The IRS would never push legal boundaries in order to pursue the ideological agenda of a political party in Washington D.C., right? Well, aside from that time that Lois Lerner used her position inside the IRS to target Tea Party Organizations in order to help Obama get re-elected in 2012, of course.

While we all may wish that were the case, new documents obtained by Judicial Watch (JW) today via a FOIA request seem to indicate that the IRS may have overstepped it's bounds when it sent out letters to taxpayers threatening them with monetary penalties if they failed to sign up for Obamacare. As JW notes, the IRS spent a staggering $5 million to develop a program specifically designed to intimidate voters into signing up for the controversial healthcare legislation.

Judicial Watch today announced it received two production of documents, 77 pages and 108 pages, from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) revealing the Obama IRS coordinated with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Obama White House Behavioral Sciences “Team” in a $5 million program to pressure Americans to sign up for Obamacare. The documents also contain inter-agency agreements between the IRS and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) devised to circumvent potential legal prohibitions on unauthorized disclosure or inspection of taxpayer information collected by the IRS. In September 2016, IRS Director of Individual Taxation Janet McCubbin writes to several of her colleagues: Attached are drafts of the letters that IRS will send to selected taxpayers who paid a penalty for failure to have coverage or who claimed an exemption form the coverage requirement for tax year 2015 … As you know, we are planning to send several different versions of the letter to see which types of messages work best.

Of course, by suggesting that several letters were drafted to see which "messages work best," McCubbin seems to give away her hand that her goal was not simply to inform taxpayers, but rather to coerce them into pursuing her desired outcome.

But that's not the only foul here as JW also asserts that the IRS "may have overstepped its authority by threatening people with penalty fees."

Why am I getting this letter? The law requires people to have a minimum level of health coverage, quality for an exemption, or pay a penalty when they file their taxes. Our records show you claimed an exemption from the health coverage requirement when you filed your 2015 taxes. If you or someone in your family doesn’t have health insurance or an exemption next year, you’ll likely owe a penalty for 2017. We are writing to make sure you know how you can avoid this penalty by signing up for health insurance or getting an exemption. How much will my penalty be next year if I don’t sign up? The penalty for not having any health-coverage or an exemption in 2017 will be at least $695 per adult and $347 per child (up to $2,085 per family), and could be more, depending on your income.

Meanwhile, JW says that the IRS misled taxpayers by touting Obamacare plans that could be purchased for $75 a month, while failing to mention the high cost of co-payments and deductibles.

How much does health insurance at HealthCare.gov cost? Most people who enroll in a plan through HealthCare.gov can find plans for $75 a month or less after financial help.

Not surprisingly, and much like other FOIA requests seeking to unearth inconvenient facts, JW notes that their ongoing discovery process could stretch out for years.

Today’s release of documents is part of five promised document productions from the IRS in this case. The IRS expects to complete production of the records found to date (about 6,000) by January 24, 2018. However, the agency anticipates that another several thousand documents will be found during the remainder of the search, which will extend the final production deadline to the spring/early-summer months. "So now we have more evidence of more Obama IRS abuses targeting innocent Americans—all in the name of Obamacare," said Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton. "No wonder it took a federal lawsuit and court order to get these documents—as they show the Obama White House and its agencies were happy to threaten and treat Americans like lab rats in order to bolster Obamacare."

But we're sure it's nothing...using the IRS to threaten the American public would almost be as bad a weaponizing the entire intelligence apparatus of the U.S. government to destroy a political foe...and that kind of stuff only happens in the movies...