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.

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: Investors Business Daily

This discovery came from a lawsuit by the group Cause of Action, which has sought release of all documents related to IRS targeting of conservative groups.

 

Under court pressure, some of the documents were scheduled to be released Dec. 1 and the rest by Dec. 15.

 

In an email from the Department of Justice’s tax office requesting a delay in the delivery date of the formerly “lost” documents, it noted that TIGTA “has located 2,500 potentially responsive documents” and needed extra time “to make any necessary withholdings.”

 

“Potentially responsive” means they could relate to the release of private taxpayer information by the IRS to administration officials, including the White House. As Vice President Joe Biden might say, this could be a very big deal indeed.