As Donald Trump establishes his $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund to reward the people who tried to overthrow the government on his behalf, it is worth taking a moment to honor Charles Littlejohn. He’s the person who made it all possible.

Most people are probably not familiar with the name. Littlejohn is the person who leaked Donald Trump’s tax returns, along with those of thousands of other rich people. Littlejohn had been working as a contractor with the I.R.S. In this capacity, he had the opportunity to see that many of the very rich paid little or no income tax. Unlike those of us who work for a living, billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Donald Trump often get away with paying almost, or sometimes literally, nothing.

This apparently bothered Littlejohn. He shared the tax returns of thousands of these people with major news outlets. That was a clear violation of the law. Tax returns are supposed to be confidential and not seen by anyone outside the I.R.S. Littlejohn’s leak broke this confidence.

But Littlejohn didn’t break the law for personal profit; he did it as a public service. He wanted people to know how the very richest among us can often avoid paying taxes.

In doing so, he also exposed some of the obvious tricks the rich use. The simplest is just borrowing to support their consumption, instead of selling stock and paying taxes.

This one is worth explaining since it is so simple and pernicious. Take a very rich person, like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. Let’s say they spend $200 million a year on their boats, cars, travel, clothes, jewelry, and parties. Since both of these people own stock worth more than $200 billion, they could easily sell some and cover their expenses.

If they sold $250 million in stock, let’s say they would have capital gains of $200 million, which means, at the 20% capital gains tax rate, they would have to pay $40 million in taxes. But the billionaires don’t feel like paying taxes.

Instead, they can just borrow $200 million from a bank. Since their stock is worth 1000 times this much, banks are happy to lend. They don’t have to pay a penny in taxes on the money they borrow, nor on their stock, as long as they don’t sell it.

Borrowing against wealth to support consumption and avoid taxes is not exactly rocket science. The possibility probably occurred to anyone who thought about it for ten seconds. But most of us didn’t think the billionaires would be so greedy and pathetic as to actually take this route. Or at least we didn’t until Littlejohn leaked the tax returns. Now we know that nothing is too sleazy for the richest among us.

Littlejohn knew his leaks were illegal and presumably understood he faced prosecution if he was caught, just as many others who broke the law for a greater purpose, like civil rights protestors in the '50s and '60s, understood. He probably did not anticipate that he would get a judge who would sentence him to five years in prison.

This sentence is longer than people typically get for stealing hundreds of thousands, or even millions, from the government on their tax returns. It’s a longer sentence than many people get for committing manslaughter. Manslaughter means someone died because of a person’s actions. In this case, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Donald Trump were embarrassed.

We know Donald Trump’s “Justice Department weaponization” slush fund is a joke. But if he actually wants to compensate someone whose prosecution was politically motivated, he needs to look no further than the guy who leaked his tax return.

Since Trump is not going to use his fund to compensate someone who deserves it, we could do the next best thing. There could be a statue erected of Mr. Littlejohn on Pennsylvania Avenue, right across from Trump’s ballroom. That doesn’t compensate for five years in prison, but it would be at least a bit of justice.

Dean Baker is a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the author of the 2016 book Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer. Please consider subscribing to his Substack.