Five years in prison were handed down on Monday to the former Internal Revenue Service contractor who gave The New York Times access to former President Donald Trump’s tax returns and ProPublica access to the tax returns of billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.
Prosecutors requested the statutory maximum of five years in federal prison for Charles Littlejohn, who entered a guilty plea in October. “By unlawfully disclosing thousands of Americans’ federal tax returns and other private financial information to multiple news organizations,” they said, Littlejohn “abused his position.”
Littlejohn “used his access to unmasked taxpayer data to further his own personal, political agenda, believing that he was above the law,” according to the prosecution.
District judge Ana C. Reyes in Washington sentenced Littlejohn during a hearing. In addition, he’ll be hit with a $5,000 fine.
The maximum sentence was given, according to Ana C. Reyes, in order to dissuade anyone else from feeling “obligated to break the law.”
“You can be an outstanding person and commit bad acts,” Reyes said. “What you did in targeting the sitting president of the United States was an attack on our constitutional democracy,” she added.
Reyes contrasted Littlejohn’s actions with other recent threats and assaults on public servants, as well as with the defendants she recently sentenced on January 6.
She said he “sincerely felt a moral imperative” to act in the way he did, but she also described his actions as a planned, intricate, multiyear criminal scheme.
The lawyer argued that Littlejohn committed this crime because of his deep moral belief that the American people have a right to know and that sharing it is the only way to effect change.” He believed he was right at the time.While Littlejohn’s conduct was “inexcusable,” his lawyer said, and”violated the privacy of thousands of taxpayers and betrayed the trust placed in him by the United States government,” the public had already received a “strong message of general deterrence.”
Lisa Manning, the defense lawyer, argued for a sentence that was less severe than what would normally be prescribed for a person without a criminal history. However, Littlejohn specifically targeted the president, according to Reyes, making the crime exceptional.
Littlejohn, 38 who belongs Missouri, he addressed the court ,saying that he “acted out of a sincere but misguided belief that I was serving the public.”
Littlejohn continued, saying he thought that when Americans are well-informed, they make the best decisions and that they should know how simple it is for the wealthy to avoid paying into the system.
“I made my decision with the full knowledge that I would likely end up in a courtroom,” he said.
Florida senator Rick Scott, a Republican, claimed that he was one of the people whose tax records Littlejohn had leaked.
He said that the prospect of it being published has an impact on his whole family and that Littlejohn ought to have been charged further by the Justice Department for disclosing private information “just to harm people.”
In the year he took office, Trump paid $750 in federal income tax; in other years, he paid no income tax at all because of massive losses, according to the 2020 New York Times report. Trump had defied convention by refusing to voluntarily release his tax returns.
Later, the then-Democratically controlled House Ways and Means Committee made available six years’ worth of his returns.