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full screen A former contract employee of the US Internal Revenue Service has been sentenced to prison. Archive image. Photo: Patrick Semansky/AP/TT
A former contract employee at the US Internal Revenue Service who pleaded guilty to leaking former President Donald Trump’s declarations to the media has been sentenced to five years in prison. He has also leaked tax returns belonging to thousands of America’s richest people.
The convicted man leaked tax information to The New York Times and ProPublica between 2018 and 2020. Trump was president from 2017 to 2021.
The judge states that she imposed the harshest sentence possible to deter others who might feel “an obligation to break the law”.
The former contract employee has apologized to those affected.
– I acted out of a sincere, if misguided, belief that I was serving the public interest, he said, adding that his “action undermined the fragile trust we have in the authorities”.