The IRS Scandal, Day 566

Washington Examiner:  2,500 New Documents ID'd in White House-IRS Taxpayer Harassment Cases:

In a shocking revelation, the Treasury Inspector General has identified some 2,500 documents that “potentially” show taxpayer information held by the Internal Revenue Service being shared with President Obama’s White House.

The discovery was revealed to the group Cause of Action, which has sued for access to any of the documents. It charges that the IRS and White House have harassed taxpayers.

In an email from the Justice Department’s tax office, an official revealed the high number of documents, suggesting that the White House was hip deep in probes of taxpayers, likely including conservatives and Tea Party groups associated with the IRS scandal.

Power Line:  The IRS Scandal Rears Its Head:

The Obama Administration’s IRS scandal is multi-faceted. In addition to the persecution of conservative non-profits by Lois Lerner et al., the question has been percolating for some years whether Obama’s IRS has transferred confidential taxpayer information to Obama’s White House in violation of federal criminal laws. The issue first arose when Austin Goolsbee of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers told reporters that he had information about Koch Industries that could only have come, illegally, from confidential IRS files. When questions were asked, the administration immediately clammed up.

Years later, the judicial system may be poised to expose another layer of Obama corruption. A group called Cause of Action began a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of the Treasury, and for several years, your taxpayer dollars have funded the administration’s cover-up.

But nothing lasts forever, and a federal court in Washington, D.C. has finally overruled the Treasury Department’s frivolous objections, and ordered Treasury to respond to Cause of Action’s request for documents. That request relates to the Department’s Inspector General’s investigation–which began a long time ago, and probably has long been concluded–and asks for “[a]ll documents pertaining to any investigation by [TIGTA] into the unauthorized disclosure of [26 U.S.C.] §6103 ‘return information’ to anyone in the Executive Office of the President.”

That is an extraordinarily narrow request for documents which, one would think, could have been responded to in a few hours. But the administration’s evasion has gone on for years. Now that the court has ordered the administration to respond, its lawyers have asked for more time

Cause of Action:  Press Release:

Monday the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) informed Cause of Action that there exist nearly 2,500 potentially responsive documents relating to investigations of improper disclosures of confidential taxpayer information by the IRS to the White House. This disclosure, coming only after Cause of Action sued TIGTA over its refusal to acknowledge whether such investigations took place, and after the Court ordered TIGTA to reveal whether or not documents existed, signals that the White House may have made significant efforts to obtain taxpayers’ personal information. This disclosure, following on the heels of TIGTA’s admission that it recovered 30,000 “lost” Lois Lerner emails, renews Cause of Action’s concerns about the decaying professionalism of, and apparent slip into partisanship by, IRS’s senior leadership.

Cause of Action will continue to pursue the truth and to work for IRS accountability.

• The Blaze: Officials to Cough Up Documents That Could Show the IRS Gave Private Taxpayer Data to the White House
• The Daily Beast:  The IRS Email Double Standard
• Washington Free Beacon:  Records on Taxpayer Leaks to White House to Be Released; IRS Watchdog Will Turn Over Documents to Cause of Action
• Washington Times:  IRS Inspector General to Release Documents on Privacy Probe