The Charles Littlejohn prosecution
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In January 2024 Charles Littlejohn, an Internal Revenue Service contractor who had given Donald Trump''s tax returns to the New York Times, was sentenced to five years in prison. John Kiriakou''s response was that almost everything about it was wrong.

The objections

"The information was embraced by the Biden campaign. The Biden campaign used the information taken from the New York Times, which Littlejohn had provided, to campaign against Donald Trump." On the material itself: "the information was not classified. It was protected, but it was not classified." And on the length: "even if you don''t consider him to be a whistleblower, the sentence was so harsh as to put him on par with what Reality Winner got in her whistleblowing case, which we all complained was too harsh."

He sets it against the country''s general record: "already we''re known among industrialised countries for the harshness of our sentences on a myriad of crimes, on most crimes, compared especially to our Western European allies. But five years for leaking unclassified tax documents? It''s just stunning."

Where he assigns the blame

Unusually, Kiriakou puts this one on the bench rather than on the prosecutors, while explaining why prosecutors behave as they do. "In this case I think we have to blame the judge, because there was ample precedent for a sentence of probation, or a sentence of six months. And to go five years, I''m sorry, there''s simply no justification for something like that."

On the judge''s remarks, that targeting the president means targeting the office, and therefore democracy, and that the conduct "engenders the same fear that January 6 does", his comparison is to his own sentencing: "that surpasses what Judge Brinkema said to me ... she never accused me of weakening our democracy, she never accused me of domestic terrorism. So yeah, this is worse. And it''s also disingenuous. I don''t care if this was a Biden appointee or a Trump appointee or from any other president, this judge made herself look silly with a dumb statement like that."

On the equivalence itself: "to equate the release of tax information with top secret sensitive compartmented information, it doesn''t make any sense to me at all. Unless maybe it''s in the national security interests of the US to protect the one per cent from having us see how much they don''t pay when they''re expected to pay their taxes."

See also

- Prosecutorial careerism
- Espionage Act
- Leonie Brinkema
- The chilling effect of whistleblower prosecutions
- Donald Trump
