The man who stole and leaked former President Donald Trump and thousands of other’s tax records has been sentenced to five years in prison.
In October, Charles Littlejohn, 38, pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorized disclosures of income tax returns. According to his plea agreement, he stole Trump’s tax returns along with the tax data of “thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people,” while working for a consulting firm with contracts with the Internal Revenue Service.
Littlejohn leaked the information to two news outlets and deleted the documents from his IRS-assigned laptop before returning it and covered the rest of his digital tracks by deleting places where he initially stored the information.
Judge Ana Reyes highlighted the gravity of the crime, saying multiple times that it amounted to an attack against the US and its legal foundation.
They made an example of them. That judge is well enough off to be thoroughly upset that somebody might release their crooked tax documents.
Honestly I think they should slip something into the law, for this type of leak if the person was lying and you release the document proving them lying that you get a slap on the wrist.
Yeah. I mean, considering what they could have done, though, I’d say 5 years is less of a slap on the wrist, and more of a whack with a yardstick.
Could have done worse. Whistleblowers generally deserve significant leniency though I feel. Especially for a crime where no one was injured.
I mean, in the eyes of the judge and the lawyers, the crime was premeditated, covered up, and the defendant is remorseless. Pretty clear grounds to give the maximum penalty allowed by law.
I believe the tax records for large corporations and the upper class should fax higher scrutiny without having to be publicly leaked.
True, however, power concedes nothing without a demand. The only thing the powerful fear is losing that power. You can call for higher scrutiny of the upper class and corporations all you like, but they won’t do it unless forced to. And they’re also the ones who write national policy, so good luck writing a law to force them to do anything. It will be shoved into a shredder the second it enters the DC city limits.
Remind me again who are “they” exactly, and what are their incentives?
They are lawmakers.
Incentives would be to engage whistleblowers, forcing all to be more transparent in cases where no one is physically harmed.
Okay. Now pretend for a moment we are talking about the real planet Earth with the existing legislators of it’s actual countries.
You get approximately 0% of the change you never seek.
That is like saying if you break into someone’s house and steal something that was stolen already then your crime is ok? “Two wrongs don’t make a right”
Nah, I’m saying that sometimes someone does the wrong thing for the right reasons and they deserve leniency
I’m saying I’d like to see him tried and sentenced like he’s a billionaire.
Right and Wrong are human concepts that change and adapt depending on the the motive of the story teller.
Is killing another human being wrong? What if we call it Murder? What if we call it Self Defense? What if we call it Sacrifice? What if we call it War?
All these words we use to describe the same thing, but whether its a Right or Wrong highly depends on the era, local, and values of the story teller.
Was it wrong for Americans to help slaves escape to the north before the Civil War? That was illegal. Our hiding Jews during the Holocaust? That was also illegal.
Would it be ok to break into my neighbor’s house if I saw them drag another human being against their will, but the cops wont do anything because I can’t prove it? Pretty sure a jury wouldn’t fault me Breaking and Entry for that.