TaxProf Blog

Paul L. Caron
Dean





Monday, September 22, 2014

The IRS Scandal, Day 501

IRS Logo 2Forbes:  Congress Moves To Reform The IRS, by Robert W. Wood:

Does the IRS need reforming? Many people think so, and not just people focused on the Tea Party targeting scandal, Lois Lerner and the missing emails. Anyone who has had a seriously bad tax audit or a run-in with an overly aggressive IRS Revenue Agent who many seem to take no for an answer may have a bone to pick.

It still isn’t a happy time for the IRS, and it seemed somehow lackluster when the IRS announced a Taxpayer Bill Of Rights. Many observers yawned. Even so, there is no question but that the IRS has a tough job to do. On the whole, the IRS does an amazingly even-handed job at it too. Yet if you are in the crosshairs, that may not be comforting. And seeing the poor and sometimes evasive testimony for top IRS officials over the last year or so hasn’t been inspiring.

So perhaps it’s not surprising that bills are getting introduced in Congress and some are passing. Well, sort of. The House has passed several recently. All were intended to highlight complaints that the IRS mistreated conservative political groups when they applied for tax-exempt status.

 

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/2014/09/the-irs-9.html

IRS News, IRS Scandal, Tax | Permalink

Comments