IRS continues to hide egregious misconduct behind rules to protect taxpayers

Washington Times:

Powerful committees in both chambers of Congress now want answers to questions surrounding Christine O'Donnell’s personal tax records and whether the Delaware Republican’s private information was illegally accessed and ultimately used in an effort to derail her 2010 U.S. Senate bid.

The House Ways and Means Committee has joined the Senate Finance Committee in probing a string of incidents dating back to March 2010, when Ms. O'Donnell — a tea party favorite who riled Delaware’s GOP establishment by besting party mainstay Mike Castle in a primary contest before losing to Democrat Chris Coons in the general election — was told by Treasury Department investigators that her tax information had been breached.

Since then, Ms. O'Donnell has run into roadblock after roadblock in her search for answers as officials at the IRS, in Delaware state government and at the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration remain tight-lipped.

But for Ms. O’Donnell, who believes she was politically targeted in much the same way the IRS has singled out tea party groups and Hollywood conservatives for extra tax scrutiny, the Ways and Means inquiry is another step in the slow yet steady journey toward closure.

“I would like to see [congressional] hearings, but the hearings are the means to an end. The end is that this gets exposed,” she told The Washington Times last week. “Two powerful committees in both houses of Congress are investigating this. That alone indicates there is some serious weight to this. Unless this is all exposed, unless every level of inappropriateness and corruption is exposed, I certainly won’t be the last person to be politically intimidated like this.”
...
Even Ms. O’Donnell herself will not be briefed on what either congressional committee discovers, as the federal government asserts that tax law goes so far as to shield its own employees from being exposed publicly if they are engaged in willful targeting or other wrongdoing.
...

This is a perversion of rules meant to protect the taxpayer and not those IRS employees engaged in illegal conduct.  With a corrupt Justice Department unwilling to prosecute them as they do the President's political hatchet jobs there needs to be a way around this injustice and eople will lose all respect for the IRS.