This is the best summary I could come up with:
Federal prosecutors announced charges Friday against a contractor with the Internal Revenue Service who allegedly stole the tax returns of a high-ranking government official.
A source familiar with the matter told CNN that official is former President Donald Trump.
The man, 38-year-old Charles Edward Littlejohn, worked with the IRS from 2018 to 2020, according to court documents.
Though the official is not named in court documents, a source familiar with the investigation told CNN the tax returns in question were Trump’s.
“Both news organizations published numerous articles describing the tax information they obtained from the Defendant,” court documents said.
The New York Times and ProPublica both published articles based on tax records of the former president and other wealthy Americans around the same timeframe – in 2020 and 2021, respectively.
The original article contains 308 words, the summary contains 130 words. Saved 58%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Littlejohn is charged with one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax returns and return information and faces up to five years in prison if convicted.
He should have violently stormed Congress instead. You only get like 3 months for that.
littlejohn is what a patriot looks like because what he did is what patriots are supposed to do in the face of fascism
Well …
In addition to the former president’s tax documents, Littlejohn is also accused of stealing IRS information on “thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, including returns and return information dating back more than 15 years.” Littlejohn then sent that tax information to a second unnamed news organization.
If it was only Trump’s tax returns, then I might agree with you. It wasn’t targeted specifically and only at Trump; it was an extremely wide net that was cast, and we don’t know who the rest of the people are. Based on the information publicly available, this appears more like an attempt to sell the information, or act illegally based on some fringe principle.
read that too… ok maybe, but my sympathy for the 1% is a bit diminished atm.
I get it, that’s fair. But justice means protecting the rights of people you don’t like, or of people who are exercising their rights in ways you don’t like.
Does that run counter to my saying I might agree if it was only Trump’s tax returns? Maybe it does a little bit. I feel comfortable leaning on that Trump was openly fraudulent, corrupt, and criminal by the time Littlejohn swiped the records.
But it definitely runs counter to being okay with someone making off with tax returns of people only described as “thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people,” with no other context. I have far fewer mitigating factors (really only one, wealth) to lean on there, even if I have my suspicions about the integrity of "thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people.
It’s a very fuzzy area, and I think that reasonable people can make sound arguments either way. I suppose what I can do is be pleased with the results of Littlejohn’s actions, and believe that his being criminally charged for them, and think that his motivations were probably unrelated to patriotism.
Shit’s complicated, yo.
Who cares what rich people think. We are constantly bombarded by propaganda meant to divide the pleebs and keep them from realizing the ruling class is robing us blind.
I was writing this comment while you were posting.
Justice means the wealth would be more equitably distributed, imo, and nothing indicates the data was sold.
Also, people really need to skip the NYT. Propublica got it right.
Assuming you’re referring to this:
But justice means protecting the rights of people you don’t like, or of people who are exercising their rights in ways you don’t like.
Yup, it means both. Those are not mutually exclusive.
And:
this appears more like an attempt to sell the information, or act illegally based on some fringe principle.
Sounds like was planning on exposing tax crimes by wealthy people. If he was trying to sell it etc he wouldn’t be sending it to a news organization, right?
Highly unlikely that a contractor would have actual reason to believe that each of thousands of people had committed tax crimes so heinous that a justifiable action was to purloin each of their tax returns going back fifteen years, and then deliver that information to media outlets.
Tax returns in US should be public to anyone and everyone, like they are in many countries.
Are they? Where? It seems odd to me that a government would disclose how much everybody makes.
He should’ve posted them all online. As a cpa with a bit of rare downtime on my hands I’d love to volunteer to review returns for the irs. I know all the errors and omissions, tricks and and gimmicks, goofs, fuckups, whoopsies, you name it. 20% commission for the recovered taxes seems fair compensation.
damn, like a vigilante accountants equivalent to the justice league. Would you be wearing a costume in this hypothetical?
If storming the capital gets your 3 months, then exposing Trump’s fraud should get you… A medal of honor?
Haha yep, that’s exactly what I thought of too upon hearing the name. I do love that movie.
