Sen. Grassley Wants to Know Why Treasury, IRS, DOJ, Are Silent on Confidential Tax Return Leak

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wants to know why, more than a year later, the Department of Treasury, Department of Justice (DOJ), and IRS have yet to explain to America who leaked highly confidential tax return data on hundreds of Americans to a news outlet.

“More than a year ago, the news website ProPublica began publishing stories that it claims are based on ‘a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years’,” Grassley told colleagues during a Sept. 12 floor speech.

“Since then, ProPublica has continued to publish articles that appear to use data leaked or hacked from the IRS. Despite questions from Congress and immediate expressions of concern from the Treasury Department and the IRS, we don’t know any more today than we did a year ago,” Grassley said.

“Even though these apparent leaks of confidential taxpayer information appear to target the wealthy, all taxpayers and anyone who cares about effective tax administration should be very concerned,” he said.

Spokespersons for Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen and the DOJ did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment on Grassley’s remarks. A spokesman for the IRS referred The Epoch Times to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). The TIGTA spokesman said he could provide no information on the status of an investigation, if one exists.

ProPublica first revealed in a June 8, 2021, post that it had received what it described as tax information and data “we obtained … from an anonymous source who provided us with large amounts of information on the ultra-wealthy, everything from the taxes they paid, to the income they reported, to the profits from their stock trades.”

Since that first disclosure, ProPublica has published multiple articles allegedly based

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