Saturday, August 19, 2017

Washington Times, Lay It on the Line’: Judge in Tea Party Case Orders IRS to Disclose Employee Names, Reasons:

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the IRS to name the specific employees the agency blames for targeting tea party groups for intrusive scrutiny and said the government must prove it has ceased the targeting.

Judge Reggie B. Walton also said the IRS must explain the reasons for the delays for 38 groups that are part of a lawsuit in the District of Columbia, where they are still looking for a full accounting of their treatment.

Judge Walton approved another round of limited discovery in the case and laid out six questions that the IRS must answer, including the employees’ names, why the groups were targeted and how the IRS has tried to prevent a repeat.

At a hearing earlier this week, Judge Walton said it was time to get everything on the table. “Lay it on the line. Put it out there,” he told attorneys for the IRS, who are continuing to fight some tea party groups’ demands for full disclosure. ...

Judge Walton came down in the middle, writing his own set of inquiries for the IRS. “Why hide the ball?” he asked the tax agency. “If there’s nothing there, there’s nothing there.” Mr. Walton told the IRS to go beyond searching a basic agency database for records and ordered it to scour “other relevant resources containing documents from the relevant time period.”

https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2017/08/the-irs-scandal-day-1563-judge-in-tea-party-case-orders-irs-to-disclose-employee-names-reasons.html