosecutors said. Trump is not named in the complaint.
Former President Donald Trump arrives at Trump Tower in New York. A consultant for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been charged with disclosing Trump’s tax return to the New York Times. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura/File/Fox News)
“Littlejohn is charged with one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax returns and return information. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison,” the DOJ said in a news release.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), the IRS’s internal watchdog, is investigating the case. The DOJ declined to comment on the case.
Fox News was told a guilty plea is in the works. Littlejohn was working as a contractor for the tax agency when he allegedly stole Trump’s tax returns and gave them to the New York Times. The newspaper published several stories on Trump’s taxes before he left office.
Haryana Police arrested Monu Manesar for a provocative post on social media, but Rajasthan Police obtained transit remand in Nasir-Junaid murder case
Monu Manesar, from his Facebook page, now made private.
Bajrang Dal member and self-styled cow vigilante, Mohit alias Monu Manesar, was on September 12 arrested by the Nuh Police for an alleged provocative post on a social media platform ahead of a Hindu outfit’s Jalabhishek Yatra on August 28. The court remanded him to 14 days of judicial custody in this case, but the Rajasthan Police also arrested him in connection with the Nasir-Junaid murder case and took him on transit remand.
Nuh Superintendent of Police Narendra Bijarniya told The Hindu that Monu was arrested from Manesar market in Gurugram around 10.30 a.m. and a .45 bore pistol, a gun and three live cartridges were recovered from his possession.
Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s lawyer and confidant, turned himself in at a jail in Atlanta on Wednesday on charges related to efforts to overturn then-President Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
Pic: https://www.arkansasonline.com/
The former New York mayor, was indicted last week along with Trump and 17 others. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said they participated in a wide-ranging conspiracy to subvert the will of the voters after the Republican president lost to Democrat Joe Biden in November 2020.
Bond for Giuliani, who was released after booking like the other defendants, was set at $150,000, second only to Trump’s $200,000.
Giuliani, 79, is accused of spearheading Trump’s efforts to compel state lawmakers in Georgia and other closely contested states to ignore the will of voters and illegally appoint electoral college electors favorable to Trump.
Other high-profile defendants also surrendered Wednesday, including Jenna Ellis, an attorney who prosecutors say was involved in efforts to convince state lawmakers to unlawfully appoint presidential electors, and lawyer Sidney Powell, accused of making false statements about the election in Georgia and helping to organize a breach of voting equipment in rural Coffee County.
Georgia was one of several key states Trump lost by slim margins, prompting the Republican and his allies to proclaim, without evidence, that the election was rigged in favor of his Democratic rival Biden.
Giuliani is charged with making false statements and soliciting false testimony, conspiring to create phony paperwork and asking state lawmakers to violate their oath of office to appoint an alternate slate of pro-Trump electors.
Outside the Fulton County Jail Wednesday afternoon, Giuliani laughed when asked if he regretted allying himself with Trump.
“I am very, very honored to be involved in this case because this case is a fight for our way of life,” Giuliani told reporters. “This indictment is a travesty. It’s an attack on — not just me, not just President Trump, not just the people in this indictment, some of whom I don’t even know – this is an attack on the American people.”
After Giuliani’s surrender, Trump repeated his unfounded claims that the election was rigged and stolen and wrote on his social media site, “The greatest Mayor in the history of New York City was just ARRESTED in Atlanta, Georgia, because he fought for Election Integrity.”
Trump, the early front-runner in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, has said he plans to turn himself in at the Fulton County Jail on Thursday. He and his allies have characterized the investigation as politically motivated and have heavily criticized District Attorney Willis, a Democrat.
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark are both trying to have the case against them heard in federal court rather than in Fulton County Superior Court. Both argue the actions that gave rise to the charges in the indictment were related to their work as federal officials and that the case should be moved to federal court and the charges against them dismissed.
They had each asked a judge to allow them to avoid being arrested while those requests are pending. But U.S. District Judge Steve Jones on Wednesday rejected their requests to avoid having to be booked in jail while they fight to move the case to federal court.
Willis has set a deadline of noon on Friday for the people indicted last week in the election subversion case to turn themselves in. Her team has been negotiating bond amounts and conditions with the lawyers for the defendants before they surrender at the jail.
Misty Hampton, who was the Coffee County elections director when a breach of election equipment happened there, had her bond set at $10,000. David Shafer, who’s a former Georgia Republican Party chair and served as one of 16 fake electors for Trump, and Cathy Latham, who’s accused in the Coffee County breach and was also a fake elector, turned themselves in Wednesday morning. Also surrendering Wednesday were lawyers Ray Smith and Kenneth Chesebro, who prosecutors said helped organize the fake electors meeting at the state Capitol in December 2020.
