An Internal Revenue Service watchdog, along with the Obama administration, is refusing to release thousands of documents related to unauthorized IRS leaks of confidential taxpayer information to the White House during the IRS conservative targeting scandal, The Daily Caller reported.
Earlier this week, the Treasury Inspector General revealed about 2,500 documents that "potentially" show taxpayer information held by the Internal Revenue Service had been reportedly shared with the Obama administration.
The discovery, revealed to the group Cause of Action which had sued for access to any of the documents, speculated that both the IRS and White House were working together to harass taxpayers, The Washington Examiner reported.
In a letter to watchdog group Cause of Action on Tuesday, an attorney with the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) confirmed that the office had located "2,509 pages of documents potentially responsive to your request."
However citing privacy concerns, TIGTA has now said that the law prohibits it from releasing the controversial documents. "These pages consist of return information protected by 26 U.S.C. § 6103 and may not be disclosed absent an express statutory exception," the letter said. "Because no such exception exists here, we are withholding those."
According to the letter, there are "Department of Justice attorneys assigned to this matter," The Washington Free Beacon reported.
Separately, the documents have also been seized by Obama's former White House Chief of Staff Jacob Lew, TIGTA attorney Gregory M. Miller said.
"All of the 2,043 pages of documents we have determined to be responsive were collected by the Secretary of the Treasury with respect to the determination of possible liability under Title 26 of the United States Code," Miller wrote in a letter to Cause of Action.
But Lew has also declined to "release any information about improper disclosures of confidential taxpayer information because that would be an improper disclosure of confidential taxpayer information," according to The Daily Caller.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration "has been very rigorous in following all of the rules and regulations that govern proper communications between treasury officials and White House officials and the Internal Revenue Service," White House press secretary Josh Earnest said in response to a question about the case at a White House press briefing on Tuesday.
But existence of the records proved otherwise, Cause of Action executive director Dan Epstein said. "We know for a fact that the IRS broke the law," Epstein told Fox News.
The disclosure follows the agency's recovery of 30,000 missing emails five months after ex-IRS official Lois Lerner's lost emails revived the investigation into the matter of abuse by IRS officials in unfairly and illegally targeting conservative-leaning and Tea Party not-for-profit groups, The Washington Examiner reported.
Lerner, who headed the IRS division, has been accused of processing Tea Party and conservative groups for tax exempt status in an unfair manner before the 2010 and 2012 elections, including when the IRS allegedly improperly delayed dozens of applications for years, according to an internal audit by the agency's inspector general. Documents show that some liberal groups were singled out, too, Politico reported.
