Jan. 26 (UPI) — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Monday that the department canceled all contracts with consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton because of a data leak that included President Donald Trump’s tax returns.
The department has 31 contracts with Booz Allen for a total of $4.8 million in annual spending and $21 million in total obligations, a press release said.
“President Trump has entrusted his cabinet to root out waste, fraud, and abuse, and canceling these contracts is an essential step to increasing Americans’ trust in government,” Bessent said in a statement.
Between 2018 and 2020, a Booz Allen employee, Charles Edward Littlejohn, “stole and leaked the confidential tax returns and return information of hundreds of thousands of taxpayers.”
The breach affected about 406,000 taxpayers, including Trump, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
“Booz Allen failed to implement adequate safeguards to protect sensitive data, including the confidential taxpayer information it had access to through its contracts with the Internal Revenue Service,” Bessent said.
Littlejohn pleaded guilty in October 2023 to one charge of disclosure of tax return information and was sentenced to five years in prison. He admitted to leaking Trump’s tax information to The New York Times and leaking other tax information to ProPublica.
Booz Allen’s stock price dipped by 8% on the news, CNBC reported.