Author: David Freddoso / Source: Washington Examiner
Remember that lawsuit against the IRS for targeting small conservative nonprofit applicants? You probably haven’t heard much lately about it. That’s because this case about egregious misconduct by the governments’ tax collectors has been going on forever at a snail’s pace, and that’s mostly because of egregious misconduct by the government lawyers involved.
Already, the DOJ lawyers defending the IRS in this matter have been lectured by more than one judge for their dilatory tactics and unprofessional behavior, which has repeatedly prevented evidence in the case from being produced in a timely fashion. This lawsuit, recall, began in 2013, so at least they can console themselves with the fact that they ran out the clock on the Obama administration.
For a long time during the Obama era, the IRS tried to avoid disclosing which of its employees made decisions in these cases by hiding behind laws that are intended to protect taxpayers‘ privacy (not IRS employees’ privacy, at least in theory). After losing that argument, the government lawyers tried again, arguing that for the sake of taxpayer privacy (of course), the government’s own lawyers are not even allowed to review the files in question and determine which IRS employees were involved. When a judge patiently explained that this was not actually the case,…
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