A former IRS contractor who pleaded guilty to leaking tax documents belonging to former President Donald Trump and other wealthy Americans was sentenced Monday to five years in prison and ordered to pay a $5,000 fine.
The video is from a previous report.
Charles Littlejohn pleaded guilty in October to taking tax return information without authorization for leaking documents to the media in 2019 and 2020.
“Scope and Scale [is] “Unparalleled in the history of the IRS,” U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said of Littlejohn's crime as she handed down her sentence Monday in Washington, DC.
According to a sentencing memo filed by prosecutors, Littlejohn “abused his position by illegally disclosing thousands of Americans' federal tax returns and other private financial information to multiple news organizations,” sources told the New York Times.
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“In the case of Mr. Trump's tax returns, he has no legal obligation to release them,” Reiss Littlejohn said Monday. “Your targeting of the current President of the United States is an attack on our constitutional democracy.”
Littlejohn testified that he acted in a “genuine belief.”
Taxpayers “deserve to know” how easy it is for wealthy Americans to avoid paying taxes, the former contractor said.
His lawyer, Lisa Manning, said Littlejohn was deeply sorry for his actions.
“He's very, very remorseful, he's deeply sorry for the victims,” Manning told the judge. “If he wants to, he'll get it back.”
The Florida Senate read a victim impact report at the hearing. Rick Scott asked the judge to impose the maximum sentence on Littlejohn, saying Littlejohn abused his position of trust to “harm Americans,” including Scott and his family.
“Donald Trump, Elon Musk … all were attacked for political reasons,” Scott said.
Republican members of the House Ways and Means Committee, Judge Reyes, asked in a letter last week that Littlejohn be sentenced to the statutory maximum of five years in prison.
“In our view, the seriousness of the offenses and the circumstances surrounding them justify an upward variation. We therefore respectfully ask that you sentence Mr. Littlejohn to the maximum sentence of five years, so that similar behavior will be deterred in the future,” he said.
Before handing down the sentence, Judge Reiss said that because only 152 victims' information had been released, the intent of the harm was “not necessary or done,” after Littlejohn admitted leaking the tax records of “more than a thousand” wealthy individuals. Tax payers.
The judge compared Littlejohn's actions to those of some of the defendants on January 6.
“This cannot be open season on our elected officials,” Judge Reyes said.
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