Supreme Court Won’t Review Ex-IRS Employee’s FOIA Suit
Yvonne Juris, Law360, Nov. 13, 2018
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear a suit by a former Internal Revenue Service employee challenging the IRS watchdog agency’s rejection of his Freedom of Information Act request concerning a congressional investigation that he triggered.
As usual, the high court did not explain its denial. In his September petition to the court, Peter Janangelo asked the justices to review court rulings that allowed the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration to reject his November 2015 FOIA request.
Janangelo was seeking records from TIGTA on an investigation into alleged misconduct by an IRS manager that had been triggered by a congressional inquiry by Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev. Janangelo had informed Heck about the alleged misconduct, according to court documents.
“There is a public interest in this information, aside from Mr. Janangelo’s personal interest in defending himself, and that is that these documents will expose violations of federal law including nepotism, retaliation for whistle-blowing, and discrimination in favor of certain employees with personal or sexual relationships with their superiors at the IRS, which is a scandal worthy of public exposure,” Janangelo said in his petition.
TIGTA invoked the Glomar response — named for a Central Intelligence Agency denial of a FOIA request for records of a secret government salvage ship called the Hughes Glomar Explorer — to dismiss his claims, saying it could neither confirm nor deny the records existed, according to court documents.
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