Dude was arrested for showing everyone what trump was obligated to show, but illegally hid from everyone.
This is America.
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.
He did also promise he would do it but then refused to follow through
I can’t wait to find a redcoat that hates this guy but loves Snowden.
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.
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.
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.
Sounds like was planning on exposing tax crimes by wealthy people. If he was trying to sell it etc he wouldn’t be sending it to a news organization, right?
Highly unlikely that a contractor would have actual reason to believe that each of thousands of people had committed tax crimes so heinous that a justifiable action was to purloin each of their tax returns going back fifteen years, and then deliver that information to media outlets.
What do you mean? Why do you think it’s unlikely? Apparently this guy thought and did exactly that.
What do you mean? Why do you think it’s unlikely?
In the same way that it’s highly unlikely that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election, even if people who have no evidence of it very strongly express that they think there was. When those people then attempt to subvert the election in order to install into power the person they say they think actually won (again, without any evidence of fraud), those people are committing crimes.
Based on the information at hand, we don’t have any indication whatsoever of why Littlejohn purloined those tax returns and delivered them to media outlets, both contrary to existing law. Let’s imagine he does say that he possesses evidence which suggests that each of those thousands of people had committed tax crimes so heinous that committing a crime and subverting the justice system is justifiable.
If those crimes were so heinous as to justify that, it would be the last thing you would do, not the first. First, you would report these heinous crimes - and the evidence you already have - to the very government agency you are contracted with. Second, you would report these heinous crimes, and the evidence you already have, and the IRS declining to investigate them to another agency, like the Justice Department, or to your Senators or Representative in Congress. Third, you would report the heinous crimes, and the evidence you already have, and the IRS declining to investigate, and higher federal departments and Congresspeople ignoring the whole thing to the media. (Never mind that all of those people willfully ignoring what has to be evidence of heinous tax crime is a textbook conspiracy theory.)
Then, when your “evidence” has shown to be nothing to the IRS, and the Justice Department, and your Senators and Congresspeople, and the media - then you commit a crime and steal thousands of peoples tax returns, and deliver those to … yeah first you deliver them to the IRS, or maybe the next steps higher than that, not to the media first.
BUT THEN, THEN!! Then you can take the stolen tax returns and deliver them to the media. On the really off chance that you were actually right, and those tax returns demonstrate heinous tax crimes that so so many people in goverment actively swept under the rug, and that nobody else could see, without having those tax returns in their hands, it will all be worth it.
None of that happened. Littlejohn stole thousands of tax records and turned them over to media outlets. The end. If Littlejohn thinks that taking evidence to any or all of those other people and organizations shouldn’t be the first step, and stealing the data and shoving it over to media outlets should be first, that’s a conspiracy theorist.
But we don’t know what Littlejohn thinks. We don’t (yet?) know why he did what he did.
Maybe he tried to sell them, and wasn’t having any luck, and decided to go for notoriety. Maybe he did sell some, and we just don’t know about that yet. Maybe he was trying to get at Trump’s returns specifically, and it made the most logistical sense to pull a ton of data along with Trump’s - either to obscure the targeting of Trump specifically, or to be more likely to catch Trump’s return inside of the data gathered up (if the desired data couldn’t be located any other way). Maybe he didn’t even know he had Trump’s returns until after he collected this data. Maybe he never intended to “make off” with the data, but it ended up on a computer he had access to, or a backup, then he looked at it, then he realized he had Trump’s returns. Maybe he was a conspiracy theorist.
All of those are “maybe,” because they’re all speculation. As is the speculation that
A contractor would have actual reason to believe that each of thousands of people had committed tax crimes so heinous that a justifiable action was to purloin each of their tax returns going back fifteen years, and then deliver that information to media outlets.
And every single one of those “maybes” is way more likely than a textbook conspiracy theory being true.
Apparently this guy thought and did exactly that.
If he “thought and did exactly that,” he’s a conspiracy theorist.
It seems to me that he had the information in his hands that clearly demonstrated something. It’s not a conspiracy theory if he has these people’s tax returns and can read them.
As far as widespread financial wrongdoing by wealthy people… remember the Panama Papers?
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.
