Judge threatens IRS lawyers with contempt if they do not turn over Lerner emails

Washington Times:

A federal judge rebuked the Obama administration’s IRS Wednesday for refusing to divulge documents, including Lois G. Lerner emails, and warned he would hold those who break his orders in contempt.

Judge Emmet G. Sullivan called the administration’s defense “nonsensical” and said the IRS must release documents every Monday toJudicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm that requested the documents under open-records laws, and then sued after the IRS didn’t comply.

“Officers of the court who fail to comply with court orders will be held in contempt,” Judge Sullivan said in a published order.

SEE ALSO: Newly recovered Lois Lerner email shows IRS tried to cover up tea party targeting

On July 1, at a hearing, he had ordered the IRS to turn over documents weekly. But after the hearing was over, the IRS approached Judicial Watchand proposed a new schedule. Judicial Watch said it would accept the new schedule, but wanted the IRS to make it official with the court — something the IRS refused to do.

Judge Sullivan was not pleased, noting that the government lawyers had agreed his initial instructions were clear, but violated them anyway.

“The government’s reasoning is nonsensical,” he wrote.

At stake in the documents are the emails the IRS said were lost when Ms. Lerner, the former agency employee at the center of the tea party targeting scandal, had a computer hard drive crash. The agency said it tried but was unable to recover them — though the IRS’s independent inspector general recovered them from backup tapes, which investigators said the IRS never even bothered to search.
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This appears to be a judge willing to break through the Obama administration stonewall on the IRS scandal.  Judicial Watch appears to be able to do what has alluded Congress an other litigants in getting actual discovery.