Virginia's Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is accusing the IRS of refusing to release $125-million in settlement funds to Virginia. It comes at a time when the IRS is under scrutiny for its spending and other questionable practices, but the Attorney General says that's just a coincidence.
The money is from a 2012 settlement in which Cuccinelli was the lead investigator into Medicaid fraud by Abbott Laboratories. The plea agreement was $1.5 billion, with the federal government already collecting more than a third for itself. Cuccinelli says most of Virginia’s share is designated for law enforcement agencies, but the state hasn't seen a dime because the IRS has yet to submit a double-sided sheet of post-case paperwork to the Treasury Department. For eight months, he's been asking the agency to expedite the process. While not specific about motives, he says he wonders if someone has something against him or Virginia:
"If you set that aside, there's incompetence or there's malevolence. The level of incompetence here is so astoundingly high that it does become hard to believe that even a federal agency like the IRS is capable of that level of incompetence," said Cuccinelli.
Cuccinelli says he's turned to Virginia's congressional delegation for help, including both U.S. Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, House Judiciary Committee Chair Bob Goodlatte, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.