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Paul L. Caron
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Wednesday, June 17, 2015

The IRS Scandal, Day 769

IRS Logo 2Judicial Watch Press Release, IRS Finds New Lois Lerner Emails:

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton made the following statement in response to the IRS’ court filing Friday about 6,400 newly discovered emails from Lois Lerner’s account:

Late Friday afternoon, the Obama IRS finally complied with Judge Emmet Sullivan’s June 4 order requiring the IRS to provide answers by June 12 on the status of the Lois Lerner emails the IRS had previously declared lost. Judicial Watch raised questions about the IRS’ handling of the missing emails issue in a court filing on June 2, 2015, demanding answers about Lois Lerner’s emails, which had been recovered from backup tapes.

Our review of the seven-page filing shows that the IRS remains intent on stonewalling Judicial Watch and Judge Sullivan. Indeed, contrary to false representations to the court and Congress that the emails were lost and unrecoverable, the IRS finally admits that it has as many as 6,400 new Lois Lerner emails but won’t promise to turn them over to Judicial Watch. Even though the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration already identified and removed emails that are duplicates, the IRS is in ‘the process of conducting further manual deduplication of the 6,400’ emails, rather than reviewing them in response to Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act requests that are more than two years old now. Our legal team will continue pursuing all necessary and available legal options to hold the IRS accountable for its flagrant abuse of power.

Plaintiff's Response to Defendant's June 12, 2015 Response (No. 1:13-cv-1559-EGS, June 12, 2015):

1.  Defendant Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) does not refute in its seven-page Response that the Treasure Inspector General for Tax Administration (“TIGTA”) was able to locate the Lois Lerner backup tapes within one day of its investigation or that the IRS never requested the backup tapes from its technicians before declaring that the emails were lost forever.

2.  IRS has still not disclosed whether TIGTA has produced to the IRS all emails it forensically recovered and when the IRS expects to produce them to Plaintiff in response to the FOIA requests submitted more than two years ago.

3.  Rather, it affirmed that the “Service is in the process of conducting further manual duplication of the 6,400 forensically-recovered emails to supplement the automated duplication conducted by TIGTA.” This is after TIGTA had already identified and removed emails that are duplicates of the recovered emails or those which the IRS had already produced to Congressional Committees. According to its Response, the IRS does not intend to begin producing any of the 6,400 emails until after it has completed its review and production of the Lerner emails that were not forensically recovered. ...

4.  The IRS has a statutory duty to search for and produce documents responsive to Plaintiff’s FOIA requests in the shortest amount of time. 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(6)(A); Order, Jason Leopold v. U.S. Department of State, Case No. 15-0123-RC (D.D.C. May 27, 2015) (DKT No. 17) (ordering the State Department to start producing Hillary Clinton’s emails every thirty days, rather than waiting to produce them at one time in January 2016).

5.  Plaintiff’s counsel is not concerned about receiving duplicate emails in this case. Lois Lerner’s emails are at the heart of Plaintiff’s FOIA requests. Plaintiff has waited more than two years to receive them and the IRS should start producing them now.

6.  Also, the IRS’s uncited statement that it is premature for TIGTA to publically disclose the status of its investigation in greater detail is directly contradictory to Congressman Chaffetz’s statement on June 12, 2015 that TIGTA is preparing to release the conclusion of its investigation about the Lois Lerner’s emails in the next several days. The fact that TIGTA’s conclusion of its investigation is expected in the next few days indicates (1) that the investigation is complete and (2) the report is basically in final form.

7.   Judicial Watch respectfully requests that the Court order the IRS to start producing any non-exempt, responsive emails contained within the 6,400 emails immediately and disclose whether they are all or a subset of the recovered emails from the 1,268 backup tapes.

8.  Further, Judicial Watch respectfully requests that the Court order the IRS to file monthly status reports about its progress of the production of non-exempt, responsive emails that were placed in the Congressional database two years ago, the 6,400 recovered emails and any additional emails that may be recovered by TIGTA from the 1,268 backup tapes.

https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2015/06/the-irs-scandal-day-769.html

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Comments

Someone should write a news or scholarly article on the IRS's attitude towards confidentiality. It's a combination of retail fanaticism with regard to protecting confidentiality and wholesale disregard. When it comes to delay and obstruction with regard to FOIA requests or whistleblower reports of tax fraud, the IRS is fanatical in refusing cooperation for fear of admitting that, say, they are auditing a given taxpayer. When it comes to ordinary business precautions against hackers stealing thousands of files, on the other hand, the IRS attitude is "We have higher budget priorities." Part of this is political, but another part is IRS culture, and a third part is stupidity, I expect-- being pennywise and poundfoolish.

Posted by: Eric Rasmusen | Jun 17, 2015 9:04:45 AM