A former contractor at the Internal Revenue Service who disclosed the tax records of former President Donald Trump to The New York Times and those of billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to ProPublica received a five-year prison sentence on Monday.
Charles Littlejohn entered a guilty plea in October, with prosecutors seeking the maximum penalty of five years in federal prison, asserting that he “abused his position by unlawfully disclosing thousands of Americans’ federal tax returns and other private financial information to multiple news organizations.” Prosecutors alleged that Littlejohn “weaponized his access to unmasked taxpayer data to further his own personal, political agenda, believing that he was above the law.”
U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes handed down Littlejohn’s sentence at a hearing held at the federal courthouse in Washington. Additionally, Littlejohn was fined $5,000.
Reyes remarked, “You can be an outstanding person and commit bad acts. What you did in targeting the sitting president of the United States was an attack on our constitutional democracy.”
Littlejohn’s lawyer contended that he acted “”out of a deep, moral belief that the American people had a right to know the information and sharing it was the only way to effect change” and that he believed he was justified at the time.
