close X

Search Results for: inspector general

Dan Epstein Discusses Recently Uncovered Government Documents That Reveal Critical Faults with the Federal Records Archiving System

June 2, 2015 by

Tonight on Fox News’ Special Report, Cause of Action Executive Director Dan Epstein will speak with Chief Washington Correspondent James Rosen about recently uncovered government documents that reveal critical faults with the federal records archiving system during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State.

Internal agency documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests submitted to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) show that as early as 2012, officials were concerned the State Department’s maintenance of Clinton’s official emails could be in violation of the Federal Records Act, yet they did nothing to prevent this breach of federal law.

The urgent need for permanent Inspector Generals at executive agencies has been recently highlighted by revelations that Clinton exclusively used a private email system for official government business.

Agencies are required to collect, retain, and preserve federal records, which provide the Administration, Congress, and the public with a history of public policy execution and its results. However, internal emails show that since 2009, NARA consistently identified problems with the State Department’s retention policy but failed to take any remedial actions to prevent the loss of critical records.

Knowing the deficiencies at State Department, internal meeting notes reveal that NARA, under the direction of then-acting IG James Springs, still failed to secure Clinton’s emails in July 2014 although it had the opportunity to do so.

Months later, emails show, NARA officers highlighted concern over an attempt made by the State Department to find a legal justification for their failure to adhere to record maintenance mandates.

Given NARA’s long-term knowledge of deficiencies with the State Department’s records system and its lost opportunity to fix the problem in 2014, the agency was either aware of the failure to preserve Clinton’s emails or was extremely negligent in overseeing the general preservation of senior officials’ emails.

Epstein Testifying Before Senate Committee

During Clinton’s entire tenure, the State Department’s acting IG was Harold Geisel. In 2013, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs sent letters to Secretary of State John Kerry and President Obama noting that the “gap of more than 1,840 days is the longest vacancy of any of the 73 Inspector General positions across the federal government.”

On Wednesday June 3rd, Dan Epstein will appear before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee to discuss the critical need for permanent Inspector Generals within our nation’s federal agencies to serve as watchdogs and prevent this precise lack of oversight from happening again.

Filed Under: Press Release Tagged With:

Cause of Action Sues the Justice Department For Information On Tax Detail Program

May 27, 2015 by

Cause of Action, a nonprofit government accountability organization, recently discovered that the Department of Justice has been placing their Tax Division attorneys, some of whom have worked directly on the IRS targeting scandal, in the White House to provide legal advice to the President.

Having found no evidence of agency policies in place to safeguard against confidential tax information being shared with the wrong people, this practice of DOJ attorneys being detailed at the White House is alarmingly urgent.

In April, Cause of Action submitted several Freedom of Information Act requests and sent a letter to the Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. These documents sought answers to whether appropriate legal and ethical safeguards are in place at both the Office of White House Counsel, as well as the DOJ, to ensure that detailed attorneys are appropriately screened to prevent confidential taxpayer returns and/or return information protected under Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code from being unlawfully accessed or disclosed.

Having received no response from the government since our April requests, Cause of Action on Tuesday filed a complaint in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the Department of Justice and Internal Revenue Service.

As the complaint states, CoA is seeking the release of records relating to how the federal government protects Americans’ private tax information when government attorneys have the power to access and disclose that information. These records have been requested and improperly withheld by the Internal Revenue Service and United States Department of Justice.

“Given the IRS’ track record of failing to protect confidential tax information, this lack of agency oversight is a threat to our privacy and democracy,” said Cause of Action President Dan Epstein. “Ethical and legal protocols at these agencies should be held to the highest standards, especially when government attorneys are accessing confidential taxpayer return information while intermittently leaving to work in the White House.”

The case number is 15-cv-00770.

[Read the Complaint below]

 

ECF No. 1 5.26.2015 Complaint

ECF No. 1-1 5.26.2015 Exhibits 1-15 to Complaint

Filed Under: Press Release Tagged With: ,

National Review: Conservative Group Uncovers New Roots of the IRS Scandal

May 19, 2015 by

Read the full story: National Review

A group of lawyers who have been investigating the origins of the IRS scandal for the past year-and-a-half say they’ve uncovered the real roots of the IRS scandal — and they’ll surprise both liberals and conservatives alike.

 

The group, Cause of Action, which has subpoenaed thousands of pages of documents from the agency and is still embroiled in litigation with it, says the targeting of conservative groups resulted as much from IRS personnel merely following the instructions laid out in their employee handbook, the Internal Revenue Manual, as from any political bias at the top.

 

When the scandal broke nearly two years ago, the IRS and the Obama administration pointed the finger at a few bad apples in the agency’s Cincinnati office. The agency’s inspector general blamed the inappropriate targeting of tea-party groups on the “ineffective management” of top bureaucrats. Many reporters, particularly on the right, including here at National Review, concluded that top D.C. official Lois Lerner and her colleagues in the IRS’s Exempt Organizations office had orchestrated events from the outset.

 

Dan Epstein, executive director of Cause of Action, is a former attorney and investigator for the House Oversight Committee. He and his team, a group of 13 attorneys funded by the Koch brothers’ sprawling network of donors, say none of these stories fully explain what happened at the IRS between 2010 and 2014 and that, in fact, the targeting was baked in the cake. That is, the Internal Revenue Manual, the handbook by which IRS employees are required to abide, mandates the sort of scrutiny that delayed the processing of the applications of hundreds of conservative nonprofit organizations. Cause of Action has laid out its case in a confidential, 35-page memo obtained by National Review. They concluded that many of the IRS officials involved in the scandal were just following the rules.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: , , ,

Cause of Action Testifies Before Congress On Questionable White House Detail Program

May 19, 2015 by

WASHINGTON – Cause of Action Executive Director Dan Epstein testified before Congress today about CoA’s recent investigation into whether the White House may have illegally accessed confidential taxpayer information.

During a hearing held by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law, Epstein discussed Cause of Action’s finding that attorneys in the Justice Department’s Tax Division are being detailed to the White House to review the background files of potential presidential nominees.

As Epstein stated, the program raises ethical and legal questions because of these attorneys’ access to confidential taxpayer returns and return information.

“Cause of Action is concerned that this program may be a manner by which the President can be armed with information that may benefit him politically,” Epstein said.

Through a handful of Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) requests, Cause of Action found that the detailing of Tax Division attorneys to the White House has been unique to the current Administration. Since 2009, these attorneys, many involved in controversial matters involving confidential tax records, have served the President as “clearance counsel” – that is, vetting the President’s nominees by examining their tax records.

During its examination of these White House details, CoA found no evidence of policies, procedures, rules and/or guidelines that exist to ensure that detailed attorneys are appropriately screened to prevent confidential taxpayer returns and/or return information from being unlawfully accessed or disclosed. This means Americans’ most private information may be inappropriately disclosed to the White House.

Epstein noted two DOJ Tax Division attorneys in particular, Andrew Strelka and Norah Bringer. Prior to being assigned to White House detail, both served as trial attorneys involved in litigation concerning the IRS’s targeting of political groups.

It is known that Ms. Bringer accessed confidential taxpayer return information, and it is reasonable to assume that Mr. Strelka did the same.

“The American people deserve answers as to whether their most private information may have been shared with the White House for political gain,” Epstein told the committee.

In light of this concern, Cause of Action requested on April 15, 2015 that the DOJ Inspector General investigate the Tax Division’s practice of detailing attorneys to the White House. To date, the Inspector General has not responded to our request.

Filed Under: Press Release Tagged With: ,

Weekly Rundown 5-8-2015

May 8, 2015 by

COA_blogImages_v03

 

CNN Money: Whistleblower accuses cybersecurity company of extorting clients – Cause of Action’s fight against the FTC continued on Tuesday… Read More

Law 360: Analyst Backs LabMD In FTC Row, Alleges Fraud At Tiversa — “LabMD Inc. on Tuesday scored a major hit in its data security fight with the Federal Trade Commission after a former analyst at the cybersecurity firm Tiversa Inc. testified that his company lied to the agency about the extent of LabMD’s data leaks after the medical testing firm turned down its services… According to LabMD’s attorney Reed Rubinstein… the testimony marked a “remarkable day” in the case and vindicated the company’s assertion that “the FTC action was based on manufactured evidence.” At the close of the hearing Tuesday, Rubenstein announced that LabMD will seek a criminal investigation against the Tiversa…” Read More

Epoch Times: EB-5 Visa Limits May Slow Flow of China’s Elite to US – Cause of Action will not allow public officials to take advantage of the EB-5 visa program… Read More

Fox News: Clinton agrees to testify this month before House committee on Benghazi, private emails — “Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has agreed to testify on Capitol Hill this month about two controversial issues when she was secretary of state — the fatal terror attacks in Benghazi, Libya, and using a private server and emails for official business, her attorney said Tuesday…” Read More

Washington Times: IRS still targeting tea party: Nine groups awaiting agency approval — “Nine tea party groups were still awaiting IRS approval for nonprofit status nearly two years after the political targeting program was exposed, the inspector general said in a report Thursday that, despite hiccups, claimed the tax agency has generally done a good job of cleaning up its act…” Read More

Filed Under: News, Media Tagged With: , ,

Cause of Action Renews Request for Review of Department of Justice’s Asset Forfeiture Program

May 6, 2015 by

By: Josh Schopf

Cause of Action today sent a letter to the Inspector General for the Department of Justice (DOJ IG), renewing its request for an investigation of DOJ’s asset forfeiture program. In response to a prior letter from Cause of Action, the DOJ IG announced in January 2015 that it was conducting a review of its asset seizure activities. This review, however, does not examine administrative seizures, or the civil liberties threats that result from such seizures, even though administrative seizures comprise the majority of adoptions.

Cause of Action also demanded an immediate investigation of Desert Snow, LLC, an approved federal contractor involved in asset seizure and training activities. Specifically, Desert Snow’s founders created a program known as Black Asphalt, which was used for a government-run license-plate tracking system, and enabled more than 25,000 officers and federal authorities throughout the country to share reports about American motorists, many of whom had not been charged with any crimes. The purported goal of the license-plate tracking program, run by the DEA, is to seize cars, cash and other assets to help combat drug trafficking. But the breadth of the program has expanded, and is now being used in connection with potential crimes and is being accessed by numerous state and local law-enforcement agencies. Congress has questioned license-plate tracking systems and other surveillance programs, but reports indicate that the program continues to expand, and that Desert Snow continues to receive federal funds, including from DOJ.

Cause of Action is asking the DOJ IG to investigate Asset Forfeiture Program contractors and systems, including but not limited to, Desert Snow, Black Asphalt, and license plate tracking systems.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: ,

Weekly Rundown 4-30-2015

April 30, 2015 by

COA_blogImages_v03

National Review: It Appears the State Department Has Had a Policy of Retaining Senior Officials’ Emails Since 2009 – The State Department has provided Cause of Action with documents showing that the department has required emails to be preserved since 2009. According to the documents, the department should have had possession of Secretary Clinton’s email records when Mrs. Clinton left office. The fact that they did not have possession of her emails raises still pressing questions… Read More

Washington Examiner: State Department allowing Clinton Foundation to approve emails for release – “State Department officials began allowing the Clinton Foundation to review emails the government planned to release to Congress and Freedom of Information Act requesters in January 2014, prompting a process that has delayed the publication of agency records for months.”… Read More

Cause of Action: HHS Inspector General Finds Potential Misuse of Obamacare Federal Grant Dollars – The IG for HHS, Daniel R. Levinson, recently sent a letter to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services expressing concern that Obamacare state exchanges may be unlawfully spending federal grant dollars to fund operations… Read More

CNN: IRS watchdog finds 6,400 missing Lois Lerner emails – The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has found emails from Lerner that were previously thought to be permanently deleted… Read More

Washington Times: Obama clean energy loans leave taxpayers in $2.2 billion hole – Even after Obama administration officials promised that these projects would pay for themselves, taxpayers have now been left holding the bag… Read More

Filed Under: Media, News