This week, convicted tax-return leaker Charles Littlejohn will ask an appeals court to reduce his five-year prison sentence. But after inflicting extensive, lasting damage on the U.S. system of voluntary taxation, he should feel fortunate he didn't get a harsher sentence.
Between 2018 and 2020, while working as a contractor for the IRS through Booz Allen Hamilton, Littlejohn stole and leaked the confidential tax returns of roughly 405,000 individuals, businesses, and even charities. He and his allies celebrated exposing President Donald Trump's filings, but it's hardly a public service to expose the records of hundreds of thousands of other innocent, unsuspecting Americans—an act ProPublica turned into a yearslong political spectacle with more than 50 stories targeting their ideological opponents.
