A former Internal Revenue Service contractor, who leaked tax information about Donald Trump and other wealthy individuals to news organizations, got his job to intentionally to spread the confidential records, according to Justice Department prosecutors.

Charles Edward Littlejohn, 38, of Washington, pleaded guilty in October to unauthorized disclosure of tax return and return information. U.S. District Judge Ana Reye scheduled sentencing for Jan. 29. Prosecutors recommended Tuesday he receive the maximum sentence of five years in prison.

“After applying to work as an IRS consultant with the intention of accessing and disclosing tax returns, Defendant weaponized his access to unmasked taxpayer data to further his own personal, political agenda, believing that he was above the law,” wrote prosecutors Corey Amundson, chief of the Justice Department’s public integrity section, Jennifer Clarke and Jonathan Jacobson.

  • IHeartBadCode@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    I don’t think the costs of this will be very high

    You know what? I’ll give you that. I’m hopeful enough this blows over without much ado. But IDK, I’ve seen smaller mole hills turn mountains.

    The kind of people who meaningfully distrust the IRS aren’t interested in facts

    The thing is, it isn’t binary. It’s a range of folks. And I would rather us not lose ranks. It’s easier to indicate trust in something if there’s not an actual reason to distrust.

    Also like how do you feel about jury nullification?

    Aw man! Complicated. Because you can really start going all kinds of dark places if you start thinking a Judge willingly could hand out bad instructions to the jury. A not guilty is a lot harder to have an appellate review and if you try to fix it that way, do you want to have not guilty become easier to appeal?

    Like we could have a big old day about that topic. Wooo. That’s a can and it is marked “Oops all worms”.