An IRS contractor pled guilty Thursday to leaking the private tax information of former President Donald Trump and thousands of other wealthy Americans to the news media.
Charles Littlejohn, 38, of Washington, D.C., faces a maximum of five years in prison, the Department of Justice said. Sentencing is slated for late January.
He took a plea deal so they don’t have to spend time bringing the case to trial.
He took the plea deal probably because he can’t afford a lengthy legal battle, decline to pay his lawyers, getting court dates shifted, appointing his own judge,… There is an entirely separate US justice system for the rich and powerful.
Or there might have been more than enough evidence to convict him but the prosecutor offered him a deal with less time served in exchange for making the process easier on the courts.
You can fight a case through trial but if you’ve got bad facts you’ve wasted your time and money (unless you’ve got a PD) plus might just end up serving a greater sentence.
That’s not to say that having the capacity to afford serval attorneys on retainer isn’t beneficial, just that there is such a thing as a good plea deal when you’re stuck with bad facts.
Or the cops told him that they had plenty of evidence to convict, scared him with a lengthy prison sentence, and he chose a plea deal because he viewed it as exactly that, a deal for a lesser punishment.