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.

  • @RememberTheApollo
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    411 months ago

    So everyone should abuse their power? Are you willfully blind to where that goes?

    • @[email protected]
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      011 months ago

      Are you willfully blind to what happens if you let your opponents oppress and abuse you without fighting back in kind? I am not going to the gulag. Have fun there.

      • @RememberTheApollo
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        111 months ago

        Your methodology ends up with a dictator seizing power to put all their opponents in the gulag. All you’re saying is that you hope your dictator wins first. You’re absolutely clueless about geopolitical history if you don’t understand how this works.

        • @[email protected]
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          111 months ago

          I don’t see you offering a viable alternative. Your method is to just acquiesce? The rule of law has already failed. Trump is not in jail. The Supreme Court (1/3 appointed by Trump) is on the take from conservative billionaires. Congressional corruption put Gorsuch on the Court rather than Garland (longest vacancy by 3x the next longest), then turned around and replaced Ginsberg with an extremely quick turnaround.

          The failure to act in kind has already weakened this country irreparably. Let’s keep letting them do what they do. It’s worked out terribly so far.

          So yeah, I would rather my dictator than their’s, but I am going to get their’s.

          • @RememberTheApollo
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            111 months ago

            The viable alternative is to follow the law and vote the assholes out. If you cannot manage that and/or it fails, and still wish to maintain some semblance of democracy, you’re fucked. I think that’s painfully obvious. You try to do the right thing, and if you choose the same path as the shitheads you hate you’re just the same. You just twisted the needle from a christo-fascist autocracy to a Stalinist communist autocracy.

            • @[email protected]
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              111 months ago

              Even if we vote him out, he is going to claim he won and run a rebellion. Probably better planned and more successful this time. His opposition is largely a bunch of pussies that let him and his ilk trample the rule of law. There is no outcome to this coming election that is not a disaster.