If there is a case study which perhaps best describes why Judicial Watch is so important and how we are different from any other organization, it is the record of success we have achieved in exposing the Obama Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scandal, in which that powerful federal agency was used to target and harass conservative organizations.
And that success continued this week in federal court, before U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, who held a hearing about the supposedly missing emails of Lois Lerner and other IRS officials, which were the subject of longstanding Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and a lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. IRS(No. 1:13-cv–1559)).The emails Judicial Watch has sought since May 2013 cover portions of the same period for which the IRS on June 13, 2014, notified the House Committee on Ways and Means were lost or destroyed. Yet the IRS failed to notify either Judicial Watch or the court concerning the “lost” emails.
You’ll be pleased to know that Judge Sullivan, like Judicial Watch, demanded answers and accountability. The lawyer for the IRS, Geoffrey Klimas, suggested that it would be “appropriate” to wait until its own investigation by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) concluded before Judicial Watch or the court get any answers through discovery. Judge Sullivan was skeptical (you can review the hearing transcript here):
THE COURT: More appropriate for whom, though, for the department or the public? I mean, this is an action filed by an organization that seeks documents under the theory that the public likes to know what its government is doing, so appropriate for whom? How would delaying discovery assist this plaintiff [Judicial Watch] and the public in learning what happened here?
MR. KLIMAS: I would submit that letting the Inspector General conclude his investigation serves the public interest. The Inspector General is –
THE COURT: First of all, we don’t know who this Inspector General is; secondly, we don’t know whether his or her report is going to be public, right, right?
MR. KLIMAS: That’s correct.
THE COURT: So what’s — so let’s just stop there. Whose interest does that benefit, other than the IRS and not the public?
Judge Sullivan was not persuaded and demanded answers, under oath, from the IRS within 30 days. Here’s a squib from his court order, which you can read in its entirety here: “For the reasons stated by the Court on the record during the status hearing on July 10, 2014, Defendant IRS is hereby ORDERED to file a sworn Declaration, by an official with the authority to speak under oath for the Agency, by no later than August 11, 2014.”




















