A former contractor for the IRS who used his access to leak the tax records of former President Donald Trump and thousands of other wealthy Americans has been sentenced to five years in prison as part of a controversial plea deal.

As CBS News reported, Charles Littlejohn, 38, was facing a maximum sentence of five years in prison after he pled guilty last October to one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax returns and return information.

On Monday, Federal District Court Judge Ana Reyes did in fact hand down the maximum sentence for that charge, five years, plus 3 years of supervised release and a $5,000 fine. But the sentence is still raising eyebrows due to the massive scope of Littlejohn’s leaks and the individuals who were affected.

Littlejohn’s most notable target was Trump, and according to prosecutors’ sentencing memo, Littlejohn had previously worked for an IRS contracting company and then returned to the role “with the hope and expectation” of being able to access tax records related to Trump and other high-profile wealthy individuals. Over a two-year period, Littlejohn “exploited a loophole” in the company’s computer system, prosecutors alleged, stole the data files, uploaded them to a private website in a way that avoided the IRS’ software that detected large downloads to devices, and then downloaded the data from that website to one of multiple personal devices, finally leaking them to news organizations months later.

The contracting firm who hired Littlejohn was not identified in court documents, but a report by Fortune last October noted that he had worked there from 2008 to 2010 and 2012 to 2013, before returning to work 2017 to 2021 — the period in which he was targeting Trump and others.

On Sept. 27, 2020, The New York Times published a lengthy report based on the leaked data, covering decades of Trump’s personal and business tax records and showing how “[t]he tax returns that Mr. Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American public.” The bombshell revelations in the Times article included Trump paying only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017, and “no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.”

Trump attorney Alina Habba attended Littlejohn’s plea hearing to read a victim impact statement and objected to the deal that let him plead guilty to only one charge, calling the leak of the ex-president’s tax returns an “atrocity” and an “egregious breach.”

Littlejohn also allegedly leaked a trove of information to ProPublica, which packaged it in a report on how “ultrawealthy” Americans were the country’s “most effective income-tax avoiders,” paying no taxes at all, “year in and year out.”

Other people targeted by Littlejohn include Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Florida Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), a billionaire from his pre-political career as a hospital executive. Scott has been especially vocal in criticizing Littlejohn — and the “politicized” justice system that “alloew[ed] him to plead to just a single criminal count” and attended the defendant’s sentencing hearing to read his own victim impact statement.

Scott continued attacking the Justice Department for “playing partisan politics” to allow Littlejohn to plea to such a “lenient sentence,” posting a video clip of him speaking on Fox News denouncing how Littlejohn had targeted “over 7,500 cases” but “he’s going to plead guilty to one case.”

Before he was sentenced, Littlejohn admitted his crimes in the courtroom.

“I alone am responsible for this crime…I made my decision with full knowledge that I would likely end up in a courtroom to answer for my serious crime,” he said. “I used my skills to systematically violate the privacy of thousands of people.”

Neither his admission nor the supporting statements from his family and friends seemed to sway Judge Reyes, who called his actions “an attack on our constitutional democracy.”

“He targeted the sitting president of the United States of America, and that is exceptional by any measure,” she said. “It cannot be open season on our elected officials.”

Reyes added that the court sought to send a message that America was “a nation of laws” and no one else should be tempted to view “this type of conduct as acceptable or justifiable or worth the trade-off.”

The judge also voiced “exasperation” with the limits to the maximum sentence for the one count in the plea deal, reported CBS News.

“The fact that he did what he did and he is facing one felony count, I have no words for,” said Reyes.

Littlejohn will have to turn himself in by April 30, as ordered by Reyes, to begin his sentence.

The post Ex-IRS Contractor Who Leaked Trump’s Tax Returns Gets 5-Year Prison Sentence in Controversial Plea Deal first appeared on Mediaite.

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