Student Guilty Of Attempting To Hack Trump’s Taxes

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports:

A Haverford College student who used a campus computer to attempt to hack into an IRS database to obtain Donald Trump’s tax returns days before the 2016 presidential election pleaded guilty Tuesday to two misdemeanor crimes in federal court.

Justin Hiemstra, 22, who finished his studies in May but will not get his degree until he completes a study-abroad program next May, told Judge Cynthia Rufe that he did not know what he would have done with the tax returns if he and classmate Andrew Harris had succeeded in obtaining them on Nov. 2, 2016.

Hiemstra, a native of St. Paul Park, Minn., pleaded guilty to accessing a computer without authorization and attempting to access a computer without authorization to obtain government information. The maximum sentence he faces for both crimes is two years in prison, two years of supervised release, and a $200,000 fine.

The Associated Press reports:

U.S. Attorney William McSwain said Justin Hiemstra of St. Paul Park pleaded guilty to using a school computer at Haverford College under someone else’s username to attempt to open a false FAFSA application as a member of the Trump family.

In the course of the attempt, Hiemstra found someone had already created a username and password in Trump’s name and correctly answered security questions to reset the password, after which he used Trump’s personal information to attempt to add the president’s tax information to the FAFSA application, according to the Justice Department.