- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
The man who stole and leaked former President Donald Trump and thousands of other’s tax records has been sentenced to five years in prison.
In October, Charles Littlejohn, 38, pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorized disclosures of income tax returns. According to his plea agreement, he stole Trump’s tax returns along with the tax data of “thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people,” while working for a consulting firm with contracts with the Internal Revenue Service.
Littlejohn leaked the information to two news outlets and deleted the documents from his IRS-assigned laptop before returning it and covered the rest of his digital tracks by deleting places where he initially stored the information.
Judge Ana Reyes highlighted the gravity of the crime, saying multiple times that it amounted to an attack against the US and its legal foundation.
I doubt he expected five years though. It’s not like he was making money from what he did or showing classified information that could harm someone.
I do not want him to be punished, but at the same time ‘we’ need to uphold the standards that ‘they’ would not (when it suited them).