Is this woman the new Lois Lerner?

As some at the Federal Election Commission seek to broaden the power of the agency, critics are arguing that it's beginning to look increasingly like the Internal Revenue Service under Lois Lerner, who has been accused of using her office for partisan purposes.

They take special aim at the commission's Democratic chairwoman, Ann Ravel, who also served as chairwoman of California's equivalent to the FEC, the Fair Political Practices Commission, before coming to Washington in 2013. Ravel has lambasted the commission as "dysfunctional" because votes on enforcement issues have often resulted in ties, and she has said the commission should go beyond its role of enforcing election laws by doing more to get women and minorities elected to political office. She has complained that super PACs are "95 percent run by white men," and that as a result, "the people who get the money are generally also white men."

To remedy those problems, Ravel sponsored a forum at the FEC in June to talk about getting more women involved in the political process. She has also proposed broadening disclosure laws to diminish the role of outside spending, and suggested that the FEC should claim authority to regulate political content on the Web. She's also voiced support for eliminating one member of the commission in order to create a partisan majority that doesn't have tie votes, saying in an interview with Roll Call, "I think it would help."

Hans von Spakovsky, who served on the FEC from 2006-2008, takes issue with Ravel's effort to go beyond the traditional purview of the commission's functions. "The FEC has one duty, and one duty only — to enforce the existing campaign finance laws. It has no business trying to 'encourage' or 'discourage' folks to get involved in politics, no matter who they are, minority or otherwise," Spakovsky told theWashington Examiner.

Spakovsky also said it would be contrary to the function of the FEC to limit the number of commissioners. "The fact that any action by the FEC requires the votes of four commissioners, and thus bipartisan agreement, ensures that its investigations are based on enforcing the law evenly, without regard to the party a particular candidate is a member of. Ravel wants to end that, which would allow the FEC to be used for partisan political witch hunts," Spakovsky said.

Ravel did not respond to a request for comment.

The votes on which the commission ties often pertain to alleged violations by the third-party groups known as super political action committees. Super PACs have no contribution limit and no spending limit as long as they do not "coordinate" with the candidates for whom they are spending. The FEC defines this as "payment made in cooperation with, at the suggestion of, or per an understanding with a candidate." Critics of those groups say they often circumvent the law by straddling the definition of coordination.

Ravel co-signed a letter with fellow Democratic Commissioner Ellen Weintraub in June, saying the spending that those groups engage in on behalf of candidates should count toward the spending limit for those candidates. "There is this basic notion that super PACs are supposed to be separate from the candidates," Weintraub has said. "[Voters] look at what's going on, and they say: 'This doesn't look separate. Where are the lines?'"

The Wall Street Journal's editorial board has compared Ravel to the IRS' Lerner, who's also been accused of using her office to push a political agenda. "We'll take our chances with donations freely given than with the arbitrary and partisan rulings of Lois Lerner at the IRS or Ann Ravel at the Federal Election Commission," the editorial board wrote.

Via: Washington Examiner

Continue Reading.....

Kamala Harris, Dem Rising Star, Goes for the Jugular on Conservative Nonprofits

The Supreme Court is being asked to determine whether California’s ambitious Attorney General and candidate for U.S. Senate, Kamala Harris, has violated the First Amendment and federal law protecting confidential tax return information.

Harris is California’s top charity regulator, and has been delegated broad, unbridled discretion to tell charities and nonprofit advocacy groups what they must file to obtain a license to speak with potential and existing donors.

Nonprofit organizations are some of the most effective critics of government, other powerful institutions -- and ambitious politicians -- making them especially vulnerable to the desire to bully and censor them. The Lois Lerner/IRS scandal is a good example.

Harris decided to push the limits by telling charities that they may not solicit contributions unless they first file a list of their top donors, which is an extortionate prior restraint on speech. Those donors are found on a confidential “Schedule B” to the tax returns filed by nonprofits with the IRS. 

Federal law protects confidential tax return information, and even provides civil and criminal penalties against federal and state officials who violate the confidentiality law.  The IRS was ordered to pay the National Organization for Marriage for disclosing that organization’s Schedule B donor information to hostile blogs.

As or even more importantly, what Harris is doing flies in the face of the 1958 landmark Supreme Court decision in NAACP v. Alabama. That case held that membership lists are protected by the First Amendment from demands of states and their attorneys general.

The petition for the court to hear this case filed by the Center for Competitive Politics will be supported by an amicus brief filed by the Free Speech Coalition of Virginia, along with dozens of policy advocacy groups, and even charities such as animal sanctuaries. 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) nonprofit organizations may still add their name to the amicus brief in what may be a landmark case protecting privacy and rights of private association.

Here is a clip from the amicus brief to be filed explaining the collaboration between Lois Lerner and state charity officials:

A bipartisan report of the Senate Finance Committee about the Internal Revenue Service’s treatment of nonprofit organizations, issued August 5, 2015, references various unlawful disclosures of confidential tax information by the IRS, including the Form 990 Schedule B information of the National Organization of Marriage.[1]

Recent publicized violations of disclosure of confidential tax return information by the IRS -- and of course what is publicized is based only on the times that the IRS was caught -- demonstrate that even the federal service with its supposedly sophisticated guards of confidentiality is untrustworthy.  It defies logic to believe that state attorneys general, a partisan elected position subject to the temptations and whims of partisan politics no matter how dedicated and professional, would have better safeguards of such confidential tax return information.

Via: American Thinker

Continue Reading....

Lerner Rages Against 'Evil and Dishonest' Republicans, Will Nets Report?

Lois Lerner’s utter contempt for Republicans was on full display in a newly uncovered email in which she railed: “They called me back to testify on the IRS ‘scandal,’ and I too[k] the 5th again because they had been so evil and dishonest in my lawyer’s dealings with them.”

The question has to be asked, will Lerner’s use of such inflammatory language be enough to wake the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) network evening and morning shows out of their IRS scandal coverage slumber? 

So far, they have yet to report on any of the recent IRS scandal revelations such as Lerner setting her sights on Bristol Palin, her glee when she found out instant messaging emails were not automatically archived, and the IRS’s targeting of donors to conservative organizations.

On Thursday, Politico’s Katy O’Donnell, in article headlined “Lerner Slammed ‘evil and dishonest’ GOP Inquisitors,” reported on a “Politico examination of thousands of pages of emails and other material recently released by the Senate Finance Committee” that uncovered  particularly spiteful emails Lerner had sent to a friend:

When she was under investigation by Congress, she offered a blistering critique of her inquisitors. In a March 6, 2014, email, Lerner told a friend: “They called me back to testify on the IRS ‘scandal,’ and I too[k] the 5th again because they had been so evil and dishonest in my lawyer’s dealings with them.”

In June 2014, Lerner told the same friend that an unflattering picture of her appearing before Congress kept surfacing because “it serves their purposes of hate mongering to continue to use those images. I was never a political person — this whole fiasco has only made me lose all respect [for] politics and politicians. I am merely a pawn in their game to take over the Senate.”

These emails come on the heels of new evidence that Lerner’s IRS was holding up approval of conservative groups. 

On August 11, Americans for Tax Reform’s Alexander Hendrie reported that Lerner’s IRS granted only one conservative group non-profit status in three years:

Lois Lerner’s political beliefs led to tea party and conservative groups receiving disparate and unfair treatment when applying for non-profit status, according to a detailed report compiled by the Senate Finance Committee.

Because of Lerner’s bias, only one conservative political advocacy organization was granted tax exempt status over a period of more than three years:

“Due to the circuitous process implemented by Lerner, only one conservative political advocacy organization was granted tax-exempt status between February 2009 and May 2012. Lerner’s bias against these applicants unquestionably led to these delays, and is particularly evident when compared to the IRS’s treatment of other applications, discussed immediately below.”

As the report notes, Lois Lerner became aware in April or May of 2010 that the IRS Exempt Organizations (EO) division had begun receiving a high number of applications from Tea Party organizations. But as the backlog of applicants increased, Lerner added “more layers of review and raised hurdles for applicants to clear.”

Via: Newsbusters

Continue Reading....

LOIS LERNER’S IRS GRANTED ONLY ONE CONSERVATIVE GROUP NON-PROFIT STATUS IN THREE YEARS

Lois Lerner’s political beliefs led to tea party and conservative groups receiving disparate and unfair treatment when applying for non-profit status, according to a detailed report compiled by the Senate Finance Committee.

Because of Lerner’s bias, only one conservative political advocacy organization was granted tax exempt status over a period of more than three years:

“Due to the circuitous process implemented by Lerner, only one conservative political advocacy organization was granted tax-exempt status between February 2009 and May 2012. Lerner’s bias against these applicants unquestionably led to these delays, and is particularly evident when compared to the IRS’s treatment of other applications, discussed immediately below.”

As the report notes, Lois Lerner became aware in April or May of 2010 that the IRS Exempt Organizations (EO) division had begun receiving a high number of applications from Tea Party organizations. But as the backlog of applicants increased, Lerner added “more layers of review and raised hurdles for applicants to clear.”

This “rigid and unorthodox process” meant that over the three year period, tea party and conservative groups waited a total of 621 years for the IRS to make a decision about their applications for tax-exempt status. As the report notes, many of these applications could have been decided far earlier, but were not due to decisions by Lerner. As the report notes:

“The unfortunate consequence of imposing this highly rigid and unorthodox process on EO Determinations was that many Tea Party applications that could have been decided in 2010 were not. Rather, those Tea Party applications unnecessarily languished for several more years, while the IRS mismanaged its way through a series of failed initiatives designed to bring the applications to decision.”

In contrast, progressive or non-affiliated applicants faced a timely review process. Indeed, the IRS was willing and able to quickly approve high profile non-tea party applicants:

“Although applications from the Tea Party and conservative organizations languished at the IRS, this was not the case for all groups that applied. In cases where the IRS wanted to act quickly, it did – particularly for other high-profile applications that attracted political attention.”

As the Finance Committee concludes, the process by which EO approved applications for tax-exempt status was clearly based on how closely an organization aligned with Lerner’s liberal views:

“The IRS’s treatment of these organizations was almost universally consistent with Lerner’s personal political views – this is, supporting Democratic candidates and opposing conservative tax-exempt organizations that engaged in political speech. Conservative organizations that sought to participate in the nation’s political discourse, such as the Tea Party, drew the strongest ire from Lerner.”

Via: Infowars

Continue Reading....

Lois Lerner: Lincoln Should’ve Let the South Go Instead of Civil War

Most Americans tend to agree that Abraham Lincoln was one of this country’s better presidents, having saved the nation from imploding on itself with the Civil War. Former IRS chief Lois Lerner, however, does not apparently have the same thoughts about keeping the South in the union.

“Look my view is that Lincoln was our worst president not our best,” Lerner wrote in 2014. “He should (have) let the south go. We really do seem to have 2 totally different mindsets.”

The Senate Finance Committee released a report yesterday that examined 1.5 million pages of IRS emails. A significant focus has gone to the fact that Lerner had a pattern of deriding conservatives as “crazies” and “assholes,” as well as the allegations that her leadership mismanaged the applications of Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status

“The report clearly shows that conservative groups were singled out because of their political beliefs, and gross mismanagement at the IRS allowed this practice to continue for years,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch.

Lerner is still reeling from renewed backlash after yesterday’s reports suggested that she once targeted an organization that once paid a fee to Bristol Palin.

Via: Mediaite

Continue Reading,.....

IRS's Lois Lerner called conservatives 'a--holes' in emails

Lois Lerner emails obtained from the House Ways and Means Committee are displayed in Washington, Wednesday, July 30, 2014. (AP Photo) 

A trove of IRS emails show top official Lois Lerner had a deep commitment to the Democratic Party and a significant dislike for the new conservative grassroots groups that formed under the Tea Party banner and sought tax-exempt status from the agency.

"Crazies" and "a--holes," were the blunt terms Lerner used to describe conservatives, who, with a Supreme Court decision striking down the campaign finance reform law, were bringing about "an end to America," she wrote.

The emails are included in a bipartisan report issued Wednesday by the Senate Finance Committee, which cited "gross mismanagement" and also "personal politics" as the root cause of the IRS mishandling of tax-exempt applications from Tea Party organizations.

Democrats on the panel emphasized the mismanagement, declaring there was no evidence the groups were singled out because they were conservative. They cited lack of training, lack of oversight and ineptitude as the main culprits in the mishandling of hundreds of tax-exempt applicants that were subjected to extra scrutiny and delays.

"The results of this in-depth, bipartisan investigation showcase pure bureaucratic mismanagement without any evidence of political interference," said Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the finance panel.

But Lerner, the former top official who oversaw tax-exempt groups, showed a true dislike for conservative-leaning organizations, according to her email conversations with her husband and associates.

"Well, you should hear the whacko wing of the GOP," her husband, Michael Miles, wrote to Lerner in November 2012.

"The US is through; too many foreigners sucking the teat; time to hunker down, buy ammo and food, and prepare for the end. The right wing radio shows are scary to listen to."

Lerner responds, "Great. Maybe we are through if there are that many a--holes."

Via: Washington Post

Continue Reading....

IRS mismanaged Tea Party groups, Senate report finds

The IRS severely mismanaged the applications of Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status, a long-awaited and bipartisan Senate report said Wednesday.

But Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee couldn't find common ground on perhaps the central IRS issues of the last 27 months: whether the agency intentionally targeted conservative groups because of their politics, and whether there was White House or Treasury involvement.

The new report did find that Lois Lerner, the central figure in the controversy, "failed to adequately manage" her staff that were processing the tax-exempt applications. 

More broadly, the committee, led by Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), found that the IRS division overseeing tax-exempt groups showed little to no regard for the groups who in some cases faced years of delay on their applications. 

"Not only did those organizations have to withstand delays measured in years, but many also were forced to bear a withering barrage of burdensome and inappropriate 'development letters' aimed at extracting information the IRS wrongly concluded was necessary to properly process the applications," the report said.

Lerner launched the IRS controversy in May 2013, by apologizing for the IRS's treatment of Tea Party groups through a planted question at a law conference. A Treasury inspector general subsequently found the IRS had selected groups with “Tea Party” and “patriots” in their name for extra scrutiny.

Republicans and Democrats have long agreed that Lerner and her division mishandled Tea Party groups' applications, but have quarreled from almost the start over whether conservative groups were singled out intentionally.

The controversy intensified last year after the IRS said it couldn't find an untold number of Lerner's emails because of a computer crash, something that also delayed the Senate Finance report. A Treasury inspector general only recently concluded an inquiry that found that the IRS lost as many as 24,000 of Lerner’s emails.

Hatch said Wednesday that "the administration’s political agenda guided the IRS’s actions with respect to their treatment of conservative groups," and that Lerner's own personal views "impacted how the IRS conducted its business."

Wyden, on the other hand, told reporters that "my judgment is this report points to vast bureaucratic bumbling."

"There is not a single shred of political interference," he added.

The Finance Committee's findings are unlikely to relieve any of the partisan tensions surrounding the IRS, which has seen its budget slashed even further in the wake of the congressional investigations.

House Republicans have raised the specter of impeaching the IRS commissioner, John Koskinen, over his handling of the missing Lerner emails. Koskinen himself has said that it was up to the Finance panel to decide whether the IRS singled out conservative groups for political reasons. 

In a statement, the IRS said that it appreciated the Finance Committee's efforts and that the agency would study the report's recommendations.

"The IRS is fully committed to making further improvements, and we want to do everything we can to help taxpayers have confidence in the fairness and integrity of the tax system," the statement added.

Koskinen has also said the IRS will hold off on releasing new proposed rules that would more clearly define political activity for the 501(c)(4) groups at the center of the controversy, to keep from overly influencing the 2016 campaign.

Democrats have said confusion between tax law and current IRS rules helped fuel the improper scrutiny of tax-exempt applications, an idea dismissed by Republicans.

The findings and recommendations that the Republicans and Democrats agreed upon in the new bipartisan report are broad and, in many cases, likely noncontroversial.

The report, for instance, notes that the extra scrutiny given to tax-exempt applicants reduced taxpayer trust in the IRS, that the exempt organizations unit needed a more centralized command structure and that many staffers in that division didn’t have enough training to do their jobs correctly.

Its recommendations include that the IRS do a better job managing the backlog of tax-exempt cases.

But in their own section, Republicans said the IRS did not hold up liberal groups just because of their name, as some Democrats have said.

GOP senators also criticized what they called an overly political culture within the IRS, in which an employee union has so much influence that it “makes it difficult for the agency to remain apolitical.”

And Republicans blasted not only Lerner but the agency’s senior-most officials — including former Commissioner Doug Shulman and former interim Commissioner Steven Miller — for concealing what they knew from Congress for months.

“The report clearly shows that conservative groups were singled out because of their political beliefs, and gross mismanagement at the IRS allowed this practice to continue for years,” Hatch said on the Senate floor Wednesday.

But Wyden said that wasn’t so in his own floor speech Wednesday. The Oregon Democrat said the Finance panel found no documents showing any link between the improper scrutiny and either the White House or Treasury.

On top of that, Wyden said none of the IRS staffers interviewed by the committee talked of any political bias, and that Republicans were unfairly hyping Lerner’s own political views to make their case that the agency targeted Tea Party groups.

Democrats, Wyden said, found no proof that Lerner’s liberal views influenced how she did her job.

“So, Ms. Lerner’s husband voted for socialists, she is a Democrat, she supports same-sex marriage, and she apparently doesn’t have a lot of Republican supporters among her family or friends,” Wyden said. “What is all of this supposed to prove?”

Via: The Hill

Continue Reading....

Lois Lerner Wanted To Audit A Group With Ties To Bristol Palin

Embattled ex-IRS official Lois Lerner inquired about auditing a pro-abstinence group with ties to Bristol Palin, the daughter of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, according to a Senate report released on Wednesday.

Senate Finance Committee chairman Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, disclosed Lerner’s email — which she sent in April 2011 — in an addendum to a report detailing the results of a two-year investigation into whether the IRS unfairly targeted conservative groups.

The bi-partisan report concluded that Lerner and the IRS often ignored applications for tax-exempt status submitted by Tea Party organizations and other groups.

According to Hatch, Lerner’s political views influenced the IRS’ handling and processing of tax-exempt applications for the conservative groups.

One example of this was an email Lerner sent to her supervisors asking whether an audit should be conducted on Candie’s Foundation, a nonprofit group which seeks to limit teen pregnancy.

Bristol Palin was paid $332,500 to serve as an “ambassador” for the organization, which was founded by an executive at Candie’s Inc., an apparel company.

After Lerner learned of the payment to Palin from a news article, she wrote in an April 8, 2011, email chain to David Fish, Judith Kindell — two IRS officials — and others:

Thoughts on the Bristol Palin issue? I’m curious that a [private foundation] can pay any amount to someone who is not a [disqualified person]? It is a [private foundation] right? Even if it were a [public charity] – would that be private benefit – what are the consequences? I’m asking because I don’t know whether to send to Exam as a referral.

Hatch noted how unusual it was for Lerner to consider an audit based upon a single news article. He noted that out of 1.5 million IRS records reviewed by his committee staff, there were no other instances where Lerner referred a progressive group for an audit based on a single news article.

“Lerner’s willingness to act on this particular news article – among many that reached her inbox each day – shows that she was paying close attention to conservative politicians and organizations,” Hatch stated in his report.

USA Today noted another partisan comment from Lerner that Hatch cited in his report.

In a March 6, 2014, email exchange Lerner and a friend were discussing the political landscape in Texas. Lerner’s friend criticized Rick Perry and Greg Abbott, the former and current governors of the state, respectively.

“As you can see, the Lone Star State is just pathetic as far as political attitudes are concerned,” the friend wrote to Lerner.

She responded by stating that Abraham Lincoln should have allowed the South to secede from the Union.

“Look my view is that Lincoln was our worst president not our best. He should’[v]e let the south go. We really do seem to have 2 totally different mindsets,” she wrote.

Via: Daily Caller

Continue Reading....

[VIDEO] We Now Know Where Lois Lerner's Emails and Backup Tapes Were Destroyed

There have been dozens of questions surrounding the disappearance of emails belonging to former IRS official Lois Lerner, the woman at the center of the IRS targeting scandal. Some of Lerner's emails have been recovered, after IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said under oath they were lost forever. Thousands are still missing. But perhaps the most compelling questions that have been asked since the IRS targeting scandal broke in May 2013 are 1) Exactly where were Lerner's emails and backup tapes destroyed? 2) Who destroyed them?

Now, we have an answer. According to Americans for Tax Reform, Lerner's hard drive was destroyed by the IRS "Midnight Unit" in West Virginia: 

Backup tapes containing as many as 24,000 Lois Lerner emails were destroyed by an IRS entity officially known as the "Media Management Midnight Unit" located in Martinsburg, West Virginia, according to documentation released this week by the House Oversight Committee. In all, 422 backup tapes holding the emails were magnetically "degaussed" despite an agency-wide preservation order and congressional subpoena. Degaussing is a process whereby powerful magnets are used to erase data on a storage tape.

The preservation order came from IRS Chief Technology Officer Terence Millholland in response to Congressional subpoenas over Lois Lerner's emails. However, the agency completely failed to ensure the order was followed or understood. According to the House Oversight report:

-"The IRS failed to ensure compliance with the preservation order at each turn. The IRS failed to confirm compliance with the preservation order in February 2014, upon learning of the gap in emails; failed to ensure the Media Management Midnight Unit, the team that destroyed the backup tapes, properly understood the preservation order; and failed to make certain that individuals who ordered the destruction of the specific media, in this instance the backup tapes, properly understood the preservation order."

Keep in mind Lerner's hard drive didn't simply "crash" on its own, but instead hadphysical damage. According to one Treasury Inspector General, the hard drive likely crashed due to "an impact of some sort." The question is who damaged the hard drive and whether it was done on purpose to destroy evidence.

New documentation released by the House Oversight Committee this week again raises questions on how Lois Lerner's hard drive was physically damaged and whether there was some kind of deliberate act to destroy data on it.

The House Oversight Committee report cites an officially transcribed interview with John Minsek, senior investigative analyst with the IRS Criminal Investigations (CI) unit. Minsek examined the Lerner hard drive in 2011. In the transcribed interview, he notes Lerner's hard drive contained "well-defined scoring creating a concentric circle in the proximity of the center of the disk." 

Earlier this week a federal judge threatened to "haul into court the IRS Commissioner to hold him personally into contempt," for ignoring court orders and refusing to turn over emails belonging to Lerner by deadline.

Via: Townhall

Continue Reading....

Federal Judge Threatens To Hold IRS Commissioner, DOJ Lawyers in Contempt of Court over Lerner

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced that U.S District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan today threatened to hold the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department attorneys in contempt of court after the IRS failed to produce status reports and newly recovered emails of Lois Lerner, former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the IRS, as he had ordered on July 1, 2015.

During the a status hearing today, Sullivan warned that the failure to follow his order was serious and the IRS and Justice Department’s excuses for not following his July 1 order were “indefensible, ridiculous, and absurd.”  He asked the IRS’ Justice Department lawyer Geoffrey Klimas, “Why didn’t the IRS comply” with his court order and “why shouldn’t the Court hold the Commissioner of the IRS in contempt.”  Judge Sullivan referenced his contempt findings against Justice Department prosecutors in the prosecution of late Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) and reminded the Justice Department attorney he had the ability to detain him for contempt.  Warning he would tolerate no further disregard of his orders, Judge Sullivan said, “I will haul into court the IRS Commissioner to hold him personally into contempt.”

After the hearing, Judge Sullivan issued the following “minute order”:

At the July 29, 2015 status hearing, the Government agreed that the Court’s July 1, 2015 oral order from the bench was clear and enforceable.  Nonetheless, the Government reasoned it inappropriate to file a motion for reconsideration until a written order was issued.  As expressed at the hearing, the Government’s reasoning is nonsensical.  Officers of the Court who fail to comply with Court orders will be held in contempt.  Also, in the event of non-compliance with future Court orders, the Commissioner of the IRS and others shall be directed to show cause as to why they should not be held in contempt of Court.  The Court’s July 1, 2015 ruling from the bench stands: (1) the Government shall produce relevant documents every Monday; (2) the Government’s document production shall be accompanied by a status report that indicates (a) whether TIGTA has turned over any new documents to the IRS, (b) if so, the number of documents, and (c) a timeframe for the IRSs production of those documents. Signed by Judge Emmet G. Sullivan on July 29, 2015.

At a July 1, 2015, status conference, Sullivan ordered the IRS to begin producing, every week, the nearly 1,800 newly recovered Lerner emails responsive to Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.  Despite the court order, the IRS did not produce any Lerner emails until July 15.  The IRS also failed to provide Judicial Watch a status report of the Lerner email production issues, as also ordered by Sullivan.  Last week, Judge Sullivan ordered sua sponte the parties to appear for a status hearing today after Judicial Watch raised concerns about the IRS’ failure to comply with his orders to release the newly discovered Lerner emails and status updates on its production of previously “missing” documents.

The developments come in Judicial Watch’s FOIA lawsuit seeking documents about the Obama IRS’ targeting and harassment of Tea Party and conservative opponents of President Obama (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Internal Revenue Service (No. 1:13-cv-01559)).  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.

Yesterday, Judicial Watch released the first batch believed to be newly recovered emails of Lerner. The new documents show that Lerner and other top officials in the IRS, including soon-to-be Acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller, closely monitored and approved the controversial handling of tax-exempt applications by Tea Party organizations.  The documents also show that at least one group received an inquiry from the IRS in order to buy time and keep the organization from contacting Congress.

“In a dramatic court hearing today, Judge Sullivan made it clear he would personally hold accountable the IRS Commissioner Koskinen and Justice Department attorneys for any further contempt of his court orders in Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.  “The missing and-then-not missing Lois Lerner saga is a stark example of the Obama administration’s contempt for a federal court and the rule of law.  That Obama administration officials would risk jail rather than disclose these Lerner documents shows that the IRS scandal has just gotten a whole lot worse.”

Via: Judicial Watch

Continue Reading....

Newly Recovered Lois Lerner Email Shows IRS Tried To Cover Up Tea Party Targeting

The IRS sent one of its intrusive scrutiny letters to a nonprofit group in order to throw up a smokescreen and prevent the group from complaining to Congress about poor treatment, according to one of Lois G. Lerner’s apparently lost emails, which were recovered by auditors and released by an interest group Tuesday.

Judicial Watch, which sued to force the production of the Lerner emails, said the emails confirm that Ms. Lerner, the central figure in the targeting probe, and her colleagues were aware of the sensitive nature of the cases but appeared to hide details of the massive backlog they were amassing as they held up hundreds of tea party and conservative group applications for nonprofit status.

The IRS turned over 906 pages of emails July 15 to Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm, ahead of a Wednesday court hearing. Judicial Watch concluded that the emails were part of the messages Ms. Lerner lost in a computer malfunction, and released them Tuesday.

“This material shows that the IRS‘ cover-up began years ago,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. “We now have smoking-gun proof that top officials in the Obama IRS unlawfully harassed taxpayers just to keep them from complaining to Congress about IRS‘ targeting and abuse. No wonder the Obama IRS has had such little interest in preserving or finding Lois Lerner’s emails.”

The Lerner emails have become almost as big a scandal as the initial targeting. Ms. Lerner, who was head of the division that scrutinized the tea party applications until she retired while under investigation in 2013, suffered a computer hard drive crash that cost potentially thousands of emails that should have been part of the record.

The IRS took routine steps to try to recover the emails but reported that it was unable to do so.

But the agency’s independent inspector general said it was able to find the messages easily on backup tapes stored at remote locations — and that the IRS never bothered to look for those tapes, even as it was tellingCongress that all possible routes for message recovery had been exhausted.

According to the new emails, Ms. Lerner and her colleagues were aware of the growing outcry among nonprofit groups that they were being delayed.

In one Nov. 3, 2011, exchange between Ms. Lerner and Cindy Thomas, a program manager in the Cincinnati office that was handling the cases and was involved in a back-and-forth with Washington, the IRS admitted to having hundreds of cases stacked up and awaiting action.

Afraid of congressional pressure, Ms. Thomas ordered one of the inquiry letters to be sent, just to prevent one of the organizations being held up from complaining.

“Just today, I instructed one of my managers to get an additional information letter out to one of these organizations — if nothing else to buy time so he didn’t contact his Congressional Office,” she wrote in the email released by Judicial Watch.

Ms. Thomas said she feared a judge would get involved soon and order the IRS to move the applications more quickly.

That email exchange did confirm that IRS employees in Washington were deeply involved in making decisions about the nonprofit groups’ cases.

The IRS initially blamed the Cincinnati office for the glitch.

President Obama last week blamed the targeting scandal not on poor management but on “crummy” legislation he said Congress passed that gave his employees confusing instructions, and on funding cuts. He said the IRS wasn’t able to do its best work as a result.

Via: Washington Times

Continue Reading....

[VIDEO] Jason Chaffetz: Expect News on Probe of IRS 'As Early As Next Week'

Rep. Jason Chaffetz asserts there is evidence that the IRS intentionally targeted conservative groups under Lois Lerner, the former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit at the agency, and said "there will be news … as early as next week."

Chaffetz, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is leading the congressional investigation into the IRS scandal. On Thursday, he told a group at the Ripon Society in Washington, D.C., the IRS destroyed documents requested by the committee in March 2014.

"Probably the biggest thing our committee is looking at is the IRS," the Utah Republican said. "You have political targeting that is factual at this point. There are no ifs, ands or buts. You had groups within the IRS who were politically targeting conservatives and impeding their First Amendment rights. You're going to continue to hear more about this. Because when the targeting became evident, the Oversight and Government Reform Committee put in place a subpoena for the documents — a small window of Lois Lerner's emails.

"Internally, the IRS put a preservation order in place — don't destroy or get rid of any of these documents. These documents and emails were in the possession of the IRS. And on March 4, 2014, they destroyed them."

Lerner resigned from her post at the IRS in September 2013 after she was placed on administrative leave in May of that year following the revelations.

Chaffetz said during his address at the Ripon Society the IRS deliberately defied orders by destroying the documents.

"Imagine if the IRS had given you a summons for you to produce documents," Chaffetz added. "You had them in your possession, and then you destroyed them. What would happen to you? Do you think they would say, 'Oh, darn it!' No, which is why Congress has to stand up for itself. You cannot — with a duly issued subpoena and eternal preservation order in place — go out and destroy documents and say there is no consequence to that; nobody's going to be held accountable, and nobody is at fault.

"And yet that's essentially what we've heard from the president, who has said repeatedly there is not even a 'smidgeon' of corruption. He was on 'The Daily Show' with Jon Stewart the other night and said, 'You know what the real scandal is? The real scandal is that the IRS is underfunded. They need more agents, more people, and Congress passed a bad law.'

"You know this ridiculous law the president is talking about? It was passed in 1913. He makes it look as if we had passed this law. That little detail he said on 'The Daily Show,' you're going to see that surface. We will continue to pursue this, and I promise you — there will be news on the IRS side as early as next week. So stay tuned."

It was recently reported that investigators found more than 1,400 emails tied to Lerner that were thought to have been deleted.

Via: Newsmax

Continue Reading....