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A ‘Times’ Leak Saga for Our Times

Anticipating the legal denouement of a vexing legal soap opera featuring Trump, Ken Griffin, a modern Snowden, and The New York Times.

The New York Times covered the Trump tax return saga when the leaker, Chaz Littlejohn, was charged in September—but since that initial story, the paper has basically ignored their source and his predicament.
The New York Times covered the Trump tax return saga when the leaker, Chaz Littlejohn, was charged in September—but since that initial story, the paper has basically ignored their source and his predicament. Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Eriq Gardner
January 22, 2024

Back in 2016, when Donald Trump defied convention (yet again) by refusing to release his tax returns, a St. Louis systems analyst named Charles “Chaz” Littlejohn decided to take matters into his own hands. At the time, pretty much every political reporter in America was searching for those returns (if they weren’t already looking for the Apprentice tapes), but Littlejohn had a different idea. He rejoined Booz Allen Hamilton, the government contractor he had quit a few years earlier (back when Edward Snowden was still there) so that he could consult once again for the Internal Revenue Service. He then worked his way into the agency’s most sensitive database, where he collected Trump’s returns in a manner that he hoped would cover his tracks.