Tag: lois lerner

Possible PERSONAL link between Wisconsin GAB / IRS witch hunts targeting conservatives discovered.

Well, look at this…

Former IRS tax-exempt director Lois Lerner ran the agency’s policy on conservative groups. Kevin Kennedy runs the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB) that helped prosecutors with their secret John Doe investigation of conservative groups after the 2011 and 2012 recall elections of Governor Scott Walker and state senators.

Emails we’ve seen show that between 2011 and 2013 the two were in contact on multiple occasions, sharing articles on topics including greater donor disclosure and Wisconsin’s recall elections. The emails indicate the two were also personal friends who met for dinner and kept in professional touch. “Are you available for the 25th?” Ms. Lerner wrote in January 2012. “If so, perhaps we could work two nights in a row.”

Continue reading Possible PERSONAL link between Wisconsin GAB / IRS witch hunts targeting conservatives discovered.

Lois Lerner cursed out conservatives using her IRS email account.

Let’s say that I had some oversight authority over liberal groups or individuals. Or that I could do things to make life more difficult for those groups. And let’s say that I wrote the right-wing equivalent of what Lois Lerner wrote about conservatives (according to her, we’re apparently a*sholes, crazies, and teRrorists)…

LernerEmails2

(Via Truth Revolt)

…using my official email address. Two observations about that would inevitably follow:

  1. Liberal groups would go ballistic, whether or not I was linked to any kind of detrimental activities towards them.
  2. They would have a point.

I understand that people don’t want to be told that they can’t have the luxury of a private opinion, but: I don’t want IRS personnel to think that they get to have the luxury of a private opinion, especially when it involves people that they may be auditing. And I really, really don’t want that opinion expressed via public property. That’s an irs.gov email account she’s using. My taxes pay to maintain that email account. I’m giving her resources: I expect a basic amount of professionalism in return.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Lois Lerner looked to target sitting Senator for IRS investigation.

Charming.

Today, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) announced the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) targeting of conservative individuals includes a sitting United States Senator.  According to emails reviewed by the Committee under its Section 6103 authority, which allows the Committee to review confidential taxpayer information, Lois Lerner sought to have Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) referred for IRS examination.

“We have seen a lot of unbelievable things in this investigation, but the fact that Lois Lerner attempted to initiate an apparently baseless IRS examination against a sitting Republican United States Senator is shocking,” said Camp.

Basically, what happened here was that Lerner got sent an invite meant for Sen. Grassley by mistake.  So she immediately started sniffing around for a way to make a federal case out of it, and got gently smacked down by a colleague more aware of the pesky reality that you actually have to wait for somebody to break the rules before you can investigate them for it.  Your tax dollars at work, folks: the IRS may not be able to follow the same document storage rules that they’ll enforce on the rest of us, but they’re absolutely proactive when it comes to trolling through your mail for a preemptive strike.

Sheesh.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

IRS cut ties with Sonasoft almost immediately after Lois Lerner scandal broke.

I’m sorry* to revisit this topic, but this Sonasoft thing is starting to blow up: “The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) cancelled its longtime relationship with an email-storage contractor just weeks after ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s computer crashed and shortly before other IRS officials’ computers allegedly crashed.” Basically, the Daily Caller – doing the legwork that our legacy media apparently cannot – determined that Sonasoft offered email backup services from 2005 to 2011 (Sonasoft certainly claimed that).  A couple of weeks after Congress started requesting Lois Lerner’s email records from the IRS, Lerner’s computer crash – and, shortly after that, the IRS let their contract with Sonasoft lapse.  Left unstated is why the IRS would decide to terminate services with the company that was providing them with backups, although I’m sure that we could all hazard a guess or two. Continue reading IRS cut ties with Sonasoft almost immediately after Lois Lerner scandal broke.

IRS continues to flail about in Lerner case; consequences to ensue.

(H/T: Instapundit) This was… unwise of the Internal Revenue Service.

Some history: House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa as early as June 4, 2013 asked the IRS to provide “all documents and communications sent by, received by, or copied to Lois Lerner” between Jan. 1, 2009 and the present.” Note the “all.”

Mr. Issa sent an official subpoena demanding “all” the records in August 2013, and another subpoena reiterating the “all” demand in February 2014. Former Acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel in August of 2013 told Congress, under oath, that the IRS was “reviewing every one of Lois Lerner’s emails, and providing the response.” Current IRS Commissioner John Koskinen in February told Congress, under oath, that the IRS was sending all of Ms. Lerner’s emails.

Yet in its letter on Friday the IRS slipped in the following: “In early 2014, Chairmen Camp and Issa reiterated their requests for all of Lois Lerner’s email, regardless of subject matter . . . Fulfilling the request,” said the IRS, meant it had to compile Lerner emails that went beyond the “search terms” it had “originally loaded for review.” By mid-March, the agency admitted, it had produced for Congress only the Lerner emails that it—the IRS—considered “related” to the scandal.

Highly unwise.  It’s precisely because of behavior like this that the House has decided to spank the IRS.  Or, rather, start the spanking process: Continue reading IRS continues to flail about in Lerner case; consequences to ensue.

Quote of the Day, Most Of You Already Thought A Special Prosecutor For The IRS Was Needed… edition.

…but it’s just that Ron “Whitewater” Fournier of the National Journal agrees with you.

If the IRS can’t find the emails, maybe a special prosecutor can.

Mind, he didn’t – and probably still doesn’t – agree with you that the IRS targeting originated with the White House*, but hey, a special prosecutor is just what we need to resolve that question.  Surely we can all – and do, apparently – agree that the important thing here is to figure out just what happened…

Moe Lane

Nancy Pelosi skips Lois Lerner contempt vote for DCCC fundraiser.

Why worry about the beer can, once the beer has been drunk?

Priorities:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) did not attend the Wednesday evening vote series to hold former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt for refusing to testify about the agency’s improper scrutiny of Tea Party groups.

She was, however, at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser attended by the president and roughly 90 guests at the home of Disney Chairman Alan Horn in Bel Air, Calif., according to a White House pool report.

On the bright side, we now can put an upper-limit monetary value on just how much the Democratic party cares about Lois Lerner’s travails.  Although I imagine that it’s probably no fun to know that your so-called ‘defenders’ don’t think that you’re worth more than three, four hundred thousand bucks? – Because that’s kind of chump change, in this business of ours. Continue reading Nancy Pelosi skips Lois Lerner contempt vote for DCCC fundraiser.

House formalizes contempt for Lois Lerner.

We knew already that she should be held in contempt: the House just merely made it official tonight.  Please note this, too:

Federal law says that if the House or Senate votes to hold someone in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena, the matter is referred to the local U.S. attorney, a Justice Department official. It is then the “duty” of the U.S. attorney to bring the matter before a grand jury. But that doesn’t guarantee an indictment. Justice officials didn’t respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.

Oh, man, speaking as a partisan political hack it’d be a real shame if Eric Holder’s Justice Department tried to do a whitewash of political corruption in an election year. An absolute shame.  I mean, I can’t see at all how we could take advantage of that move…

Moe Lane

PS: The statute of limitations on all of this will extend past January of 2017, ye Beltway denizens.  Have a nice day!

[UPDATE: Dagnabbit, I think Ace got in that particular snark first.]

House Oversight Committee: IRS’s Lois Lerner lied to us, you know.

OK, this just sounds like straight-up perjury:

[The House Oversight committee report] states that [former IRS overseer Lois] Lerner made false statements to committee staff on various occasions.

During a February 2012 briefing, Lerner told committee staff that the criteria for evaluating tax-exempt applications had not changed. According to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), however, Lerner directed in June 2011 that the criteria used to identify applications be changed.

Continue reading House Oversight Committee: IRS’s Lois Lerner lied to us, you know.