A former IRS contractor who leaked thousands of confidential tax records from high-profile figures, including former President Donald Trump, was sentenced Monday to serve five years in prison.
Charles Littlejohn, 38, stole tax return information from some of the wealthiest people in the nation, authorities said. He admitted to giving Trump’s confidential tax information to The New York Times in 2019 and, one year later, leaked the financial data of thousands more to ProPublica, The Washington Post reported.
He pleaded guilty in October to disclosing tax return information without authorization.
In a statement released Monday, Nicole Argentieri, the acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s criminal division, said Littlejohn “abused his position as a consultant at the Internal Revenue Service by disclosing thousands of Americans’ federal tax returns and other private financial information to news organizations.”
“He violated his responsibility to safeguard the sensitive information that was entrusted to his care, and now he is a convicted felon,” she said.
Authorities did not name Trump or others targeted by Littlejohn, although The Associated Press and other media outlets said the timeline of the disclosures and publication of the information fit with reporting from the Times and ProPublica.
Officials said Littlejohn used broad search parameters to access Trump’s tax returns while hiding what he was doing. He uploaded the information to a private website before saving it to his personal storage devices, utilizing devices including an Apple iPod, before he reached out to the Times, authorities said.
In court on Monday, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes told Littlejohn that his decision to leak the confidential tax records of a sitting president “was an attack on our constitutional democracy,” The Wall Street Journal reported. She handed down the maximum sentence, which had been sought by prosecutors, according to the newspaper.
Littlejohn apologized, saying that he was solely responsible for the disclosure.
“I also understand that my actions, despite being driven by a desire for transparency, were illegal and have caused significant harm,” he said, according to the Journal.
Prosecutors said the case was “unparalleled in the IRS’s history,” the AP reported. In addition to Trump, Littlejohn also released tax records belonging to Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Warren Buffet and Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., reports show.
Officials with the IRS have said they have tightened the agency’s security since the thefts, according to the AP.
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