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.
Legal does not equal moral
Louder for the people on the right.
Nah, what this person did wasn’t right. Is it funny to see them revealed absofuckinglutely and a good thing for the “greater good” but authorizing people do whatever they want because of the supposed “greater good” is a dangerous path to take. That fucking idiot who leaked many military documents on his stupid ass discord server was doing it for a supposed “greater good” but all it was harmful. We can all laugh and agree when its happened to X “bad person” but what happens when its someone you support it gets messy or its taken out of context. We had 8 fucking investigations on the nothingburger of Benghazi, while a tragic incident trying to pin the blame all the blame on Hillary Clinton was a bit much and those investigations wasted millions of dollars.
There are some differences between leaking classified documents and leaking the President’s tax forms. One is supposed to be secret, while the other is conventionally released to the public, as a show of confidence that the candidate is on the up-and-up. Leaking one can cause the death of Americans and can act against the interests of the country, while leaking the other is to the benefit of the country.
I would go so far as to say that if you don’t ever want your tax forms released, then you probably shouldn’t be running for president.
While yes it is customary to to release your tax returns if you are running for office but its not a legal requirement and if we want it to be an actual requirement, we should enforce a law that makes it so. Its a private document that a private citizen has and to say its to be force out via a leak is not a great look. I agree I want my candidates to release their tax returns for the public to see but we as the voters should be demanding this, clearly it wasn’t that important for the base that Trump is following. Would you like it if your Tax returns were out in the open for everyone to see? Fuck Trump, he is a corrupt shit businessman who has not done a single thing unless it was in his interests but having to rely on someone to leak intel is not great. Remember when the DNC and RNC were both hacked into but conveniently only the DNC’s emails got around to being exposed. Wonder who could of done that and why, maybe to benefit an outside power.
Sounds like more of a public service than a crime…
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.
He deserves a medal.
Removed by mod
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!
