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Paul L. Caron
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Saturday, August 23, 2014

The IRS Scandal, Day 471

IRS Logo 2Washington Examiner op-ed:  The Case for Impeaching Lois Lerner and Other Lawbreakers at the IRS, by Ken Cuccinelli & Mark Fitzgibbons:

In April, the House Ways and Means Committee referred Lois Lerner to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution. Nothing has come of it. Given the politicization and lawlessness of the DOJ under Attorney General Eric Holder, nothing likely will.

The House should move to impeach Lerner instead, and other IRS officials who have broken the law. Federal bureaucrats need to be sent a message that lawbreaking is not part of their job descriptions, and that notwithstanding our recalcitrant Justice Department, our constitutional system provides this remedy against executive branch officials gone rogue under the law.

More importantly, Americans deserve to know that lawbreaking within their own government will have consequences. ... If criminal conduct within the IRS and the federal bureaucracy won’t be prosecuted, our Constitution at least gives our elected representatives a check of impeachment on unelected “civil officers.”

Impeaching Lerner and others may actually help restore some faith that someone in government takes the rule of law seriously.

 

The order from U.S. District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan was certainly clear enough. In a landmark victory for Judicial Watch, the federal judge ordered the IRS to submit sworn declarations detailing what happened to Lois Lerner’s “lost” emails and what steps were being taken to find them. What was provided was a garbled explanation from no less than five IRS officials with more holes than a block of Swiss cheese. ...

These sworn declarations came from five IRS officials: Aaron G. Signor, John H. Minsek, Stephen L. Manning, Timothy P. Camus, and Thomas J. Kane.

We noted that the IRS and DOJ filings seem to treat as a joke Judge Sullivan’s order requiring the IRS to produce details about Lois Lerner’s “lost” emails and any efforts to retrieve and produce them to Judicial Watch as required under law.

This is the story we’re supposed to believe, according to these IRS officials: Lerner’s crashed drive was analyzed by two technicians who employed a variety of tech tactics to recover the data, to no avail. The drives – which, mind you, had no recoverable data according to these experts – were then “degaussed” (wiped clean) “to protect against any possible disclosure of… taxpayer information.” Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the IRS email scandal would have realized that these filings were a blatant continuation of the cover-up.

Well, if there’s one thing I know, it is that most federal courts don’t take kindly to being treated disrespectfully and expected to act like a somnolent member of Congress as administration officials mislead, omit, and play games.

Sure enough, in a stunning move, Judge Sullivan took the extraordinary step of launching an independent inquiry into the issue of Lerner’s missing emails. ...

Judicial Watch has filed hundreds of FOIA lawsuits. I have never seen this type of court action in all my 16 years at Judicial Watch.

Judge Sullivan has already authorized Judicial Watch to submit a request for limited discovery into the missing IRS records after September 10. So stay tuned for further details very soon.

Judge Sullivan took the additional step of appointing Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola to manage and assist in discussions between Judicial Watch and the IRS about how to obtain the missing records. Magistrate Facciola is an expert in e-discovery.

https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/08/the-irs-5.html

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Comments

It is hard to believe that Mr. Cuccinelli was the AG of Virginia and made a semi-serious run for governor. Mr. Cuccinelli obviously is not a constitutional scholar, or maybe he just doesn't pay attention. Let's just briefly review the impeachment power of the Congress. "Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States . . ." U.S. Const., art. I, sec. 2. Assuming for purposes of argument that a lower-level executive, such as Lerner was, can be impeached, Mr. Cuccinelli's suggestion still fails. Lerner is no longer a holder of public office, or did the fact-challenged Mr. Cuccinelli not know this?

Posted by: Publius Novus | Aug 23, 2014 7:50:39 AM