I finally won my FOIA lawsuit against the IRS. The basis of my lawsuit was that the IRS inappropriately cited exemptions to redact almost all of the emails responsive to my request. Also, the IRS failed to even search for other material I requested, as they claimed my request was too broad. However, the judge ruled the IRS had not provided a viable basis for those exemptions and that, in general, my request was not overly broad, but was very specific. As a result, the IRS must now reproduce previously redacted material without the redactions, so I can actually read what they did not want me to see, plus search for and produce additional documents they never even looked for.
Also, what’s very interesting is that the judge began his ruling by stating that I founded a bank but that “an international tax enforcement body shut it down on suspicion of tax evasion in 2022.” That is precisely what I alleged happened in my dismissed civil rights lawsuit against the IRS and OCIF. Former IRS Chief Jim Lee and former OCIF Commissioner Natalia Zaqueira lied during the OCIF press conference. Lee said neither the IRS nor J5 had anything to do with the closure of my bank, and Zaqueira said the bank was being shut down to protect customers from insolvency. But based just on the limited IRS production, it was clear to the judge what actually happened.
The judge may not have appreciated what his conclusion implied, as that was not something he was asked to rule on. But one aspect of his conclusion should have raised a concern. How do authorities justify shutting down a bank on the mere “suspicion of tax evasion”? Don’t you have to prove there actually was tax evasion? This is particularly problematic with my bank, as prior to the shutdown there was a criminal grand jury investigation that found no evidence to substantiate that suspicion. So in my case, my bank was not shut down based on a suspicion of tax evasion, but despite the fact that the suspicion proved to have been unfounded. That makes the shutdown even worse.