More Bureaucratic Corruption: New Head of IRS Ethics Office Illegally Destroyed Records

By 

Jay Sekulow

|
January 29, 2016

3 min read

Constitution

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The Obama Administration’s IRS continues to become an ever-more-tangled web of bureaucratic blunders and corruption.

The investigative report from The Daily Caller is worth reading in full.  It’s mind-boggling how the revolving door of corruption and ineptitude combines to create an IRS absolutely incapable of self-correction. 

Here’s just a few highlights:

  • “The new head of the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) ethics office [Stephen Whitlock] once oversaw the illegal shredding of documents sought by the federal tax agency’s inspector general (IG), and allegedly retaliated on the colleague he believed snitched on him about it.”
  • “Whitlock’s chief of operations was, until recently, a former tax enforcement agent who attempted to avoid government payments by declaring bankruptcy and who even lost his official sidearm in a bar fight.” That weapon was found in a dead felon’s hands a week later in Prince George’s County, Maryland.
  • “Additionally, in this newly-appointed 7-person leadership team are two of Lois Lerner’s former top deputies, at least one of whom was involved in the targeting of conservative and Tea Party non-profit applicants. Records of those activities also mysteriously disappeared after Congress began investigations in 2013.”

Thousands of taxpayer files shredded days before internal auditors were scheduled to review them.  A revolving door of transfers, hires, and early retirements to avoid accountability.  A bankrupt official with a questionable ethics background teaching an ethics course required after the Lois Lerner-led IRS targeting scandal of conservative groups.

And now, an official who oversaw the shredding of thousands of files is the new head of the IRS ethics office.

I wish I could say this is surprising, but it’s not.

As I reported recently, the IRS continues to unconstitutionally target Americans around the country for their Christian and conservative beliefs.

Enough is enough. The bureaucratic incompetency and corruption must end now. The IRS has clearly shown it cannot clean up its own act.

The only way to protect the American people from this IRS is to abolish it.  Until then, the only way to establish some controls on the IRS is through aggressive outside pressure, legal action, and litigation.

We’ve been doing that at the ACLJ for years, and it’s paying off with numerous victories.  We secured an important victory in our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the IRS by forcing them to follow the law and compelling them in court to search for and disclose any communications between the IRS and liberal lawmakers in New Hampshire. Then, we filed formal legal comments against the new proposed IRS regulation that would have attempted to require charitable donors to disclose their Social Security numbers for public government reporting. Again, only after we took legal action, did the IRS cave and withdraw the flawed proposal.

But the federal bureaucracy’s unmitigated abuses extend far beyond the IRS.  To learn more about how we must resist the rogue and reckless bureaucracy, reform our broken system, and restore our republic, order the newly revised and expanded paperback edition of my book, “Undemocratic: Rogue, Reckless and Renegade: How the Government is Stealing Democracy One Agency at a Time,” with two brand new chapters.

Equip yourself to be a part of the solution.

Pre-order the revised and expanded paperback edition today: