Conservatives are criticizing the Justice Department over a plea deal being made with a high profile Internal Revenue Service contractor who leaked the tax records of some 7,500 of the wealthiest Americans, including President Trump.

In 2019 and 2020, Charles Edward Littlejohn provided news outlets with stolen tax documents that resulted in dozens of articles being published on the taxes that the wealthiest Americans do and do not pay.

In a new court filing, prosecutors have laid out a plea deal for the contractor, Mr. Littlejohn, that they say “does not account for the fact that he leaked thousands of individuals’ tax returns. His [sentencing] range would be the same today if he had leaked only a single return.”

Prosecutors are currently looking at a 60-month sentence for two separate leaks perpetrated by Mr. Littlejohn, which is the maximum sentence for a single offense under the statute he is being prosecuted under. Prosecutors said Mr. Littlejohn took the job at the IRS specifically in order to steal and leak the tax information.

Republican politicians had responded to the potentially lenient sentence by pressuring prosecutors to “throw the book” at Mr. Littlejohn, saying they were afraid he would get less than the maximum sentence.

“While we wish that prosecutors had pleaded him to additional counts, you still can impose a more serious sentence than the anticipated 8-to-14-month guideline range,” Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee wrote in a letter. “Mr. Littlejohn took the law into his own hands and decided he knew what was best.”