A Federal Appeals Court Just Upheld the IRS Leaker’s Five-Year Sentence — and the Papers He Leaked To Haven’t Told Their Readers
On July 17, 2026, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed the five-year federal prison sentence of Charles Littlejohn, the former IRS contractor who stole and leaked President Trump’s tax returns to the New York Times and the confidential tax data of thousands of wealthy Americans to ProPublica. Judge Justin Walker wrote the opinion; Judges Neomi Rao and Judith Rogers joined it in full.
Littlejohn pleaded guilty in 2023 to a single felony count that, under federal sentencing guidelines, should have carried something like 12 to 18 months. U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes went far above that in January 2024 and handed down the statutory maximum instead. The D.C. Circuit has now said, unanimously, that she was right to.
Three days after the ruling, the Washington Free Beacon’s Ira Stoll reported something else entirely: as of July 20, neither the Times nor ProPublica — the two newsrooms that built major investigative series on Littlejohn’s stolen files — had published a word about their own source losing his appeal.
- 5 years — the statutory-maximum sentence Judge Ana C. Reyes imposed Jan. 29, 2024, unanimously affirmed by the D.C. Circuit July 17, 2026 — USA v. Littlejohn, No. 24-3019
- 12–18 months — the sentencing-guideline range Littlejohn's single guilty count actually carried; Reyes went nearly 4x above it
- ~7,600 people, ~600 entities — wealthy individuals and organizations whose tax data Littlejohn stole and disclosed, per the D.C. Circuit's opinion
- 405,427 taxpayers — the full breach scope the IRS disclosed to Congress in February 2025, ~89% of them business entities — per Fox Business and the IRS's letter to Rep. Jim Jordan
- $21,000,000 — in Booz Allen Hamilton federal contracts Treasury canceled Jan. 26, 2026, naming Littlejohn's conduct as the reason
Littlejohn’s lawyers filed the appeal on February 12, 2024, two weeks after Reyes handed down the sentence. It took the D.C. Circuit until July 17, 2026 — nearly two and a half years — to rule, and when it did, it left him nothing to work with. The panel rejected every argument the defense raised: that the sentence was calculated wrong on paper, and that it was too harsh given the facts. The court found it procedurally reasonable and substantively reasonable, full stop.
Walker’s opinion put the underlying conduct plainly, opening with the premeditation: “In 2017, Charles Littlejohn obtained a job as a consultant to the Internal Revenue Service so that he could steal and leak the tax returns of President Donald Trump.” The panel itself was not a partisan lineup. Walker and Rao were both appointed to the D.C. Circuit by President Trump in his first term; Rogers has sat on the same court since 1994, appointed by President Clinton. All three signed the same 16-page opinion.
“Littlejohn's sentence was procedurally reasonable. And it was substantively reasonable. So we affirm.”
Judge Justin Walker · opinion for a unanimous panel · D.C. Circuit · July 17, 2026
Littlejohn returned to the IRS in 2017 as an outside contractor through Booz Allen Hamilton, the consulting firm holding the agency’s data-analytics contract. In the summer of 2019 he pulled fifteen years of President Trump’s tax filings and, that fall, delivered them to the New York Times, which began publishing stories built on the material in September 2020.
He didn’t stop there. In July and August 2020, per DOJ’s charging documents, Littlejohn separately stole tax data on roughly 7,600 of the country’s wealthiest people and about 600 organizations — a list that court filings and subsequent reporting show included Elon Musk and Florida’s Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), among thousands of others. That November, he handed the cache to ProPublica, which built its “Secret IRS Files” series on it starting in June 2021: more than 50 articles, publishing at least 152 individuals’ private tax information.
Littlejohn was still on Booz Allen’s payroll for years afterward. It took until January 26, 2026 for the Treasury Department to act on that fact: Secretary Scott Bessent announced the cancellation of all 31 of Booz Allen’s federal contracts, worth $21,000,000combined, citing the firm’s “inadequate safeguards to protect sensitive data” and naming Littlejohn directly as the reason. Booz Allen said it was “surprised” by the move, noting it had cooperated fully with the government’s investigation of its former employee; the company’s stock fell more than 11% the day the news broke.
Littlejohn was charged in September 2023 and pleaded guilty the following month to one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax return information under 26 U.S.C. § 7213(a)(1). At sentencing on January 29, 2024, Judge Reyes told him directly what she thought the crime actually was.
“What you did in targeting the sitting president of the United States was an attack on our constitutional democracy.”
U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes · sentencing of Charles Littlejohn · Jan. 29, 2024
She rejected the defense’s framing of Littlejohn as a whistleblower acting in the public interest just as directly.
“The press tells us Democracy dies in darkness. It also dies in lawlessness.”
Judge Ana C. Reyes · Jan. 29, 2024
Littlejohn did not dispute any of it. In his own allocution he told the court, “I alone am responsible for this crime,” and admitted he had “used my skills to systematically violate the privacy of thousands of people.” More than two years later, the D.C. Circuit’s own opinion echoed nearly the same language back at him in describing his conduct — that he had used his “skills to systematically violate the privacy of thousands of innocent people,” and that doing so was “an attack on our constitutional democracy because his goal was to influence an election through illegal activity.”
Former IRS contractor sentenced to five years in prison — the statutory maximum — for leaking President Trump's tax returns to the New York Times and confidential taxpayer data to ProPublica.
Acting Assistant Attorney General Nicole Argentieri, head of DOJ’s Criminal Division, put the government’s case in similarly blunt terms after the sentencing.
“He violated his responsibility to safeguard the sensitive information that was entrusted to his care, and now he is a convicted felon. Today's sentence sends a strong message that those who violate laws intended to protect sensitive tax information will face significant punishment.”
Nicole Argentieri · Acting Assistant Attorney General, DOJ Criminal Division · Jan. 29, 2024
A federal judge has sentenced Charles Littlejohn to five years in prison — the maximum allowed — for leaking Donald Trump's tax records and the tax data of thousands of wealthy Americans.
Judge Justin Walker (D.C. Circuit, appointed by President Trump, 2020) — wrote the July 2026 opinion affirming the sentence.
Judge Neomi Rao (D.C. Circuit, appointed by President Trump, 2019) — joined the opinion.
Judge Judith Rogers (D.C. Circuit, appointed by President Clinton, 1994) — joined the opinion; her vote made the ruling cross-administration, not partisan.
U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes (D.D.C., appointed by President Biden, 2023) — imposed the original five-year sentence.
Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), Ways and Means Chairman — praised the maximum sentence but called the single-count charge “wildly insufficient based on the defendant’s multiple thefts and disclosures.”
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Judiciary Chairman — pressed the IRS on the breach’s true scope; called DOJ’s decision to charge “thousands” of criminal acts as one count “highly concerning.”
IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel — told the Ways and Means Committee Littlejohn “betrayed IRS employees, and he betrayed the American taxpayer.”
Three different figures describe this breach, and they measure three different things — we keep them separate rather than round them into one headline number. Roughly 7,600 individuals and 600 entities is what DOJ says Littlejohn specifically targeted and stole. At least 152 individuals, across roughly 50 articles, is what ProPublica actually published. And 405,427 taxpayers — about 89% of them business entities — is the full scope the IRS itself disclosed to Congress in a February 14, 2025 letter to Rep. Jordan, drawing on analysis from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.
The gap between “targeted” and “total exposed” is the real story of how large the breach grew once investigators looked past the headline names. Sen. Rick Scott gave a victim-impact statement in person at Littlejohn’s 2024 sentencing and has separately sued Booz Allen and Littlejohn in civil court over his own leaked returns — one senator among 405,427 people whose information moved without their consent.
On July 20, 2026, the Washington Free Beacon’s Ira Stoll noted something the ruling itself didn’t say: “At this writing, the decision hasn’t been reported in either the New York Times or ProPublica, which describes itself as ‘a nonprofit, investigative newsroom that exposes corruption.’” Stoll wasn’t the only one to notice. Power Line flagged the same silence the same week, under the headline “Sentence affirmed & unreported.”
Both outlets built substantial coverage on the material Littlejohn handed them — the Times’ reporting on Trump’s returns and ProPublica’s “Secret IRS Files” series were widely discussed and prize-nominated. Neither, as of this writing, has told readers that a unanimous federal appeals court — spanning judges appointed by three different presidents — just closed the book on their source’s own criminal case. A similar silence had already drawn notice back in 2023, when Littlejohn was first charged and much of the same coverage gap was flagged in real time.
The appeal is over. Three judges appointed by three different presidents agreed, unanimously, that five years was the right sentence for a breach that grew from a targeted leak of a sitting president’s tax returns into a disclosure touching 405,427 taxpayers. The outlets that turned Littlejohn’s theft into award-nominated journalism haven’t told their own readers he lost.
