It’s no wonder that Lois Lerner wants immunity in exchange for her testimony. After all, people that have done nothing wrong, don’t need immunity. That being said, a video of Lerner from 2010 seems to shed a little more light on the reason why she and others in the IRS targeted the Tea Party.
From Breitbart:
Newly uncovered video shows Lois Lerner discussing the political pressure that swirled around the IRS in 2010. Lerner says “everyone” was “screaming at” the IRS to stop the flood of money pouring into the 2010 elections through 501(c)(4) groups as a result of Citizens United.
Lerner spoke to a small group at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy on October 19, 2010, just two weeks before the wave election that brought the Tea Party and Republicans significant gains in Congress. During her appearance Lerner was asked about the flow of money from corporations to 501(c)(4) groups. "Everyone is up in arms because they don’t like it" Lerner replied, adding "Federal Election Commission can’t do anything about it; they want the IRS to fix the problem."
Lerner goes on to outline the fact that 501(c)(4) organizations have the right to do “an ad that says vote for Joe Blow” so long as their primary activity is social welfare. However Lerner again emphasizes the political pressure the IRS was under at the time saying, "So everybody is screaming at us right now ‘Fix it now before the election. Can’t you see how much these people are spending?’" Lerner concludes by saying she won’t know if organizations have gone too far in campaigning until she looks at their “990s next year.”
Here’s the video:
Let’s go over the timeline here:
- January 21, 2010: The SCOTUS hands down the Citizens United ruling.
- October 19, 2010: Lois Lerner is on tape describing the intense amount of pressure put on the IRS by the Federal Elections Commission and others to “fix the problem” of private, non-profit companies donating to candidates and elections.
- November 2nd, 2010: The 2010 midterm elections bring historic gains for the GOP, around 700 seats nationwide.
Look, let’s not kid ourselves. The Democrats took a shellacking in the 2010 midterms because of the passage of Obamacare. Sure, there may have been other factors at play but that’s the big one. To blame the midterms on Citizens United is just plain silly. And while the leftists at the IRS had already been targeting conservative groups based solely on their ideology since well before Citizens United, the fact remains that, in their minds, Citizens United was the culprit. And after the huge 2010 midterm losses, something had to be done.
I believe that’s what detectives call a “motive.
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