Prison sentence for individual who leaked Trump's tax records

Littlejohn appeared before a judge at a hearing in federal court in Washington D.C.

Littlejohn, who reached a plea deal with prosecutors in October 2023 and pleaded guilty to the charge of "unlawfully disclosing federal tax returns of an American," was sentenced to 5 years in prison and a 5 thousand dollar fine.

During the hearing, the prosecution alleged that Littlejohn "abused his position by unlawfully disclosing the federal tax returns and other private financial information of thousands of Americans to multiple news organizations."

DEFENSE: SHARED FOR THE AMERICAN PUBLIC'S RIGHT TO KNOW

Littlejohn's lawyer argued that his client committed the crime "out of a deep, moral belief that the American public had a right to know the information and that sharing it was the only way to effect change," and that he believed he was in the right at the time.

Judge Ana Reyes, who presided over the case, stated that this crime amounted to an attack on the U.S. and its legal foundation, saying, "What you did by attacking the sitting president of the U.S. (Trump) was an attack on our constitutional democracy."

38-year-old Littlejohn had leaked the tax returns of more than 1,000 wealthy individuals, mostly billionaires, including the records of former President Donald Trump, from a computer belonging to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service where he worked as a contractor, and provided them to media organizations named The New York Times and ProPublica.

News Source: AA