The Grassley Amendment, now ten years old, expressly restricted Tax Court to the Federal Rules of Evidence. So when matters involved in grand jury proceedings swim into ken, FRCrimP Rule 6(e) takes second place.

Judge Rose E. (“Cracklin”) Jenkins Judge-‘splains in Mohammad Fawad Aryanpure & Malika Aryanpure, Docket No. 17120-23, filed 7/7/25.

“Petitioners’ Motion also requests in camera review of the additional documents identified in Exhibit A, which petitioners contend may be solely amongst third parties and inappropriately identified by respondent as being subject to deliberative process privilege. Respondent’s Response argues that such documents are outside of the scope of the Court’s Order and that, in any event, petitioners waived any objections other than on the grounds of deliberative process privilege. The Response further argues that the documents are protected by attorney-client privilege and Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, incorporating the arguments made in the Document Response.” Order, at p. 2.

FRCrimP Rule 6(e) bars disclosure of grand jury matters by specified persons, including IRS attorneys.

IRS says they don’t even have DOJ stuff.

“It also noted that respondent ‘is not in possession of the Department of Justice’s files to be able to identify with specificity individual documents that are not protected by Rule 6(e),’ making it unclear to this Court how the documents in question came to be in respondent’s possession.” Order, at p. 2.

Judge Jenkins orders all documents to be presented today. She’ll first check for privilege, and then hear argument about what unprivileged materials, if any, warrant Rule 6(e) protection.

Edited to add, 7/8/25: Judge Rose E. (“Cracklin'”) Jenkins reviewed the documents, and found “there is no ongoing grand jury proceeding that could be affected by disclosure. Furthermore, having reviewed the documents in question and observed their limited relevance to the issues in this case, the Court does not believe that even if there were an ongoing grand jury proceeding, disclosure of the documents would have affected it.” Order, 7/8/25, at p. 3. IRS, hand ’em over.