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7/10/15 IRS Scandal Escalates: New IRS Obstruction http://www.judicialwatch.org/

Don't fall off your chair, but this week the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) ignored meet a court-imposed deadline to produce newly found Lois Lerner's emails.  

Lerner is the former director of the agency's Exempt Organizations Unit who remains at the epicenter of a growing scandal over the tax agency's targeting of the Tea Party and other conservative groups and citizens. 


In a victory for Judicial Watch, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered the IRS last week to begin producing, every Monday, nearly 1,800 newly recovered Lois Lerner emails. 



Judge Sullivan ruled from the bench during a status conference on July 1, 2015. 



Despite the court order, the IRS failed to produce any Lois Lerner emails this past Monday.  The IRS also failed to provide Judicial Watch a status of the Lois Lerner email production issues, as also ordered by Judge Sullivan.


After some back and forth, we've agreed to receive the documents next week but I'm not sure how the IRS is going to explain its ignoring his orders to Judge Sullivan.


A report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) released just this week on the Lois Lerner email scandal confirms that the IRS failure to timely search its back-up tapes resulted in 24,000 Lois Lerner emails being destroyed. 

The TIGTA report also confirms that IRS Commissioner John Koskinen delayed informing Congress (and the courts) for months about Lois Lerner's email issue.  (Judge Sullivan ordered the IRS to produce the TIGTA report to chambers the next day for in camera review at the July 1 hearing.)

http://www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/tigta-report-6-30-2015-1559/?




The TIGTA report details that the Treasury Department also knew about the Lerner email problems for months but made no public disclosure.  Other records remain missing, including potentially over 300 IRS hard drives. The office of IRS Chief Counsel William J. Wilkins, an Obama political appointee, oversaw the mishandling of the Lois Lerner email issue.

These developments come in response to your JW's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking documents about the Obama IRS' targeting and harassment of Tea Party and conservative opponents of President Obama's.

It was our litigation that forced the IRS first to admit that Lerner's emails were supposedly missing and, then, that the emails were on IRS back-up systems.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/judicial-watch-v-irs-lawsuit/?




Back in November 2014, the IRS told the court it had failed to search any of the IRS standard computer systems for the "missing" emails of Lerner and other IRS officials.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/irs-admits-court-hasnt-searched-missing-lerner-emails/?




On February 26, 2015, TIGTA officials testified to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that it had received 744 back-up tapes containing emails sent and received by Lerner.  This testimony showed that the IRS had falsely declared to Congress, Judge Sullivan and Judicial Watch that Lerner's emails were irretrievably lost.

http://www.treasury.gov/tigta/congress/congress_02252015.pdf?




Sure enough, TITGA recovered the new Lerner emails from IRS back-up tapes.  TIGTA was able to locate the Lois Lerner back-up tapes within one day of requesting them from the IRS.
 
The Obama IRS' contempt for the courts and for Congress resulted in a massive destruction of evidence.  IRS Commissioner John Koskinen's and IRS Chief Counsel William J. Wilkins' resignations are long overdue.