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:
- Commissioner, Internal Revenue Service — John Koskinen
- Chief of Staff — Crystal Philcox
- IRS Chief Counsel — William J. Wilkins
- Deputy Commissioner for Services and Enforcement — John Dalrymple
- Wage and Investment Division — Debra Holland, Commissioner
- 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]
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