REVEALED: Biden admin downplayed leak of IRS records, over 400,000 taxpayers affected: House Judiciary

On Tuesday, the House Judiciary Committee revealed that over 400,000 taxpayers were affected by the leaking of tax records by a former IRS contractor, including the records of President Donald Trump.

"Relying on data analysis by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) and the IRS, the IRS mailed notifications to 405,427 taxpayers whose taxpayer information was inappropriately disclosed by Mr. Littlejohn. Approximately 89% of the taxpayers are business entities," IRS acting commissioner Douglas W. O’Donnell wrote in a letter to Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan.

Charles Littlejohn, a former IRS contractor, was sentenced in January 2024 to five years in prison after leaking the tax records of Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk outlets like the New York Times and ProPublica. He had pleaded guilty in October. 

"The IRS’s admission confirms the Committee’s suspicion and recent reports that show the scope of the leak was much broader than what the Biden Administration’s IRS initially led the public to believe," the committee wrote. 

The committee said that an IRS spokesperson in May 2024 claimed that over 70,000 taxpayers had been affected. "We found out that it's actually over 405,000 taxpayers! This is a MASSIVE scandal."

Jordan wrote in response, "The Obama IRS targeted conservatives. The Biden IRS leaked your data."

The IRS stated in a May 2024 release that Littlejohn collected taxpayer data between 2018 and 2020, and that in response to the case, the IRS "has taken aggressive action more generally to enhance data security – to ensure, to the fullest extent feasible, that nothing like the Littlejohn incident can happen in the future."

"We recognize that this does not address the most immediate concerns of taxpayers whose information has already been unlawfully disclosed. Still, in the hope that this conveys to you our commitment to safeguard tax and financial information and to protect taxpayers’ rights, we note that we have developed a number of the protocols and protections that the IRS has put in place in recent years using Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funding resources and industry and government best practices to better protect taxpayers."