A federal judge has sentenced an FBI agent who was fired for illegally accessing his neighbor’s email to spend a week in jail and serve 50 hours of community service.

Mark Tolson, 60, pleaded guilty in September to digging through the email account of Washington lobbyist Jack Burkman, who aided 22-year-old Jacob Wohl in a scheme to scuttle ex-special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema sentenced Tolson on Friday, according to Politico.

Tolson accessed Burkman's email account and combed through the lobbyist’s communications to head off Burkman and Wohl’s attempts to smear Mueller. Wohl had offered multiple women money to level sexual harassment allegations against Mueller, and Wohl and Burkman later claimed at a press conference that they had located a victim of harassment by Mueller.

Tolson's wife had the password to Burkman's email after doing some work for the lobbyist, and she provided the password to her husband. Tolson accessed Burkman's email and sent screenshots of messages as well as the login information to Burkman's email account to a journalist.

Tolson told Brinkema that he broke the law "to protect Director Mueller" from Burkman and Wohl's smear campaign.

"This is actually a very serious offense," Brinkema said. "You're lucky. Your wife is lucky. The government could have prosecuted her as well."

"You can't just rummage through other people's accounts," Brinkema added. "You had to have known better."

Burkman reacted with outrage to the ruling. He called Tolson a "cyber-terrorist" and suggested that the judge went easy on Tolson because Burkman is a Republican.

"What a disgrace our judicial system is. Mark Tolson gets 7 days. Can you imagine the jail time he would have gotten if I were a liberal?" Burkman tweeted after the ruling. "The good news is that we will be suing him in federal court for extensive damages."