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- cross-posted to:
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The man who stole and leaked former President Donald Trump and thousands of other’s tax records has been sentenced to five years in prison.
In October, Charles Littlejohn, 38, pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorized disclosures of income tax returns. According to his plea agreement, he stole Trump’s tax returns along with the tax data of “thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people,” while working for a consulting firm with contracts with the Internal Revenue Service.
Littlejohn leaked the information to two news outlets and deleted the documents from his IRS-assigned laptop before returning it and covered the rest of his digital tracks by deleting places where he initially stored the information.
Judge Ana Reyes highlighted the gravity of the crime, saying multiple times that it amounted to an attack against the US and its legal foundation.
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Biden needs to pardon this guy right after elections
I would rather depend on congress to protect whistleblowers and/or disclose finances for candidates than set precedent for pardoning people who illegally obtain and publish private information of political rivals. Both seem pretty unlikely, for now.
He won’t. Man drives me nuts.
If Biden pardoned the guy, it would be seen as a very partisan action and would be seized upon in absolutely no uncertain terms by the GOP. They get their base in a lather over shit they just made up, imagine what they’d do with something that actually happened.
Ok I imagine them doing the absolute same shit they do with their imagined scandals.
It’s not like they are holding back waiting for something real.And btw Trump himself ordered many partisan pardons.
So I don’t see any downside to pardoning this guy right now.
It’s not like he hurt anybody.
He leaked something that should have been public in the first place.And that judge is obviously deranged if they think, this is even close to the same level as a violent attack on the capital to hinder a change of democratic power.
That’s why you do it after the election. Biden only has 4 more years anyway. GOP can’t do anything. Pardons are something a president does, not impeachable.
That’s RIGHT! Releasing Tax Returns gets you MORE Jail Time then trying to violently overthrow the United States Government and HANG the Vice President! That will teach Hostile Countries to MESS with US!
The way we turned our backs on Afghani interpreters who tried to get asylum here should have shown Charles Littlejohn what happens to people who fight for America
He probably knew. There are more stories of bad outcomes for that kind of shit than good ones. The fact that he did it anyway is why his actions are so admirable and heroic.
The judge compared Littlejohn’s actions to those of the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack, noting that, “your actions were also a threat to our democracy.”
Because stealing and releasing tax documents is the same thing as attempting to violently overthrow the government.
So the judge is in with trump. Hope none of his cases go that guys way.
Like yeah, he broke the law and needed to be punished. But it wasn’t government secrets, which i’m pretty sure is already legally coded separately from this guys crimes, and also neither of which are treason, which would be the capital attack.
So the guy blatantly spoke against his own legal experience for a political swing.
I was going to argue that the attack on the Capitol (though your spelling may more accurately reflect real life) was not treason. No enemies were afforded aid or comfort.
“Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or imprisoned and fined, and incapable of holding any U.S. office.” [emphasis mine]
Now I’m rethinking my life. How could I have been so wrong about such a pivotal event in my life?!
(For any of your assholes thinking I’m a 01/06 sympathizer or apologist, I doubt you personally know anymore more angry. Given my druthers, I’d ask the court to impose the death penalty and carry it out personally. And I’m not some angry, young, keyboard warrior talking. I’ve thought on this much.)
I wonder if they’d accept the Pledge of Allegiance as counting for that section
She was appointed by Joe Biden and is an immigrant to this country from Uruguay. I don’t think she’s a Trump sycophant, I think she’s just a lawful pedant and a fan of hyperbole.
This same judge has sentenced many for J6.
“your actions were also a threat to our democracy.”
This is one of those exciting sentences where you have to substitute ‘democracy’ for ‘rich people’s yacht money’.
I disagree. As commendable as his actions are, he clearly broke a law that is there for a good reason.
But how did it endanger democracy? Every president ever has willingly released the documents he leaked. How were his actions dangerous?
“Trust in the system” is a resource that needs managing. If the contractor got off lightly, it would erode the trust people have that the IRS will manage their information.
Let alone the fact that a light sentence for a guy who leaked the administration’s foe’s information would be incredibly corrupt
Friend of mine recently was busted with an ounce of pot, he was compared to Al Capone in court by the judge. Judges can be straight sociopathic.
Fucking judges are blowhards stuck up their own ass wanting to make the judgments they hand down sound more important than they are.
It’s all about feeding their giant fucking egos.
Apparently Norway must hate democracy since all of their tax returns are public.
Documents that every other president released voluntarily…
Is the judge part of the Sinclair media group?
In a manner of speaking, yes.
Sucks that leaking those returns moved the needle exactly 0% in the fight against Trump.
Trump could be eating his own shit in front of a crowd during a rally and his followers will start doing the same.
sounds like a potentially effective piece of performance art if we can find a skilled impersonator.
Would they eat his or their own?
Yes.
I… I could pay to watch this.
Just watch “The Platform”.
Let’s hope he didn’t sleep under any bridges, too. That would be what they call a repeat offender.
🫡
too bad judge Reyes isnt going to tell us how serious it is to steal classified documents and sell them.
Selling classified documents to Russian and Chinese interests is standard practice for the oligarchy though. Some petty serf peasant slapping a few feudal lords, that is a real crime in Neo Feudal America.
So who’s donating to his commissary? I’d be willing to throw a 20 every now and then.
Got a link?
To donate directly to his prison commissary, the basic instructions are at the bottom of this page here
https://web.archive.org/web/20240129195016/https://www.bop.gov/inmates/communications.jsp
However each of those methods is going to require getting a match on the inmate locator, and since he isn’t actually incarcerated yet there aren’t any matching results
One other thing I found, though I have no way of knowing if it’s legit - https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.gofundme.com/f/charles-littlejohns-legal-defense-fund
(title is legal defense, but text says “defray his legal fees and expenses during incarceration.”)
Looks like he’s still fighting the sentence and his friends set up a gofund me to help pay his legal fees. Should anyone be interested in showing him some support outside of the commissary.
Is there a way to write him a letter? Idk how your prison system works, but this dude needs some encouragement for what he did.
Is there a way to write him a letter?
Theoretically, yes, that should be a big old 1st amendment free speech right, but since this is a legal right for a poor person expect it to be a big pain to exercise
Anyway, all the instructions should be on this page here
https://web.archive.org/web/20240129195016/https://www.bop.gov/inmates/communications.jsp
However each of those methods is going to require getting a match on the inmate locator, and since I don’t think he is actually incarcerated yet there aren’t any matching results (and it will probably take some time after he’s been incarcerated for his record to start showing up)
I also found what looks like a GoFundMe page for him, which might be a way to get in contact with his family and friends, which might be a better way of contacting him (among other things, the prison email system only allows inmates to send messages to approved contacts and they’re limited to 30 of those, so sending everything to someone with regular email who could be one of those contacts and just forward things along might work best) - https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.gofundme.com/f/charles-littlejohns-legal-defense-fund
I should add I haven’t verified that GoFundMe is legitimate, but it looks like it is
This man is a hero.
This is what the US does to heros that speak truth against the owner class.
You’re not wrong but I feel you might be being overly specific. It’s not just the US that protects their wealthy – this would happen anywhere – some places maybe a little less harshly, but plenty would be more harsh, too. The Panama Papers journalist was killed “extrajudicially”
You’d have thought he was Russian opposition and he had revealed something about Putin!
I don’t know if this sort of thing is allowed, but if outsiders can donate money to his prison commissary account, I will definitely donate.
Would you donate for Assange? Same policy applied on him.
Assange didn’t steal anything.
Careful guys, he’s a hero
Funny thing is that probably in prison they will clap when he enters his cell
Nah ah… Unless snitches get bitches …
/S
Pretty damn fast compared to how long its taking to prosecute Trump.
…because the leaker plead guilty. If he went to trial this would have taken longer.
Does no one read the article or understand basic legal processes?
So let me ask you something. What do you get out of this? Hanging around in places where you believe that all the people are wrong and foolish? Waiting for some comment that’s just low enough hanging fruit for you to know enough to have a basic response to, does this satisfy you? Your statement is no shit and your question is rhetorical. Do you just like standing in the middle of a crowd and screaming, denoting yourself separate and superior? Is this what you do online?
I like to have a diversity of thought and thought the Fediverse of all places would be promoting that. Instead everyone lumps into tribes and follows groupthink without question.
I’ve been here since LW started and belong here just as much as anyone else.
Technically the pleading guilty part is also in the footer below the post for users on desktop, but I was making a statement about due processes rather than complaining Charles case was too quick. Kind of akin to how a person mentions the beauty of the colors of clouds or the dread incurred by a coming storm just for somebody else to come along and yell “…Obviously. Does nobody watch the forecast or understand basic meteorology?”
Surely outrage is a good substitute for the legal system?
A lot of people just want to be mad. This thread is full of people saying he should just be released, without realizing that if we release him because we happen to like the outcome, what’s that saying for the next person who wants to break the same law.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m as happy as everyone else that he did release the documents, but he broke the law to do it and knew the consequences when he did so. He knew this was a possibility.
Yet holding onto classified documents, then hiding them and lying about it to investigators for months gets nothing but a very stern finger-wagging?
It may still come to bite him in the ass. The trial is actually scheduled to May this year but the scheduling will be looked at in March. The charges themselves are pretty serious, I think it was something like 30 charges under the espionage act and 10 charges for obstruction of justice or false statements.
There’s a reason Trump wants to postpone it until after the election. His only shot at wiggling out of it is by becoming president.
