Trump Tax Return Leaker Blames Five-Year Sentence on Politics

The former Internal Revenue Service contractor who leaked tax returns of President Donald Trump and the country’s wealthiest billionaires told a federal appeals court his five-year prison sentence was based on improper political pressure.

Charles Littlejohn, who pleaded guilty in 2023 to stealing IRS tax data and leaking it to the New York Times and ProPublica, said Judge Ana Reyes was biased in handing down the maximum 60-month sentence, and she made a number of procedural errors reaching that conclusion.

Reyes “erroneously concluded that Mr. Littlejohn targeted the President to undermine constitutional democracy” and “treated Mr. Littlejohn’s offense as comparable ...