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: Wall Street Journal

“In an abrupt decision, the Treasury inspector general’s office said that the documents are covered by privacy and disclosure laws and can’t be provided to Cause of Action, despite a promise last week to hand over some 2,500. . . .

 

“All of the 2,043 pages of documents we have determined to be responsive were collected by the Secretary of the Treasury with respect to the determination of possible liability under Title 26 of the United States Code. These pages consist of return information protected by 26 U.S.C. § 6103 and may not be disclosed absent an express statutory exception,” said the office in a letter dated Dec. 1.”

 

It’s something of a Catch-22, but the logic is not obviously unsound. If the IRS violated taxpayer privacy by providing information to the White House—and as Glenn Reynolds never tires of reminding us, President Obama himself “joked” about auditing his enemies—it’s easy to imagine that disclosing specific details of the violations would be impossible without compounding them. All of which is a strong argument for a confidential but independent investigation of the administration’s abuse of the IRS.

Read the full story: Washington Examiner

Less than a week after ’fessing up that it found some 2,500 documents potentially showing that the IRS shared taxpayer returns with the White House, the Obama administration has reversed course and won’t release the trove to a group suing for access.

 

In an abrupt decision, the Treasury inspector general’s office said that the documents are covered by privacy and disclosure laws and can’t be provided to Cause of Action, despite a promise last week to hand over some 2,500.

 

The decision coincides  with publication this week of the Washington Examiner’s series,“Watchdogs, lapdogs and attack dogs,” that assesses problems with the IG system, including the tendency in some quarters to protect federal officials and agencies from critical scrutiny.

Read the full story: Washington Free Beacon

On Monday the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) informed the watchdog group Cause of Action that it will turn over nearly 2,500 documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the group.

 

In a statement, Cause of Action said the number of documents “signals that the White House may have made significant efforts to obtain taxpayers’ personal information.”

Read the full story: Power Line

Years later, the judicial system may be poised to expose another layer of Obama corruption. A group called Cause of Action began a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of the Treasury, and for several years, your taxpayer dollars have funded the administration’s cover-up.

 

But nothing lasts forever, and a federal court in Washington, D.C. has finally overruled the Treasury Department’s frivolous objections, and ordered Treasury to respond to Cause of Action’s request for documents. That request relates to the Department’s Inspector General’s investigation–which began a long time ago, and probably has long been concluded–and asks for “[a]ll documents pertaining to any investigation by [TIGTA] into the unauthorized disclosure of [26 U.S.C.] §6103 ‘return information’ to anyone in the Executive Office of the President.”