Below are two selected documents from the most recent OGR report on FDIC’s involvement in Operation Choke Point.
August 2013 email between FDIC officials regarding state regulation of an industry targeted by Operation Choke Point:
November 2012 email from Thomas Dujenski, (FDIC Regional Director, Atlanta), to Mark Pearce, (Director, FDIC Division of Depositor and Consumer Protection), regarding Dujenski’s viewpoints on the same industry:
Cause of Action joined ten organizations in support of the proposed amendment to the Rules of the House of Representatives that would clarify the jurisdiction of the Committee on the Judiciary by adding “criminalization” to the Committee’s legislative jurisdiction.
Bipartisan Support for Amending Rule on Judiciary Committee Jurisdiction by Cause of Action
Cause of Action’s battle continues against the IRS’s chief auditor (TIGTA) to publicize unauthorized disclosures to the White House. Yesterday, TIGTA released 31 pages, 27 of which are already publicly available. In sum, TIGTA has produced only about one percent of the documents responsive to CoA’s request despite the court’s ruling mandating disclosure.
The records released show that TIGTA was concerned about inquiries from “external stakeholders,” including the White House and the Department of the Treasury, following media reports that TIGTA had opened an investigation into whether Koch Industries’ tax information was illegally disclosed to Austan Goolsbee. See the full production here.
After Cause of Action’s 2012 public records (FOIA) request concerning investigations into unauthorized disclosures of taxpayer information to the White House, TIGTA refused to confirm the existence of any records, so we took them to court. The Court ruled in CoA’s favor in September and TIGTA claimed that it was reviewing 2509 pages of documents to comply with a court order. On December 1, 2014, TIGTA indicated that after review, 2043 pages were responsive to Cause of Action’s request, but it refused to produce actual records. TIGTA claimed the records were protected under Section 6103, a provision in the tax code requiring the confidentiality of tax returns or return information relating to a taxpayer’s actual or potential tax liability.
The IRS’s auditor (TIGTA) indicated that it would address the remaining 466 pages within two weeks. On December 15, 2014, TIGTA withheld 435 pages and released 27 pages in full and 4 pages in part, again citing Section 6103 as the basis for protecting nearly all of the records. In other words: the records showing White House and IRS employees may have violated Americans’ privacy is being protected under . . . privacy laws.
Looking Ahead:
CoA will file a motion claiming TIGTA’s failure to produce all responsive documents is in violation of the law. The Court has scheduled a briefing schedule to begin on January 30, 2015. In the meantime, CoA will aggressively file additional FOIA requests to determine the extent of the White House’s review of taxpayer information, even outside of the context of Section 6103. Stay tuned.
Read the full story: Wall Street Journal
In March 2012 the conservative legal group Cause of Action filed a Freedom of Information request, asking the IRS for documents, including emails showing any disclosures of confidential taxpayer information to the White House. Predictably, the IRS and Treasury stonewalled the request. After the normal administrative requests and appeals failed, Cause of Action launched a federal suit. They wanted all the documents and any correspondence related to the IRS’s refusal to hand them over. The IRS responded that it was exempt from such disclosures and that releasing the files would impede its own internal investigation.
In September Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled decisively against the administration. The judge, an Obama appointee, said the plaintiff is entitled to see any relevant documents and ordered the Treasury to search for them. The office of the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, which oversees the IRS, announced in late November that it had found some 2,500 relevant documents. It said it would produce them by mid-December.
Read the full story: National Review
The Internal Revenue Service might be done in by a group of the type it has been accused of targeting, and the agency seems to know it has been tripped up.
Several congressional committees have tried their hand at investigating the IRS, but Cause of Action (CoA), a government watchdog group, may be the ones to put the agency in a corner. IRS and Department of Justice officials are looking for ways to get the group off their tail.
“We’ve set up a trap for them,” CoA president Dan Epstein tells National Review Online. “We’re literally outsmarting them.”
For more than a year, CoA has focused on the IRS’s inconsistent application of the Internal Revenue Code’s rule 6103, which states that private taxpayer information must be kept confidential. Through a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) applications, CoA methodically requested documents pertinent to the White House’s potential unlawful acquisition of such information. The IRS appears to have moved to stonewall CoA, which has not yet received the documents it requested, and Epstein says that the delays amount to the IRS’s acknowledgment to at least some wrongdoing.
First Amended Complaint (February 20, 2014)
IRS Complaint (February 5, 2013) Lawsuit concerning proposed rulemaking
FOIA Request to IRS regarding communications with outside groups regarding the Notice of Proposed Rule Making
IRS FOIA Request (December 24, 2013)
IRS Information Quality Act Petition – seeking clarification on how the IRS determined the burdens that nonprofits would face under the proposed rule
Request for Meeting with OIRA Administrator
Comment Extension Request – asking the IRS to extend the comment period for the proposed rulemaking until after the IRS produces in full documents in response to CoA’s FOIA request