by Kate Anderson
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, the news outlet reported.
“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.”
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 reportedly added.
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, NBC News reported.
In November 2018, Littlejohn “exploited a loophole” in the IRS protocols 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, NBC News reported.
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Kate Anderson is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Donald Trump Signs Tax Returns” by Donald Trump.
he’ll be rewarded by the left.
I’m old enough to remember that the whole “release your tax records” thing was a last-ditch stunt by George Romney to get the GOP presidential nomination. The argument was that someone with a career in public service should have nothing to hide. Okay, but he stunt failed and Romney lost.
Trump’s career was not in public service. He was a businessman. His taxes filings are difficult to understand and ultimately not that informative.
But it sure is good for the Left and blowhard know-nothings.
Every other President from Ford to Obama released their tax records…
I’m old enough to remember when the Left thought Trump was refusing to release his tax returns because they would implicate him in some nefarious criminal enterprise and/or show he was broke.
Turned out to be a nothing burger for them and a HUGE violation of a US citizen’s right to privacy.