[From article]
It’s been a very bad week for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) – which translates into a very bad week for the American people.
First, it was revealed the IRS failed to implement critical upgrades to its computer systems which made it much easier for Russian hackers to steal information from more than 100,000 taxpayers. Then, if Russian hackers weren’t enough, an IRS employee in Missouri pleaded guilty to stealing more than $325,000 by filing fraudulent tax returns – stealing the identities of American taxpayers.
Now, we learn that as Congress began its investigation into the unlawful scheme targeting conservative and Tea Party groups the IRS used “hundreds of attorneys” to hide critical information from Congress.
According to new bombshell testimony, the IRS set up a previously unknown “special project team” comprised of “hundreds of attorneys,” including the IRS Chief Counsel (one of only two politically appointed positions at the IRS).
The IRS’s director of privacy, governmental liaison, and disclosure division, Mary Howard, testified that soon after the IRS targeting scandal was revealed, the IRS “amassed hundreds of attorneys to go through the documents [requested by Congress] and redact them.” She told Congress that once the “special project team” was created and operational, she never saw requests for information.
Members of Congress have long complained that many of the documents produced by the IRS have been “redacted to the point of absurdity.” Now we know why.
Her testimony is clear: As soon as the IRS targeting scandal broke, the IRS set up a special team of hundreds of attorneys, including President Obama’s political head of the Chief Counsel’s office, to keep requests for publicly available information away from the person who would normally review those documents and turn them over to Congress and the public. That “special” team then overly redacted, delayed, and determined which documents it wanted Congress to see.
After setting up a special “group” to target and delay applications by Tea Party groups for tax-exempt status, the IRS set up a new “special project team” to delay and redact information from Congress about that targeting. Talk about a cover-up.
When asked about these revelations and the ongoing investigation by Congress into the IRS and former top IRS official Lois Lerner’s involvement, Howard testified, “I think that Lois Lerner was the tip of the iceberg.”
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/06/04/more-irs-outrage-agency-used-hundreds-lawyers-to-hide-information-from-congress.html
More IRS outrage: Agency used 'hundreds of lawyers' to hide information from Congress
By Jay Sekulow
Published June 04, 2015
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