SUMMARY: A federal judge has sentenced Charles Littlejohn, a former IRS contractor, to the maximum five-year prison term for leaking tax records of former President Donald Trump and other affluent individuals to news organizations.
KEY POINTS:
- Judge Ana Reyes sentenced 38-year-old Littlejohn to five years in prison, with an additional three years of supervised release and a $5,000 fine, denouncing his actions as “an assault on our constitutional democracy.”
- Littlejohn admitted guilt in October to unauthorized disclosure of tax returns, disclosing Trump’s data to The New York Times and that of other wealthy Americans to ProPublica.
- A St. Louis native, Littlejohn, a 2007 economics graduate from the University of North Carolina, worked at an undisclosed consulting firm from approximately 2017 to 2021, primarily handling IRS contracts.
- Between 2018 and 2020, he pilfered information from the IRS, encompassing “returns and return information dating back more than 15 years,” according to the September 2023 indictment.
During Monday’s court hearing, CNN reported that Littlejohn, set to surrender by April 30, expressed that he “acted out of a sincere misguided belief” and was “aware of the potential consequences.”
KEY QUOTE: “I made my decision with the full knowledge that I would likely end up in a courtroom,” Littlejohn reportedly said.
INTRIGUING FACT: The Justice Department emphasized the unprecedented nature of Littlejohn’s leaks. He “uploaded the tax returns to a private website to evade IRS protocols,” later transferring the data to multiple portable storage devices, including an iPod.
HEADLINE DETAIL: The Times’ revealing 2020 report on Trump’s tax records and ProPublica’s subsequent exposé on wealthy individuals, such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, came after Littlejohn’s actions. While unnamed in his 2023 indictment, both publications were identified by the Times. ProPublica, however, claimed ignorance of the source’s identity post-indictment.