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03/4/2015

Daily Caller: State Department Refusing To Answer How It Handled Open Records Requests For Hillary Emails

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A specialist there told TheDC that CREW’s request was closed in May 2013. Asked what explanation was given for the closure, the specialist could not specify. TheDC followed up with Santulli to confirm that the organization did not receive notice that the request was closed. He maintained that CREW did not receive such a notice.

 

The likelihood that the State Department found no records responsive to CREW’s request raises questions over how the State Department searched for the accounts and the records and whether Clinton or her aides were contacted.

 

As previously mentioned, the State Department has avoided answering that line of inquiry.

 

“If they requested any of Secretary Clinton’s email communications it is the obligation of the chief information officer to search Clinton’s records,” Daniel Epstein, executive director of the government watchdog Cause of Action, told TheDC. “Any records that deal with official agency business, and those would all be agency records responsive to FOIA.”

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03/4/2015

Daily Caller: Hillary Could Be Prosecuted For Mishandling CLASSIFIED Information

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The State Department could not definitively say that the personal email account used by Hillary Clinton to conduct state department business did not transmit classified information…

 

“By using a private email system, Secretary Clinton violated the Federal Records Act and the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual regarding records management, and worse, could have left classified and top secret documents vulnerable to cyber attack,” Cause of Action Executive Director Dan Epstein said in an email to reporters. “This is an egregious violation of the law, and if it were anyone else, they could be facing fines and criminal prosecution.”

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03/3/2015

Washington Examiner: Transparency advocates condemn Clinton’s secretive private email account

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Advocates of greater transparency and accountability in the federal government blasted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Tuesday for using a private email account to conduct official business during the four years she was the nation’s chief diplomat. “The use of personal email is a strategic and intentional way for the former secretary to avoid transparency from Congress and the media,” said Daniel Epstein, executive director of Cause of Action. “Further, this act of secrecy by the former secretary raises serious questions given the numerous ethics concerns raised about Mrs. Clinton’s role as a cabinet official, as well as a political candidate.”

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03/2/2015

Nonprofit Quarterly: Missing Lerner Emails May Lead to Criminal Charges for Former IRS Chief

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In a Thursday evening meeting of the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) J. Russell George told the committee that his office has been able to recover emails from more than 700 backup tapes secured from the IRS. In light of evidence that suggests some of the tapes may have been erased, and because it is unclear why the IRS delayed producing the tapes and asserted the data from the tapes was unrecoverable, the potential for criminal charges was mentioned…The IRS claims that it has cooperated in all investigations, producing more than 1 million pages of documents and almost 150,000 emails. However, many of the most important communications about Lerner’s conduct in the IRS scandal have come not from investigators and the IRS but as a result of nonprofit watchdog groups like Judicial Watch and Cause of Action submitting Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to agencies other than the IRS—specifically, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and the U.S. Justice Department/FBI.

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02/25/2015

Washington Examiner: Cause of Action presses IRS on taxpayer data shared with White House

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A government watchdog group fired another shot in its legal battle to obtain records of the unauthorized disclosure of taxpayer information to White House officials when it filed a motion late Tuesday against the IRS inspector general. Cause of Action, a nonprofit oversight group, pressed the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration on why it had cited a law written to protect taxpayers against the government in an attempt to instead protect the government against the taxpayers’ inquiry.

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02/24/2015

The Hill: Group files suit for IRS records

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A government oversight group on Tuesday filed a motion in federal court to force the Obama administration to release thousands of records linked to the IRS’s targeting of conservative-leaning groups. Cause of Action is seeking the enforcement of a prior court order requiring the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) to produce more than 2,500 documents. The group argues that TIGTA continues to protect the White House by denying the disclosure of the records through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

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02/24/2015

Washington Free Beacon: Watchdog Group Asks Court to Force Release of Docs on IRS Targeting

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The watchdog group Cause of Action is asking a federal court to force the Obama administration to release thousands of documents related to the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups. Cause of Action asked a court in a motion filed Tuesday to compel the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) to disclose roughly 2,500 documents related to unauthorized leaks of taxpayer information to White House officials.

 

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