Judge Reggie B. Walton of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia also said the IRS
...the Internal Revenue Service; that office of the United States government that collects taxes and persecutes the regime's political enemies...
must provide information about which groups were targeted and why, along with a strategy to make sure such targeting doesn't happen again.
The IRS is involved in multiple lawsuits with conservative groups related to the Tea Party targeting scandal; this particular case involves True the Vote.
"We’re thrilled the judge has taken this step and it feels good to have it recognized that they need to be held to account," True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht told Fox News on Monday. "What happened to me was very personal--my name was thrown around the IRS, and the names of the people involved need to be known. What they did was criminal."
The targeting scandal drew much attention in 2013 when the IRS, headed at the time by Lois Lerner
...the former head of the IRS Exempt Unit. She is a past president of the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws and a member of the Massachussetts bar. She was held in contempt of Congress for her role in the IRS targeting of regime political enemies and refusing to testify. The dog ate her computer's hard drive with all her emails on it..., admitted it was applying extra scrutiny to conservative groups applying for nonprofit status.
"That was wrong," Lerner said at the time in the press. "That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. ... The IRS would like to apologize for that."
But director of investigations and research at Judicial Watch Chris Farrell, whose organization is also involved in litigation with the IRS on this issue, told Fox News that the IRS owes litigants "real accountability."
"This was creepy, chilling stuff," Farrell told Fox News. "Judge Walton has accomplished more with one ruling than all of the rest of the federal government--all three branches--over the last six years."