WE HAD AN AWESOME NATION UNDER GOD AND NOW WE HAD AN OBAMANATION
AGAINST GOD
IRS had 'secret research project' on
conservatives
Lois Lerner warned colleague questions
by Congress were 'dangerous'
Published: 43 mins ago
Garth Kant Garth Kant is WND
Washington news editor. Previously, he spent five years writing, copy-editing
and producing at "CNN Headline News," three years writing,
copy-editing and training writers at MSNBC, and also served several local TV
newsrooms as producer, executive producer and assistant news director. He is
the author of the McGraw-Hill textbook, "How to Write Television
News."
Lois Lerner
WASHINGTON – The government watchdog
group Judicial Watch released more bombshells in the IRS scandal, using the
federal court system to get information Congress has been unable to obtain
directly from the tax agency or the Justice Department.
Tom Fitton, the group’s president, told
WND the scandal has now become so massive, “President Nixon resigned over
lesser abuses of the IRS.”
Just-released emails reveal the IRS had
a “secret research project” using lists of donors to mostly conservative
organizations that Judicial Watch said the agency never should have had in its
possession.
The documents do not describe the
project or show how the IRS used the names on the lists.
A thread of emails seemed to
acknowledge the agency was aware it did not have a valid reason for soliciting
the donor lists.
Referring to all the emails released
Thursday by Judicial Watch, Fitton told WND, “These documents show how justice
has been abused by this administration. That Eric Holder’s Justice Department
has done no serious criminal investigation of the IRS abuses is no surprise
since that agency is implicated in the scandal and obstructed investigations.”
Another email exchange revealed Lois
Lerner, the former IRS employee at the center of the scandal, warned a
colleague that Congress was asking “dangerous” questions about their targeting
of conservative nonprofit organizations.
Congress has been stymied in its
attempts to get much of the information from the IRS and the Justice Department
that Judicial Watch has been able to obtain through the legal system.
The documents are the latest emails
Judicial Watch has obtained as part of a lawsuit it filed in October 2013 after
the IRS refused to comply with a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, requests
dating back to May 2013.
Attorney General Eric Holder has
ignored a contempt of Congress citation against Lerner and a recommendation by
a congressional committee to file criminal charges in the IRS scandal.
But Judicial Watch has been able to use
FOIAs to obtain a series of documents with explosive revelations that have
helped House committees keep their investigations into the IRS scandal alive.
“We are doing the work of the
Department of Justice, the media and Congress. We are thankful that the court
process still works and our lawsuit is, right now, the last best hope for
accountability and truth in this massive scandal,” Fitton told WND.
These latest documents show Lois
Lerner, the key figure in the IRS scandal, and the agency’s former head of the
tax-exempt division, had obtained the donor lists.
Judicial Watch said they also show 75
percent of the groups were apparently conservative and only 5 percent were
liberal.
When Lerner used a planted question on
May 10, 2013 to disclose the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups, as a
congressional investigation began to bear down upon her, she conceded the
requests for donor names was “not appropriate.”
An email just unearthed by Judicial
Watch from Deputy Associate Chief Counsel Margo L. Stevens to Lerner had
instructed her as on May 21, 2012, that “such information was not needed
across-the-board and not used in making the agency’s determination on exempt
status.”
Judicial Watch said key parts of that
email and other emails had been blacked out. In fact, many of the documents
were completely blacked out.
Judicial Watch said the Obama
administration was not required by law to withhold any of that information, and
it may have been using a FOIA exemption when material is deemed
“pre-decisional” or deliberative.”
An email thread a month later, on June
27, 2012, showed the donor lists were being used for a “secret research
project.”
Judicial Watch said the emails, with
the subject line “donor names,” included this exchange:
June 27, 2012: 8:59 a.m. – David L.
Fish, IRS acting director of Exempt Organizations Rulings and Agreements, to
Holly Paz:
Joseph Urban [IRS Technical Advisor,
Tax Exempt and Government Entities] had actually started a secret research
project on whether we could, consistent with 6104, argue that [REDACTED] Joe
was quite agitated yesterday when I told him what we were doing. (He was
involved when the initial question was raised, but we didn’t continue reading
him in). At one point he started saying that this was a decision for Steve
Miller – I told him we were already doing it, and that I didn’t know whether
Lois had already talked to Nikole [former IRS Chief of Staff to IRS Commissioner
Steve Miller] about this. Would not be surprised if he already started working
on Lois.
June 27, 2012 9:02 a.m. – Holly Paz to
David L. Fish:
Thanks for the heads up. The decision
was made by Steve, based on advice from P and A. [Procedure and Administration]
It was on the very next day, June 28,
2012, that Lerner warned Paz that congressional and TIGTA inquiries into their
IRS procedures were becoming “dangerous.”
June 28, 2012 8:57 a.m. – Paz to
Lerner: “Now TIGTA wants to talk to me. I am guessing they read this morning’s
paper. [Apparent reference to Wall Street Journal article concerning IRS
scrutiny of Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS tax exempt status] Will keep you
posted.”
June 28, 2012 9:13 a.m. – Lerner to
Paz: “Not alone. Wait til I am there.”
June 28, 2012 09:17 a.m. – Paz to
Lerner: “Sorry. Too late. He already called me. It was not about WSJ. Just him
trying to get better understanding of the scope of the [House Ways and Means
Committee Chairman Dave] Camp [R-MI] request.”
June 28, 2012 8:22 a.m. – Lerner to
Paz: “Just as dangerous. I’ll talk to you soon. Be there in half hour.”
Judicial Watch believes the “dangerous”
request was apparently a letter sent by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave
Camp, R-Mich., to IRS the head of the IRS requesting copies of all 501(c)(4)
(tax-exempt status) applications from 2010 and 2011.
The concern by Lerner and other IRS
officials apparently began just after they were informed, in late March 2012,
their process for reviewing tax-exempt applications was under investigation in
the form of an audit conducted by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax
Administration, or TIGTA.
On May 17, 2013, then-IRS Commissioner
Steve Miller testified before Congress that “instructions had been given to
destroy any donor lists,” but, four months later, donor lists were actually
turned over to the House Ways and Means Committee.
The committee then announced, a year
later, on May 7, 2014, that, of the scores of conservative groups that provided
donor information to the IRS, “nearly one in ten donors were subject to audit.”
In a statement released by Judicial
Watch, Fitton said, “[I]t is well past time that President Obama should be held
to account about his repeated and recent falsehoods about his IRS scandal.”
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