by Paul Sperry, Real Clear Wire:
The Internal Revenue Service recently awarded a lucrative contract to help modernize its computer databases to the same Washington firm, Booz Allen Hamilton, that employed the man who pleaded guilty last week to stealing and leaking thousands of private tax returns of wealthy Americans, including former President Trump, according to records reviewed by RealClearInvestigations.
The massive IRS theft is the third major breach of confidential and classified government information by Booz Allen contractors over the last decade – including Edward Snowden’s 2013 leak exposing the National Security Agency’s worldwide anti-terror surveillance program.
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Cyber-thief Charles “Chaz” Littlejohn was working on an IRS contract for Booz Allen in 2018 when he stole more than two decades of Trump’s personal tax records from IRS computers. He later leaked them to the New York Times, which published negative stories on Trump’s long-sought returns several weeks before the 2020 election, which Trump narrowly lost in a handful of battleground states.
After the election, Littlejohn leaked a trove of sensitive IRS data on Elon Musk, Michael Bloomberg and other billionaires – including major conservative donors – to ProPublica. The left-leaning news site used them to write a series, “The Secret IRS Files,” about how the rich use loopholes and tricks to avoid paying taxes. Congressional Democrats cited the series in their push for higher taxes on the wealthy.
Trump lawyer Alina Habba said she suspects Littlejohn was an operative in a broader political conspiracy to sabotage the former president before the 2020 election.
“What Mr. Littlejohn did, I do not believe he did alone,” she said last week at the Washington courthouse where he pleaded guilty. Habba added that the leak probably “cost my client thousands of votes and was all by design.”
A Democrat donor, Littlejohn struck a deal with federal prosecutors in which he copped to a single count of disclosing tax information without authorization. Though facing a maximum of five years, his plea deal calls for an estimated range of eight to 14 months when he is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 29.
“That looked more like a Hunter Biden plea deal,” Habba said. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) agreed, saying Littlejohn is getting a “slap on the wrist.”
Booz Allen’s Name Kept Out of Court Papers, Press
The most profitable government contractor in the world, Booz Allen has been connected to a number of high-profile Democrats over the years, including former employee James Clapper, who served as President Obama’s intelligence czar. Clapper was involved in an intelligence community operation just weeks before the 2020 election to suppress information about Biden foreign influence-peddling found on his son’s laptop.
At least two Obama administration alumni sit on Booz Allen’s board. President Clinton’s IRS commissioner also holds a seat. In the 2020 election cycle, federal records show Booz Allen contributed a total of $238,776 to Joe Biden versus $85,657 to Trump. The company also gave almost four times more money to the Democratic National Committee than to the Repubican National Committee.
Federal investigators were closing in on the 38-year-old Littlejohn this summer when the Biden administration decided to rehire his former employer, Booz Allen, through a contract with a ceiling value of $2.6 billion to help overhaul the IRS’ IT operations.
The massive new IRS contract may explain why the Biden administration won’t identify Littlejohn’s employer by name in court papers and press releases about the case.
The Justice Department would only say that Littlejohn “served as a contractor to Company A, a consulting firm that serviced public and private clients.” The Treasury Department, which oversees the IRS and also investigated Littlejohn, has not identified Booz Allen as the firm, either. Nor have Littlejohn’s lawyers, who declined comment.
The Washington media have gone along with the blackout describing Littlejohn as an “IRS Contractor.” Even as they have reported in some detail on the mechanics of Littlejohn’s thievery – he uploaded data to a private server instead of downloading it to a flash drive which might set off IRS alarms – news outlets never explained the key question of how he had access to the tax returns in the first place: because he was working for Booz Allen. The New York Times reported that Littlejohn “was working for a company contracted by the IRS. The company that employed the contractor was not named.” The Washington Post described Littlejohn as a “financial consultant” and left it at that. Meanwhile, Politico has published at least three stories on Littlejohn without naming Booz Allen as his employer.
