A former contractor for the IRS has been sentenced to five years in prison for leaking the tax records of former President Donald Trump and other wealthy Americans. Charles Littlejohn, 38, pleaded guilty to disclosing income tax return information without authorization. Prosecutors argued that Mr. Littlejohn compromised the security of sensitive personal information and sought a maximum five-year sentence. He downloaded Mr. Trump’s tax records in 2018 and shared them with reporters from the New York Times, revealing that Mr. Trump paid no income tax in 10 of the 15 years before his presidency. Mr. Littlejohn also later leaked tax information on ultra-high net worth taxpayers to ProPublica. “Mr. Littlejohn did not make a snap judgment; he made a series of calculated decisions over two to three years to willfully violate the law. Most stunning, Mr. Littlejohn has admitted that he sought to work as an IRS consultant with the hope and expectation of accessing and disclosing then-President Trump’s tax information,” U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said on Monday. “This court cannot permit others to view this type of conduct as acceptable or justifiable or worth the trade-off, no matter what their purported political or ideological motivation may be.”
