“He broke the law, but in light of the good that came from his actions in exposing the full scale of tax injustice in America, he certainly did not deserve a sentence six times higher than what guidelines recommended.”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Kenny Stancil, [email protected]
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, the Patriotic Millionaires and the Revolving Door Project launched a grassroots letter campaign calling on President Biden to commute the prison sentence of Charles Littlejohn, the IRS contractor who, in 2019 and 2020, leaked the federal income tax records of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest individuals to The New York Times and ProPublica. Bombshell reporting from the outlets went on to expose the full extent to which America’s ultra-rich avoid tax.
In January 2024, US District Judge Ana Reyes sentenced Littlejohn to five years in prison for his actions, which was six times over the four to ten months that guidelines recommended. In their letter campaign, the Patriotic Millionaires and the Revolving Door Project are calling on President Biden to commute Littlejohn’s sentence to time served.
Bob Lord, Senior Vice President for Tax Policy at the Patriotic Millionaires, released the following statement about the letter campaign:
“I’ve been a tax lawyer for forty years. For the past decade, I’ve been pretty outspoken about the various maneuvers that the ultra-rich deploy to avoid tax. But despite my best efforts, I fully recognize that no technical explanation that I could give about any of the myriad tax loopholes that the rich exploit would ever stick in the public conscience the same way that Charles Littlejohn’s leaks did about billionaires like Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos paying $0 in income tax.
In her sentencing, Judge Ana Reyes claimed that Littlejohn’s actions constituted a greater threat to American democracy than those of the January 6th Capitol insurrectionists. I couldn’t disagree more. Littlejohn did break the law, but at the end of the day, he actually did the country a great service by exposing the full degree to which our tax code privileges the wealthy and well-connected. And if lawmakers are inspired by Littlejohn’s leaks to finally take meaningful steps to reform our tax system and rein in extreme wealth, he will have undoubtedly done more to save American democracy than harm it.
I sincerely hope that the letter campaign that my organization, the Patriotic Millionaires, and the Revolving Door Project have put together inspires President Biden to recognize that Littlejohn deserves clemency.”
Kenny Stancil, a senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project, added:
“Littlejohn’s punishment was a gross miscarriage of justice. He broke the law, but in light of the good that came from his actions in exposing the full scale of tax injustice in America, he certainly did not deserve a sentence six times higher than what guidelines recommended. The purpose of the letter campaign that my organization, the Revolving Door Project, and the Patriotic Millionaires have launched is to get President Biden to understand this and to use the precious little time that he has left in office to commute Littlejohn’s sentence to time served. We hope that, as a public official who has openly committed himself to the cause of tax fairness, Biden will see the light on this issue and deliver justice to Charles Littlejohn before it’s too late.”
You can check out the Patriotic Millionaires and the Revolving Door Project’s letter campaign to President Biden HERE.
For interview requests with Bob Lord or members of the Patriotic Millionaires, please contact Emily McCloskey at [email protected].
For interview requests with Kenny Stancil, please contact him directly at [email protected].
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About Patriotic Millionaires
Patriotic Millionaires is a collection of wealthy Americans alarmed by the destabilizing concentration of wealth and power in America. Our members use their wealth to fight for a more economically equitable and vibrant democracy, built on the foundation of a fair tax system, a livable wage for every working American, and equal access to democracy. Learn more at https://patrioticmillionaires.org.
About Revolving Door Project
The Revolving Door Project (RDP) was created in order to scrutinize executive branch appointees to ensure they use their office to serve the broad public interest, rather than to entrench corporate power or seek personal advancement. In recent years our work has expanded to include monitoring how corporate and billionaire influence distorts coverage of economic issues in the media, the administration of law in our courts, and policymaking by state constitutional officers. Learn more at https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/.