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.

  • GoodEye8@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    Well for starters you can spread awareness of how much the ultra rich steal. If you’re in the eroding middle class and see that you pay more taxes than the ultra rich you might be more incline to raise taxes on them.

    If anything that would probably just screw people over if potential employers could see exactly how much money you make.

    That actually goes both ways. That in a sense makes wages public which means the employers can’t screw over employees because most employees don’t know how much others make. And I don’t know how employers really benefit from it. If you’re in a position to demand more pay it doesn’t matter how much you currently make, what matters is how much they’re willing to pay to hire you. If they think less of you because of how much you make then you probably don’t want to work there anyway.