Showing posts with label Lois Lerner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lois Lerner. Show all posts

Friday, June 22, 2018

MASSIVE: John McCain ordered Obama IRS to "Financially Ruin" the Tea Party





Judicial Watch today released newly obtained internal IRS documents, including material revealing that Sen. John McCain’s former staff director and chief counsel on the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee, Henry Kerner, urged top IRS officials, including then-director of exempt organizations Lois Lerner, to "audit so many that it becomes financially ruinous." Kerner was appointed by President Trump as Special Counsel for the United States Office of Special Counsel.
The explosive exchange was contained in notes taken by IRS employees at an April 30, 2013, meeting between Kerner, Lerner, and other high-ranking IRS officials. Just ten days following the meeting, former IRS director of exempt organizations Lois Lerner admitted that the IRS had a policy of improperly and deliberately delaying applications for tax-exempt status from conservative non-profit groups.

Lerner and other IRS officials met with select top staffers from the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in a "marathon" meeting to discuss concerns raised by both Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) that the IRS was not reining in political advocacy groups in response to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. Senator McCain had been the chief sponsor of the McCain-Feingold Act and called the Citizens United decision, which overturned portions of the Act, one of the "worst decisions I have ever seen."

In the full notes of an April 30 meeting, McCain’s high-ranking staffer Kerner recommends harassing non-profit groups until they are unable to continue operating. Kerner tells Lerner, Steve Miller, then chief of staff to IRS commissioner, Nikole Flax, and other IRS officials, "Maybe the solution is to audit so many that it is financially ruinous." In response, Lerner responded that "it is her job to oversee it all:"



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Saturday, February 3, 2018

IRS finally admits it targeted Israel-related groups, apologizes

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Wednesday, June 29, 2016

New Documents Suggest IRS’s Lerner Likely Broke the Law





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Saturday, August 29, 2015

Judge Tells IRS It Can't Hide White House Emails



...United States District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that Section 6103 of the tax code does not justify the IRS from withholding from FOIA requesters by refusing to say whether the records exist. She ordered the IRS to respond properly to an FOIA request submitted by the non-profit watchdog group Cause of Action.

“As we have said all along, this administration cannot misinterpret the law in order to potentially hide evidence of wrongdoing. No administration is above the law, and we are pleased that the court has sided with us on this important point,” said Daniel Bernstein, executive director of Cause of Action....
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Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Washington Times Reports: IRS finds yet another Lois Lerner email account

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Saturday, July 11, 2015

Surprise, Surprise: It turns out that the vast left-wing conspiracy isn’t all that vast





Wisconsin’s campaign to investigate conservative tax-exempt groups has always seemed like an echo of the IRS’s scrutiny of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. It turns out that may be more than a coincidence.

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.
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Thursday, June 25, 2015

Lois Lerner's Emails Lost, Backups Erased



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Thursday, April 30, 2015

Networks Ignore Discovery of 'Lost' Lois Lerner E-Mails



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Sunday, April 12, 2015

Lois Lerner Email Warned IRS Employees of Emails That ‘Can Be Seen By Congress’

◼ Lois Lerner, former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), warned other IRS officials that lower-level employees “are not as sensitive as we are to the fact that anything we write can be public--or at least be seen by Congress,” according to documents obtained by Judicial Watch and released on Thursday. - CNS

In the latest batch of documents the IRS released to Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which the agency heavily redacted before handing over, Lerner proposed training to help IRS employees “understand the pitfalls” of discussing “specific Congress people, practitioners and political parties” in emails that could be "seen by Congress" or the public.
“We are all a bit concerned about the mention of specific Congress people, practitioners and political parties. Our filed folks are not as sensitive as we are to the fact that anything we write can be public--or at least be seen by Congress,” Lerner wrote in an email to Holly Paz, former director of the IRS Office of Rulings and Agreements, on Feb. 16, 2012....

In June of 2014, the IRS informed Congress that it had lost two years worth of Lerner’s emails, which had been subpoenaed as part of the congressional investigation, due to a mid-2011 computer crash. However, it was revealed last November that investigators with the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) were able to recover more than 30,000 of the emails the IRS claimed were permanently lost.
Judicial watch filed a FOIA lawsuit on Feb. 18, 2015, demanding “any and all records related to the destruction of damaged hard drives from IRS employee computers from January 1, 2010, to the present.” KEEP READING
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Thursday, April 2, 2015

Twin announcements by the DOJ: protecting the administration’s friends, destroying its enemies

◼ Why, isn’t this what a nice Orwellian Department of Justice ought to be doing? - neoneocon
◼ Protecting Obama’s friends - Politico
DOJ: No contempt charges for former IRS official Lois Lerner
◼ Destroying his enemies - New York Times
Democrat Senator Robert Menendez Indicted on Corruption Charges
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Friday, February 27, 2015

Huge trove of 'destroyed' Lois Lerner emails discovered...

◼ IRS watchdog reveals Lois Lerner missing emails now subject of criminal probe - Stephen Dinan/Washington Times Via Drudge

The IRS’s inspector general confirmed Thursday it is conducting a criminal investigation into how Lois G. Lerner’s emails disappeared, saying it took only two weeks for investigators to find hundreds of tapes the agency’s chief had told Congress were irretrievably destroyed.

Investigators have already scoured 744 backup tapes and gleaned 32,774 unique emails, but just two weeks ago they found an additional 424 tapes that could contain even more Lerner emails, Deputy Inspector General Timothy P. Camus told the House Oversight Committee in a rare late-night hearing meant to look into the status of the investigation.

“There is potential criminal activity,” Mr. Camus said.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Utah Republican and Oversight Committee chairman, said the ongoing investigations undercut President Obama’s assertion last year that there was no evidence of corruption in the IRS’s targeting.

“I have no idea how the president came to such a definitive conclusion without all the facts,” he said.

The IRS belatedly told Congress it may have lost some of Ms. Lerner’s emails after her computer crashed, and asserted that the backup tapes didn’t exist.

But under questioning from Mr. Chaffetz, Mr. Camus said it took him only two weeks to track down the backup tapes, and when he asked the IRS depository for them, the workers there said they’d never been contacted by the agency itself.

◼ 32,744 emails - Reuters
"It's just shocking to me that you start (looking), two weeks later you're able to find the emails," he told Camus, referring to the Treasury inspector general's office locating the emails after the IRS said it could not find them. The IRS is part of the Treasury Department.
◼ Criminal probe launched - Stephen Dinan/Washington Times
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Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Lois Lerner Begged Supervisor Not To Visit, Or Ask About Tea Party Targeting Investigation

◼ link - Jeff Dunetz/Yid With Lid
"Please don't ask them about closures, pipelines, wait time for full development cases, or the c4 application letter … can we put this off please?" - Lerner Email to IRS Deputy Director Joseph Grant, April 2012
Judicial Watch released new Lois Lerner emails on Wednesday which reveal that Ms Learner was concerned about the questions from Congress and tried to prevent a visit by her Divisional Director "to the IRS Cincinnati office “smack dab in the middle” of Congressional inquiries into the IRS targeting of conservative groups."
◼ New #IRSscandal e-mails reveal a very paranoid Lois Lerner - Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion
Today’s document release by Judicial Watch includes evidence that then-IRS official Lois Lerner strongly objected to and attempted to prevent a visit by Tax Exempt and Government Entities (TE/GE) Division Deputy Director Joseph H. Grant to the embattled Cincinnati office, which spent time “smack dab in the middle” of Congressional investigations into the IRS targeting of conservatives.
◼ New Documents: Lerner Objected to IRS Deputy Director Visit to Cincinnati Office During Congressional Inquiries into Tea Party Targeting - Judicial Watch
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Wednesday, December 17, 2014

New IRS Emails Surface: Evidence of a White House Cover-Up?

◼ Newly released emails expose possible collusion between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and President Obama´s Department of Justice, a disturbing new development in the IRS targeting scandal. - FOX
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Friday, December 12, 2014

Obama Justice Department Was Involved In IRS Targeting, Lerner Emails Reveal

◼ Sadly, the 18 month investigation into the IRS targeting of conservative groups isn’t over, and it may be worse than anyone thought. A federal judge has broken loose more emails that the DOJ had surely hoped would never surface. The picture it reveals isn’t pretty. - Forbes

The documents prove that Lois Lerner met with DOJ’s Election Crimes Division a month before the 2010 elections.

It has to be embarrassing to the DOJ, which may not be the most impartial one to be investigating the IRS. In fact, the DOJ withheld over 800 pages of Lerner documents citing “taxpayer privacy” and “deliberative privilege.” Yet these internal DOJ documents show Ms. Lerner was talking to DOJ officials about prosecuting tax-exempt entities (yes, criminally!) two years before the IRS conceded there was inappropriate targeting....

“No wonder the Department of Justice under Eric Holder has done no serious investigation of the Obama IRS scandal,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “These new documents dramatically show how the Justice Department is up to its neck in the IRS scandal and can’t be trusted to investigate crimes associated with the IRS abuses that targeted Obama’s critics,” he said. “Richard Nixon was impeached for less.”

Perhaps the latter is an overstatement. Yet it is getting harder and harder to simply accept President Obama’s ‘no smidgen of corruption’ remark made to Fox News in February, no matter how sincere and forthright his delivery.
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Friday, November 21, 2014

FOUND! 30,000 missing emails from IRS' Lerner recovered



◼ Up to 30,000 missing emails sent by former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner have been recovered by the IRS inspector general, five months after they were deemed lost forever. - Susan Ferrechio/Washington Examiner

The U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) informed congressional staffers from several committees on Friday that the emails were found among hundreds of “disaster recovery tapes” that were used to back up the IRS email system.

“They just said it took them several weeks and some forensic effort to get these emails off these tapes,” a congressional aide told the Washington Examiner....

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee he chairs will be one of the committees that will examine the emails.

“Though it is unclear whether TIGTA has found all of the missing Lois Lerner e-mails, there may be significant information in this discovery,” Issa told the Examiner. “The Oversight Committee will be looking for information about her mindset and who she was communicating with outside the IRS during a critical period of time when the IRS was targeting conservative groups. This discovery also underscores the lack of cooperation Congress has received from the IRS. The agency first failed to disclose the loss to Congress and then tried to declare Lerner’s e-mails gone and lost forever. Once again it appears the IRS hasn’t been straight with Congress and the American people.”
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Friday, September 5, 2014

Lois-gate: Judicial Watch uncovers ‘secret research project’ targeting donor lists





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◼ link - Twitchy



◼ NEW EMAILS: IRS Obtained Donor Lists For ‘Secret Research Project’

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) improperly obtained donor lists from nonprofit groups as part of a “secret research project” being run by Lois Lerner and other officials.

IRS official David Fish revealed the “secret research project” in a June 27, 2012 email to Lerner’s direct subordinate Holly Paz, according to emails released Thursday by the nonprofit group Judicial Watch, which obtained the emails in a pending Freedom of Information Act lawsuit....

◼ FRIDAY GOVT NEWS DUMP: IRS SAYS 'LOST' EMAILS FROM 5 MORE EMPLOYEES... - AP
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Monday, August 25, 2014

Outrageous: DOJ Attorneys: Lerner’s Emails Exist, But Here’s Why We Aren’t Turning Them Over



◼ Despite IRS officials’ sworn testimony and affidavits to the contrary, a DOJ attorney has learned there is a backup system where Lois Lerner’s emails are stored. - IJReview
So why haven’t they been produced, pursuant to subpoena and court order?
◼ Judicial Watch: DOJ Admits Lois Lerner’s Emails Do Exist on Gov’t Backup System - CNS

A Department of Justice attorney admitted that “lost” emails from Lois Lerner’s hard drive do exist on an emergency backup system, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said today.
Fitton made the bombshell declaration during an appearance on Fox News:
"The Department of Justice attorney told the Judicial Watch attorney on Friday that it turns out the federal government backs up all computer records in case something terrible happens in Washington and there is a catastrophe. So the government can continue operating. They say it would be too hard to go get Lois Lerner's e-mails from that back-up system.

"Everything we've been hearing about scratched hard drives, missing e-mails of Lois Lerner, other IRS officials, other officials in the Obama administration, it's all been a pack of malarkey. They could get these records but they don't want to and they haven't told anyone about it, frankly, until we were able to get it out of them on Friday. There's no such thing as Lois Lerner's missing e-mails. It's all been a big lie. They've been lying to the courts, to the American people and to Congress."
◼ Group Claims IRS Lawyer Said Lerner’s Emails Were Backed Up - The Daily Signal
“There’s no such thing as Lois Lerner’s missing emails. It’s all been a big lie. They’ve been lying to the courts, to the American people, and to Congress. It’s really outrageous.”
◼ IRS now claims Lois Lerner’s emails not really missing, just really hard to find - HotAir

The indications of criminal conduct out of the IRS did not stop there. On Monday, court filings revealed that the tax agency destroyed Lerner’s blackberry on which the suspect emails were contained after the agency learned that her computer had crashed and a congressional inquiry was already underway.

◼ IRS Shocker: Filing Reveals Lerner Blackberry Destroyed - The device was wiped AFTER Congressional inquiry began - New York Obaerver

Judge Sullivan has had to pry information from the IRS to learn anything about Ms. Lerner’s Blackberry. Now, with these latest revelations, I’m confident he’s not finished.

In two elusive and nebulous sworn declarations, we can glean that Ms. Lerner had two Blackberries. One was issued to her on November 12, 2009. According to a sworn declaration, this is the Blackberry that contained all the emails (both sent and received) that would have been in her “Outlook” and drafts that never were sent from her Blackberry during the relevant time.

...Aside from the fact the IRS was required to keep hard copies, we now know they should exist on Blackberry servers as well as Google and perhaps others. Indeed, the Department of Justice has disclosed that they all should be on a government server—as we suspected.

Judge Sullivan has already appointed federal Magistrate Judge John Facciola to assist the parties in finding the emails on other devices. Between the two of them, they can demand production of the emails from the servers, and there are still more questions to answer.

What are all the servers the emails went through? Blackberry is touted as the most secure, so surely the emails should be found there. All of the data on her current Blackberry should be provided immediately to Judge Sullivan, for whatever insight it might provide. There’s no reason for the IRS to hold out on that. It should be given to Darrell Issa and Congress also. Nothing required in the production of the emails through the Blackberry could possibly hamper the Inspector General’s investigation.

And what about “ghost” email accounts? The IRS should be able to determine, or Judge Sullivan can, whether any of the officials whose emails are missing used personal accounts or other names for business emails they didn’t want going through the federal system even though they were required to do so.
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Wednesday, July 16, 2014

ANOTHER MYSTERIOUS ‘HARD DRIVE CRASH’ FOR THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION

◼ The freak wave of hard-drive crashes afflicting the Obama Administration – and nobody else on Earth – continues. By an amazing coincidence, the new story is about an old colleague of IRS scandal kingpin Lois Lerner at the Federal Election Commission, who in an even more amazing coincidence was also under investigation for partisan political activity. - John Hayward/Human Events @Doc_o

And so, we’re once again left with a letter from House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, (R-CA) and subcommittee head Jim Jordan (R-OH), informing another agency head that this all stinks to high heaven, especially since (April Sands — a former co-worker of Lois Lerner’s) admitted to violating federal law.
Although we recognize and appreciate the right of every citizen to participate in the political process, the Hatch Act limits certain political activities conducted by employees of the Executive Branch. In particular, the Act prohibits Executive Branch employees from engaging in partisan political activity while on official duty at a federal workplace. Certain employees, including FEC employees, are further restricted by the Hatch Act from engaging in partisan political campaigns or management. Additionally, federal law makes it a crime for a federal employee “to solicit or receive a donation of money or other thing of value in connection with a Federal, State, or local election, while in any room or building occupied in the discharge of official duties…”

As part of a settlement agreement with the [Office of Special Counsel], Ms. Sands admitted to violating the Hatch Act by soliciting political contributions via Twitter, conducting political activity through her Twitter account, and participating in a political discussion “via webcam from an FEC conference room… while on duty.” The FEC OIG sought to pursue criminal charges stemming from Ms. Sands solicitation of political contributions while on duty inside the FEC building.
But then, you know, there was that little hard drive problem, and all the evidence went away.
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Friday, July 11, 2014

Paging Rose Mary Woods: Obama’s Unbelievable Missing IRS Emails

◼ It’s relatively easy to wave away a single scandal. It’s one of the hardest tricks in politics to wave away concerns that you wave away concerns too much. - James Poulos/Daily Beast

...Leading Democrats, not just in the White House, have been lulled into a false sense of security by what they see as the manic, knee-jerk criticism that dominates the right wing. Obama’s reputation for neglecting problems he sees as beneath him has been cast in an even more unflattering light by the varieties of dismissiveness on display in his party. Whether it’s Hillary Clinton’s trademark evasive laugh or Nancy Pelosi’s infamous incomprehension of the constitutional issues surrounding Obamacare, too many top Democrats are seen too often acting as if no reasonable opposition to their agenda can even exist.

This, more than any one scandal, is likely to hobble the party for the next few election cycles. It’s relatively easy to wave away a single scandal. It’s one of the hardest tricks in politics to wave away concerns that you wave away concerns too much.
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Thursday, July 10, 2014

Rep. Stockman: We just filed resolution to have Lois Lerner arrested; Updated with full text of resolution

◼ Stay tuned… - Twitchy







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