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Court rebukes IRS for tea party targeting, orders release of secret list


WestVirginiaRebel

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WestVirginiaRebel
irs-rebuked-tea-party-targeting-ordered-release-seWashington Times:

A federal appeals court spanked the IRS Tuesday, saying it has taken laws designed to protect taxpayers from the government and turned them on their head, using them to try to protect the tax agency from the very tea party groups it targeted.

 

The judges ordered the IRS to quickly turn over the full list of groups it targeted so that a class-action lawsuit, filed by the NorCal Tea Party Patriots, can proceed. The judges also accused the Justice Department lawyers, who are representing the IRS in the case, of acting in bad faith — compounding the initial targeting — by fighting the disclosure.

 

“The lawyers in the Department of Justice have a long and storied tradition of defending the nation’s interests and enforcing its laws — all of them, not just selective ones — in a manner worthy of the Department’s name. The conduct of the IRS’s attorneys in the district court falls outside that tradition,” Judge Raymond Kethledge wrote in a unanimous opinion for a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. “We expect that the IRS will do better going forward.”

________

 

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Draggingtree
appeals_court_issues_nightmare_decision_for_lois_lerner_and_the_irs.htmlAmerican Thinker:

March 23, 2016

Appeals Court issues nightmare decision for Lois Lerner and the IRS

The wheels of justice slowly have been turning, and those of us who feared that Lois Lerner and the IRS would get off scot-free despite their lawless targeting of Tea Party groups have something to celebrate. And Lois Lerner may have had a troubled sleep last night if she was paying attention instead of enjoying her six-figure pension with leisure activities.

 

An appeals court judge in the Sixth Circuit has delivered a blistering rebuke to both the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department attorneys that have defended it in behalf of a unanimous three-judge panel. As a result, officials current and former will be forced to testify under oath for their misdeeds in a civil action with big bucks at stake. Stephen Dinan reports in the Washington Times:

 

A federal appeals court spanked the IRS Tuesday, saying it has taken laws designed to protect taxpayers from the government and turned them on their head, using them to try to protect the tax agency from the very tea party groups it targeted. Scissors-32x32.png


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IRS baloney meets Sixth Circuit grinder
Scott Johnson
Mar. 23 2016

 

(Snip)

Judge Kethledge quotes the comments of the district court judge handling the case at a discovery conference:

 

My impression is the government probably did something wrong in this case. Whether there’s liability or not is a legal question. However, I feel like the government is doing everything it possibly can to make this as complicated as it possibly can, to last as long as it possibly can, so that by the time there is a result, nobody is going to care except the plaintiffs. . . . I question whether or not the Department of Justice is doing justice.


As one can infer from the district court judge’s comments, behind the IRS’s foot-dragging and stonewalling is Obama’s Department of Justice. Judge Kethledge therefore reserves a few choice words for the Department of Justice:

 

The lawyers in the Department of Justice have a long and storied tradition of defending the nation’s interests and enforcing its laws—all of them, not just selective ones—in a manner worthy of the Department’s name. The conduct of the IRS’s attorneys in the district court falls outside that tradition. We expect that the IRS will do better going forward. And we order that the IRS comply with the district court’s discovery orders of April 1 and June 16, 2015—without redactions, and without further delay.

 

(Snip)

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Dead Air: It's Been 513 Days Since ABC, NBC, Or CBS Reported On The IRS Scandal
Matt Vespa
Mar 26, 2016

Cortney wrote earlier this week how the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit pretty much took the Internal Revenue Service to the woodshed for withholding documents relating to the targeting scandal that has united conservatives in righteous anger. In their ruling, the court ordered the IRS to handover all documents relating to groups who were subjected to targeting per the agency’s inspector general, according to Jonathan Alder. He noted that the IRS issued a writ of mandamus to avoid turning over such documents, which was rejected (via WaPo):

(Snip)

 

Adler noted that it’s been over 1,050 days since the agency began targeting conservative groups, and the Newsbusters, the liberal media bias neutralization arm of the Media Research Center, noted that it’s been at least 513 days since the Big Three–ABC, NBC, and CBS–have reported on the subject:

 

In fact, it’s been 513 days since any network has touched the IRS scandal. The last mention arrived on the October 28, 2014 edition of CBS This Morning when John Dickerson noted voters in states that would decide control of the Senate in the 2014 midterms were skeptical of the government due to a “series of different things from the Secret Service to Ebola to the IRS scandal.”

The last time NBC noted the IRS scandal was 540 days ago on the October 5, 2014 Today show, when NBC’s Meet the Press host Chuck Todd briefly noted that public skepticism about the government’s handling of the Ebola crisis was well-earned due to “Secret Service blunders, IRS losing e-mails, the Veteran Affairs Administration botching all these wait times.”

But that’s nothing compared to the IRS scandal news drought on ABC. The last time the IRS targeting imbroglio got any airtime on ABC was 686 days ago in a 16 second brief by Amy Robach on the May 8, 2014 edition of Good Morning America, when Robach reported that “six Democrats have joined Republicans in the House” to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress.

 

(Snip)

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