A federal judge has ordered the Internal Revenue Service to release the names of specific employees involved in targeting Tea Party groups, after years of litigation over what conservatives have long called “chilling” behavior by one of the government’s “most feared” agencies.

Judge Reggie B. Walton of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia also said the IRS must provide information about which groups were targeted and why, along with a strategy to make sure such targeting doesn’t happen again.

The IRS is involved in multiple lawsuits with conservative groups related to the Tea Party targeting scandal; this particular case involves True the Vote.

“We’re thrilled the judge has taken this step and it feels good to have it recognized that they need to be held to account,” True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht told Fox News on Monday. “What happened to me was very personal—my name was thrown around the IRS, and the names of the people involved need to be known. What they did was criminal.”

The targeting scandal drew much attention in 2013 when the IRS, headed at the time by Lois Lerner, admitted it was applying extra scrutiny to conservative groups applying for nonprofit status. (Read more from “Judge Orders IRS to Reveal Who Took Part in Tea Party Targeting” HERE)

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The Internal Revenue Service rehired 213 employees who ducked taxes, falsified documents, were convicted of theft, or made unauthorized use of taxpayer data, an inspector general’s report says.

The Office of Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which also first discovered the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups in 2013, examined the agency’s hiring from January 2015 through March 2016.

For these 15 months, the IRS official in charge was Commissioner John Koskinen, an appointee of President Barack Obama.

House Republicans for months sought to impeach Koskinen for obstructing a congressional probe into the agency’s targeting of the applications for tax-exempt status made by nonprofit tea party and conservative groups.

“Given the substantial threat of identity theft and the magnitude of sensitive information that the IRS holds, hiring employees of high integrity is essential to maintaining public trust in tax administration and safeguarding taxpayer information,” the inspector general’s report says, adding:

Four of the more than 200 employees had been terminated or resigned for willful failure to properly file their federal tax returns; four separated [from the agency] while under investigation for unauthorized accesses to taxpayer information; and 86 separated while under investigation for absences and leave, workplace disruption, or failure to follow instructions. This includes positions with access to sensitive taxpayer information, such as contact representatives.

As a political appointee in the executive branch, Koskinen doesn’t have the civil service protections that career government employees do. President Donald Trump could order his firing at will.

The inspector general released the report July 24. Asked about it Thursday, an IRS spokesman referred The Daily Signal to a letter to the inspector general from E. Faith Bell, the agency’s acting human capital officer.

“To the extent possible by law,” Bell wrote in the June 28 letter, “the IRS will take all steps allowable to prevent the rehiring of former employees with conduct and performance issues.”

Bell added that she had commissioned a team to implement corrective actions.

“This team will ensure existing hiring practices and policies are updated to reflect our use of IRS employment data, specifically any misconduct and performance prior to making a tentative offer [of new employment] to a former IRS employee,” Bell wrote.

The wealth of protections for federal employees under the civil service and union agreements “makes my head hurt,” Grover Norquist, president Americans for Tax Reform, told The Daily Signal.

“The average American is not happy with the way the IRS behaves on a good day,” Norquist said. “It’s disappointing that they are rehiring people who were fired for very bad behavior.”

Koskinen should go, Norquist said, and the sooner the better to avoid another political controversy similar to Trump’s ousting of James Comey as FBI director.

“All Koskinen would have to do is say something publicly about Trump’s taxes, and then Trump can’t fire him,” Norquist said. “Given the outrageous way he has behaved, why not move much sooner?”

Obama named Koskinen to the job in 2013, directing him to clean up the targeting scandal. But Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said he obstructed their probe and should be impeached.

“I don’t know why President Trump hasn’t fired John Koskinen since there is more evidence the agency is mismanaged,” said Peter Flaherty, president of the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative government watchdog group.

“Koskinen is a very typical Washington creature and is very at home in the swamp,” Flaherty said in an interview with The Daily Signal. “It’s a puzzle to me why Trump hasn’t acted.”

The IRS already had one of the worst reputations and the most power of any federal agency, Flaherty argues.

“Against the backdrop of fear that the IRS has been used for political purposes, now you may have people who can’t be trusted with sensitive personal information,” he said.

The White House twice referred comment on Koskinen to the Treasury Department, which did not respond to a request for comment.

The IRS rehired 2,000 former employees from 2015 through early 2016, the inspector general’s report says. Many were seasonal employees, and about 10 percent were problematic.

IRS officials who make hiring decisions don’t have access to the applicant’s employment history with the agency and 27 failed to disclose on paperwork that they had been terminated, the report found.

Instances of such nondisclosure are supposed to be referred to the independent Office of Personnel Management, which the report says the IRS didn’t do.

The inspector general issued a report in December 2014 that found 824 questionable rehires from 2010 through 2013. Of those 824, a total of 60 seasonable employees were rehired in 2015 despite substantiated prior conduct and performance issues, the new report says. (For more from the author of “IRS Rehires 213 Employees Ousted for Falsifying Documents, Avoiding Taxes, Other Offenses” please click HERE)

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The federal government currently wields a tremendous amount of power over the citizens of the United States, far more than the Founders intended.

One manifestation of federal overreach is civil asset forfeiture. This practice allows the federal government to confiscate the wealth of its citizens upon the mere suspicion of wrongdoing.

The IRS, not content with expropriating the wealth of its citizens on April 15 every year, has now taken up the practice of seizing funds that have been involved in perfectly legal transactions on the basis of a hunch.

Thankfully, legislation in the House and the Senate has been introduced to bring this practice to a halt. Both chambers should act on the bills swiftly.

Under the Bank Secrecy Act, financial transactions of over $10,000 trigger bank reporting requirements. If there are multiple transactions of just under $10,000—by a business, for example—the IRS may become suspicious that there is nefarious activity occurring.

That suspicion can result in assets being seized from innocent Americans. As the House Committee on Ways and Means reported last year:

Current law allows the Federal government, including the IRS, to use civil procedures to seize assets the government believes are involved in illegal activity without ever having to prove that the owners of the assets actually were engaged in criminal activity.

Current law circumvents ancient concepts like due process and innocence until guilt is proven. The federal government then places the burden of reclaiming the assets on the citizen it targeted.

This situation threatens the liberty of American citizens.

The Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration conducted a review of this practice and concluded in a March 30 report that the IRS “criminal investigators mainly pursued law-abiding citizens and businesses when seizing assets in civil forfeiture cases because they were easier to go after.”

The report found that the extent of the problem was significant. In fact:

The inspector general found money seized and forfeited by the IRS was legally obtained in 91 percent of a sample of 278 structuring investigations it reviewed occurring between fiscal years 2012 and 2014. Altogether, those funds totaled $17.1 million and involved 231 cases.

Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., made progress in righting this wrong in the last session of Congress. He introduced the Restraining Excessive Seizure of Property through the Exploitation of Civil Asset Forfeiture Tools (RESPECT) Act.

The RESPECT Act would require that the IRS first prove “that the money was connected to a crime,” and would also “exempt from federal income tax any interest that the Treasury pays on seized funds that are returned.”

The bill had bipartisan cosponsors and passed the House by a vote of 415-0 last September. The Senate did not take up the bill, and it languished. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott’s companion bill also was never acted on.

Roskam introduced the bill again in the House, and Scott has introduced the bill in the Senate this year, on the same day that the Treasury’s tax inspector general released his critical findings about the IRS seizing money from innocent Americans.

This bill is a bipartisan ray of light in an increasingly fractured political process. Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., joined Roskam in introducing the bill.

Republicans and Democrats agree that the IRS is overstepping its authority and needs to be restrained. Scott has also introduced the Senate companion bill.

There is clear bipartisan consensus that civil asset forfeiture is an abuse that needs to be halted. To protect taxpayers, small businesses, and the basic integrity of rule of law, the RESPECT Act needs to get to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature. (For more from the author of “The IRS Can Seize Your Money Based on a Hunch. This Bill Will Bring That to an End.” please click HERE)

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