The IRS consultant who released Donald Trump's tax returns, Charles Littlejohn, got the job to intentionally disclose the records, prosecutors said.

A former Internal Revenue Service contractor, who leaked tax information about Donald Trump and other wealthy individuals to news organizations, got his job to intentionally to spread the confidential records, according to Justice Department prosecutors.

Charles Edward Littlejohn, 38, of Washington, pleaded guilty in October to unauthorized disclosure of tax return and return information. U.S. District Judge Ana Reye scheduled sentencing for Jan. 29. Prosecutors recommended Tuesday he receive the maximum sentence of five years in prison.

“After applying to work as an IRS consultant with the intention of accessing and disclosing tax returns, Defendant weaponized his access to unmasked taxpayer data to further his own personal, political agenda, believing that he was above the law,” wrote prosecutors Corey Amundson, chief of the Justice Department’s public integrity section, Jennifer Clarke and Jonathan Jacobson.

  • IHeartBadCode@kbin.social
    0·
    8 months ago

    You cannot have rich and powerful people under such a system because the means for them to posses such status do not exist

    Disinformation.

    There is zero biological imperative that rich and powerful people must exist

    There is a finite set of things and a means to obtain significant portions of those finite things.

    Humans are inherently cooperative

    Humans are complex.

    Our world got to where it is through shedding the blood of tyrants, not asking them nicely

    Let me ask you, all that blood shed previously. Did it work? Are we winning right now? You mentioned the US Civil War, ask yourself, did the slaves actually get free? Did the blacks actually get rights? Did the people who started the war face justice?

    Also, all that those moments in history where there was shedding of blood. You do understand, if we had that today, you and I are pretty much assured to not make it. You do understand that? If we went to bloodshed, a lot of the people on this forum are highly likely the be part of the dead. You know in the Declaration of Independence there’s a line:

    Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed

    And reason why is because they knew, that overthrowing the government means most people die and the rich and power continue on. You do kind of notice how a lot of the folks who signed that document were also very rich and very powerful people and very not dead at the end of the Revolutionary war?

    “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

    Which is why I’m curious about you quoting Thomas Jefferson in his letter to John Adam’s son-in-law. For me a real quote is:

    It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

    • Deceptichum@kbin.social
      0·
      8 months ago

      Let me ask you, all that blood shed previously. Did it work?

      Yes, we are undeniably slightly better off than at any other period. Go ask how many women, queers, or PoC would rather go back to the '50s.

      Can you not even recognize such a simple reality?