Obama Outrageously Denies IRS Targeting Scandal on Daily Show, Nets Censor

President Barack Obama outrageously denied there was anything scandalous about the IRS-Tea Party controversy, in his Tuesday interview on The Daily Show, as he lectured Jon Stewart that: “When there was that problem with the I.R.S. everybody jumped, including you....you got this back office and they’re going after the Tea Party. Well it turned out no.”

 Obama went on to assert “the truth of the matter is there was not some big conspiracy there.” Obama was never challenged by Stewart on this dodge despite the recent bombshell news that Lois Lerner had a meeting with the Justice Department and the FBI to target Obama opponents.  

While all Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) network morning shows, on Wednesday, offered glowing coverage of Obama’s sitdown with Stewart, not one of them picked up on Obama’s scandal denial. 

 CBS This Morning’s Vladimir Duthiers offered the most nostalgic, sentimental coverage when he reminisced, “Like two old friends just enjoying each other’s company, Tuesday night, Jon Stewart and President Obama both reflected on the approaching conclusion of their careers.

” The I.R.S. portion of the video begins after the end of the 7:06 mark. Fast forward or let it play to see second part.

he following is the relevant exchange from the July 21 interview as it was shown on Comedy Central’s official The Daily Show website:  

BARACK OBAMA: When there was that problem with the IRS everybody jumped, including you. 

JON STEWART: What happened with the I.R.S.?

OBAMA: Look, look, you got this, you got this back office and they’re going after the Tea Party. Well it turned out no. Congress had passed a crummy law that didn’t give people guidance in terms of what it was they were trying to do. They did it poorly and stupidly. But that becomes, but, but -

STEWART: Wow! You really only do have a year left. That’s unbelievable! Throwing it out there. 

OBAMA: But hold on Jon - this is important. But the truth of the matter is there was not some big conspiracy there. They were trying to sort out these conflicting demands. You don’t want all this money pouring through non-for-profits but you also want to make sure that everybody is getting treated fairly. Now the real scandal around the I.R.S. right now is that it has been so poorly funded that they can’t go after, they can’t go after these folks who are deliberately avoiding tax payments. And the real scandal is a tax code where multinationals can pay zero taxes making massive profits. 

So we tend to get distracted by the fact that there are going to be elements - because government is a human enterprise - where somebody somewhere is screwing up at any given time. Because it’s a huge system. Overall it works really well to help a lot of people. What is scandalous is the fact that we are not making as much progress as we should on the basic things we know government should be doing. Rebuilding our infrastructure, rebuilding our roads, rebuilding our ports. Setting up a smarter system for distributing energy. 

STEWART: Right. 

Via: Newsbusters

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Midnight Raids, Secret Subpoenas: IRS' Lerner Close Friends With Leader Who Targeted Scott Walker

The official behind the IRS' conservative nonprofit targeting scandal, Lois Lerner, was friends with the Wisconsin regulator who targeted Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's conservative aides and allies.

Lerner and Kevin Kennedy, director of the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, were friends for 20 years and traded emails on campaign finance, politics, and personal matters between 2011 and 2013, emails obtained by the Wall Street Journal reveal. That was the same time frame the IRS increased its harassment of conservative groups and Wisconsin prosecutors conducted a secret John Doe probe of Walker's allies, raising the troubling question of whether they coordinated their investigations.

After Walker's victory in a recall election, Lerner's long time friend Kennedy helped Milwaukee County prosecutors conduct an onerous, several-year investigation into Walker's political allies, complete with secret subpoenas for phone, text message and email records and armed, middle of the night raids on Walker associates' homes.

Under Kennedy, the Government Accountability Board hired four investigators to conduct the probe and set aside staff for the investigation, according to WSJ.

Ostensibly the purpose of the investigation was to determine whether Walker's campaign had illegally colluded with conservative groups, after Walker had busted state employee unions and Wisconsin Democrats lost the state election recall to Walker.

The investigation never uncovered any wrongdoing, and eventually federal Judge Rudolph Randa ordered it to end, ruling that the investigation had violated the First Amendment rights of Walker's associates. They were "pursuing criminal charges through a secret John Doe investigation against the plaintiffs for exercising issue advocacy [free] speech rights," Randa wrote.

The judge wrote that investigators also targeted Republican candidates for state Senate and that "all or nearly all right-of-center groups and individuals in Wisconsin who engaged in issue advocacy from 2010 to the present are targets of the investigation," a violation of the First Amendment.

Via: Washington Examiner

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With new documents, stench of IRS scandal reaches into its third year

In 2013, Lois Lerner, former head of the IRS non-profit section, pleaded the Fifth Amendment before the House Oversight Committee. She had been called to testify about her division's unjustifiable harassment of conservative applicants for nonprofit status.

Just over a year later, it was reported that a number of Lerner's work emails had gone missing due to a supposed problem with her hard drive. Then last month, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration testified that IRS employees — despite being under explicit orders not to destroy records — had "magnetically erased" as many as 24,000 of Lerner's missing emails from hundreds of data tapes where they were being stored.

Whether the emails' disappearance was innocent or not, the public is only now beginning to get more information about just what it concealed, thanks to an ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the IRS by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch. Documents unearthed this week show that in Fall 2010, Lerner was working to get the Justice Department to prosecute nonprofits that engaged in political activity. This despite the fact that 501(c)4 groups, which cannot take tax-deductible donations, are permitted to engage in some political advocacy by law and by Civil Rights-era court precedents.

One newly uncovered memo describes an October 2010 meeting between Lerner, an FBI official and senior officials at the Justice Department criminal division that investigates public corruption cases. According to this memo, Lerner attempted to get them to go after groups that Lerner described as "political committees 'posing' as if they are not subject to FEC law."

The newly unearthed emails also confirm that around the same time, the IRS shared as many as 1.25 million pages of confidential tax documents with the Justice Department — an apparent violation of strict federal tax privacy laws. Those million-plus pages, according to an email contained among the new documents, were 113,000 tax filings for 501(c)4 organizations from 2007 until October 2010.

The original IRS scandal hinted at an intensive but narrow effort within one division to punish or at least make life difficult for the Obama administration's political opponents — the sort of thing that could perhaps be chalked up to a few bad actors. But the new documents suggest there were at least attempts to bring other agencies in on the wrongdoing.

Incidentally, the new documents also show how later, in July 2013, Obama Justice Department officials requested access to documents before they were handed over to Congress as part of the investigation into this IRS wrongdoing.

Via: Washington Examiner

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[VIDEO] Watchdog reveals evidence was destroyed during probe of IRS targeting

WASHINGTON –  The lead government watchdog for the IRS revealed Thursday that computer evidence was erased during the investigation into the agency's targeting scandal, months after the IRS was told to preserve documents. 

J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, testified to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that IRS employees erased computer backup tapes shortly after officials discovered thousands of emails related to the tax agency's Tea Party scandal had been lost. 

As many as 24,000 emails were lost because 422 backup tapes were "magnetically erased" around March 4, 2014. 

George said his office found no direct evidence the tapes were destroyed to hide information from Congress or law enforcement. But the destruction nevertheless defied a preservation order, and is sure to raise suspicions over motive. 

"We have been misled. There has been evidence that has been destroyed," committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said Thursday. 

George said those tapes "likely contained" 2010 and 2011 emails to and from former IRS official Lois Lerner, who has emerged as a central figure in congressional investigations. He said they will "most likely never be recovered." 

A source familiar with the matter told Fox News the evidence was destroyed 10 months after a preservation order for the emails; seven months after a subpoena; and one month after IRS officials realized there were potential problems locating certain emails. 

Via: Fox News

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Federal Judge Asks IRS for Update on Lois Lerner's Emails

A District of Columbia federal judge has ordered the IRS to give him a status update on the release of Lois Lerner's emails, as well as those by other IRS officials. 

U.S District Judge Emmet Sullivan said in a June 18 order that he wants a status of the recovery and release of the emails recovered by the IRS watchdog agency, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), sent to the court by June 29, Judicial Watch said in a statement. In addition, Sullivan set a hearing and a scheduling of a status conference for July 1.

"[F]ile a supplemental report, setting forth any new information regarding: (1) TIGTA’s recovery of emails from the backup tapes; (2) TIGTA’s production of emails to the IRS; (3) the IRS’s review of emails and production to the plaintiff; and (4) the status of the TIGTA investigation. This report shall be filed by no later than June 29, 2015," he wrote. 

The judge issued an order on June 4 telling the IRS to give answers about Lerner's emails, which were once declared lost, by June 12, which the federal agency complied with. The order came after Judicial Watch asked the court if all emails that TIGTA had recovered had been turned over. 

On June 12, the IRS said that it was in "the process of conducting further manual deduplication of the 6,400" emails. Although Judicial Watch has noted that the IRS watchdog already said previously that it had gone through the process of identifying and removing duplicate emails. 

The IRS has yet to turn over any of the emails by the former IRS official that were requested by Judicial Watch in its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that it filed in October 2013. 

Judicial Watch asked Sullivan in a court filing it sent on June 15 that the IRS be kept from "stonewalling" any further and turn over the documents it asked for in the FOIA request once and for all. 

Via: NewsMax

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The IRS Mystery Man Calling the Shots

 (REUTERS)

When it comes to the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service, the media has focused its attention on Lois Lerner, who oversaw the tax agency’s Exempt Organizations Unit. But they may want to pay more attention to William Wilkins, the IRS chief counsel, whose office, according to sources, had unprecedented involvement in applications for tax exempt status and the special scrutiny of conservative applications.

Wilkins is one of just two of the tax agency’s roughly 90,000 employees who was appointed by the White House, according to reports.  He came to the IRS in 2009 from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, where he had worked as a lobbyist since 1988. At WilmerHale, as the firm is now called, he was part of the tax practice group and as part of his responsibilities he advised nonprofit organizations on tax compliance. Prior to that, Wilkins served as staff counsel to the Democratic side of the Senate Finance Committee from 1981 to 1988.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, who is suing the IRS to force the issuance of emails related to the tax exempt scandal, is highly critical of Wilkins. He says, “The counsel’s office was up to its neck in tea party targeting. I don’t understand why he is still there.” Wilkins also led the defense team of former Obama pastor Jeremiah Wright and Trinity United Church of Christ in 2008, when it faced an IRS probe regarding its tax exempt status.

The IRS has refused to immediately release the 6,400 emails that Fitton’s group is requesting, telling a U.S. district court that they needed to be “de-duplicated” before circulating them more widely. Judicial Watch responded yesterday by requesting that the court order the IRS to produce the emails immediately. 

Adding fuel to the fire, Americans for Tax Reform issued a statement yesterday saying that the IRS was moving at a “snail’s pace” in releasing emails, and that the delay was “unacceptable.”

Via: Fox Business

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Judicial Watch: IRS Finds New Lois Lerner Emails

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton made the following statement in response to the IRS’ court filing Friday about 6,400 newly discovered emails from Lois Lerner’s account:

“Late Friday afternoon, the Obama IRS finally complied with Judge Emmet Sullivan’s June 4 order requiring the IRS to provide answers by June 12 on the status of the Lois Lerner emails the IRS had previously declared lost. Judicial Watch raised questions about the IRS’ handling of the missing emails issue in a court filing on June 2, 2015, demanding answers about Lois Lerner’s emails, which had been recovered from backup tapes.
“Our review of the seven-page filing shows that the IRS remains intent on stonewalling Judicial Watch and Judge Sullivan. Indeed, contrary to false representations to the court and Congress that the emails were lost and unrecoverable, the IRS finally admits that it has as many as 6,400 new Lois Lerner emails but won’t promise to turn them over to Judicial Watch. Even though the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration already identified and removed emails that are duplicates, the IRS is in ‘the process of conducting further manual deduplication of the 6,400’ emails, rather than reviewing them in response to Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act requests that are more than two years old now. Our legal team will continue pursuing all necessary and available legal options to hold the IRS accountable for its flagrant abuse of power.”

The “lost” Lois Lerner emails are at issue in Judicial Watch’s October 2013 lawsuit seeking documents about the Obama IRS Tea Party targeting scandal. Judicial Watch’s litigation forced the IRS first to admit that Lerner’s emails were supposedly missing and, then, that the emails were on IRS back-up systems.  Lois Lerner is the former head of the Exempt Organizations branch of the IRS, and was one of the top officials responsible for the IRS targeting of President Obama’s political opponents.

In November 2014, the IRS told the court it had failed to search any of the IRS standard computer systems for the “missing” emails of Lois Lerner and other IRS officials.

On February 26, 2015, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) officials testified to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that it had received 744 backup tapes containing emails sent and received by Lerner.  This testimony showed that the IRS had falsely represented to both Congress, Judge Sullivan, and Judicial Watch that Lerner’s emails were irretrievably lost.

Via: Judicial Watch

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IRS using absurd excuse to avoid turning over newly discovered Lois Lerner emails

The IRS is using a laughable excuse to stonewall the disclosure of 6,400 emails from Lois Lerner that were “forensically recovered.”  Remember these names: Geoffrey J. Klimas and Stephanie Sasarak. They are lawyers working for the Department of Justice who are representing the IRS, and they have just insulted the intelligence of the Washington, DC District Court and the American people by telling the Court that, as Patrick Howley writes in the Daily Caller:

…the IRS received new Lerner emails from the Treasury Department’s inspector general (TIGTA) but can’t fork over the emails to Judicial Watch, a nonprofit group suing to get the emails. Why? Because the IRS is busy making sure that none of the emails are duplicates  – you know, so as not to waste anyone’s time.
However, the inspector general already made sure that none of the emails were duplicates, so the IRS’ latest excuse falls flat.

Klimas and Sasarak admit in their court filing:

“Prior to providing the Service with the approximately 6,400 forensically-recovered emails, TIGTA identified and removed emails which appear to be duplicates of those which the Service has already produced to the Congressional Committees or were duplicates of other recovered emails.”

So there is absolutely no reason to delay disclosure of the emails. But the lawyers make up an insulting excuse – that they have to check for duplication with Lerner emails they don’t yet have:

 “The Service expects to begin processing and reviewing the recovered emails immediately following its review and production of Lerner communications which were not forensically recovered. At this time, the Service is unable to estimate when it will finish processing and reviewing the forensically-recovered emails.”

There must be some seriously incriminating material in these emails if DoJ attorneys are willing to beclown themselves by offering nonsense arguments to prevent their disclosure.  Lois Lerner took the Fifth Amendment for a reason. Most federal judges do not enjoy being mocked this way. But, it is possible to use nonsense arguments and filings to delay, and the goal clearly is to get past the 2016 election and hope that the public memory fades.

It might work.

Via: American Thinker

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Obama IRS Political Appointees Protected Tea Party Probe Requests

Internal Revenue Service Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner listens during testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee May 22, 2013 in Washington, DC. The committee is investigating allegations that the IRS targeted conservative non-profit organizations with the words "tea party" and "constitution" in their names for additional scrutiny. Lerner, who headed the division that oversees exempt organizations, plans to assert her constitutional right not to answer questions. AFP PHOTO / Karen BLEIER (Photo credit should read KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images)

A special internal committee was set up by senior IRS officials after information requests from Congress and “other investigative bodies” asking the IRS to investigate conservative and Tea Party non-profit applicants were sent to the federal tax agency’s two Obama White House political appointees.

Mary Howard, the IRS’s director of privacy, governmental liaison and disclosure division, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government reform Wednesday she never saw any of the information requests because the requests were forwarded to the special committee. Howard is also the tax agency’s chief Freedom of Information Act officer.

“I think Lois Lerner was just the tip of the iceberg,” Howard said.

“You’re telling me your group doesn’t get that?” Republican Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz asked. “Do you realize that there are only two political appointees in the IRS, the commissioner and the chief counsel?”

Chaffetz pressed Howard on White House involvement in screening documents related to the scandal. He held up an April 2009 memo from President Barack Obama that required agencies to send any requested documents to the White House that held “White House equities.”

Since those information requests never went to her department, Howard couldn’t tell the Oversight Committee who had to sign off on the release of any documents related to Lerner or the nonprofit targeting.

Chaffetz also said the committee had to subpoena the IRS for Howard’s presence at the hearing.

“We will drag the IRS up here every single week if we have to,” Chaffetz said. “You work for the American people.”

“If the IRS went after an individual … There’s no way you’d put up with this,” he continued.

Via: Daily Caller

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GOP Calls on AG to Prosecute Lois Lerner in IRS Scandal

(Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images)

Republican lawmakers are petitioning the new attorney general, Loretta Lynch, to criminally prosecute former IRS official Lois Lerner over the agency's targeting scandal, having failed to convince her predecessor to do so.

According to The Hill, 24 Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee sent a letter to Lynch asking for her to take up the panel's 2014 request to charge Lerner for possible crimes. 

Special: Ted Cruz Discloses the Key to Winning in 2016 – Click Here

The allegations include using her position at the agency to pursue heightened scrutiny of conservative groups; obstructing investigations by giving misleading information; and disclosing confidential taxpayer information, The Hill said.

Before former Attorney General Eric Holder stepped down from his post, House Speaker John Boehner was informed by the department that Lerner would not be prosecuted for refusing to testify at a congressional hearing.

The letter, which was circulated by the committee's chairman, Paul Ryan, also prompted statements of support from Boehner and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

"The American people deserve the truth as to how the IRS was used as a political tool to target and harass Americans for their beliefs. … It is outrageous that despite having evidence right at their fingertips, the DOJ has refused to investigate potential criminal acts taken by Lois Lerner at the IRS," Boehner said in a stat

Via: Newsmax

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IRS Hires $1,000-An-Hour Lawyers And It Might Have Violated Federal Law

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is paying a Washington law firm $1,000 an hour in taxpayer money to perform a corporate audit, despite its claim of being severely underfunded.

The IRS’ $2.2 million contract with big-money firm Quinn Emanuel has sparked a Senate Finance Committee investigation, with the committee’s chairman saying that the IRS “appears to violate federal law.”

Senate Finance Committee chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch wrote a letter this month to IRS commissioner John Koskinen stating his concerns relating to the contact, which pays Quinn Emanuel $1,000 an hour to perform an audit of Microsoft.

Hatch said that the contract appears to violate laws against the IRS sharing confidential taxpayer information with third parties. (RELATED: Lois Lerner Sent The White House Confidential Taxpayer Info).

“Despite these statutory prohibitions against the outsourcing of certain revenue functions or sharing of confidential taxpayer information, in May of last year the IRS hired a litigation law firm to assist in the income tax audit and investigation of a corporate taxpayer, including the conduct of sworn interviews,” Hatch’s letter stated.

“The IRS’s hiring of a private contractor to conduct an examination of a taxpayer raises concerns because the action: 1) appears to violate federal law and the express will of the Congress; 2) removes taxpayer protections by allowing the performance of inherently governmental functions by private contractors; and 3) calls into question the IRS’s use of its limited resources.”

But the Obama administration quickly re-wrote the rules shortly after hiring Quinn Emanuel.

Via: Daily Caller

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The Obama Administration's Ethics Problem

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki cannot get a handle on the recent scandalous treatment of veterans in VA hospitals, where more than 40 sick men were allowed to die without proper follow-up treatment. A cover-up allegedly followed. When the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal broke under the George W. Bush administration, heads rolled. So far, Shinseki seems immune from similar accountability.

Almost nothing that former secretary of health and human services Kathleen Sebelius promised before, during, or after the implementation of the ill-starred Affordable Care Act came true. She was also cited by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel for violating the Hatch Act, as she improperly campaigned for Obama’s reelection while serving as a cabinet secretary.

Former IRS official Lois Lerner used the federal tax-collection agency to go after groups deemed too conservative. She invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid telling Congress the whole truth.

Susan Rice, former U.N. ambassador and now national-security adviser, flat-out deceived the public in five television appearances about the Benghazi catastrophe. She insisted that the deaths of four Americans were due to a spontaneous riot induced by a reactionary video maker — even though she had access to intelligence fingering al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists as the culprits who planned the attack on the anniversary of 9/11.

Rice recently blamed Obama foreign-policy failures on domestic political polarization. But that is best described as the give and take of democracy and was once thought to be our foreign-policy strength.

Rice also knows little history. In 2007, in the midst of the surge, when Americans were fighting for their lives to stabilize Iraq, then-senator Hillary Clinton implied that the commanding general in Iraq, General David Petraeus, was a veritable liar. Senate majority leader Harry Reid agreed and declared that the war was already lost. Then–presidential candidate Barack Obama prematurely wrote off the politically inconvenient surge as a failure. Was Rice then shocked that “polarization” affected foreign policy?

Via: Real Clear Politics

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The IRS Targeting Scandal, Lois Lerner and Contempt of Congress - The Truth Must Be Uncovered

On May 10, 2013, former top IRS official Lois Lerner appeared before a gathering of the American Bar Association. Responding to a question that she had planted in the audience, Lerner apologized for what she acknowledged was “inappropriate” targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election.

Lerner said the practice was initiated by low-level rogue employees in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias.

Fast forward to today – on the eve of the one-year anniversary of that bombshell. Lois Lerner faces a vote in the full House of Representatives – a vote to hold her in contempt of Congress.

What a difference a year makes.

As we know, that’s exactly what happened in this case.

Under the direction of Lois Lerner, there was a coordinated nationwide effort – not the work of a few rogue agents – to target conservative and Tea Party groups that applied for tax-exempt status. Lerner and others (we still don’t know how high the involvement goes) employed a strategy to delay these applications – effectively silencing these conservative organizations – putting them on the sideline in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election.

Our federal lawsuit challenging this unlawful and unconstitutional action by the IRS is moving forward. We represent 41 organizations in 22 states. Eleven of our clients are still waiting for an answer – one group has been waiting for a response for nearly five years.

As if this deliberate targeting scheme was not enough, we now know that Lerner was truly a partisan bureaucrat – her politically-charged conduct outlined in a letter released recently by the House Ways and Means Committee.

Make no mistake about it. The actions of Lois Lerner, which I detailed in an earlier post, clearly reveal what can only be described as stunning political bias and manipulation.

Via: Fox News

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Issa, Cummings clash at hearing after ex-IRS official Lerner takes 5th

A House hearing on the IRS targeting scandal rapidly broke down into a heated and deeply personal argument between a top Democrat and Republican, moments after former IRS official Lois Lerner once again invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to testify. 

Lerner, who last year refused to answer questions about her role in singling out Tea Party and other conservative groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status, was called back before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday. Though Republicans argue she waived her Fifth Amendment right by giving a statement during the last hearing, Lerner continued to invoke that right on Wednesday. 

"On the advice of my counsel, I respectfully exercise my Fifth Amendment right and decline to answer that question," she said in response to several questions. 

But ranking Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., got into a heated argument with Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., after Issa tried to adjourn the hearing. 

Issa at first stood up and prepared to leave as Cummings said he wanted to ask a "procedural question." In seconds, tensions flared. 

"Mr. Chairman, you cannot run a committee like this," Cummings appealed. 

Cummings' microphone was then turned off, and then flipped back on again. Issa sat down momentarily, but then abruptly told Lerner she was "released" and said: "We're adjourned, close it down."

Via: Fox News

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White House, IRS exchanged confidential taxpayer info

Top Internal Revenue Service Obamacare official Sarah Hall Ingram discussed confidential taxpayer information with senior Obama White House officials, according to 2012 emails obtained by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and provided to The Daily Caller.

Lois Lerner, then head of the IRS Tax Exempt Organizations division, also received an email alongside White House officials that contained confidential information.

Ingram attempted to counsel the White House on a lawsuit from religious organizations opposing Obamacare’s contraception mandate. Email exchanges involving Ingram and White House officials — including White House health policy advisor Ellen Montz and deputy assistant to the president for health policy Jeanne Lambrew — contained confidential taxpayer information, according to Oversight.

The emails provided to Oversight investigators by the IRS had numerous redactions with the signifier “6103.”

Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code forbids a federal employee from “disclos[ing] any return or return information obtained by him in any manner in connection with his service as such an officer or an employee.”

Federal employees who illegally disclose confidential taxpayer information could face five years in prison.

“Thanks, David. Thanks for the information on [6103],” White House official Lambrew wrote to IRS official David Fish in a July 20, 2012 exchange. “I am still hoping to understand whether the 50 percent rule is moot if the organization does not offer goods and services for sale to the general public. Do we assume that organizations like [6103] do offer goods and services for sale?”

Another email from Montz to Ingram and others refers to the “[6103] memo” and the “[6103] letter” while discussing organizations that are not required to file 990′s.

Via: Daily Caller

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Lois Lerner retires---courtesy of the American taxpayer

And Her Troubles are Just Beginning.

Top IRS official Lois Lerner has now "retired."  

Lerner, under fire since she confessed on May 10, 2013, that the IRS had singled out Tea Party and other conservative groups for extra scrutiny, had been on paid leave while revelation after revelation demonstrated that she was not only instrumental in targeting Tea Party groups, but she also misled the American public when the agency "confessed" to IRS wrongdoing.

In fact, nothing about her original story has proven true.  In May, she claimed that low-level officials applied extra scrutiny to conservative groups, that this scrutiny was “wrong,” and that the IRS put a stop to it when it learned of the abuse.

All these assertions were wrong.

Leaked documents show that Lerner, former Director of IRS Exempt Organizations, saw the Tea Party applications as "extremely dangerous,"

The documents show she took the lead in yanking their applications for tax exempt status from Cincinnati to Washington, D.C. -- where they were ultimately scrutinized in the IRS Chief Counsel's office -- and she hoped that the Federal Election Commission  would "save the day" from conservative electoral gains.

Yet no other federal agency had to "save the day," as the IRS conducted its systematic targeting of conservatives and then kept targeting them even after approving their applications for tax exemption, actions that had an undeniable impact on conservative advocacy.

In other words, rather than providing the solution, Lerner was a key part of the problem. 

As the evidence of her wrongdoing quickly piled up, Lerner improperly pled the Fifth Amendment before a congressional panel, proclaiming her innocence before refusing to speak – a move that would never work in federal court.

Via: Fox News

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AP: Lois Lerner, Official at Center of IRS Targeting Scandal, Retiring

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Internal Revenue Service says an official at the center of the agency's tea party scandal is retiring.

Lois Lerner headed the IRS division that handles applications for tax-exempt status when she was placed on paid leave in May. While she was in charge, the agency acknowledged that agents improperly targeted tea party groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status from 2010 to 2012.

Lerner first disclosed the targeting at a law conference in May, when she was asked a planted question about IRS treatment of political groups. Less than two weeks later, she refused to answer questions at a congressional hearing, citing her constitutional right not to incriminate herself.

 Republicans in Congress have repeatedly called for her to be fired.

Via: Fox News

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[Update: September 11] Censored! IRS Scandal Being Buried by Big Three Networks

The Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks have colluded with the Obama administration to censor the latest IRS scandal news. The latest: On September 11 the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, in an article headlined “Lois Lerner’s Own Words,” reported the following: “In a February 2011 email, Ms. Lerner advised her staff—including then Exempt Organizations Technical Manager Michael Seto and then Rulings and Agreements director Holly Paz—that a Tea Party matter is ‘very dangerous,’ and is something ‘Counsel and [Lerner adviser] Judy Kindell need to be in on.’ Ms. Lerner adds, ‘Cincy should probably NOT have these cases.’

That’s a different tune than the IRS sang in May when former IRS Commissioner Steven Miller said the agency’s overzealous enforcement was the work of two ‘rogue’ employees in Cincinnati. When the story broke, Ms. Lerner suggested that her office had been unaware of the pattern of targeting until she read about it in the newspaper. ‘So it was pretty much we started seeing information in the press that raised questions for us, and we went back and took a look,’ she said in May.”

The WSJ Review & Outlook piece went on to note: “Earlier this summer, IRS lawyer Carter Hull, who oversaw the review of many Tea Party cases and questionnaires, testified that his oversight began in April 2010. Tea party cases under review are ‘being supervised by Chip Hull at each step,’ Ms. Paz wrote to Ms. Lerner in a February 2011 email. ‘He reviews info from TPs, correspondence to TPs etc. No decisions are going out of Cincy until we go all the way through the process with the c3 and c4 cases here.’ TP stands for Tea Party, and she means 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) nonprofit groups.” So far ABC, CBS and NBC have yet to report this story.
 

Last Time Any Aspect of the IRS Scandals Was Mentioned on Big Three Morning and Evening Shows:

ABC - June 26 (78 days)

CBS - July 24 (49 days)

NBC - June 27 (77 days)

Via: Newsbusters

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IRS Scandal Blows Wide Open As New Emails Uncovered

Lois Lerner's Own Words

Emails undercut the official IRS story on political targeting.

 The Wall Street Journal-Congress's investigation into the IRS targeting of conservatives has been continuing out of the Syria headlines, and it's turning up news. Emails unearthed by the House Ways and Means Committee between former Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner and her staff raise doubts about IRS claims that the targeting wasn't politically motivated and that low-level employees in Cincinnati masterminded the operation.

In a February 2011 email, Ms. Lerner advised her staff—including then Exempt Organizations Technical Manager Michael Seto and then Rulings and Agreements director Holly Paz—that a Tea Party matter is "very dangerous," and is something "Counsel and [Lerner adviser] Judy Kindell need to be in on." Ms. Lerner adds, "Cincy should probably NOT have these cases."

That's a different tune than the IRS sang in May when former IRS Commissioner Steven Miller said the agency's overzealous enforcement was the work of two "rogue" employees in Cincinnati. When the story broke, Ms. Lerner suggested that her office had been unaware of the pattern of targeting until she read about it in the newspaper. "So it was pretty much we started seeing information in the press that raised questions for us, and we went back and took a look," she said in May.

Via: Wall Street Journal

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