Dear All,
While the nation’s
attention has been wholly focused on the Ferguson, Missouri Riots, there has
been breaking news in regards to the IRS Scandal.
If you recall, over
30,000 Lois Lerner emails(former Director of the IRS) were recently found and
turned over to the proper authorities for investigation.
Yesterday, the
‘Washington Examiner’ reported that there were 2,500 new IRS documents found
that are potentially troublesome for the Obama Administration pertaining to the
IRS Scandal and Investigation.
Excerpt: 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.
Ron
Kirkish
Revealed: 2,500 new
documents in IRS / W.H. harassment cases
Link
to “FOIA” and court order document:
By Paul Bedard | November 25, 2014 | 6:37 pm
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.
In requesting a delay
in the delivery date of the documents, Justice told Cause of Action, “The
agency [Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration] has located 2,500
potentially responsive documents and anticipates being able to finish
processing 2,000 of these pages by the December 1 date. It needs the additional
two weeks to deal with the last 500 pages to determine if they are responsive
and make any necessary withholdings.”
Cause of Action, which
calls itself “Advocates for Government Accountability,” wasn’t surprised by the
number of documents.
It had filed suit to
win access to them and a federal judge shot down Treasury’s earlier
bid to hide the documents.
“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,” it said in
a statement to Secrets.
The disclosure follows
the agency’s recovery of 30,000 “lost” emails from former IRS executive Lois
Lerner, the central figure in the IRS-Tea Party scandal.
Cause of Action said
the latest finding renews their “concerns about the decaying professionalism
of, and apparent slip into partisanship by, IRS's senior leadership.”
Below is the full
email from Treasury:
My client wants to
know if you would consent to a motion pushing back (in part) TIGTA’s response
date by two weeks to December 15, 2014. The agency has located 2,500
potentially responsive documents and anticipates being able to finish
processing 2,000 of these pages by the December 1 date. It needs the additional
two weeks to deal with the last 500 pages to determine if they are responsive
and make any necessary withholdings. We would therefore like to ask the court to
permit the agency to issue a response (including production) on December 1 as
to any documents it has completed processing by that date, and do the same as
to the remaining documents by December 15. I note that the court’s remand was
for a “determin[ation],” which the D.C. Circuit has recently explained can
precede actual production by “days or a few weeks,” but we would prefer to
simply agree on a date for turning over any of the remaining 500 documents that
may be responsive.
Yonatan Gelblum
Trial Attorney, Tax
Division
U.S. Department of
Justice
Link to court “FIOA”
document: https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1371470/irs.pdf
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington
Secrets" columnist, can be contacted atpbedard@washingtonexaminer.com.
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