IRS Commissioner John Koskinen along with IRS and Department of Justice attorneys have landed themselves in the doghouse with U.S District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan. A year ago, this no nonsense judge, a Clinton appointee, ordered the IRS to produce under oath and in writing explanations about the disappearance of Lois Lerner’s emails. A few weeks ago, the IRS managed to “find” about 1,800 of the 26,000 emails and then sorta forgot to comply with a certain judicial order:

At July 1, 2015, status conference, Judge Sullivan ordered the IRS to begin producing, every week, the nearly 1,800 newly recovered Lois Lerner emails responsive to Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

It seems the IRS had other ideas. The agency chose to wait until July 28th to comply with Judge Sullivan’s order and release 906 emails. Judge Sullivan was NOT amused.

Yesterday he ordered IRS and DOJ attorneys into his courtroom. During that hearing, Judge Sullivan blisteringly lectured them for not complying with his July 1 order.

During the a status hearing today, Sullivan warned that the failure to follow his order was serious and the IRS and Justice Department’s excuses for not following his July 1 order were “indefensible, ridiculous, and absurd.”