Littlejohn is charged with one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax returns and return information and faces up to five years in prison if convicted.
He should have violently stormed Congress instead. You only get like 3 months for that.
Dude was arrested for showing everyone what trump was obligated to show, but illegally hid from everyone.
This is America.
Not a legal requirement, just the "right thing to do"
Yeah. How the hell can that not be a legal requirement for a position like "president"?
It should be a requirement for any public office
It should be, but nobody has ever refused before I believe.
Turns out the founding fathers could not account for a situation where half the voting public wants everything to burn.
I can't wait to find a redcoat that hates this guy but loves Snowden.
Not to defend Trump in the slightest, but it was my understanding that the President isn't actually required to release his taxes; it's just a tradition that literally every other presidential candidate has conformed to. You know, to show that they're trustworthy, which is why Trump never released his.
Yep, Trump showed how much of the government actually runs on norms and traditions instead of actual laws. Even some of the laws that he did break (like the Presidential Records Act) don't actually specify penalties because Congress assumed it wasn't necessary.
The funny thing is, his tax returns were fairly unremarkable. I'm a cpa and my background is largely with high and ultra high net worth individuals and their businesses, so people like trump are my bread and butter. I reviewed his returns when they first leaked and honestly nothing jumped out at me as particularly noteworthy or interesting at all. All I can speculate is that he's just a stubborn asshole and simply didn't want to release them.
I always thought the big "issue" people were expecting wasnt that the tax returns were going to show anything illegal or noteworthy, but rather they would instead just show that he is worth way less than he goes around claiming.
There was a lot of speculation about that but I'm not sure if there's any consensus. Individual tax returns only show income, and business returns only show book values (not fair market value which would help determine wealth). He had pretty big net operating loss carryovers from previous years which essentially zeroed out his income for a few years, so it's hard to say. I feel like I remember looking for foreign account disclosures but didn't see them in the returns, which would be at least one set of FMV numbers to go with. It's been a while since I looked though. Overall I walked away being disappointed so I'll stick with my original assessment, maybe I take another look later today though.
If storming the capital gets your 3 months, then exposing Trump's fraud should get you... A medal of honor?
Yeah, but this is America. Where democrats run the show, but conservatives do whatever they want with impunity.
Damn poor guy. I'll put 20 bucks on his books for Ramen. Dudes a true patriot.
The rich deserve to be exposed for the countless crimes they've committed over the decades with tax dodging. Good on this man. It speaks volumes of how shitty our country is though when January 6th insurrectionists get less time than this guy might though.
Sadly, a jury of his peers will be people who make just enough that they are suddenly concerned about their tax return privacy despite being a W2 earner.
Maybe he and Trump can be cellmates!
The hero we needed. Good job sir.
Why are tax returns not public property? In Sweden you can look up anyone's tax info.
A man named Littlejohn, so sly,
Stole Trump's taxes as they caught his eye,
For his audacious feat,
A national hero's seat,
Damnthefilibuster says, let him fly!
Nine ChatGPT poem!
Yes. Limerick to be precise.
Brain no worky. GPT to the rescue!
Ah true! A limerick! Nice.
Prompt engineering ftw.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Federal prosecutors announced charges Friday against a contractor with the Internal Revenue Service who allegedly stole the tax returns of a high-ranking government official.
A source familiar with the matter told CNN that official is former President Donald Trump.
The man, 38-year-old Charles Edward Littlejohn, worked with the IRS from 2018 to 2020, according to court documents.
Though the official is not named in court documents, a source familiar with the investigation told CNN the tax returns in question were Trump’s.
“Both news organizations published numerous articles describing the tax information they obtained from the Defendant,” court documents said.
The New York Times and ProPublica both published articles based on tax records of the former president and other wealthy Americans around the same timeframe – in 2020 and 2021, respectively.
The original article contains 308 words, the summary contains 130 words. Saved 58%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I love how it's about someone leaking documents and the very next thing is someone leaking to CNN that this case is about Donald Trump.
There's a certain meta humour to this that's kind of impressive.
littlejohn is what a patriot looks like because what he did is what patriots are supposed to do in the face of fascism
Well ...
In addition to the former president’s tax documents, Littlejohn is also accused of stealing IRS information on “thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, including returns and return information dating back more than 15 years.” Littlejohn then sent that tax information to a second unnamed news organization.
If it was only Trump's tax returns, then I might agree with you. It wasn't targeted specifically and only at Trump; it was an extremely wide net that was cast, and we don't know who the rest of the people are. Based on the information publicly available, this appears more like an attempt to sell the information, or act illegally based on some fringe principle.
He should've posted them all online. As a cpa with a bit of rare downtime on my hands I'd love to volunteer to review returns for the irs. I know all the errors and omissions, tricks and and gimmicks, goofs, fuckups, whoopsies, you name it. 20% commission for the recovered taxes seems fair compensation.
damn, like a vigilante accountants equivalent to the justice league. Would you be wearing a costume in this hypothetical?
What makes you think I don't already wear a crime fighting suit to work? There was a documentary about it and everything, The Accountant. I specialize in espionage, intrusion/counter intrusion, taking some CPE next week for long range assault weaponry, the usual.
Tax returns in US should be public to anyone and everyone, like they are in many countries.
Are they? Where? It seems odd to me that a government would disclose how much everybody makes.
I read once that maybe Sweden or Norway has publicly available tax returns. BUT, the person whose return you look at gets notified when you view it, so you can't just go around subtly snooping on your friends and neighbors without being noticed. Idk if that's true though.
Justice means the wealth would be more equitably distributed, imo, and nothing indicates the data was sold.
Also, people really need to skip the NYT. Propublica got it right.
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