A former IRS consultant was sentenced to five years in prison for leaking former President Donald Trump’s tax returns as well as the filings of thousands of other wealthy people to the news media.
A district judge on Monday agreed with the Justice Department that Charles Littlejohn, 38, deserved the maximum statutory sentence for what she called “egregious” crimes.
Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden nominee to the bench, focused on Littlejohn's decision to release Trump's filings, which Reyes called "an attack on our constitutional democracy."
Noting that Trump was under no legal obligation to release his filings and likening the case to the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol, Reyes said: "It cannot be open season on our elected officials."
Littlejohn’s lawyers had asked for leniency in the form of a sentence of between 12 and 18 months, saying that, at the time, he believed the public had the right to know how much Trump and the others paid in taxes. He has since come to regret leaking the information, his representatives told the court.
Littlejohn gave Trump’s records to the New York Times, which published a blockbuster report in September 2020, shortly before the presidential election, showing that Trump had paid little or nothing in taxes. Littlejohn also gave tax data on thousands of wealthy people to ProPublica, which published a string of stories showing how some maneuver to erase their tax bills.
Among those who had their filings leaked was Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who, appearing at the two-hour sentencing hearing, asked the judge for the maximum sentence.
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