A former IRS contractor was sentenced to prison time last week after illegally releasing tax records tied to former President Donald Trump. The records revealed that the former president had paid a higher actual tax rate than accused by some left-wing critics.
Charles Littlejohn received five years in prison following an investigation into how the former president’s tax records were leaked to the media. Littlejohn was originally charged last September on one count of disclosing information from a tax return for a government official.
He pleaded guilty the following month to illegally releasing ten years of Trump’s private tax records. Littlejohn admitted to sending the sensitive data to the New York Times.
The sentence was handed down by U.S. District Court Judge Ana C. Reyes, who also imposed a $5,000 fine on the former contractor.
The judge said that a person could be ‘an outstanding person and commit bad acts.” She also told Littlejohn that his action “in targeting the sitting president of the United States was an attack on our constitutional democracy.”
Former IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn has been sentenced to five years in prison for leaking Trump’s tax returns. | @StrackHaley https://t.co/q4jQqIQWzH
— National Review (@NRO) January 31, 2024
Reyes also argued that the Department of Justice (DOJ) should have charged the former contractor with other counts, saying that she had “no words” about the situation. She also called his actions the “biggest heist in IRS history.”
She also compared the former contractor’s actions to the Jan. 6, 2021 protests at the U.S. Capitol, arguing that his actions engendered “the same fear that Jan. 6 does.”
Littlejohn requested mercy from the court, arguing that he “acted out of a sincere but misguided belief that I was serving the public.” His legal team also argued that the former IRS worker was simply trying to release information to the American public.
Littlejohn discovered and released the information regarding Trump in late 2018 utilizing secretive search terms to find the information in the IRS database. He allegedly took the information and sent it to his own website.
