Read the full story: The Weekly Standard
The waste is not confined to NIH, either. The Weekly Standard reported last year that the Centers for Disease Control, which presumably should also be fighting Ebola, was using part of its $12.5 billion Obamacare slush fund to campaign for tougher state liquor laws. A 19-month investigation by watchdog Cause of Action concluded the use of these funds violated the law and was “a front for lobbying, government propaganda, and cronyism.”
Read the full story: Powerline
So, for more than three years Obama has managed to keep the lid on this scandal by hiding the Inspector General’s report. Along with Koch Industries, the Washington Free Beacon and a government watchdog group called Cause of Action made Freedom of Information Act requests for documents relating to the Inspector General’s investigation. When the Obama administration refused to produce any responsive information, Cause of Action sued.
On September 29, a federal district judge in Washington ruled in Cause of Action’s favor. Cause of Action had asked for all documents related to any investigation by TIGTA into the unauthorized disclosure of tax return information to anyone in the Executive Office of the President. The Obama administration made a “Glomar response,” which means that it would neither confirm nor deny the existence of any responsive records, on the theory that doing so would itself reveal information protected under FOIA.
Read the full story: Washington Post
The judge’s order came as part of a lawsuit by Cause of Action, a conservative organization that has accused the Obama administration of targeting taxpayers for harassment.
Dan Epstein, the group’s executive director, called the court’s decision a “decisive win” for government transparency and accountability. “The court has ruled that the federal government cannot hide behind confidentiality laws to prevent Americans from knowing if our president has gained unauthorized access to their tax information,” he said.
Read the full story: Courthouse News Service
Plaintiff Cause of Action, a nonprofit formerly known as the Freedom through Justice Foundation, filed a wide-ranging Freedom of Information Act request with the Internal Revenue Service in October 2012.
Among the items it sought were any documents related to investigations of IRS employees disclosing tax return information to the Executive Office of the President.
That portion of the request was passed on to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. TIGTA is organized under the Department of the Treasury, but is independent of the department, according to its website. It audits and investigates IRS operations.
Read Dan Epstein’s op-ed in the Daily Caller here.
Attorney General Eric Holder may be heading for the exit door at the Department of Justice (DOJ), but numerous gaps in the agency’s enforcement remain. Will the next attorney general address fraud, transparency, and oversight concerns? We recommend four issues the next attorney general can and should resolve.
Transparency: Eric Holder’s Department of Justice declared its dedication to transparency and openness, going so far as to issue a memo to all agency heads on the Freedom of Information Act, declaring, “In the face of doubt, openness prevails.” In practice, however, this is perhaps the most secretive DOJ on record. The Associated Press Washington Bureau Chief Sally Buzbeesays the transparency of the Obama administration “is significantly worse than previous administrations.”
Cause of Action, a government oversight organization of which I am executive director, found that improper White House review of FOIA requests violated both the letter and spirit of FOIA. We are now suing the Department of Justice for allowing the White House to obstruct the processing of FOIA requests — an integral part of open and transparent government. The next attorney general should enforce Eric Holder’s promise of a bias toward disclosure, by taking decision-making about FOIA productions away from the White House and placing it back in agencies where it belongs.
IRS Political Targeting: Americans have known for over a year about the Internal Revenue Service’s political targeting of non-profit groups. Cause of Action first petitioned DOJ to look into this scandal in May 2013. While an investigation has begun, the DOJ assigned an attorney from the Civil Rights Division (CRD), which mostly prosecutes hate crimes cases and conspiracies to violate civil rights, to investigate the IRS. If criminal violations are uncovered in the investigation, the CRD may not have the authority to handle them, given its jurisdiction. That is why the next attorney general should appoint a special counsel to direct the investigation.
Lois Lerner’s Emails: Perhaps the most confounding part of the IRS scandal is the somehow “lost” emails of Lois Lerner, the IRS official at the heart of the scandal. Cause of Action’s investigation indicates that in losing this valuable information, multiple government officials violated the Federal Records Act, which instructs agencies to create their own regulations regarding document retention. IRS regulations, for instance, required Ms. Lerner to print and file her emails and her attachments. By failing to preserve Lerner’s records, the IRS may have violated its own regulations — and therefore the Federal Records Act.
To this day, the Department of Justice refuses to investigate this potential violation of law, so we urge the next attorney general to conduct an investigation to determine if there has been a violation of the Federal Records Act.
The Chicago Transit Authority: In 2012, Cause of Action provided the Department of Justice with evidence of up to $150 million in rampant fraud at the Chicago Transit Authority, a government entity with close ties to the current administration. As we noted at the time, DOJ has a duty to deal with this issue — the agency has the power to intervene on behalf of other federal agencies to recover misspent taxpayer dollars using the False Claims Act. DOJ declined to take up the case. Cause of Action is continuing to pursue this fraud lawsuit against the CTA because American taxpayers deserve accountability. The next attorney general should intervene in False Claims Act litigation even if they may be politically unfavorable.
We hope the next Attorney General resolves these four issues. Attorneys in the Department of Justice have a saying: “Do Justice.” Four simple steps would allow the next AG to ensure justice is done.
Dan Epstein is the Executive Director of Cause of Action.
Read the full story: Washington Free Beacon
Cause of Action filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit after TIGTA refused to confirm or deny the existence of the investigation in what is commonly known as a “Glomar response.”
“The court has ruled that the federal government cannot hide behind confidentiality laws to prevent Americans from knowing if our President has gained unauthorized access to their tax information,” Cause of Action executive director Dan Epstein said in a statement Tuesday. “This is a decisive win for all Americans and for government transparency and accountability.”
Read the full story: Washington Examiner
Cause of Action, the Project on Government Oversight and the Sunlight Foundation were among the 24 organizations that joined the call for the Obama administration to review the Craig Memorandum and either withdraw it or clearly define “White House equities” to prevent overreach.
Cause of Action has also sued a dozen federal departments claiming their adherence to the Craig Memorandum violates the FOIA.