It is bad enough that President Joe Biden has pardoned hundreds of drug dealers, embezzlers, thieves, and other dangerous criminals; commuted the death sentences of dozens of murderers; released ruthless terrorists from Guantanamo Bay so they can unleash more brutality into the world; and to top it all off, given his son a “get-out-of-jail-free card” in one of the most corrupt, personal abuses of the pardon power by any president in U.S. history.
But now he is apparently considering clemency for Charles Littlejohn, who stole the private, confidential tax returns of thousands of Americans, including President-elect Donald Trump, in the biggest theft ever at the IRS, and leaked them to The New York Times and other media outlets. To the everlasting shame of the law schools that employ them (Emory, Indiana, Michigan, and Missouri), four law professors (along with other liberal groups) have nothing but praise for this convicted felon and are petitioning Biden to reduce Littlejohn’s sentence from five years to only ten months.
The letter the professors, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, David Gamage, Goldburn P. Maynard, Jr., and Alex Zhang, wrote to Biden reads like a Marxist screed about the “superrich” and how they “control” too great a share of America’s wealth. They claim the public “has a right to know” what is in the tax returns of Trump and other wealthy Americans, although they don’t limit their “sincere belief” in this lack of privacy to the rich. No, they laud “countries with a stronger sense of egalitarianism” than America like Finland, Norway, and Sweden where “most tax information is public.”
In other words, these ivory tower academics think that the personal financial information contained in tax filings that Americans overwhelmingly consider to be highly confidential and private and no one’s business but their own (and unfortunately the IRS’s), should not be confidential. It should be available to every Tom, Dick, and Harry – and their neighbors – to peruse and talk about.
By the way, “egalitarianism” is left-wing code for wealth redistribution and confiscatory taxes by an all-powerful government that makes sure we are all equally poor – except for those who are the favored members of the party in control of that government.
All of us normal people want our tax returns to be confidential, which is why it is a felony under 26 U.S.C. §7213(a)(1) for any federal employee to disclose tax returns or “return information.” Each violation is punishable by up to five years in prison.
That is exactly what Littlejohn got from Judge Ana Reyes, who was appointed to the bench by Joe Biden in 2023. But only getting five years was quite a deal for Littlejohn because the Justice Department allowed him to plead guilty to a single felony of stealing and disclosing one tax return, despite the fact that he stole literally thousands of returns.
It is not just taxpayers who demand privacy and have a right to it. Such confidentiality, as the liberal U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held in U.S. v. Richey (1991), is essential to “maintaining a workable tax system.” None other than Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg (before her ascension to the Supreme Court) wrote on behalf of the D.C. Circuit in National Treasury Employees Union v. FLRA (1986) that taxpayer privacy is “fundamental to a tax system that relies on self-reporting” since it protects “sensitive or otherwise personal information.”
Littlejohn was lucky that he only got five years. He could have been punished far more severely given the number of tax returns he stole. He doesn’t deserve clemency or a pardon from Joe Biden. Any such grant that lets him out of prison or reduces his sentence, on top of Biden’s egregious pardon of Hunter Biden, will just be another sign of Biden’s contempt for the rule of law and, in this case, the privacy of Americans’ financial and tax information.
In fact, as Paul Sperry at RealClearInvestigations reports, the IRS is still dealing with the aftermath of Littlejohn’s misdeeds, having sent literally thousands of letters to taxpayers telling them that “the full scope of what he disclosed is still unknown.” Booz Allen Hamilton, the IRS contractor that Littlejohn was working for when he committed his crimes, is also dealing with lawsuits filed by taxpayers.
The last thing we need is another shameful abuse of the pardon power by this president.
