Former IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn was sentenced to five years in prison on Monday after leaking former President Donald Trump’s tax records, according to NBC News.
Littlejohn, 38, was charged in September 2023 with one count of disclosing information from a tax return for a government official, and he pleaded guilty in October to leaking 10 years of Trump’s tax records to The New York Times. U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes sentenced Littlejohn to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine, according to NBC News. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: GOP Rep Demands IRS Show Plans To Crack Down On Leakers To Protect Taxpayers)
“You can be an outstanding person and commit bad acts,” Reyes told the former contractor, according to NBC News. “What you did in targeting the sitting president of the United States was an attack on our constitutional democracy.”
COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA – NOVEMBER 25: Former U.S. President Donald Trump waves to the crowd on the field during halftime in the Palmetto Bowl between Clemson and South Carolina at Williams Brice Stadium on November 25, 2023, in Columbia, South Carolina. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
Reyes also criticized the justice department for only bringing one count against Littlejohn, saying that she had “no words,” according to CNN. She also compared the incident to Jan. 6 and argued he pulled off the “biggest heist in IRS history.”
“It engenders the same fear that January 6 does,” Reyes added, according to CNN.
Littlejohn told the court before Reyes sentenced him that he “acted out of a sincere but misguided belief that I was serving the public” and his attorney argued that his client had only acted “out of a deep, moral belief that the American people had a right to know the information” and felt it necessary to share it, according to NBC News. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: GOP Rep Demands IRS Show Plans To Crack Down On Leakers To Protect Taxpayers)
IRS contractor sentenced to 5 years in prison for stealing Donald Trump’s tax returns and leaking it to a news organization
— BNO News (@BNONews) January 29, 2024
In November 2018, Littlejohn “exploited a loophole” in the IRS protocals and sent the tax data he found on the former president to his own private website, according to The Washington Post. Prosecutors claimed that the former contractor did not use search terms like “Trump,” but other phrases that were “designed to conceal the true purpose of his queries.”
Littlejohn also released tax records from Tesla CEO Elon Musk and billionaire Jeff Bezos to ProPublica, according to NBC News.
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