[EL] IRS Mess

Tue Jan 14 09:01:48 PST 2014

I think she was talking about the DOJ/FBI investigation, headed up, as we have discussed, by Civil Rights Division attorney Barbara Bosserman. From the WSJ article quoted below by Rick: “The Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn’t plan to file criminal charges over the Internal Revenue Service’s heightened scrutiny of conservative groups, according to law-enforcement officials, a move that likely will only intensify debate over the politically charged scandal.” (I suppose it would actually be DOJ that would file charges, if any, but the reference seems to be to the DOJ/FBI investigation.)

Mark S. Scarberry
Professor of Law
Pepperdine Univ. School of Law

From: BZall at aol.com [mailto:BZall at aol.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2014 5:32 AM
To: Scarberry, Mark; law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] IRS Mess

And just to clarify a bit further, I believe Cleta was talking specifically about internal agency investigations (though she can correct me), not the on-going congressional investigations.

Reminds me of the 1990's IRS political targeting of audits scandal, when the large coalition, led by the late, great Bill Lehrfeld, gathered in my conference room at Williams & Jensen and, among other things, discovered that we had all received questionnaires with essentially one question:

"Please send us all material the IRS has in its files about your organization."

We blinked, looked at each other, and responded "Don't YOU have that in your files?"

Barnaby Zall
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In a message dated 1/14/2014 12:13:03 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, Mark.Scarberry at pepperdine.edu<mailto:Mark.Scarberry at pepperdine.edu> writes:
To put Cleta Mitchell's comment in context, I believe she had just said (as quoted in the WSJ story) that none of the investigators had contacted any of her clients, which led her to believe there was no real investigation.

I have no way of knowing whether the investigation is being done in a thorough way, but perhaps a failure to talk to the alleged victims (her clients) might lead a reasonable person to be skeptical.

Mark Scarberry
Pepperdine

Sent from my iPad

On Jan 13, 2014, at 8:25 PM, "Rick Hasen" <rhasen at law.uci.edu<mailto:rhasen at law.uci.edu>> wrote:

...

Quote of the Day: IRS Mess Edition<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=57911>
Posted on January 13, 2014 5:25 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=57911> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

“As far as I can tell, nobody has actually done an investigation. This has been a big, bureaucratic, former-Soviet-Union-type investigation, which means that there was no investigation….This is a deplorable abuse of the public trust, but I am not surprised.”

–Cleta Mitchell, quoted in WSJ’s Criminal Charges Not Expected in IRS Probe<http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303819704579318983271821584>, which begins:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn’t plan to file criminal charges over the Internal Revenue Service’s heightened scrutiny of conservative groups, according to law-enforcement officials, a move that likely will only intensify debate over the politically charged scandal.

The officials said investigators didn’t find the kind of political bias or “enemy hunting” that would amount to a violation of criminal law. Instead, what emerged during the probe was evidence of a mismanaged bureaucracy enforcing rules about tax-exemption applications it didn’t understand, according to the law-enforcement officials.

...

--

Rick Hasen

Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science

UC Irvine School of Law

401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000

Irvine, CA 92697-8000

949.824.3072 - office

949.824.0495 - fax

rhasen at law.uci.edu<mailto:rhasen at law.uci.edu>

http://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/

http://electionlawblog.org<http://electionlawblog.org/>
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