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.
