Lillie Davis Neamo passed away 1/1/26. See WAPO obituary here. According to the obituary, she served at DOJ for 42 years and “served as a Supervisory Litigation Assistant for the Tax Division, Appellate Section,” which I presume was her most recent position at DOJ Tax.
According to the obituary, events on 1/14/26 are visitation (10-11am) and service (11am-12pm) at Marshall-March Funeral Homes - The District of Columbia, 5119 4th St. NW, Washington, DC 20011.
John Dowd, a DOJ Tax Alumnus, authored this opinion piece in MS Now: I was Donald Trump’s lawyer. Jack Smith should be celebrated, not vilified (MS Now 12/16/25), here.
Of course, every person who has bothered to become informed and is not blinded by bias (ideology, self-promotion, etc.) knows that Jack Smith is a class act. Smith should be able to tell his side of the story in an open public session where everyone participating (Smith and congressmen) can show who they really are.
Dowd also is a class act.
Florida Bar News has this article: Samadhi Jones, Miami's George Elias nears 99 still practicing, mentoring, and giving back (12/15/25), here.
DOJ Tax relevant excerpts:
At age 23, in his first job out of law school, Elias found himself sitting before the U.S. Supreme Court at the solicitor general’s table on the team that handled treason cases before Chief Justice Earl Warren, Justice Hugo Black, et al. Chief Justice Warren himself admitted Elias to the Supreme Court Bar less than two years later. Elias later transferred to the tax division before moving to Miami where he opened a private practice in trust and tax law, a practice that he continues to operate today.
It is not clear to me, but I infer that he may have been first in the SG’s office and then transferred to the Tax Division. If so, that would have been an unusual trajectory to the Tax Division.
There is much more about his life in the article. I highly recommend that DOJ Tax Alumni click the link and read it.
David Hubbert, for AAG Tax, has written a thoughtful article for Blomberg: David Hubbert, What to Watch for in the Wake of the Tax Division’s Demise (BloombergLaw Tax Management Memo 10/24/25), here. All of it is good, so I don’t try to summarize it.
I point DOJ Tax Alumni to Karen Kelly and Caroline Rule’s article titled Federal Tax Prosecutions Before and After Department of Justice Tax Division Is Eliminated (White Collar Crime Litigation 9/22/25), here. Kelly was formerly a leader in the Tax Division before its demise at the behest of the Trump Administration. Kelly is now with Kostelanetz where Caroline Rule is a partner. Caroline Rule is a major force in tax crimes.
I have been trying to determine how the DOJ Tax functions would be folded into the DOJ Civil and Criminal Divisions, respectively. The article says:
According to the reorganization, the Civil Tax Division attorneys and the Criminal Tax Division attorneys will be relocated from the Tax Division into their respective components at the DOJ: the DOJ Civil Division and the DOJ Criminal Division. There will then be a separate tax section within each division. Within the Civil Division, the tax attorneys will be renamed the Tax Litigation Section, which will include the six geographical Civil Trial Sections, 1 the Court of Federal Claims unit, the Office of Review, and the Appellate unit. On the criminal tax side, the attorneys will be moved into the Tax Section of the Criminal Division, which will include the three geographical regions and the Criminal Appeal unit. At least initially, the criminal attorneys will continue to be organized by geographic regions within the Tax Section. Presently, the regions are Northern Criminal Enforcement Section, Southern Criminal Enforcement Section, and Western Criminal Enforcement Section.
I infer that the pyramid structures in both DOJ Tax Civil and Criminal will be moved into the DOJ Civil and Criminal Sections, respectively. Presumably, some of the top level DOJ Tax Civil and Criminal Sections functions will be thinned out or eliminated, but some type of pyramid structure will remain. The basic work functions to line level attorneys will remain the same.
I await an org chart from the DOJ Civil and Criminal Divisions to get a better fix on this.
DOJ Tax Alumni may be interested in this Editorial Comment by a DOJ Tax Alumnus, Mike Romano: The Federal Prosecutor’s Decision Not to Charge (Justice Connection 10/17/25), here
. A somewhat long excerpt from the beginning:
The decision not to charge someone is a critical part of a prosecutor’s job, but it often goes unseen. I learned this first-hand during my 18 years as a DOJ prosecutor – prosecuting tax fraud across the country, violent crimes in Washington, D.C., then January 6 cases with the Capitol Siege Section, and later public corruption cases with the Public Integrity Section (before this administration dismantled it.
Criminal charges, after all, come with a host of consequences, whether or not the person charged is ever convicted. Police may take the person into custody, depriving them of their liberty, even if only for a few hours. They may be compelled to appear in court and sit through a trial, both of which are further deprivations of liberty. That person will need a defense attorney, the cost of which can be astronomical. And the mere fact of criminal charges, and an arrest record, can cause real harm to a person’s reputation and employability, even if that person is never convicted.
Every federal prosecutor I worked with took the decision to charge—or, not to charge—extremely seriously. And when an investigation convinced me that no crime had been committed, or the wrong person had been accused, I was proud not to bring charges, or to dismiss charges that were unwarranted.
Doing this was my legal, ethical, and moral obligation; it was, in my view, the sort of exercise that made the Department’s use of power legitimate.
Justice Department prosecutors have a guide called the Principles of Federal Prosecution, which helps them determine when a case should or should not be brought. One of those principles is the following:
[A]s a matter of fundamental fairness and in the interest of the efficient administration of justice, no prosecution should be initiated against any person unless the attorney for the government believes that the admissible evidence is sufficient to obtain and sustain a guilty verdict by an unbiased trier of fact.
Romano's editorial comments echo the foundational speech by Attorney Robert Jackson later Supreme Court Justice) in 1940, titled The Federal Prosecutor, DOJ link here; alternative link here. (I provide an alternative link because I can't be sure it will stay on the DOJ website since its sentiments are not the sentiments of the current powers that be in DOJ.)
In the immediate past post, I sought input on the possibility of a DOJ Tax Division Alumni Reunion/Wake in May 2025 at the time of the ABA Tax Section Meeting May 7-9, 2026. I have set up a Google Form for Alumni to state their interest.
The Google Form is here: https://forms.gle/pGkKfz73NUvSQ1EAA
I urge Alumni who may be interested to complete the form so that those in the planning group (yet to be formed) can gauge interest and identify an appropriate venue for the event.
Also, since the DOJ Tax Alumni are far larger in number (by many multiples) than my current email list, please forward the link to the Form to as many DOJ Tax Alumni as you know. I will regret Alumni who might be interested not knowing of the event.
Thank you.
Jack Townsend.
Alumni may remember that in the 1990s and early 2000s, we had 5-year Tax Division Alumni Reunion Events. With the demise of the Tax Division, I thought it might be appropriate to have a final reunion/wake. As before, I think the best time is contemporaneous with the ABA Tax Section May Meeting, the next being May 7-9, 2026, which might attract many non-D.C. area alumni to attend.
Please share your thoughts on whether this is a feasible project. And let me know your thoughts as to how to make it happen. Additionally, some volunteers to help make it happen would be greatly appreciated.
Please share this information with alumni you may know so that, hopefully, we can make the event as well attended as possible.
You may email me at jack@tjtaxlaw.com or comment below.
Thanks,
Jack Townsend
The Tax Division is no more (except as its residue now resides in the DOJ Civil and Criminal Sections). See Francesca Ugolini, A Eulogy for the Tax Division, (Tax Notes 9/23/25), here; and Nathan Richman, Dismantling of Justice Department’s Tax Division Has Resumed (Tax Notes 9/26.25), here.
1. The main Tax Division web site has been taken down and now appears as an archive page here.
2. It is unclear how the organizational structures of the Civil and Criminal Divisions will change with the incorporation of the Tax Division functions. As of this posting, the web pages for the Civil and Criminal Divisions do not indicate anything about the reorganization.
3. I suspect that the line attorneys doing the litigation work will continue as before with no substantial disruption of their work.
4. There will have to be conforming changes to the Justice Manual and the Criminal Tax Manual. Similarly, there will have to be changes to the IRS’s IRM and other publications referring to the Tax Division. I presume that conforming changes will take some time and may occur piecemeal.
5. The Wikipedia Page, here, says it was last edited on August 17, 2025, but does not mention the reorganization and the information on the page is substantially out of date (e.g., the Division Executive is said to be David A. Hubbert, Acting Assistant Attorney General, who left that role in January 2025). See Deputy AAG Tax Hubbert Removed and Reassigned to Sanctuary City Program (Whatever That Is) (DOJ Tax Division Alumni Blog 2/7/25; 2/11/25), here.
Mike Paup passed away on August 20, 2025. His obituary is here. The obituary says "No services are scheduled at this time." My understanding is that there may be no services. However, the obituary page does offer an opportunity to post memories. As of this morning, there has been one posting. I am sure others will follow. Alternatively, those wishing to post memories on this blog as comments, please do so. I moderate comments but get notice of the need to moderate, so approval should be fairly current.
Added 8/27/25 @ 11am: The obituary linked above has been filled out with more detail. The Washington Post Obituary is here. One thing I noticed in both obits is that Mike received an LLB. We old timers remember that law schools began to change the basic law degree from LLB to JD, starting as I recall it in the 1960s. My class at UVA Law '67 voted down a proposal to change our degree. Nevertheless, at some time thereafter, UVA Law changed from LLB to JD, but apparently had not made that change by the time Mike graduated in 1969. I infer that Mike declined, as did I, when UVA Law offered to change the degree from LLB to JD.
I have been able to piece together a brief professional bio for Mike as follows:
Mike was born in Kansas on Oct. 27, 1941, and grew up in Wichita, where he graduated from high school in 1959. He graduated from Columbia University in 1963 and the University of Virginia Law School in 1969, where he served on the Law Review and was Order of the Coif. Mike joined the DOJ Tax Division Appellate Section in July 1969 and became a Reviewer there in 1973 or early 1974. Mike became Chief of the Appellate Section in 1980, and then Deputy Assistant Attorney General overseeing the Civil Trial Sections in late 1987. He was one of a handful of Appellate Section attorneys selected by the SG's office to present the oral argument to the Supreme Court, arguing (and winning) United States v. Fulman, 434 U.S. 528 (1978). He received a Presidential Rank Award for Distinguished Service (the highest award given to those in the Civil Service (year perhaps 1990)). In 1995, Mike left DOJ Tax to become "Special Counsel" to Stuart Brown, then Chief Counsel of the IRS. He served in that capacity for several years before retiring in the early 2000s.
I served with Mike in DOJ Appellate from 1969 to 1974, when I moved to DOJ Tax Refund 2. Mike was a great lawyer and fantastic person.
