Republican senators have signaled that they will seek to boost the penalty for crooks who steal federal tax data after a leftist who pilfered the returns of former President Donald Trump is set to receive a light sentence.
Sen. Steve Daines, a Montana Republican, filed a bill that would double the maximum penalty for such offenses from five years to 10 years and would increase the potential fine from $5,000 to $10,000, according to The Washington Times on Friday.
“A mere slap on the wrist for illegally releasing Americans’ private tax information only perpetuates Biden’s two systems of justice and does nothing to crack down on future leaks,” Daines told the Times.
Daines was reacting to a plea deal reached last month between federal prosecutors and Charles Littlejohn, a former government contractor with the Internal Revenue Service.
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Littlejohn pled guilty to one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax returns and return information.
As the Tampa Free Press has reported, Littlejohn stole years’ worth of Trump’s tax returns in 2019 and in 2020 and fed them to The New York Times.
In 2020, he also stole tax returns of many wealthy Americans, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, and Peter Thiel.
He provided that data to the leftist group ProPublica. Prosecutors noted that ProPublica received from Littlejohn tax data for “thousands of the nation’s wealthiest individuals” and published more than 50 articles using that information.
Last month, Joe Bishop-Henchman, of the conservative National Taxpayers Union, reported on Littlejohn’s day in court.
He noted that Littlejohn’s pending sentence seems “disproportionately lenient” compared to how the IRS treats other taxpayers. For example, a suspect was accused of not filing tax records for foreign bank accounts for five years. Instead of seeking five $10,000 fines for the five unfiled forms, Bishop-Henchman wrote, the IRS demanded 272 fines — one for each unreported bank account for each year.
Bishop-Henchman also reported that Trump’s camp asked the judge to toss Littlejohn’s plea deal or at least impose the maximum sentence of five years. Littlejohn will be sentenced in January.
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GOP Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, told the Times he supported Daines’ goal.
“Unfortunately, the Department of Justice elected to charge only one count despite the more than a thousand disclosures he admitted to in open court,” Smith said.
“To restore trust in the justice system and the IRS — and to deter future thefts — there need to be significant consequences for this type of illegal, politically motivated activity.”
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