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Did the IRS Manipulate the 2020 Election?

By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | September 9, 2024

Hunter Biden pled guilty on Thursday to a barrage of federal tax crimes. But will the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department ever plead guilty to stealing the 2020 election for Joe Biden?

In 2023, the IRS assessed 18,599,109 penalties on individuals who allegedly underpaid or failed to pay federal income taxes. How did the IRS miss Hunter Biden for so long?

In 2021, the Biden administration sought to compel banks to report to the IRS any bank account with more than $600 in transactions per year. But the feds effectively disregarded multimillion dollar windfalls pouring into Hunter’s coffers from around the globe.

Hunter is a tax dodger straight out of IRS Central Casting. Between 2014 and 2019, he pocketed more than $8 million from shady foreign sources, triggering a bushel of Treasury Department Suspicious Activity Reports. Hunter failed to pay more than $1 million in taxes and was slapped by a tax lien of $112,805 for his 2015 taxes. The IRS even threatened to cancel his passport, but no criminal charges were filed.

The IRS began formally investigating Hunter in 2018; by January 2020, a team of a dozen IRS employees were working on his case. The Justice Department failed to file any charges before the statute of limitation expired on Hunter’s 2014 and 2015 tax violations.

IRS investigators vigorously pushed to search part of Joe Biden’s Delaware estate prior to the 2020 election. On September 3, 2020, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf agreed with Gary Shapley, an IRS supervisory special agent, that there was “more than enough probable cause for the physical search warrant” and “a lot of evidence in our investigation would be found in the guest house of former Vice President Biden.” Wolf reportedly told Shapley that U.S. Attorney David Weiss “agreed that probable cause had been achieved.” But Wolf declared that “optics were a driving factor in the decision [not] to execute a search warrant,” according to Shapley.

Like the “optics” Team Biden unleashed when they sent heavily-armed FBI agents to raid Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in August 2022 to choreograph government documents for photographers? The FBI recently admitted that the documents they seized were arranged prior for a publicity shot. There has been scant media criticism of the Biden White House for seeking to destroy the president’s political opponent with high profile tactics that did better on CNN than in federal court.

IRS investigators were kept out of an October 2020 Justice Department briefing on an alleged “criminal bribery scheme” investigation on Joe Biden and his family. This severely limited the potential political damage to the presidential frontrunner at that time. A female FBI supervisor stated in a congressional interview last year that the Justice Department used the 2022 midterm election as a pretext to delay further action on Hunter’s tax case. CNBC reported in April 2023 that the IRS reportedly “finished its investigation more than a year ago,” but no charges were filed.

The IRS’s Shapley filed a whistleblower complaint in April last year asserting that the investigation of Hunter Biden’s tax violations was being blocked by “preferential treatment and politics.” In May last year, a special agent in the IRS’s international tax and financial crimes group who had spent five years investigating Hunter Biden also filed a whistleblower complaint on the Biden case. The IRS responded with accusations of criminal conduct and warnings to other agents in an apparent attempt to intimidate into silence anyone who might raise similar concerns,” according to Mark Lytle and Tristian Leavitt, Shapley’s lawyers.

After two IRS officials formally became whistleblowers, the Justice Department dismissed the entire IRS team from the Hunter investigation, potentially crippling the ability to pursue Hunter’s million-dollar plus tax violations.

The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee reported last year that IRS investigators were met with a “‘Delay, Divulge, and Deny’ campaign that ultimately shielded the president’s son by allowing the statute of limitations to expire on several tax crimes for…when Joe Biden was the Vice President.” Attorneys for Hunter Biden were tipped off ahead of time about searches, resulting in the removal or destruction of evidence. “Prosecutors instructed investigators not to ask witnesses questions about Joe Biden or references to the ‘big guy,’” the congressional committee noted.

An FBI agent was interviewed last year by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee investigators regarding the potential coverup. The interview transcript confirms official skullduggery. Just the News website excerpted the transcript of the questioning:

“In September of 2021, are you aware that Lesley Wolf emailed Gary Shapley stating, ‘I do not think you are going to be able to do these interviews as planned,’ adding that they would require approval from DOJ Tax Division. ‘Are you aware of that?’ the FBI agent was asked at one point.

“At another point, the FBI agent was asked: ‘Are you aware in October of 2021 Lesley Wolf emailed Gary Shapley and the investigative team that ‘It will get us into hot water if we interview the President’s grandchildren’?”

In July 2023, the Justice Department sought to close Hunter’s case with a wrist-slap plea for tax misdemeanors. But federal judge  Maryellen Noreika did not agree that ‘there is nothing to see here, move along.’ She asked lawyers a few questions about the blanket immunity that prosecutors provided for Hunter’s other possible crimes and the deal collapsed. Hunter missed his chance to win the Emmy Award for Best Tear-Jerking Performance on Courthouse Steps by a Media Darling. The Washington Post reported that Hunter had written “a statement about his desire to close a difficult chapter in his life, and was planning to read it to news cameras outside the courthouse after entering his plea” at the federal courthouse in Delaware.

Attorney General Merrick Garland claimed that David Weiss, the Special Counsel he appointed to investigate Hunter’s alleged crimes, had independent authority to file charges as he pleased. But it was later revealed that Weiss’ charging ability was severely restricted outside of Delaware and by Justice Department tax attorneys. Curtailing Weiss’ ability to prosecute the case enabled President Biden to continue scoffing at reporters who ask about kickback allegations: “Where’s the money?”

Biden won the 2020 election by a margin of 43,000 votes in three swing states because far more Americans considered Biden “honest and trustworthy” than Trump (52% vs. 40% according to a Gallup poll in October 2020). But Biden’s honesty was always a mirage created by a craven media and federal coverups. Biden campaigning as “Mr. Clean” was as absurd as if Bill Clinton had campaigned as the Chastity Kid, or Donald Trump campaigning as Humility Incarnate.

In the final debate with Trump before the election, Joe Biden proclaimed that “my son has not made money” from China. But while he was vice president, Biden took Hunter with him to Beijing in 2013 to help his boy snare sweetheart deals.

Any tax indictment of Hunter or criminal search of Joe Biden’s Delaware home prior to Election Day 2020 would have shattered Biden’s moral pretenses. And once his Teflon shield vanished, the New York Post’s revelations of Hunter’s laptop would have done far more damage to Uncle Joe.

At the least, a federal search of Biden’s home shortly before the 2020 election could have had the same blunderbuss effect as the October 2016 FBI re-opening of its investigation into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s email crimes.

Hunter’s guilty plea may have been a subsidy for the Kamala Harris presidential campaign. Pleading guilty before the trial got rolling will prevent a deluge of potentially riveting evidence of Biden family corruption and official coverups. Instead, Team Biden and the Harris campaign is hoping for a single news cycle of bad publicity.

The rigging of the Hunter Biden IRS investigation is no surprise to anyone familiar with the agency’s history. As author David Burnham wrote in his 1990 masterpiece A Law Unto Itself: The IRS and the Abuse of Power, “In almost every administration since the IRS’s inception the information and power of the tax agency have been mobilized for explicitly political purposes.” Burnham noted, “The reality that so many are somehow in violation of a supremely murky law gives the agency and the individual agent an astonishingly free hand to pick and choose their targets.” This arbitrary power can be compounded when the feds choose to ignore or overlook brazen tax offenses by the politically connected.

A pardon for Hunter is as certain as Joe Biden’s next verbal hairball. But will federal agencies have the decency to drop the “equal justice” hokum and admit that “optics” trumps fair play almost every time?   

September 9, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

Clinton Foundation Whistleblowers Have Chance to Bust IRS & Expose Hillary’s ‘Pay-to-Play’

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 08.06.2023

Clinton Foundation whistleblowers are due to provide new information to the US Tax Court concerning the IRS’ apparent unwillingness to investigate Bill and Hillary Clinton’s charity. The IRS, FBI, and DoJ have already been under the spotlight over their apparent “preferential treatment” of Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

The Hunter Biden IRS whistleblower case has largely eclipsed another Tax Court development that could have serious consequences for US dynastic political families. Late last month, US Tax Court Judge David Gustafson reinvigorated a years-long whistleblower case concerning the Clinton Foundation, a charity run by Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Two forensic investigators-turned-whistleblowers, John Moynihan and Larry Doyle, filed a lawsuit over the IRS’ apparent unwillingness to look into the charity’s alleged misdeeds.

Despite the IRS commissioner repeatedly trying to trash the case, the judge rejected the agency’s latest motion to dismiss and asked for new arguments by June 30, 2023.

What’s in the Clinton Foundation Whistleblower Case?

The story of the years-long case goes back to August 2017, when Doyle and Moynihan first submitted a whistleblower complaint with the IRS accusing the Clinton Foundation of tax crimes. However, in November 2018 they received a preliminary denial from the revenue service.

Nonetheless, the whistleblowers did not give up. On December 13, 2018, Doyle and Moynihan testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, suggesting that the Clinton Foundation owes the US government between $400 million and $2.5 billion in taxes. According to the forensic investigators, the charity does not operate as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, but acts as nothing short of a foreign agent.

“As such, the foundation should’ve registered under FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act). Ultimately, the foundation and its auditors conceded in formal submissions that it did operate as a (foreign) agent, therefore the foundation is not entitled to its 501c3 tax-exempt privileges as outlined in IRS 170 (c)2,” Moynihan stated at the time.

The two whistleblowers told US lawmakers that they had collected approximately 100 exhibits in excess of 6,000 pages, expressing bewilderment at the IRS’ hesitation to investigate the Clinton Foundation case.

Tax Court Judge Busted IRS

Having received the final denial from the IRS to look into the issue in February 2019, Doyle and Moynihan filed a lawsuit with the US Tax Court.

On October 8, 2020 they scored their first victory: Tax Court Judge Gustafson ruled that the IRS’ Whistleblower Office (WBO) had “abused its discretion” in trying to dismiss “specific credible documentation” put forward by Doyle and Moynihan, thereby allowing the case against the Clintons’ charities to proceed.

The judge also raised concerns over the IRS’ handling of the case and detailed mistakes in the filing of specific forms by the IRS Criminal Investigation (CI) division and omissions in its conclusions concerning the Clinton Foundation whistleblowers’ complaint. Judging from the division’s documentation, it remained unclear whether the IRS had used the information provided by the whistleblowers in any investigation into the charity. The judge noted, however, that he had reasons to believe that the IRS had engaged in some investigative activity concerning the Clinton charity in coordination with the FBI.

“Prompted by petitioners’ [Doyle and Moynihan] allegations – explicit and detailed, with names, dates, and locations – the WBO’s email put a single direct question to CI: ‘Can you please confirm that IRS CI is not working with these [whistleblowers] on any investigation with these [target] entities?’ CI’s reply was a non-answer that looks like it may have been a deliberate evasion: ‘The claim was appropriately declined by criminal investigation.’ But was CI ‘working with’ petitioners or not? CI did not say,” Gustafson wrote at the time.

Besides this, in 2018 the CI “had to be asked three times to complete its Form 11369 for this case, giving ‘unacceptable’ responses to the WBO and grousing that it’s ‘somebody else’s job,'” the judge pointed out.

In April 2021, Tax Court Judge Gustafson suggested in his new ruling that the IRS Whistleblower Office had been withholding important information concerning the case: “The [IRS] Whistleblower Office must further investigate to determine whether CI proceeded with an investigation based on petitioners’ information and collected proceeds… It seems clear we should remand the case to the WO so that it can explore this gap,” the judge stated.

Durham Report Sheds New Light on Clinton Foundation Probes

Meanwhile, on October 26, 2021, Moynihan and Doyle announced that they had been approached and interviewed by Special Counsel John Durham, who at the time was investigating the origins and handling of the Trump-Russia probe.

Earlier, on September 24, 2021, The New York Times broke a story that the special counsel had sought information about the FBI’s Clinton Foundation inquiry within the framework of his probe, which was launched in 2019.

Later, in May 2023, Special Counsel Durham revealed in his 306-page final report that the FBI’s Washington, New York, and Little Rock, Ark., field offices had at least four ongoing probes into the Bill and Hillary Clinton charity’s apparent “pay-to-play” schemes during the 2016 election cycle. Still, all four investigations were abruptly closed prior to the 2016 Election Day, with Hillary running as the Democratic presidential nominee.

Durham particularly pointed out that senior FBI and Justice Department officials engaged in slowing down and closing the aforementioned investigations. “Both senior FBI and department officials placed restrictions on how those matters were to be handled such that essentially no investigative activities occurred for months,” the special counsel emphasized.

Durham Report and Hunter Biden IRS Whistleblower Case May Help

Judge Gustafson’s May 30 ruling gives an opportunity to Doyle and Moynihan to incorporate Durham’s allegations in their forthcoming court filings, which they should submit no later than June 30, as per Just the News, a US independent media outlet founded by award-winning investigative journalist John Solomon.

In addition, a specific recent ruling in a Tax Court case titled Berenblatt vs. IRS Commission could also come in handy for the Clinton Foundation whistleblowers, the media outlet noted.

“Whistleblowers may be granted limited discovery if they make a significant showing that there is material in the IRS’s possession indicative of bad faith on the IRS’s part in connection with the case or of an incomplete administrative record compiled by the IRS,” the ruling stated concerning the Berenblatt vs. IRS Commission.

The IRS’ lax handling of the Doyle and Moynihan complaint, as well as the agency’s ambiguous conduct and apparent unwillingness to look into the Clinton Foundation appear especially suspicious in light of the FBI’s closure of a whopping four probes into the charity.

Previously, similarly controversial behavior by IRS, FBI, and DoJ officials was exposed by Hunter Biden IRS whistleblowers.

On May 26, 2023, IRS supervisory criminal investigator Gary Shapley appeared before the US House Ways and Means Committee and provided seven bombshell documents totaling 23 pages to confirm his claims regarding the apparent “preferential treatment” of Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden. The documents presented by the agent indicated that starting from at least 2020, DoJ officials made repeated attempts to thwart his investigation.

Shapley blew the whistle in April. After that, the IRS veteran and his 12 subordinates were expelled from the probe at the request of the DoJ. What’s more, one of Shapley’s subordinates, who asked his seniors about the rationale behind booting the team out, was threatened and silenced by IRS officials.

What Will Happen to Clinton Foundation if Doyle and Moynihan Win?

Wall Street analyst and investigative journalist Charles Ortel has been conducting a separate private investigation into the Clinton Foundation for the last several years. Ortel is an old hand in exposing potential financial fraud: he was the first to raise a red flag about General Electric (GE) shortly before the company’s stock crashed in 2008.
In an interviews with Sputnik, the Wall Street analyst repeatedly drew attention to the FBI, DoJ, and IRS’ failures to see obvious discrepancies in the Clinton Foundation’s operations and financial documentation. Per Ortel, the charity’s case remains the largest unprosecuted fraud ever.

Separately, the analyst referred to the US mainstream media’s unwillingness to touch upon the matter, too. The US mainstream press either silences or ridicules attempts to investigate the Clinton Foundation’s apparent “pay-to-play” schemes much in the same vein as it tried to trash the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” story.

“The judge [Gustafson] and his staff likely have extensive evidence indicating that the entity originally known as ‘The William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation’ and subsequently operating under many other names is not validly authorized by the IRS or by any other government to conduct charitable activities as a nonprofit organization,” Ortel told Sputnik.

“Nonetheless, Bill Clinton and his associates have solicited more than $2 billion in the guise of charity but have failed to account for its financial results in the manner required by applicable laws and regulations.”

“Because Bill Clinton also is active politically and pursuing personal profit, there is great suspicion that the Clinton Foundation Charity Network is the core of an illegal conspiracy where donors seeking political favors from Clinton and his globalist allies exchange contributions for favors inside America and around the world. The Clinton approach and past failures by many governments to purge charity fraud and political corruption from the system likely inspired the Biden family to follow the Clinton script. Who knows how many other politicians will milk supposed charities for personal and political gain?” the Wall Street analyst pointed out.

If Doyle and Moynihan win their case in the US Tax Court and subsequent IRS/FBI investigations into the Clinton Foundation are conducted in good faith, it is likely that the alleged fraud and pay-to-play schemes would be proven, according to the analyst.

He believes that the Clinton Foundation should be placed in conservatorship and run by a nonpartisan group of Trustees, who would then be charged with constructing accurate records from October 23, 1997 to present.

“This course may not be possible because there are major defects in the known public record calling into question whether ‘The William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation’ actually existed after April 25, 2005 when Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws were defectively amended,” Ortel continued. “In a worst case scenario for the Clinton family and for ‘Trustees,’ all ‘revenues’ of ‘The Clinton Foundation’ would become taxable personal income to the co-conspirators while some expenses might be tax deductible. On top of this financial burden, fines and penalties and interest might also be assessed.”

“Not only should the FBI investigate the Clinton Foundation fraud conspiracy, but appropriate government authorities must investigate why current and former presidents who illegally abuse public charities are insulated and protected from prosecution and then discipline all bad actors involved forcefully and publicly,” the Wall Street analyst concluded.

June 9, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

Authorities Should Look Into Biden Family Corruption Instead of Hunter’s Tax Shenanigans

By Andrei Dergalin – Sputnik – 27.05.2023

As new revelations about the IRS probe into Hunter Biden’s tax affairs are being brought forth, a former US state senator suggests that the Department of Justice and the FBI should probably focus their attention on more serious matters related to the US president’s family.

An IRS whistleblower named Gary Shapley dropped a bombshell this week related to a tax probe into the shady affairs of Hunter Biden, son of US President Joe Biden.

Shapley, who supervised Hunter’s tax probe since January 2020, has alleged he discovered signs of the investigation being “slow-walked” prior to him taking over, and that the Department of Justice tried to interfere with and thwart his probe.

Commenting on this development, former Colorado State Senator Ted Harvey told Sputnik that Shapley’s surprise about how long the investigation has been taking likely stems from the fact that the latter has never previously worked on a case involving a president’s son or an “elite Democrat operative.”

“Everybody that’s part of the Democrat machine never has their day in court because the machine protects them. And this shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody,” he explained while speaking on Sputnik’s Fault Lines podcast.

Harvey did note, however, that he would rather have the FBI look into the “actual criminal behavior of the Biden family” and into how said family allegedly put the US national security at risk, adding that, he does not particularly care about “any tax evasion from the president’s son.”

“I want the FBI and the Justice Department to look into the real issues with the Biden family and the corruption that we’ve seen there,” he added.

Meanwhile, Steve Gill, attorney and CEO of Gill Media, observed that while mainstream American media used to like whistleblowers, that same media now appears rather critical of them due to the media’s job essentially being to “protect the Biden family at all costs.”

He also pointed to allegations of foreign governments “dishing millions of dollars to the grandchildren of Joe Biden,” telling Sputnik’s Final Countdown podcast that it would be interesting to find out “exactly what these under-age grandchildren were doing to generate income from foreign governments.”

May 27, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , , | 1 Comment

IRS Opened Investigation Into Journalist Matt Taibbi On Christmas Eve, Following Government Censorship Reporting

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | May 25, 2023

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) examined independent journalist Matt Taibbi’s 2018 tax returns on December 24, 2022, which was a Saturday and Christmas Eve. It was soon after Taibbi published the first batch of Twitter Files, internal Twitter documents exposing how federal government agencies pressured Twitter to censor content.

The timing raised eyebrows and many believed it to be an act of retaliation for sounding the alarm on government-backed censorship.

The House Judiciary Committee obtained the details after the IRS was criticized for visiting Taibbi’s home in March about the tax filing, on the same day the journalist testified before Congress about the Twitter Files.

In a letter to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel, chair of the Judiciary Committee Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said the documents the agency provided “raise more questions than they answer.”

The IRS defended the review by saying it was trying to determine that Taibbi was not the victim of identity fraud. It further claimed that in 2019, it wrote to Taibbi to explain that there was a discrepancy in his 2018 tax return. However, the documents obtained by the committee show that the IRS opened a review of the tax return on Christmas Eve last year.

Additionally, Taibbi did not owe the IRS. In fact, he was owed a refund, according to the documents obtained by the Committee.

“The IRS asserted to the Committee that it sent a letter to Mr. Taibbi on October 24, 2019 — nine days after Mr. Taibbi filed his 2018 tax return — asking Mr. Taibbi to verify his return because it met identity theft criteria and could not be processed until he confirmed,” Jordan wrote.

“The IRS alleged that it sent a second letter to Mr. Taibbi on March 23, 2020.

“However, according to Mr. Taibbi, neither he nor his accountant received either of these letters or any other notification that there was an issue with his 2018 tax return — that is until the IRS conducted a field visit at Mr. Taibbi’s home three years later.

“The IRS also failed to produce these purported letters to the Committee.”

Jordan added: “The IRS’s production shows that the IRS opened its examination of Mr. Taibbi’s 2018 tax return on December 24, 2022. Not only was this date Christmas Eve and a Saturday, but it also happened to be three weeks after he published the first Twitter Files detailing government abuses and the same day that Mr. Taibbi published the ninth segment of the Twitter Files, detailing how federal government agencies ‘from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA’ coordinated to censor and coerce speech on various social media platforms.”

In March, Taibbi said that an IRS agent visited his home in New Jersey and left a note telling him to contact the agency.

May 25, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Why Clinton Foundation Whistleblowers’ Case Against IRS May Cause US Political Dynasties to Shiver

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – February 12, 2020

While the mainstream media in the US was preoccupied with Donald Trump’s impeachment another legal drama has been unfolding since March 2019, namely Lawrence W. Doyle and John F. Moynihan v Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel has explained why the case matters more than the impeachment saga.

Lawrence W. Doyle and John F. Moynihan, both graduates of the Catholic Jesuit College of the Holy Cross and independent expert forensic investigators, came to prominence on 13 December 2018 when they testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the Clinton Foundation’s alleged fraud.

According to them, the charity does not operate as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organisation and has acted as nothing short of a foreign agent “throughout its existence”. Summarising their conclusions the two Jesuit alumni suggested that the Clinton Foundation owes between $400 million and $2.5 billion in taxes and informed US lawmakers that if the IRS refuses to consider their “tax claim” they would appeal to the US Tax Court. According to Zero Hedge, the ongoing litigation is apparently related to this very case.

Multinational Charities “Perfect” Disguise for Money Laundering

Charles Ortel, a Wall Street analyst and investigative journalist who has been conducting a private inquiry into the Clinton Foundation for several years opines that the aforementioned legal case may involve unprosecuted crimes by some “charities” operated by political dynasties and may even put the IRS itself under the microscope.

“I believe that Doyle and Moynihan, like most concerned citizens, want the IRS to enforce charity laws and regulations fairly, without regard to whether a given charity might be linked to a Republican, Democrat, or Independent person,” he says, specifying that the precise claim and details of the legal case in question are unknown since they’re sealed by the court.

According to Ortel, multinational charities have become “perfect” vehicles for disguising money laundering and influence peddling since regulators do not have enough resources to check their revenues and spending scrupulously especially when these non-profits are operating abroad.

“Compounding the above problems is the fact that numerous foreign actors including governments, companies, and individuals are eager to curry favour with sitting or rising politicians who, typically, are also hungry for financial support,” he suggests. “While foreign interests are barred from directly supporting or financing political candidates, they are allowed to ‘contribute’ to charities in which dynastic political families have interests or associations.”

Why IRS & FBI Turns a Blind Eye to Loosely Operated Charities

To illustrate his point Ortel referred to the Clinton Foundation that has repeatedly come under the spotlight being suspected of alleged “pay-to-play” schemes. Echoing Doyle and Moynihan, Ortel believes that the Clinton Foundation cannot be called a “charity” since its operations in the US and abroad go beyond charitable activities. Furthermore it is neither validly organised nor properly audited, he highlights. The Wall Street analyst raises the question as to why the supposed violations have remained unnoticed by the FBI and IRS for over a decade.

Referring to page 432 of the first IG Horowitz Report, Ortel notes that the FBI opened investigations into the Clinton Foundation in January 2016. By July 2016, the IRS too confirmed that they had opened a Clinton Foundation investigation, he points out. However, nothing has been heard since then about the cases.

The Washington Post reported on 10 January that John Huber, the US attorney in Utah, who was appointed by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions in November 2017 to look into the FBI handling of possible corruption at the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s alleged pay-to-play schemes during her tenure as secretary of state, “found nothing worth pursuing.” The media outlet specified, however, that “the assignment has not formally ended and no official notice has been sent to the Justice Department or to lawmakers”, citing knowledgeable sources.

“What I suspect is that bureaucrats and others in the IRS and Department of Justice have been reluctant to press into their investigations because high level current and former politicians and powerful donors, across the political spectrum are likely implicated in trafficking influence through these false-front charities, and others”, Ortel presumes.

US Debt is Soaring While “Charities” Sit on Trillions

The Wall Street analyst explains why financial violations and fraud on the part of charitable organisations are fraught with risks for national economies and societies.

“One hopes that the overwhelming majority of American charities abide by relevant laws”, he says. “This is likely true concerning charities that tackle local, state, or national challenges, but American charities and foreign charities that operate internationally are rife with potential for fraud and corruption.”

He points out that this is particularly true when it comes to disaster relief when “pocketbooks open instantly and large sums swarm” towards various “tax-exempt organisations” often connected to celebrities that say they are going to help.

Ortel bemoans that fact that “afterwards, too frequently as in the case of Haiti, for example, there is no rigorous accounting for the vast sums claimed as donations or expenses”. The Clinton Foundation’s role in fundraising to tackle the consequences of the 2010 Haiti earthquake is still triggering controversy and was addressed by Donald Trump during his 2016 campaign.

“In 2020, America has run up a mountain of government debt and we see little progress in paring back soaring annual government deficits that add to our monstrous debt pile”, the investigative journalist emphasises. “At the same time, loosely regulated charities, some funded by monopolists and near monopolists sit on trillions of dollars of unencumbered assets inside private foundations or public charities.”

According to him, if the IRS and Department of Justice did their best to enforce existing laws and regulations that prohibit certain tax-exempt organisations from enriching themselves “vast sums could be raised to help reverse erosion in [the US] national balance sheet”.

Ortel expresses hope that the effort spearheaded by Doyle and Moynihan will help restore confidence in the administration of justice.

February 12, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

IRS Claims Two Years Of Emails Were Destroyed In A ‘Computer Crash;’ Congressman Asks The NSA To Supply ‘Missing’ Email Metadata

By Tim Cushing | Techdirt | June 16, 2014

The IRS is currently being investigated by Congress for some possibly politically-motivated “attention” it directed towards “Tea Party” and other conservative groups that operated as tax-exempt entities. Along the way, IRS official Lois Lerner, who was the first to publicly disclose the inappropriate targeting, was also one of the first government officials to plead the Fifth (twice) in government hearings.

The Congressional investigation demanded copies of Lois Lerner’s emails from the IRS. Some were turned over to the House Ways and Means Committee, but not everything it sought. Now, the IRS is telling the committee that it’s not going to get everything it asked for.

The IRS has told Congress that it lost more than two years’ worth of emails involving former IRS official Lois Lerner, due to a computer crash.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) on Friday said it was “unacceptable” that he was just learning of this problem now, after a lengthy investigation into Lerner’s involvement in the IRS targeting scandal.

Camp points out that the IRS withheld these emails for over a year before suddenly “discovering” they were unavailable. The IRS says it can find everything Lerner sent to and received from other IRS employees but nothing containing correspondence with those outside the agency.

Obviously, this convenient “computer crash” has generated a lot of skepticism. For one thing, a “computer crash” doesn’t really have the power to destroy electronic communications. Email is almost always stored somewhere else other than the local user’s computer. And even if the IRS meant a “server crash” instead of a “computer crash,” any decent server system contains multiple levels of redundancy.

The Blaze sought input from Norman Cillo, a former Microsoft project manager, who presented six reasons why he believes the IRS is lying about its inability to recover these emails. Number one on the list seems to be the most applicable.

I believe the government uses Microsoft Exchange for their email servers. They have built-in exchange mail database redundancy. So, unless they did not follow Microsoft’s recommendations they are telling a falsehood.

The IRS’s own policies on email state that its employees use both Microsoft Outlook and Exchange, which means it should have some form of backup available.

Secure Messaging enrollment is an automated process for all LAN accounts with an Exchange mailbox in IRS. You can find the instructions for configuring the Outlook client to use the certificates at the Secure Enterprise Messaging Systems (SEMS) web site: http://documentation.sems.enterprise.irs.gov/.

According to Cillo, the only other explanation for the IRS’s inability to recover these emails is that the agency is “totally mismanaged and has the worst IT department ever.” Unfortunately, the government seems to have a lot of mismanaged and terrible IT departments, so this may be closer to the truth than anyone would really like to admit. Perhaps the general ineptitude of large government agencies is behind the Treasury Department’s policy that all email sent to or from IRS employees be “archived” via hard copy printouts.

If you create or receive email messages during the course of your daily work, you are responsible for ensuring that you manage them properly. The Treasury Department’s current email policy requires emails and attachments that meet the definition of a federal record be added to the organization’s files by printing them (including the essential transmission data) and filing them with related paper records. If transmission and receipt data are not printed by the email system, annotate the paper copy.

There’s more information here, citing the IRS’s own internal guidelines on tape backups, etc., that suggest further levels of redundancy, as well as the commissioner of the IRS testifying that the agency stores its emails on servers.

Critics believe the IRS has simply “vanished” the crucial emails in order to cut Lerner adrift and make it appear she acted alone. Any evidence that would tie outside government agencies (including the administration itself) into this situation has been deemed unrecoverable. Supposedly, there should be paper copies of the missing emails, but no one in Congress has requested these and the IRS certainly isn’t offering to look.

But one Congressman thinks he has a solution to the missing email dilemma. Steve Stockman (last seen here threatening to bring a defamation lawsuit against someone who uttered true facts about his criminal past) knows some people who have a whole lot of email data just laying around.

“I have asked NSA Director Rogers to send me all metadata his agency has collected on Lois Lerner’s email accounts for the period which the House sought records,” said Stockman. “The metadata will establish who Lerner contacted and when, which helps investigators determine the extent of illegal activity by the IRS.”

Yeah, let me know how that works out for you, Steve. The NSA can’t even confirm or deny its monthly water usage at its Utah data site, much less that it has metadata pertaining to Americans’ communications.

[Sidebar: I do really love the fact that this sort of thing is becoming increasingly common — the use of the NSA as the backup-of-last-resort for phone/email/internet communications data. If anyone claims it can’t find email X or phone record Y, someone’s going to say, “Hey, I’ll bet the NSA has a copy!” Hilarious. The NSA will never again be allowed to pretend it doesn’t harvest data on American citizens.]

The whole letter, which begins with some light ass-kissing of new NSA director Michael Rogers (“thank you for your 33 years of, and continued service to, our country...”) and closes with a bit of grandstanding, surreally asking “the Agency” to send all relevant metadata on the missing Lerner emails to “Donny@mail.house.gov.” All in all, probably one of the most incongruous demands the NSA has ever received, a letter which conjures up the image of a late-night meeting in an underground parking garage, with sunglassed NSA liaisons handing over a briefcase full of metadata to a 19-year-old intern dressed in his dad’s suit.

It’s pretty hard to shake the impression that this is a coverup. As always, the specter of pure ineptitude lurks in the background, as it often does when large bureaucracies tangle with technology. But until the IRS presents further evidence detailing how exactly these emails went missing, it’s safe to assume there’s been an active effort made to cover up government impropriety.

June 16, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

IRS chief defends targeting of groups as ‘obnoxious,’ not illegal

By Bernie Becker and Peter Schroeder – The Hill – 05/17/13

Acting IRS chief Steven Miller on Friday said he did not believe agency officials did anything illegal when giving extra scrutiny to conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

Miller, who was forced to resign this week by President Obama, said he didn’t believe the scrutiny was illegal even as he apologized for the IRS’s actions, which have turned into a political storm for the White House.

He also admitted under questioning from House Ways and Means Committee members that facts could emerge that might change whether he thinks anyone in the agency committed a crime, and he said one staffer involved in the extra scrutiny was reassigned and another received counseling.

Facing tense, and at times hostile, questions from GOP lawmakers at the first congressional hearing on the IRS controversy, Miller said the screening process the IRS used was “obnoxious” and called the customer service the agency offered “horrible.”

Miller stressed that the extra attention happened because IRS officials faced an avalanche of applications for tax-exempt status.

But he also pushed back on GOP lawmakers who said the IRS was targeting conservatives, calling that a “loaded” statement.

“When you talk about targeting, that’s a pejorative term,” Miller said.

Asked if the IRS’s actions had been illegal, he responded: “I don’t believe it is.”

He then added of the behavior: “I don’t believe it should happen.”

Miller’s answers did not sit well with GOP lawmakers throughout Friday’s hearing, and his comments fly in the face of top Republicans like Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who have said that agency staffers should be jailed.

Republicans on Friday accused the acting IRS chief of lying to them about the extra scrutiny given to conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. Miller found out about that special attention more than a year ago but declined to tell lawmakers.

At the start of Friday’s committee hearing, Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) rattled off several different violations he believes the IRS committed.

Camp also linked the IRS uproar to what he called a “culture of cover-ups and political intimidation in this administration,” an apparent reference to last year’s attack in Benghazi, Libya, and the Justice Department’s subpoena of reporter records.

“This systemic abuse cannot be fixed with just one resignation,” Camp said. “And, as much as I expect more people need to go, the reality is this is not a personnel problem. This is a problem of the IRS being too large, too powerful, too intrusive and too abusive of honest, hardworking taxpayers.”

But Republicans on the panel have also expressed frustration throughout the hearing at Miller’s sometimes feisty answers, with the acting chief maintaining that he did not lie to them.

“You’re not going to cooperate with me, Mr. Miller, and you’ve been uncooperative in this hearing,” Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Wash.) told the IRS official.

Democrats acknowledged that the IRS had made serious mistakes and generally agreed with Miller’s statements that agency officials did not target Tea Party and conservative groups for political reasons.

“What I’m trying to point out, and basically to debunk, is the notion or idea the political statements — and, I believe, nonfactual statements by Chairman Camp — to link these scandals to the White House,” said Rep. Joe Crowley (N.Y.), a member of House Democratic leadership.

Democrats also stressed repeatedly that the Doug Shulman, who was IRS commissioner when the targeting took place, was nominated by former President George W. Bush. And several said that the major issue was the cloudy regulations guiding which groups should be granted tax-exempt status.

Miller is testifying along with Russell George, the Treasury inspector general whose report details what he called “ineffective management” at the agency.

George’s report found that the IRS asked for excessive information from conservative groups, including donor lists and whether group leaders wanted to run for public office. The IRS also applied inconsistent principles when deciding which groups to give extra screening, the report said, leading some groups to wait months or years for approval.

According to the inspector general’s report, Lois Lerner, the IRS official who first disclosed the targeting, found out in June 2011. Lerner pushed for the screening guidelines to be changed, but other IRS officials eventually went around her to change them again.

George’s report also says that IRS staffers assert that lower-level employees crafted the screening process and that they were not influenced by any outside group.

Miller on Friday acknowledged that Lerner’s disclosure of the IRS targeting last Friday came from a planted question.

Camp had said in his opening statement that he was interested in hearing why the IRS targeting occurred and why the agency kept it secret for so long, who started the extra scrutiny, and when President Obama and his administration found out.

But in a hearing break, he told The Hill that he wasn’t satisfied with the answers the panel was getting from Miller, a feeling shared by other Republicans.

“On the one hand, you’re arguing today that the IRS is not corrupt,” said Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.). “But the subtext of that is you say, ‘Look, we’re just incompetent.’ And I think it is a perilous pathway to go down.”

May 17, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Decades of Political Tyranny at the IRS

By Karl Grossman | May 16, 2013

President Barack Obama got it right and wrong Monday when he stated, “If you’ve got the IRS operating in anything less than a neutral and nonpartisan way, then that is outrageous, it is contrary to our traditions.”

He was right in declaring it was “outrageous” for the IRS to target conservative organizations for tough tax treatment. But he was incorrect in saying “it is contrary to our traditions.”

For the U.S. Internal Revenue Service has for decades gone after organizations and individuals that take stands in conflict with the federal government at the time. This has been a tradition, an outrageous tradition.

It is exposed in detail by David Burnham, longtime New York Times investigative reporter, in his 1991 book A Law Unto Itself: The IRS and the Abuse of Power. He relates how President Franklin D. Roosevelt likely “set the stage for the use of the tax agency for political purposes by most subsequent presidents.” Burnham writes about how a former U.S. Treasury Secretary, banker Andrew Mellon, was a special IRS target under FDR. During the presidencies of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, he recounts, the focus of the IRS’s efforts “at political control” were civil rights organizations and those against the U.S. engaging in the Vietnam War. Nixon’s “enemies list” and his scheme to use the IRS against those on it is what the current IRS scandal is being most compared.

History Professor John A. Andrew III in his 2002 book Power to Destroy: The Political Uses of the IRS from Kennedy to Nixon—its title drawn from U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall’s  dictum “The power to tax is the power to destroy”—focuses further on this tradition. He tells of how John F. Kennedy administration’s “Ideological Organizations Project” investigated, intimidated and challenged the tax-exempt status of right-wing groups including the John Birch Society. Then, with a turn of the White House to the right with Nixon came investigations, he writes, of such entities as the Jerry Rubin Foundation, the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the Center for Corporate Responsibility.

During the Reagan administration, I had my own experience with the IRS—ostensibly

because of a book I wrote. Nicaragua: America’s New Vietnam? involved reporting from what was then a war zone in Nicaragua and in Florida—where I interviewed leaders of the contras who were working with the CIA to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government—and Honduras, being set up as a tarmac for U.S. intervention in Nicaragua. I visited a U.S. military base there. The book warned against a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua (subsequently decided against by the Reagan White House after the Iran-contra scandal). The book was published in 1985 and soon afterwards I was hit with an IRS audit. It would be more, I was informed, than my showing up at an IRS office. The IRS was to come to my house for a “field audit.”

The investigator sat on one side of our dining room table and on the other side was me and my accountant, Peter Berger of Shelter Island. What would be an all-day event started with the investigator asking me to detail how much my family spent on food each week and then, slowly, methodically, going through other expenses. Then he went through income. He obviously was seeking to determine on this fishing expedition whether income exceeded expenses. He went through receipts for business expenses including restaurant receipts, asking who I ate with. He sorted through receipts for office supplies. By mid-afternoon, he had gotten nowhere. At that point, having been hours together, a somewhat weird relationship had been formed. And he began to tell me how his dream in college was to become a journalist. He expanded on that, and then asked: “Have you ever faced retaliation?”

“What do you think this is?” I responded.

He was taken back—insisting my name had come up “at random.”

In the end, all he did was trim some of what was listed as business use of my home phone.

Was I being retaliated against for the book I had written?  One would never know. Recently, I ran into accountant Berger, now retired, and he commented about how that day at my house was the strangest IRS audit he had ever been involved in.

The IRS has been beyond reform. Burnham writes in A Law Unto Itself: The IRS and the Abuse of Power that a “political imperative of not messing with the IRS” has become “close to being a law of nature almost as unbending as the force of gravity.”  It is “rarely examined by Congress.”

President Obama announced yesterday that the acting commissioner of the IRS was asked and agreed to tender his resignation as a result of the scandal. That’s a small start. Far more important is somehow ending the tradition of IRS political tyranny. Fundamental change in the IRS is called for.

Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College of New York, is the author of the book, The Wrong Stuff: The Space’s Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet. Grossman is an associate of the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).

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May 16, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | 3 Comments

IRS Says It Will Respect 4th Amendment With Regard to Email, But Questions Remain

By Nathan Freed Wessler | ACLU | April 16, 2013

With tax day behind us, taxpayers may soon have something else to celebrate from the IRS. In testimony before the Senate Finance Committee today, IRS Acting Commissioner Steven Miller was questioned aggressively about documents released by the ACLU last week that indicate that the IRS does not think it needs a warrant to read all emails and other electronic communications during criminal investigations. Under pressure from senators, Miller agreed to update IRS policy documents within 30 days to state that a warrant is required for access to all emails, regardless of their age.

Two senators from opposite sides of the aisle, Senator Grassley (R-IA) and Senator Wyden (D-OR), pressed Miller about whether the IRS has sought or obtained emails without a warrant since a federal appeals court ruled in 2010 that a warrant is required for all emails. (You can watch the hearing here. Sen. Grassley’s questions start at 1:25:00 and Sen. Wyden’s questions start at 1:31:10.) They asked why the IRS seems to be ignoring that 2010 decision—United States v. Warshak—in most of the country, and advising its criminal investigative agents that emails stored on a server for more than 180 days can be obtained without a warrant. Surprisingly, Miller answered that the IRS follows Warshak across the country. That’s not what internal IRS documents and its public policy manual show, but if true it is welcome news. Importantly, Miller committed to clarify written IRS policy within 30 days to state that a warrant is always required.

Miller’s testimony leaves several important questions unanswered, however:

  1. Although Miller stated that the IRS Criminal Investigation unit obtains warrants for all emails, he did not discuss other forms of electronic communication such as text messages, instant messages, and direct messages on social media. Under the Fourth Amendment, a warrant should be required for those private communications as well.
  1. Miller stated that, to his knowledge, the IRS has not obtained electronic communications without a warrant in the past. But an internal IRS Chief Counsel Advice memorandum from 2011 reveals that, months after Warshak, IRS investigative agents requested emails from an internet service provider without a warrant at least once. The IRS should explain when it started following Warshak nationally, and whether it has sought or obtained emails without a warrant in the past.

We applaud Senators Grassley and Wyden for quickly taking up this important issue and getting an answer from the IRS, less than a week after the ACLU released the IRS documents. But while the IRS’s apparent change of policy is a step in the right direction, there is more for Congress to do. The current IRS policy manual relies on the outdated Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which only requires a warrant for some emails and other electronic communications. In order to uniformly protect the privacy of Americans’ private communications, lawmakers must update ECPA to require a warrant for the contents of all electronic communications, regardless of age or other factors. Strong reform legislation has been introduced by a bipartisan group of sponsors, and is starting to make its way through the legislative process. Follow this link to urge Congress to modernize our electronic privacy law and close the loophole that’s letting the government access email and other electronic communications without a warrant.

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April 16, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

IRS Plans to Cut Back Auditing of Large Corporations

By Noel Brinkerhoff and Danny Biederman | AllGov | April 11, 2013

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has decided to spend less time auditing multi-million dollar corporations.

Under a new plan revealed to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), the IRS will expend 18% less effort auditing businesses with assets of $10 million or more compared with just two years ago.

The agency also sees itself devoting 14% less time for specialized revenue agents to conduct corporate audits in FY 2013, compared to what was allocated in FY 2011.

There has been less of a drop in the rate of individual taxpayer audits—5.3% in FY 2012, moving to 7% due to an increase in number of filed returns.

TRAC—which obtained the IRS planning document through a Freedom of Information Act request—noted that the reductions were decided upon before sequestration, which could result in the IRS implementing more cuts in the months ahead.

The IRS responded to the release of the TRAC report by pointing out that its budget was cut by $1 billion in 2010, and that its staff was reduced by 7,000 employees in 2011. It insisted that it maintains a fair balance between individual and corporate audits.

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April 11, 2013 Posted by | Economics, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | 1 Comment

New Documents Suggest IRS Reads Emails Without a Warrant

By Nathan Freed Wessler | ACLU | April 10, 2013

Everyone knows the IRS is our nation’s tax collector, but it is also a law enforcement organization tasked with investigating criminal violations of the tax laws. New documents released to the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the IRS Criminal Tax Division has long taken the position that the IRS can read your emails without a warrant—a practice that one appeals court has said violates the Fourth Amendment (and we think most Americans would agree).

Last year, the ACLU sent a FOIA request to the IRS seeking records regarding whether it gets a warrant before reading people’s email, text messages and other private electronic communications. The IRS has now responded by sending us 247 pages of records describing the policies and practices of its criminal investigative arm when seeking the contents of emails and other electronic communications.

So does the IRS always get a warrant? Unfortunately, while the documents we have obtained do not answer this question point blank, they suggest otherwise. This question is too important for the IRS not to be completely forthright with the American public. The IRS should tell the public whether it always gets a warrant to access email and other private communications in the course of criminal investigations. And if the agency does not get a warrant, it should change its policy to always require one.

The IRS and Email: Reading Between the Lines

The federal law that governs law enforcement access to emails, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), is hopelessly outdated. It draws a distinction between email that is stored on an email provider’s server for 180 days or less, and email that is older or has been opened. The former requires a warrant; the latter does not. Luckily, the Fourth Amendment still protects against unreasonable searches by the government. Accordingly, in 2010 the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decided in United States v. Warshak that the government must obtain a probable cause warrant before compelling email providers to turn over messages.

However, the IRS hasn’t told the public whether it is following Warshak everywhere in the country, or only within the Sixth Circuit.

The documents the ACLU obtained make clear that, before Warshak, it was the policy of the IRS to read people’s email without getting a warrant. Not only that, but the IRS believed that the Fourth Amendment did not apply to email at all. A 2009 “Search Warrant Handbook” from the IRS Criminal Tax Division’s Office of Chief Counsel baldly asserts that “the Fourth Amendment does not protect communications held in electronic storage, such as email messages stored on a server, because internet users do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such communications.” Again in 2010, a presentation by the IRS Office of Chief Counsel asserts that the “4th Amendment Does Not Protect Emails Stored on Server” and there is “No Privacy Expectation” in those emails.

Other older documents corroborate that the IRS did not get warrants across the board. For example, the 2009 edition of the Internal Revenue Manual (the official compilation of IRS policies and procedures) explains that “the government may obtain the contents of electronic communication that has been in storage for more than 180 days” without a warrant.

Then came Warshak, decided on December 14, 2010. The key question our FOIA request seeks to answer is whether the IRS’s policy changed after Warshak, which should have put the agency on notice that the Fourth Amendment does in fact protect the contents of emails. The first indication of the IRS’s position, from an email exchange in mid-January 2011, does not bode well. In an email titled “US v. Warshak,” an employee of the IRS Criminal Investigation unit asks two lawyers in the IRS Criminal Tax Division whether Warshak will have any effect on the IRS’s work. A Special Counsel in the Criminal Tax Division replies: “I have not heard anything related to this opinion. We have always taken the position that a warrant is necessary when retrieving e-mails that are less than 180 days old.” But that’s just the ECPA standard. The real question is whether the IRS is obtaining warrants for emails more than 180 days old. Shortly after Warshak, apparently it still was not.

The IRS had an opportunity to officially reconsider its position when it issued edits to the Internal Revenue Manual in March 2011. But its policy stayed the same: the Manual explained that under ECPA, “Investigators can obtain everything in an account except for unopened e-mail or voice mail stored with a provider for 180 days or less using a [relevant-and-material-standard] court order” instead of a warrant. Again, no suggestion that the Fourth Amendment might require more.

The first indication that the IRS was considering the effect of Warshak came in an October 2011 IRS Chief Counsel Advice memorandum available on the IRS website but not provided in response to our FOIA request. An IRS employee sought guidance about whether it is proper to use an administrative summons, instead of a warrant, to obtain emails that are more than 180 days old. (The emails in question were located on an internet service provider’s (ISP) server somewhere in the territory covered by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals). The memo summarized the holding of Warshak and advised that “as a practical matter it would not be sensible” to seek older emails without a warrant. This is good advice, but the memo’s reasoning leaves much to be desired. The memo explained that Warshak applies only in the Sixth Circuit but that, because the ISP had informed the IRS that it did not intend to voluntarily comply with an administrative summons for emails, there was not “any reasonable possibility that the Service will be able to obtain the contents of this customer’s emails . . . without protracted litigation, if at all.” Any investigative leads contained in the emails would therefore be “stale” by the time the litigation could be concluded, making attempted warrantless access not worthwhile.

The memo misses another chance to declare that agents should obtain a warrant for emails because the Fourth Amendment requires it. Instead, the memo’s advice (which may not be used as precedent and is not binding in other IRS criminal investigations) is limited to situations in the Ninth Circuit where an ISP intends to challenge warrantless requests for emails. The IRS shouldn’t obey the Fourth Amendment only when it faces the inconvenience of protracted litigation; it should recognize that the Fourth Amendment requires warrants for the contents of emails at all times.

Finally, to the present: has the IRS’s position changed this tax season? Apparently not. The current version of the Internal Revenue Manual, available on the IRS website, continues to explain that no warrant is required for emails that are stored by an ISP for more than 180 days. Apparently the agency believes nothing of consequence has changed since ECPA was enacted in 1986, or the now-outdated Surveillance Handbook was published in 1994.

The IRS Owes the American Public an Explanation—and a Warrant Requirement

Let’s hope you never end up on the wrong end of an IRS criminal tax investigation. But if you do, you should be able to trust that the IRS will obey the Fourth Amendment when it seeks the contents of your private emails. Until now, that hasn’t been the case. The IRS should let the American public know whether it obtains warrants across the board when accessing people’s email. And even more important, the IRS should formally amend its policies to require its agents to obtain warrants when seeking the contents of emails, without regard to their age.

(We also sent FOIA requests to the FBI and other components of the Department of Justice—we will be receiving records from those offices in the coming weeks).

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April 10, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , | Leave a comment