Karen Kelly Article on Federal Tax Prosecutions Before and After Department of Justice Tax Division Is Eliminated (10/19/25)

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.

Finally, on a detour, Kelly and Rule's article linked above mentions Robert Jackson. Jackson made a mark in the Tax Division as AAG Tax. Jackson was also Chief Counsel of the IRS, AAG Antitrust Division, Solicitor General, Attorney General, and Supreme Court Justice (not to mention Chief Prosecutor at the Main Nuremberg Trial). I have recently submitted an article on the tax aspects of the Supreme Court’s Loper Bright where Chief Justice Roberts claimed that the state of the law at the enactment of the Administrative Procedure Act in 1946 required review of agency interpretation de novo rather than with deference, I have spent considerable time on Justice Jackson who wrote some key Supreme Court unanimous opinions embracing deference in the 1940s just prior to the APA and ask the question whether, if Justice Jackson had been asked in 1946 whether the law included deference at the enactment of the APA, he would have answered the question YES. In other words, the spirit of Robert Jackson would call out the lie, or, more politely, the error, of Chief Justice Roberts in Loper Bright. I am confident that Jackson’s role in key tax agencies (IRS and DOJ Tax, including defending tax cases as Solicitor General) confirmed for him the need for deference.