As the New York Times detailed, Elon Musk and his DOGE non-agency are now routinely accessing vital government computer systems at the Treasury Department, the GSA, the IRS and other federal bureaus. President Trump’s “special government employee” has deployed engineers as young as 19 to peruse and mine sensitive government systems previously off limits to all but select, authorized personnel. In response, a group of federal employee unions has filed suit to stop the “massive and unprecedented” intrusion into the “sensitive personal and financial information maintained in government records” of tens of millions of Americans.

Surprisingly, Republicans inside of Congress and out have largely been silent about Musk’s capture of Uncle Sam’s computing infrastructure. Surprising, that is, because Republicans launched investigations and demanded harsher sentences when IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn was convicted in 2024 of leaking Donald Trump’s and Elon Musk’s tax returns to the media.

As you may recall, in September 2020, the New York Times published a sensational story revealing that Donald Trump paid only $750 in 2016 and 2017, and none at all in 10 of the previous 15 years. His 1995 filing showed a staggering loss of $915 million, a figure which enabled him to avoid paying federal income taxes for almost two decades. Then in June 2021, Pro Publica released a report on “The Secret IRS Files: Inside the Tax Records of the .001%” based on a massive trove of returns from thousands of America’s wealthiest individuals. Among those who paid virtually nothing to the United States Treasury was Elon Musk:

A ProPublica investigation found that while Musk's wealth had grown by nearly $14 billion from 2014 to 2018, he paid $68,000 in federal income tax in 2015, $65,000 in 2017 and none in 2018. Between 2014 and 2018, the investigation found, he had a true tax rate of 3.27%.

Worried about the implications for the 2020 reelection of the man who had broken his promise to make his tax returns available to the American people, Republican in Congress rallied to protect President Trump. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO) published an FAQ about the Trump tax return revelations calling them “inaccurate” and warning “there is a strong prospect that a felony crime was committed by the individual releasing the private tax return information of an individual without their consent – in this case the President’s.” On September 29, 2020, Smith’s GOP colleagues Kevin Brady (R-TX) and  Mike Kelly (R-PA) wrote Attorney General Bill Barr and IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig demanding investigation into and prosecution of the perpetrator(s) of the Trump tax return leak:

“This leak of the President’s private tax information…should be a serious concern for all Americans who do not wish to have their personal tax information weaponized against them – especially for political purposes,” the lawmakers wrote. “It is imperative that we determine whether the individual or individuals that disclosed the information committed a federal crime in doing so.”

Echoing this week’s lawsuit by public employee unions that Elon Musk’s DOGE apparatchiks had violating the Privacy Act and the Internal Revenue Code, Brady and Kelly also cited 26 U.S.C. § 6103. “Only a small number of individuals are likely to have had ‘legal access’ to the information at issue. For most of the individuals with access to the information, an unauthorized disclosure would constitute a federal crime.”

The Attorney General, now Biden nominee Merrick Garland, agreed. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration investigated the case, which was prosecuted by the Justice Department’s Criminal Division in conjunction with the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of West Virginia. In October 2023, IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn pled guilty to one count of disclosing tax return information without authorization. On January 29, 2024, Littlejohn was sentenced to five years in prison, which as Brady and Kelly previously noted was the maximum term for the crime.

Now, it should be noted that unauthorized access (or UNAX) to IRS records on its own is a violation precisely because Americans’ willingness to voluntarily comply with the tax system is the confidence that IRS is protecting one's personal and financial information. In 2022, IRS asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to review the previous decade for instances of unauthorized access to taxpayer records. In its report on “IRS Security of Taxpayer Information,” GAO found:

About one-quarter of cases investigated in the time period GAO reviewed were ultimately substantiated. Between fiscal years 2012 and 2021, IRS completed 1,694 investigations of employee discipline cases that included an UNAX issue. More than half of UNAX cases originated in IRS's Wage & Investment Division. About 30 percent of cases originated in the Small Business/Self-Employed Division. Of the 1,694 UNAX cases, 12 percent (204) also included an unauthorized disclosure issue. IRS substantiated 27 percent of the 1,694 UNAX cases as violations and about 24 percent of the 204 unauthorized disclosure cases. Over the past 10 fiscal years, it has taken TIGTA and IRS, on average, a combined 464 days to investigate and close UNAX cases.

As Fedscoop pointed out, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) may refer cases of unauthorized access and disclosure to the Justice Department. “Between 2012 and 2021, DOJ accepted 35 such cases, resulting in 24 guilty verdicts, and the IRS closed 25 cases where a criminal indictment was returned.”

Littlejohn’s was one such closed case in 2024. And to be sure, his actions “appear to be unparalleled in the I.R.S.’s history.” Littlejohn not only admitted his crimes, but acknowledged “he committed this offense out of a deep, moral belief that the American people had a right to know the information and sharing it was the only way to effect change.” Biden DOJ prosecutors charged that Littlejohn had “weaponized his access to unmasked taxpayer data to further his own personal, political agenda, believing that he was above the law.” To accomplish his mission, the Justice Department revealed, he scoured IRS databases for information about Donald Trump “using broad search parameters designed to conceal the true purpose of his queries” and “then uploaded the tax returns to a private website in order to avoid IRS protocols established to detect and prevent large downloads or uploads from IRS devices or systems” before saving the tax returns to multiple personal storage devices.” (If this sounds familiar, it should. According to the New Republic, “Elon Musk has taken control of government employees’ private data by having his cronies illegally install a commercial server at the Office of Personnel Management.”) After providing the documents to the New York Times in 2019, he repeated the procedure for thousands of the richest Americans, revelations which became the basis of dozens of articles which appeared in Pro Publica.

But the Republicans who now are cheering on Elon Musk’s campaign to loot and pillage federal information systems were apoplectic after the Charles Littlejohn case. His punishment, they insisted, wasn’t nearly sever enough. Florida GOP Senator Rick Scott, whose records were among those revealed by Littlejohn in the Pro Publica series, gave a victim impact statement at the contractor’s sentencing. Despite Merrick Garland’s past statement that “By using his role as a government contractor to gain access to private tax information, steal that information, and disclose it publicly, Charles Littlejohn broke federal law and betrayed the public’s trust,” Scott blamed Biden’s AG for the crime itself:

Scott also published a letter that asked Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to attend and criticized prosecutors for allowing Littlejohn to plead guilty to a single criminal charge. Scott wrote that Littlejohn’s crimes were “entirely aligned with the agenda of the Biden administration” and that Garland had politicized the Justice Department.

“Since you have steered the Justice Department down this partisan political path, you should be on hand personally to in some way be accountable,” Scott wrote.

For his part, House Speaker Mike Johnson tweeted he “absolutely” agreed with his GOP colleagues on the House Ways and Means Committee that Littlejohn “acted with an apparent political motivation and perhaps with an intent to impact a Presidential election.”

But while Chairman Smith and his fellow committee Republicans asked for the five-year sentence ultimately handed down to Charles Littlejohn, others on the right were outraged that his punishment wasn’t more severe. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) launched an inquiry into what he called “DOJ's Sweetheart Deal for Trump Tax Return Leaker.” In his letter to the DOJ Criminal Division’s Acting Assistant Attorney General, Jordan wrote:

The Department's decision to pursue just one charge for 'thousands' of separate criminal acts is highly concerning, and we worry that the Department's decision may be politically motivated.

Last May, House Republicans ratcheted up their criticism, sponsoring legislation that would double the maximum sentence to 10 years for an unauthorized disclosure of tax records and further declare “every leaked return a separate and distinct offense.” That would mean those who leak multiple returns could face cascading penalties. As Rep. Jason Smith, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, put it:

“No American should fear that their sensitive tax information might be unlawfully disclosed to another party or made public without their consent. Increasing the maximum fine and imprisonment period for unauthorized disclosure of taxpayer information will help deter individuals from violating the trust of American taxpayers.”

But that was then and this is now. And now, Elon Musk and his “Department of Government Efficiency” with President Trump’s blessing are running roughshod over the systems used by the Treasury, the Social Security Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and more. While Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) have proposed “Stop the Steal” legislation to prevent the Musk from continuing to commit what is already likely a vast array of federal offenses. But as Roll Call explained, Democrats and all Americans will have to depend on the courts and whistleblowers to do what the GOP will not:

The law would place new legal limits on access to Treasury Department payment systems, which the DOGE reportedly received over the weekend. But it would require Republicans, some of whom have set up or signed onto DOGE caucuses and in the case of the House even a standing subcommittee in order to work with Musk, to help bring up and pass a bill that would rely on Trump to sign into law and then enforce.

That’s simply not going to happen to protect the sensitive information of the American people, their businesses and organizations. That’s because what both parties considered a serious bug in the system in 2024 is now an essential feature for Republicans.