Targeting Conservatives: Watchdog Obtains IRS - FEC Email Exchange

Watchdog obtains IRS-FEC email exchange

 October 31, 2013, 08:00 pm @TheHill escerpt:

A conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch, said it obtained an email chain from the Internal Revenue Service in which the department provided confidential tax information to the Federal Election Commission.

The watchdog group obtained the exchange from a freedom of information request made shortly after congressional investigators began prodding the agency on whether it inappropriately shared confidential tax information about a conservative group applying for tax-exempt status. 

 Leaking Information about conservatives isn't new for Obama's IRS

Lois Lerner, then-IRS director of Exempt Organizations, who was quoted in the emails has since retired.

Judicial Watch said the IRS sent the FEC annual tax returns, request forms for tax-exempt status, and articles of organization. The watchdog received the information from the FEC. It said the IRS had not yet complied with its request for information.

Sharing taxpayer returns would violate federal law. 

The White House Lied and blamed a few 'rogue agents in the Cincinnati office'

The House Ways and Means subcommittee on Oversight released a portion of the email exchange in July questioning whether the IRS had shared confidential information. Congressional investigators had since requested more information. The exchange between Lerner and the FEC dates back to 2009.

“These extensive emails and other materials provide a disturbing window into the activities of two out-of-control federal agencies: the IRS and FEC,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement accompanying the release. “And there is the very real question as to whether these documents evidence a crime.”

Lois Lerner earns a 'bushel of Pinocchios' from the Washington Post
An IRS Political Timeline @WSJ


Other Links:
Obama's IRS Targets Conservative Groups-Leaks Info
Democrats Justify Using IRS to Target Political Opponents
Lerner Statement - Fuller Clip
Lois Lerner Invokes the 5th Amendment @CSPANVL
A bushel of Pinocchios for IRS's Lois Lerner
IRS released confidential info on conservative groups to ProPublica
Supporters of Propublica
Planted question gambit backfires on IRS officials
IRS Targeting Conservatives is 'Poor Customer Service' that Leads to Promotions
Strassel: The IRS Scandal Started at the Top
IRS's Lois Lerner's Own Words

IRS Commissioner's Opening Statement:

Emails Undercut the Official IRS Story on Targeting Conservative Groups

The IRS's targeting of conservative groups needs to be ignored by the left and the Obama sycophants in the media. Another textbook case of cognitive dissonance by the leftists.  Keep repeating phony scandal, or they were all targeted just the same.

Lois Lerner's Own Words

Emails undercut the official IRS story on political targeting.

A version of this article appeared September 11, 2013, on page A18 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Lois Lerner's Own Words.
Excerpted:

Congress's investigation into the IRS targeting of conservatives has been continuing out of the Syria headlines, and it's turning up news. Emails unearthed by the House Ways and Means Committee between former Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner and her staff raise doubts about IRS claims that the targeting wasn't politically motivated and that low-level employees in Cincinnati masterminded the operation.

In a February 2011 email, Ms. Lerner advised her staff—including then Exempt Organizations Technical Manager Michael Seto and then Rulings and Agreements director Holly Paz—that a Tea Party matter is "very dangerous," and is something "Counsel and [Lerner adviser] Judy Kindell need to be in on." Ms. Lerner adds, "Cincy should probably NOT have these cases."

That's a different tune than the IRS sang in May when former IRS Commissioner Steven Miller said the agency's overzealous enforcement was the work of two "rogue" employees in Cincinnati. When the story broke, Ms. Lerner suggested that her office had been unaware of the pattern of targeting until she read about it in the newspaper. "So it was pretty much we started seeing information in the press that raised questions for us, and we went back and took a look," she said in May. 

 Earlier this summer, IRS lawyer Carter Hull, who oversaw the review of many Tea Party cases and questionnaires, testified that his oversight began in April 2010. Tea party cases under review are "being supervised by Chip Hull at each step," Ms. Paz wrote to Ms. Lerner in a February 2011 email. "He reviews info from TPs, correspondence to TPs etc. No decisions are going out of Cincy until we go all the way through the process with the c3 and c4 cases here." TP stands for Tea Party, and she means 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) nonprofit groups.

The emails also put the targeting in the context of the media and Congressional drumbeat over the impact of conservative campaign spending on the 2012 elections. On July 10, 2012 then Lerner-adviser Sharon Light emailed Ms. Lerner a National Public Radio story on how outside money was making it hard for Democrats to hold their Senate majority.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had complained to the Federal Election Commission that conservative groups like Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity should be treated as political committees, rather than 501(c)(4)s, which are tax-exempt social welfare groups that do not have to disclose their donors.

Background testimony and video on the IRS scandal











More blogs on the IRS targeting of conservatives:
Democrats Justify Using IRS to Target Political Opponents
Obama's IRS Targets Conservative Groups-Leaks Info
Targeting Conservatives: An IRS Political Timeline

Barack Obama's Organizing for Action operates as a 501C4 tax exempt organization