Background
One
interesting use of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), is crafting the
request to search for certain keywords, sent to and/or from government
officials.
For example,
in 2015, when the Republican Presidential primary was at it’s peak, the
abolishment of the IRS became a hot topic.
So,
interested to see what the IRS was talking about internally, I requested a
search of the following IRS official emails regarding the discussion of such a
thing, on November 8, 2015.
I requested
the search be conducted on the following IRS individuals:
1.
Commissioner, Internal Revenue
Service — John Koskinen
2.
Chief of Staff — Crystal
Philcox
3.
IRS Chief Counsel — William J.
Wilkins
4.
Deputy Commissioner for Services and
Enforcement — John Dalrymple
5.
Wage and Investment Division —
Debra Holland, Commissioner
6.
Large Business and International
Division — Douglas O’Donnell, Commissioner
In June of
2016, I received the documents.
This is what
was released to me:
Declassified Documents
The
documents below were mailed on a CD-ROM, and separated into different folders.
I stipulated how they were organized below.
FOIA
Response for IRS FOIA Case #F16313-0002 [2 Pages, 0.9MB]
Folder: F16313-0002
Resp. Docs. CofStaff
Emails
from Chief of Staff — Crystal Philcox.
File:
FOIAF16313-0002-ChiefofStaffResponse.pdf [103
Pages, 6.5MB]
Folder: F16313-0002
Responsive Documents Commissioner
Emails
from Commissioner, Internal Revenue Service — John Koskinen
File: Follow-up_Redacted.pdf [3
Pages, 0.5MB]
File: RePressClubCoverage.pdf [5
Pages, 0.7MB]
File: REWhowantstoabolishtheIRS.pdf [1
Pages, 0.3MB]
