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The Obama admin. isn't exactly afraid of "republicans."
7/20/13, "DOJ Declines to Prosecute Officials Involved in Tax Record Scandal," Washington Free Beacon, CJ Ciaramella
"Confidential tax records of several political candidates and campaign
donors were improperly accessed by government officials, but
the Justice Department declined to prosecute any of the officials
involved, even in one “willful” violation of the law, an IRS watchdog
reported.
In a July 3 letter
to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), the Treasury inspector general for
tax administration (TIGTA) J. Russell George acknowledged that
government
officials had illegally accessed tax records of candidates
and donors in four instances since 2006.
TIGTA determined that in three of the cases the access was “inadvertent.”
“In the fourth case, we presented evidence of a willful unauthorized
access to the Department of Justice, but the case was declined for prosecution,” George wrote....
As previously reported by the Free Beacon, there have been longstanding questions about possible unauthorized access to tax documents by former White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, Goolsbee, the former chairman of the White House Council of Economic
Advisers, sparked a mini-scandal in 2010 when he told reporters during a
background press briefing that Koch Industries—the company of
libertarian philanthropists Charles and David Koch—paid no income taxes.
Conservative lawmakers and activists said Goolsbee’s statements not
only unfairly singled out the president’s political opponents but also
used confidential IRS documents to do so. TIGTA announced in
response to a letter from six Republican senators it was launching an
investigation into Goolsbee’s comments and whether he violated the law.
However, the report was never released to the senators or the public.
The Washington Examiner obtained
an Aug. 10, 2011, email from Treasury Special Agent Daniel K. Carney,
in which he wrote, “The final report relative to the investigation of
Austan Goolsbee’s press conference remark is completed, has gone through
all the approval processes.”
The Free Beacon filed a FOIA request seeking the report, but TIGTA denied the request, saying it could neither confirm nor deny its existence of the report.
“With regard to your request for documents pertaining to a third
party, TIGTA can neither admit nor deny the existence of responsive
records,” said in
its response. “Your request seeks access to the types of documents for
which there is no public interest that outweighs the privacy interests
established and protected by the FOIA (5 U.S.C. §§ 552(b)(7)(C) and
(b)(6)).”" via Free Republic
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