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The Internal Revenue Service issued a rare apology to billionaire investor Ken Griffin over the leak of his tax returns to the press.

The apology follows the Monday settlement of a lawsuit the Citadel CEO filed against the IRS in 2022, alleging that an employee at the agency illegally leaked his tax returns to the news site ProPublica.

In 2021, ProPublica also published other billionaires’ tax information, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and real estate mogul Stephen Ross, in a 2021 series called “The Secret IRS Files.”

The IRS employee in question — government contractor Charles Littlejohn — also leaked the confidential tax returns of thousands of other wealthy Americans to the New York Times.

The former government contractor was sentenced to five years in prison in January after he pleaded guilty to unauthorized disclosure of tax returns.

“The IRS takes its responsibilities seriously and acknowledges that it failed to prevent Mr. Littlejohns criminal conduct and unlawful disclosure of Mr. Griffins confidential data,” the IRS said in a statement.

“Accordingly, the IRS assures Mr. Griffin and the other victims of Mr. Littlejohns actions that it has made substantial investments in its data security to strengthen its safeguarding of taxpayer information.”

Littlejohn accessed the tax data through an IRS database and uploaded it to a private website to avoid the agency barrier preventing large downloads. He passed former president Donald Trump’s tax information to the New York Times and passed others’ information, including Griffin’s, to ProPublica.

“He violated the terms of his contract and betrayed the trust that the American people place in the IRS to safeguard their sensitive information,” the IRS said in a statement.

The billionaire’s lawyer, William A. Burck of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP, said the lawsuit came after years of stonewalling.

“Although the IRS has acknowledged its failures, apologized to the thousands of Americans who were victimized, and has promised to protect taxpayer information in the future, it is important that all of us hold it accountable to satisfy that promise,” Burck told the Post in a statement. 

“I am grateful to my team for securing an outcome that will better protect American taxpayers and that will ultimately benefit all Americans,” Griffin said in a statement to multiple news outlets, including CBS and FOX, Tuesday.

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Ohtani blasts 54th HR as Dodgers clinch NL West

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Ohtani blasts 54th HR as Dodgers clinch NL West

PHOENIX — Shohei Ohtani matched his career high with his 54th home run, Freddie Freeman went deep twice and the Los Angeles Dodgers clinched their 12th National League West title in 13 years by beating the Arizona Diamondbacks 8-0 on Thursday.

Ohtani’s homer splashed into Chase Field’s swimming pool behind the right-center wall for a 6-0 lead in the fourth inning. The two-run shot gave him 101 RBIs for the season and matched his career-best home run total with the World Series champion Dodgers last year. He has scored a big league-high 144 runs.

Los Angeles, which clinched a postseason berth last week, won its fourth straight division title.

Arizona (80-79) fell 1½ games behind the New York Mets (81-77) for the final NL wild-card spot and also is one game back of Cincinnati (81-78). The Diamondbacks close with three games at San Diego.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto (12-8) allowed four hits in six innings and struck out seven to finish with 201. His 2.49 ERA ranked second in the NL behind the 1.97 ERA of Pittsburgh’s Paul Skenes.

Three relievers finished a five-hitter in the Dodgers’ 10th shutout.

Freeman and Andy Pages homered back to back starting the second inning, Freeman off opener Jalen Beeks (5-3) and Pages against Nabil Crismatt. Mookie Betts added a two-run single.

Freeman, who had three RBIs, has 23 homers while Pages has 27.

Arizona finished 43-38 at Chase Field. The crowd of 34,952 raised home attendance to 2,393,773, the Diamondbacks’ highest since 2008.

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Bochy’s Rangers future unclear as season ends

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Bochy's Rangers future unclear as season ends

ARLINGTON, Texas — Bruce Bochy is in the final games of his three-year contract with the Texas Rangers, a span that began with the franchise’s only World Series title, but baseball’s winningest active manager isn’t ready to discuss if he will be back next season.

“Season’s not over. It’s something we’ll talk about when the season’s over,” Bochy said before the Rangers lost 4-0 to Minnesota in their home finale Thursday. “So I’m going to stick with that right now and see if we can win a couple of games here.”

Both Bochy, who turned 70 this season, and Chris Young, the team’s president of baseball operations, said they will talk about next season after this one is done. The Rangers, who will miss the playoffs for the second year in a row since that championship in 2023, finish with three games at Cleveland this weekend.

“The two of us will sit down and talk about where things are, what happened this year, where we’re going,” Young said. “There’s things that I’m sure he’s going to want to know about the future of the team and we’ll talk about it, like we did three years ago, and figure it out.”

Young, who pitched a season for Bochy in San Diego, was the Rangers general manager when he hired Bochy as manager after the 2022 season. They were coming off their sixth consecutive losing season, the longest streak in the half-century since the franchise moved to Texas in 1972.

At that time, Bochy had been out of managing for three seasons. He stepped away from the San Francisco Giants in 2019 after 13 seasons and three World Series titles, which followed 12 seasons and a National League pennant with the Padres.

“Just love him. He’s great. I love working with him. He’s been wonderful,” Young said. “He came here to win a World Series. He’s helped us accomplish that. And, you know, we’ll figure out what the future holds.”

Young didn’t have a timeline on how quickly a decision could be made after the season ends this weekend.

The Rangers (80-79) were eliminated from playoff contention Tuesday night when they lost their eighth straight game, but ended that losing streak the next night. They can still finish with a winning record, but would have to win two out of three against the playoff-chasing Guardians.

Bochy has a career record of 2,251-2,264 over his 28 seasons, with those wins ranking sixth among all managers – the five ahead of him are all in the Hall of Fame. No managers in the past 60 years have more than Bochy’s four World Series titles, and the only ones all-time with more are Joe McCarthy, Casey Stengel and Connie Mack.

“Oh, I’ve really had a great time, and it’s as much fun as I’ve had in the game,” Bochy said of his three seasons back in the dugout. “I said this when I came back, you have a deeper appreciation when you’re out, especially for three years and you realize what you have, how blessed you are to be doing what you’re doing. It’s been a lot of fun and I still love it, and enjoy it.”

The only current MLB manager older than Bochy is 73-year-old Ron Washington with the Angels, though he hasn’t managed a game for the Angels since June 19 before he had quadruple bypass heart surgery.

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Horton ‘adament’ he can pitch, but Cubs unsure

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Horton 'adament' he can pitch, but Cubs unsure

CHICAGO — The Cubs were still evaluating the extent of starter Cade Horton‘s back injury on Thursday, leaving the National League Rookie of the Year candidate’s status for the wild-card playoff series in question.

Manager Craig Counsell said “Cade is on track still,” though an MRI on Wednesday showed “some areas of concern” in the ribs.

“Right now, Cade is a go,” Counsell said, adding that Horton is “adament he can pitch.”

Counsell said another physician will look at the imaging. Horton is scheduled to resume throwing on Friday after being off the past two days.

“We want to make sure we use this time to let Cade tell us how he feels, let Cade show us how he feels, consult our doctors and let them make recommendations and get the best decision we can make,” Counsell said.

Chicago will play the San Diego Padres in Game 1 of the National League wild-card series on Tuesday. The Cubs’ magic number for clinching the top wild-card spot — and homefield advantage in the first round — was at two over Padres entering Thursday’s game against the playoff-contending New York Mets.

Horton is 11-4 in 22 starts and 23 appearances. The 24-year-old right-hander has a 2.67 ERA that ranks second among qualified rookies.

Horton left Tuesday’s start against New York after three innings due to back tightness. He was sick following his previous start and had been coughing, which led to the issues in the back and ribs.

Counsell said the Cubs won’t announce their postseason rotation until next week.

“We’re at this phase where we’re starting to put plans into place,” Counsell said. “We have multiple ones. We’ve got four baseball games left, which affects things.”

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