By PAUL SPERRY | REAL CLEAR INVESTIGATIONS

The Biden administration is formally considering commuting the sentence of the convicted felon who stole and leaked incoming President Trump’s tax records along with those of thousands of other taxpayers, in the biggest tax data heist in U.S. history.

A search of the Justice Department’s pardon database reveals Charles Edward Littlejohn — who just began his five-year sentence in May — has been assigned a clemency case number. It says a petition for “commutation of sentence” was recently sought and is “pending.”

A number of liberal watchdog groups, including Revolving Door Project and Patriotic Millionaires, have been lobbying President Biden to free Littlejohn from prison because they believe his leaks provided a “public service.” They argue he is a “selfless defender of tax fairness” for exposing how Trump and other wealthy Americans, including billionaires Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Bloomberg, and Jeff Bezos, take advantage of tax breaks to reduce their tax bills. Littlejohn leaked the sensitive IRS data to the New York Times and the liberal news site ProPublica, which published them in a series of articles before and after the 2020 election.

Biden would have to make the decision before he leaves office on Jan. 20. The White House did not respond to requests for comment. The pending clemency comes as Biden has issued a record number of controversial pardons and commutations, including ones for his son, Hunter Biden, for tax evasion and firearms violations.

National Legal and Policy Center counsel Paul Kamenar doubts Biden will grant the request, “especially since he already pardoned Hunter on tax charges. This would further undermine his support of the rule of law.” He added that it would also overrule the sentencing meted out by a Democratic judge he appointed.

“DOJ already let him [Littlejohn] off with a slap on the wrist by allowing him to plead guilty to just a single felony count for reportedly leaking thousands of Americans’ tax returns, ” said former Senate Judiciary Committee chief investigative counsel Jason Foster, who co-founded Empower Oversight, a Washington watchdog group. “If President Biden commuted his sentence, it’d be like letting him off the hook all over again.”

Calls to release Littlejohn were led by University of Michigan tax professor Reuven Avi-Yonah. In a letter to the president last month, petitioners argued the leaker should be offered leniency because he disclosed “highly relevant information to the voting public.” Though they acknowledged the privacy concerns of such a breach, they said it nonetheless was important to expose “how little tax” the “super-rich” pay.

“Going after Mr. Littlejohn creates the perception that the system protects the interests of the super-rich taxpayers whose returns he leaked,” they rationalized in their four-page letter to Biden. They added that his five-year sentence was “particularly harsh.”

Disclosing tax returns is a crime, and after Littlejohn pleaded guilty to a felony, he was sentenced to the maximum punishment under the law by Democratic judge Ana Reyes, who was appointed to the federal bench by Biden.

Federal records show Avi-Yonah, who has called Littlejohn a “public hero,” is a Democrat who has donated to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. He has advocated for soaking the rich to keep “inequality in check.” Littlejohn has also given to Democrats and was raised in an affluent Democrat household.

The 39-year-old Littlejohn, who goes by “Chaz,” pilfered the trove of private tax returns while working for the IRS as a contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton, a Washington consulting firm with deep ties to Democrats. RealClearInvestigations was the first to report his connection to Booz Allen, which last summer received a lucrative new contract from the IRS in spite of the massive breach.

The IRS recently sent letters to the thousands of victims of Littlejohn’s theft, noting the breach of their confidential tax files was unacceptable but that the full scope of what he disclosed is still unknown. The IRS has already settled one lawsuit filed by billionaire Kenneth Griffin. Other victims are suing Booz Allen for its failure to monitor Littlejohn while he worked at the IRS.

Supporters of Littlejohn, most of whom are anti-Trump voters, have set up a GoFundMe pagethat has raised nearly $60,000 to help pay for his legal defense.

Littlejohn is incarcerated at the federal prison in Marion, Ill. He is pursuing an appeal that could lower his sentence.

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire. Paul Sperry is an investigative reporter for RealClearInvestigations. He is also a longtime media fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Sperry was previously the Washington bureau chief for Investor’s Business Daily, and his work has appeared in the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Houston Chronicle, among other major publications.