Littlejohn appeared before a judge in federal court in Washington D.C.
In October 2023, Littlejohn pleaded guilty to “unlawful disclosure of an American’s federal tax returns” in a plea deal with prosecutors and was sentenced to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
The prosecution alleged that Littlejohn “abused his position by illegally disclosing the federal tax returns and other private financial information of thousands of Americans to multiple news organizations.”
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Littlejohn’s lawyer argued that his client committed the crime “out of a deep, moral conviction that the American people have a right to information and that the only way to effect change is to share it” and that he believed he was right at the time.
“What you did by attacking the sitting president of the United States (Trump) was an attack on our constitutional democracy,” said Judge Ana Reyes, who presided over the case, adding that the offense amounted to an attack against the United States and its legal foundation.
Littlejohn, 38, leaked the tax returns of more than 1,000 mostly billionaires, including former President Donald Trump’s records, from a computer belonging to the US Internal Revenue Service, where he worked as a subcontractor, and gave them to the New York Times and ProPuplica.
