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It's interesting in this case, this man did the morally right thing, but it was illegal.
And we can compare that with Trump, who was doing the morally wrong, but legal, thing by refusing to show his tax forms. And Trump also continued to do the immoral thing after the leak, by lying and saying they weren't his actual tax forms.
Reminds of a quote I thought was attributed to Jefferson "If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so." Turns out it isn't his, but I think it's still valid.
Charged with being based
Whistleblowers deserve cash prizes, not punishment.
Problem is, leaking something juicy isn't what makes you a whistle-blower. There was no government misconduct here, just one asshole's PII. Which, as others have pointed out, is traditionally released as part of a presidential campaign but is not a legal requirement.
🎶 There goes my hero 🎶
He deserves a medal.
I’m fine to eat the downvotes to say, he should face punishment for this.
He stole privileged information and leaked it to the public. If this was your tax return, you’d likely be pissed that your privacy was breached.
Just because we like the outcome in this particular case, doesn’t mean we should excuse the actions. The ends do not inherently justify the means.
Here are a couple of the articles the leaks informed: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/27/us/donald-trump-taxes.html https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax
So I am conflicted because I'm a moral person who follows the law, but it's clear there are a lot of immoral people following the law who deserve to be exposed. I'm not sure who is right or wrong but I'm glad these articles exist. Just like I'm glad the Pentagon Papers, Snowden Leaks and Panama Papers made it out into the world.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Federal prosecutors announced charges Friday against a contractor with the Internal Revenue Service who allegedly stole the tax returns of a high-ranking government official.
A source familiar with the matter told CNN that official is former President Donald Trump.
The man, 38-year-old Charles Edward Littlejohn, worked with the IRS from 2018 to 2020, according to court documents.
Though the official is not named in court documents, a source familiar with the investigation told CNN the tax returns in question were Trump’s.
“Both news organizations published numerous articles describing the tax information they obtained from the Defendant,” court documents said.
The New York Times and ProPublica both published articles based on tax records of the former president and other wealthy Americans around the same timeframe – in 2020 and 2021, respectively.
The original article contains 308 words, the summary contains 130 words. Saved 58%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!