The other IRS case
You may have heard that the IRS was fined $50,000 for improperly releasing to the left the names of donors to a pro-traditional-marriage group called NOM in 2012, material that ended up being published and used in the 2012 election.
Sounds like a victory over the IRS, doesn’t it? If you think that, think again. This case shows how hard it is to prove anything against the IRS, and what techniques the IRS and the Obama administration’s DOJ will use to defend the IRS.
The law in this case allows harsh penalties:
Unauthorized disclosure of confidential tax information is a felony offense that can result in five years in prison, but the Department of Justice did not bring criminal charges.
So forget criminal charges, which would be the only thing that could deter such actions in the future.
And why would the IRS care about paying the plaintiffs a piddly $50K for actual rather than punitive damages? That’s chump change to the IRS—and what’s more, unless there’s something I’m not yet aware of, it seems to me that it is actually you and me, the taxpayers, who pay the IRS’s bills. What other money does the IRS have? Why should we pay any penalties whatsoever for IRS mistakes, whether they be intentional crimes or unintentional violations? Such a remedy for this offense is absurd and downright Orwellian.
In addition, the plaintiffs in a case such as NOM’s are required to prove actual intent rather inadvertent release of the confidential taxpayer information. In the NOM case, it appears that an IRS worker released information about NOM’s membership in response to a request by a gay activist named Meisel (such requests are legal, but the information concerning donor names is supposed to be redacted by the IRS and wasn’t). The information was then widely published by the left and used to campaign against Romney. At issue in the suit was who at the IRS sent Meisel the information, and whether that person’s failure to redact was an error or deliberate:
The IRS admitted that a staffer had improperly disclosed an unredacted copy of the tax information, but a federal district court judge dismissed most of NOM’s case earlier this month. Judge James Cacheris of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia said in a June 3 opinion that NOM offered no evidence that the information was willfully disclosed or the result of gross negligence, and thus the organization could not recover punitive damages.
One thing that made it difficult if not impossible to prove willfulness was the fact that Meisel took the Fifth:
Testifying under oath in a deposition as part of the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Meisel invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself and declined to disclose the identity of his “conduit.”
To get at that fact, Eastman said, the National Organization for Marriage has asked Attorney General Eric Holder to grant immunity from prosecution to Meisel.
Do not—I repeat, do not—sit on a hot stove waiting for that to happen.
So we see how it goes: tell the plaintiffs they must prove malicious intent on the part of the IRS without access to the ability to find out the relevant facts they would need to prove it, take the Fifth, have the DOJ refuse to do anything about it, and voila! Mission accomplished.
I’m curious, too whether that IRS worker kept a record of the transaction, and if that record was swallowed by a timely computer crash. I predict that we’ll never know.
If the GOP ever regains control of both congress and the presidency. the first thing it should do is outlaw any and all public employee unions. Then, they should drastically revamp the Civil Service laws to make it as easy to fire a public employee as it is to fire a (non-union) private sector employee in a right to work state.
The concentration of power in the executive branch of government has has gone way too far; I don’t think it’s any exaggeration to say that it’s become an existential threat to the country.
Neo,
Don’t be so cynical. Meisel;s emails have been lost, but you know how unreliable the IRS computers are.
“I don’t think it’s any exaggeration to say that it’s become an existential threat to the country.”
DC has always been a threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now, under the messiah gangsters, the gloves are off and their smidgen of corruption is in plain sight for any willing to open their eyes.
It’s hard to prove gross negligence. If it were not, the number of frivolous lawsuits would be even higher.
At the same time, an honest DOJ would investigate for criminal behavior. This DOJ places the protection of the administration above the protection of the citizens.
This reminds me of the shenanigans that go on at the EPA: an enviro group sues for action X, and the administration instead of fighting the (specious) suit, settles.
Action X becomes government policy.
So the IRS settles for the laughable sum of $50,000 and now, because the case is settled, nobody else can sue. How convenient.
A further hypothetical application:
Obama doesn’t want to pardon Lerner because it might be politically harmful to the party, so he has DoJ prosecute.
Holder reaches an “agreement” with Lerner’s lawyers, and she receives a laughably short sentence.
The case is closed. No avenue for further prosecution.
The only big “if” in this scenario is that Obama wouldn’t be audacious enough to just pardon the perps.
I bet THAT IRS employee got as bonus!
Per iowahawk –
“Apparently, the leading cause of hard drive failures is subpoenas.”
The Left has always had strategic assets like the iRS. People are merely waking up to it now that they are being deployed. They shouldn’t consider themselves perceptive for seeing it. Only if you saw it years before 2008 or 2012 at least.