On January 26, the Treasury Department cancelled 31 contracts worth $21 million with Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm.
The contracts were terminated ostensibly due to a leak that occurred more than five years ago. The leak exposed “how wealthy people like Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos manage to minimize their tax obligations.” The leaker, Charles Edward Littlejohn, was a Booz Allen employee who was contracted with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). He had pled guilty in 2023 and sentenced to five years in prison.
Booz Allen expressed shock at the Treasury Department’s decision.
“Booz Allen has zero tolerance for violations of the law and operates under the highest ethical and professional guidelines,” the company said in a statement. “When Littlejohn’s criminal conduct occurred more than five years ago, it was on government systems, not Booz Allen systems. Booz Allen stores no taxpayer data on its systems and has no ability to monitor activity on government networks.”
NPR
As the firm implies, the justification for cancelling these contracts is flawed. The leak was committed by an individual that exploited his access to the IRS. Contrary to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s complaint that Booz Allen failed to protect sensitive taxpayer information, it was the IRS that failed to secure it from someone they had contracted. According to Booz Allen, the company fully cooperated with the government’s investigation of the leak.
The termination of these contracts smacks of hypocrisy. Littlejohn was prosecuted by former President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ); Trump has consistently claimed, without evidence, that Biden’s DOJ was rigged against individuals who opposed Biden, and that it was corrupt, therefore being an illegitimate institution. If this was the case, why would the Treasury Department even believe that a criminal leak occurred?
