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]

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