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There’s not much more to say that what ATR lays out. In a nutshell, many IRS employees used an interoffice messaging chat system to communicate with one another, instead of email, because there was no archiving system turned on for that mode of communication — meaning there was no written trail of discussions. This methodology was discovered while looking at Lois Lerner’s emails.
From Americans for Tax Reform:
The IRS used a “wholly separate” instant messaging system that automatically deleted office communications, according to documentation released by the House Oversight Committee on Monday. The system appears to have been purposefully used by agency officials responsible for the targeting of conservative non-profits, in order to evade public scrutiny.
The system, known as “Office Communication Server” or OCS was used by IRS officials, including many in the Exempt Organizations (EO) Unit, which was headed by Lois Lerner.
As the Oversight Committee report states, the instant messaging system did not archive any communications, so it is not possible to know what employees of the EO unit discussed on it.
However, in an email uncovered by the Committee Lerner warns her colleagues about evading Congressional oversight:
“I was cautioning folks about email and how we have had several occasions where Congress has asked for emails and there has been an electronic search for responsive emails – so we need to be cautious about what we say in emails.”
Lerner then asks whether OCS is automatically archived. When informed it was not, Lerner responded “Perfect.”
While it is possible to set the instant messaging system to automatically archive messages, the IRS chose not to do so, according to one employee interviewed by the Committee. The fact that the agency chose not to archive messages raises questions about the true purpose of OCS and what discussions took place.
Needless to say, the apparent use of OCS to evade Congressional oversight once again shows that the IRS does not want the American people to learn the truth about the Lois Lerner targeting scandal.
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Earlier this week, President Obama did an interview with Jon Stewart. Jon Stewart pointed to a number of government agencies that have had various scandals under his watch — including the IRS, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Office of Personal Management — and inquired as to why his Administration has been plagued with so many problems.
As the Washington Times reported, “Mr. Obama said Congress ‘passed a crummy law’ that provided vague guidance to the people who worked at the IRS. And he said that employees implemented the law ‘poorly and stupidly.’
The president went on to say that the ‘real scandal around the IRS is that they have been so poorly funded that they cannot go after these folks who are deliberately avoiding tax payments.'”
Congress cut funding this past year as a response to the targeting scandal. The IRS’s “internal auditor concluded that the agency did, in fact, target conservative and tea party groups for intrusive scrutiny”; Obama’s Department of Justice has not finished its own investigation.
The allegation that the IRS is underfunded is absolutely ridiculous; what’s worse is that Obama has repeated tried to blame the funding cut this past year as the reason for reduced customer service. However, their customer service had already been worsening over the past year and was orchestrated by the IRS itself.
A recent House Ways and Means report showed that, “while congressional funding for the IRS remained flat from 2014 to 2015, the IRS diverted $134 million away from customer service to other activities. In addition to the $11 billion appropriated by Congress, the IRS takes in more than $400 million in user fees and may allocate that money as it sees fit. In 2014, the IRS allocated $183 million in user fees to its customer service budget, but allocated just $49 million in 2015–a 76 percent cut.”
Just as Obama dared to close national parks and monuments and cut off treatment for cancer kids during the government shutdown, in order to inflict pain on ordinary citizens, the IRS decided follow the same tactic and abrogate its basic responsibility to help taxpayers with compliance. Reducing the ability to provide customer service is particularly shameless — and using it as a red herring to try to scoop up more funding to Congress is even more repugnant. Then to also blame funding on the reason why Congress wrote a “vague” law and therefore the IRS employees were helpless in implementing it, well, that is the worst excuse of all.
It just goes to show the Obama is still willing to deflect any blame he can for anything that reflects poorly on his abominable Administration and lack of leadership.
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How is it not a complete conflict of interest to have a person working for the State Department oversee both the IRS scandal documents for the current Administration and now the Benghazi documents for an important Presidential candidate? Or, looked at it another way, how is it that a current State Department employee has complete oversight of the documents of a former Secretary of State embroiled in a State Department scandal? Where is the impartiality?
Unfortunately, this is the scenario that is playing out. Catherine Duval, a former lawyer who joined the State Department in August of last year, is in charge of the release of Hillary Clinton’s emails and documents pertaining to Benghazi to the House Select Committee investigation the scandal, the same woman who was in charge of releasing IRS documents and Lerner’s emails.
As Rep. Jim Jordan, who is involved in investigating both scandals, pointed out, “She was at the IRS when there was a preservation order and subpoena — and documents were destroyed. She is now at the State Department, where we were supposed to get [certain] information, and we know that some of the emails were not given.”
It was recently revealed at the end of June by the IRS watchdog that IRS employees had magnetically erased 422 backup tapes that would have contained copies of Lerner’s “lost” emails. Duval apparently discovered the missing Lerner emails in February 2014; “though she alerted IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and a friend she had in the administration to the problem, neither she nor other IRS officials told Congress until June.” As many as 24,000 messages were magnetically wiped on March 4, 2014.
Furthermore, “the IRS said its email backup tapes had been “recycled” under the standard policy, insisting no backup of the lost messages existed.
That turned out to be false: The IRS inspector general that summer located backup tapes of Lerner’s emails. And though Koskinen at the time vowed his top people were trying to find out if there was any recoverable data, IT employees overseeing the tapes told the IG that no top-level IRS employees had even asked if such copies existed.
Duval has testified that she did not know the email preservation tapes even existed, telling Oversight investigators the IT chiefs informed her there were no backup tapes — and she had no reason to question their expertise.”
Rep. Jordan further outlined the frustration with Duval’s management, suggesting a “common pattern”: “Duval hasn’t been clear about important details in the investigations. She knew there were important gaps in Lerner’s email records for months and did not tell Congress, Jordan said — just as State did not tell the Benghazi panel for months that Clinton had exclusively used her personal account for work.”
Now the same tactics are being employed with the Benghazi documents, deemed “slow-walking” requests from the investigation committees. A request from last November remains unfulfilled for Clinton’s Libya-related emails and correspondence of her top 10 advisors.
The State Department has pushed back, pointing to the fact that it has “given Benghazi investigators 300 emails from Clinton’s personal account, allowed 21 State witnesses to be questioned and given investigators 40,000 pages of additional documents”, while claiming diligence “to review and publish the 55,000 pages of emails we received from former Secretary Clinton according to [Freedom of Information Act] standards so they are available to the general public and the media.”
However, 60 new Clinton emails regarding Libya, which had not been given to the investigation panel by the State Department, were discovered in a roundabout way — via a subpoena to Clinton’s close friend Sidney Blumenthal. The State Department claimed that Clinton herself did not turn over 15 of the 60 undisclosed emails to the State Department, but the Benghazi Committee pointed to the other 45 which was in the hands of the State Department, yet not disclosed and released to the Committee — which makes one wonder if there are even more emails and documents.
Heads should have been rolling over how the IRS misconduct was handled. Instead, in typical Obama Administration fashion, they are instead anointed and appointed again to lead another despicable government scandal.
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The media recently profiled another large civil asset forfeiture case, much like the Hirsch Brothers and the restaurant owner. This particular case involved a North Carolina man who has owned a convenience store since 2001. Last July, the IRS seized $107,000 from his bank account.
The owner, Lyndon McLellan, was visited by the FBI, who informed him that his habit of depositing less than $10,000 cash on repeated occasions drew suspicion by the government, also known as “structuring”. What started as a means to go after drug trafficking and money laundering has entangled many American citizens in recent years who have had their money seized under suspicion of criminal activity.
Recently, several cases have received substantial news coverage, resulting in the IRS, and then the Department of Justice changing their policy of asset forfeiture; now, no assets will be seized without an actual tie to a crime. Suspicion of activity is not enough anymore.
The plight of his latest victim of asset forfeiture was given several “opportunities” to settle with the government for a partial return of his money. The owner, who had done nothing wrong — since much of his business was run in cash — refused each offer. Three days after his story gained national coverage, the government dropped their case against him, citing the IRS and DoJ policy change. The owner had never been charged formally with anything. McLellan was fortunate; in such cases, the burden is on the victim to prove his innocence.
The Institute for Justice has been successfully representing many of these victims of civil asset forfeiture. However, “though the government will return all of the money it seized from McLellan, it dismissed the case without covering the store owner’s legal fees and expenses, as well as interest on the money.
In 2000, Congress passed a law that entitles McLellan to those fees and expenses, which total more than $20,000.
Additionally, government policies require the $107,702 seized is kept in an interest-bearing account. Though McLellan will receive the money, the government wants to keep the interest earned.”
Though the new policy reforms will hopefully keep from ensnaring more innocent Americans, others have not been so lucky.
In recent years, seizures executed because of structuring violations have increased dramatically. In 2005, the Internal Revenue Service made just 114 structuring seizures. By 2012, that number had risen to 639. During that same time period, the agency seized $242 million for structuring violations.
While banks must submit reports to the Department of the Treasury for cash deposits of more than $10,000, the government also receives “suspicious activity reports” on deposits below that threshold.
It’s likely the government received a suspicious activity report detailing McLellan’s deposits, which is how he “came onto the government’s radar.”
Also, “the IRS frequently teams up with local law enforcement to look through suspicious activity reports. By seizing property and money through the Department of Justice’s Equitable Sharing Program, law enforcement agencies share the proceeds of the forfeiture.”
Though Lyndon McLellan is supposed to receive his $107,000, he may still have to wait several more months. By July, the government will have held his money for a year. It’s amazing what a little sunlight and media coverage on these unconstitutional seizures can do for the government to come to its senses.
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The recent Z Street Case against the IRS before the D.C. Court of Appeals is a notable example of egregious behavior by IRS employees.
Z Street is a group that was created in order to educate “the public about Zionism; about the facts relating to the Middle East and to the existence of Israel as a Jewish State; and about Israel’s right to refuse to negotiate with, make concessions to, or appease terrorists.”
In December 2009, the group submitted an application to the IRS in order to gain 501(c)(3) status. By July 2010, Z Street spoke to the IRS about the unusually lengthy process; the “IRS agent said that auditors had been instructed to give special attention to groups connected with Israel, and that they had sent some of those applications to a special IRS unit for additional review.”
The interesting thing about this case is that it hearkens back to the early years of the Obama Administration beginning in 2009. That’s more than three years before the IRS scandal blew wide open in 2013, which goes to show you just how deeply entrenched the culture was at the IRS — it seems no one considered actions against certain groups (but not others) to be discriminatory or punitive. Why did the IRS not recognize their own audacity?
Incidentally, according to documents, IRS inspectors were instructed to “be on the look out” (BOLO) for groups that would fit the description of “occupied territory advocacy”; that instruction was sent on August 6, 2010, merely a few days after the Z Street application file was examined. After the IRS scandal broke, and during subsequent investigations, it was revealed that the file containing “occupied territory advocacy” groups listed exactly one such group: Z Street.
The IRS manager involved with the Z Street case stated under oath by documents submitted during the initial court proceedings in 2013 that he concluded Z Street might be involved with terrorism funding because “there is a higher risk of terrorism in Israel.”
The Circuit Court was patently outraged at the IRS’s illegal actions on the matter, and further chastised the IRS and the DoJ for ridiculously implying that there can be a holding period of up to 270 days before a decision is made for a 501(c)(3) application. One judge remarked, “If I were you, I would go back and ask your superiors whether they want us to represent that the government’s position in this case is that the government is free to unconstitutionally discriminate against its citizens for 270 days.”
Why are heads still not rolling at the IRS? Why is the IRS defending this behavior? The tactic to appeal last year’s halted discovery that would potentially embarrass the IRS. This “would have allowed Z Street to examine IRS officials, under oath, and to receive internal communications from the agency regarding the special unit and special procedures for handling pro-Israel groups.”
In other words, the IRS and the government are more worried about protecting themselves than fixing the problems, thus continuing to clog up the court system until the waning days of the Obama Administration. This maneuver shows that corruption is evidently still alive and well at the IRS.
