President Donald Trump’s nomination of Donald Korb to return as IRS chief counsel would place a long-time critic of whistleblowers once again as the senior legal officer supervising approximately 1,700 IRS attorneys.

On the surface, Korb seems a strong choice to lead the IRS legal team. He worked for the agency early in his career, then later was the assistant to the IRS commissioner in the 1980s and served as IRS chief counsel from 2004 to 2008.

Korb was never a fan of whistleblowers. After the IRS whistleblower reward law was passed in 2006, Korb, as chief counsel, announced the “one-bite” rule: Once the IRS met with a whistleblower, “there will be no subsequent meetings or contacts with that person.”

Korb reasoned that multiple whistleblower interviews could expose the IRS to a claim that it was deputizing them, making them government agents. It appeared not to trouble Korb that other law enforcement agencies routinely interview whistleblowers multiple times, invariably without adverse consequences.

In 2009, the year after Korb left his position as chief counsel, his successor effectively repealed the rule.

The Chief Counsel’s Office announced a number of other rules in the wake of Korb’s departure that sharply restricted potential whistleblower rewards....

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