Former IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn was sentenced Monday to five years in prison for leaking former President Donald Trump's tax records, according to NBC News.

Littlejohn was charged in September 2023 with leaking information from government employees' tax returns. begged He was convicted in October of leaking 10 years of Trump's tax records to the New York Times. According to NBC News, U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes sentenced Littlejohn to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. (Related: Exclusive: Republican lawmaker demands IRS to show plan to crack down on leakers to protect taxpayers)

According to NBC News, Reyes told a former IRS employee that “even good people can commit bad acts.” “Your actions targeting the sitting President of the United States were an attack on our constitutional democracy.”

Littlejohn told the court before Reyes sentenced him that he “acted on a sincere but misguided belief that I was serving the people,” and his lawyer said in a statement that the client He argued that he “acted simply out of a deep moral belief in the spirit of justice among the American people.” He had a “right to know the information” and felt he needed to share it, according to NBC News.

Littlejohn also released the tax records of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and billionaire Jeff Bezos to ProPublica, according to NBC News.

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