More Proof That Lois Lerner Lied

Hmmm, whatever in the world happened to “not a smidgen of corruption” in the story about the possible targeting of conservative groups by the IRS? Hasn’t Jay Carney and President Obama been telling us all along that this was a “non-story”, not a real scandal? As it turns out, more information is coming to light that tells us it is a real story, that there is, at least, a smidgen of corruption involved, no matter how Lois Lerner and the President try to tell us otherwise. The Republican leadership in the House of Representatives may not be interested in running this to ground, but some people are staying with the story to its bitter end.

The new information in question is in the form of emails from Lois Lerner to the Department of Justice and to the Federal Election Commission. In spite of her previous claims that the IRS was not at fault by looking at conservative groups for their tax exempt status, I am beginning to understand why she then pleaded the 5th Amendment. She was up to her eyeballs in this scandal.

Judicial Watch – Judicial Watch today released a new batch of internal IRS documents revealing that former IRS official Lois Lerner communicated with the Department of Justice (DOJ) about whether it was possible to criminally prosecute certain tax-exempt entities. The documents were obtained as a result of an October 2013 Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) after the agency refused to respond to four FOIA requests dating back to May 2013.

The newly released IRS documents contain an email exchange between Lerner and Nikole C. Flax, then-Chief of Staff to then-Acting IRS Commissioner Steven T. Miller discussing plans to work with the DOJ  to prosecute nonprofit groups that “lied” (Lerner’s quotation marks) about political activities. The exchange includes the following:

• May 8, 2013: Lerner to Flax

I got a call today from Richard Pilger Director Elections Crimes Branch at DOJ … He wanted to know who at IRS the DOJ folk s [sic] could talk to about Sen. Whitehouse idea at the hearing that DOJ could piece together false statement cases about applicants who “lied” on their 1024s –saying they weren’t planning on doing political activity, and then turning around and making large visible political expenditures. DOJ is feeling like it needs to respond, but want to talk to the right folks at IRS to see whether there are impediments from our side and what, if any damage this might do to IRS programs.

I told him that sounded like we might need several folks from IRS…

• May 9, 2013: Flax to Lerner

I think we should do it – also need to include CI [Criminal Investigation Division], which we can help coordinate. Also, we need to reach out to FEC. Does it make sense to consider including them in this or keep it separate?

Lerner then “handed off” scheduling the issue to Senior Technical Adviser, Attorney Nancy Marks, who was then supposed to set up the meeting with the DOJ.  Lerner also decided that it would be DOJ’s decision as to whether representatives from the Federal Election Commission would attend.

Democratic Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse had held a hearing on April 9during which, “in questioning the witnesses from DOJ and IRS, Whitehouse asked why they have not prosecuted 501(c)(4) groups that have seemingly made false statements about their political activities.”  Lerner described the impetus for this hearing in a March 27, 2013, email to top IRS staff:

As I mentioned yesterday — there are several groups of folks from the FEC world that are pushing tax fraud prosecution for c4s who report they are not conducting political activity when they are (or these folks think they are). One is my ex-boss Larry Noble (former General Counsel at the FEC), who is now president of Americans for Campaign Reform. This is their latest push to shut these down. One IRS prosecution would make an impact and they wouldn’t feel so comfortable doing the stuff.

So, don’t be fooled about how this is being articulated – it is ALL about 501(c)(4) orgs and political activity

But in an email sent a few minutes earlier, Lerner acknowledged prosecutions would evidently be at odds with the law:

Whether there was a false statement or fraud regarding an [sic] description of an alleged political expenditure that doesn’t say vote for or vote against is not realistic under current law. Everyone is looking for a magic bullet or scapegoat — there isn’t one. The law in this area is just hard.

This is where I state the obvious. How much longer can this administration claim the IRS targeting of conservative groups is not a real scandal? There seems to be new evidence of said scandal every day, yet it is largely ignored by the media and the powers that be in the Obama White House. Do they really believe they can continue wearing blinders, that if they refuse to acknowledge what was happening at the IRS and the DOJ, all of this will just go away?

John Hayward makes an interesting observation about the reasoning behind Lois Lerner’s actions.

Human Events – Who did she mean by “everyone?”  The level of co-ordination between the Democrat Party and the IRS on this crusade against conservative groups grows more clear with each new revelation.  They freaked out after the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, and formulated a strategy to suppress groups opposed to President Obama during the 2012 election.  It worked.

But it might have stopped working if they dragged the Justice Department into the picture and gave Tea Party organizations a chance to make their case during high-profile prosecutions, as Lerner seemed to realize.  Better to quietly delay the applications for conservative organizations, dragging the process out until the election was safely in the bag, while intimidating the targeted groups and their donors with intrusive demands for information.

Again, the obvious. How much more information has to be made public before the Obama administration will admit the truth? The smidgen of corruption is real. There was collusion taking place between the IRS, the DOJ, and possibly the FEC. Elijah Cummings even got in on the act with his persecution of True The Vote. The time when Americans will simply roll over and accept their fate is past. That’s not how many of these groups roll and why so much of this is already public knowledge.

To the liberal supporters of the Obama administration, how much longer do we have to endure your claims that your heroes have done nothing wrong? How much longer before you can admit the whole of America has been lied to by what was supposed to have been the most open, honest, and transparent administration in the history of the American presidency?