IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn pleaded guilty in October to one count of taking tax return information without authorization. On two separate occasions, Littlejohn provided tax documents belonging to Trump, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk to two news organizations.
Littlejohn initially provided The New York Times with 20 years of Donald Trump's tax returns in 2019, which the news organization published a story about in September 2020.
Federal investigators looking into how the information got into reporters' hands came up short partly due to Littlejohn's technical skills, The Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Per the Journal, investigators were unsure if the returns were revealed through a government leak or from someone outside the government who had access to the documents.
That investigation was put to the side due to insufficient concrete information. Later, investigators began looking into a separate incident involving ProPublica, which published dozens of articles in 2021 on the tax returns of uber-wealthy Americans like Amazon's Bezos and SpaceX CEO Musk.
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His sentencing is scheduled for this Monday.