By Ashley Oliver, Washington Examiner | SOURCE: THE GAZETTE
A judge grilled a Department of Justice prosecutor on Monday over why the government charged Charles Littlejohn with just one count of unauthorized disclosure of taxes after Littlejohn leaked the private information of more than a thousand taxpayers to media in 2020.
“The fact that he is facing one felony count, I have no words for,” Judge Ana Reyes said during Littlejohn’s sentencing hearing.
Littlejohn, a former Internal Revenue Service contractor, is set to be sentenced Monday for the single charge, and the DOJ has asked Reyes to give him five years in prison, which is the maximum sentence for it.
Littlejohn admitted to prosecutors last fall that he carried out a plot that involved carefully working around IRS protocols to access Trump’s returns and thousands of returns from other wealthy people, according to court filings. Littlejohn said he then leaked the returns to the New York Times and ProPublica.