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

BREAKING: newly-released documents reveal 'Conservative' John McCain urged Obama IRS to illegally target conservative groups - Judicial Watch

— Wired Sources (@WiredSources) June 22, 2018

MASSIVE: John McCain ordered Obama IRS to "Financially Ruin" the Tea Party https://t.co/RnB9jcH5I0

— Jack Posobiec🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) June 22, 2018

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:"

JW released newly uncovered IRS notes showing Senator John McCain’s former staff director & chief counsel for Senate Homeland Security – Henry Kerner – urged top IRS officials like Lois Lerner to “audit so many that it becomes financially ruinous.”https://t.co/Z6YxSZJXkC

— Judicial Watch 🔎 (@JudicialWatch) June 23, 2018

Judicial Watch filed a FOIA lawsuit with the Justice Dept for any & all memos that may have been written by fired FBI Director James Comey about convos w/ Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Sen. Chuck Schumer, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, & Sen. John McCain.https://t.co/dVLuBimlHT

— Judicial Watch 🔎 (@JudicialWatch) June 22, 2018

Sorry Liberals, But Your 'Resistance' Is Nothing Like Us

I Helped Launch The Tea Party - Sorry Liberals, But Your 'Resistance' Is Nothing Like Us https://t.co/Omviyu9C6D

— Mark Meckler (@MarkMeckler) February 25, 2017

...“Today, a new movement—loosely dubbed ‘the resistance’—has suddenly arisen in visceral reaction to Donald Trump’s election as president, with thousands taking to the streets,” Ball writes, before hilariously adding: “For those who remember the Tea Party, it feels like deja vu.”

For those who remember it? I’ve got news for you, Molly. We’re still here and not anything like your various movements. No matter what shiny name leftists slap on themselves from day to day – Antifa, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Women's March, Indivisible, etc. – we’re not you, and you can never be us.

Here are just seven reasons why:

1. The Tea Party challenges the Republican Party to become better; the Resistance is all about partisanship....
2. The Tea Party Movement is grassroots; the “Resistance” is Astroturf....

When I joined the Tea Party movement and helped create Tea Party Patriots, I knew just about nothing about politics. I joined with other people sick of the status quo and tried to make our country better. The new Resistance is made of professional protestors (as embarrassingly demonstrated when Craig’s List ads offered money to show up to protest).

Also, the Resistance has published and distributed manuals, scripts, playbooks for their professional agitators according to the New York Post:

The manual, published with OFA partner “Indivisible,” advises protesters to go into halls quietly so as not to raise alarms, and “grab seats at the front of the room but do not all sit together.” Rather, spread out in pairs to make it seem like the whole room opposes the Republican host’s positions. “This will help reinforce the impression of broad consensus.” It also urges them to ask “hostile” questions — while keeping “a firm hold on the mic” — and loudly boo the GOP politician if he isn’t “giving you real answers.”

Anyone who’s spent ten minutes at a Tea Party rally knows this is never how we’d conduct ourselves. Which brings me to…

3. The Tea Party is not violent....

Far from being similar, these two groups show just how distant from each other Americans have actually grown.

Let’s imagine that members of the Tea Party went to a Bernie Sanders rally to do just one thing: disrupt it.

Let’s imagine that members of the Tea Party went to a Bernie Sanders rally to do just one thing: disrupt it. https://t.co/pP8wIPQEuz #GOP RT

— Bernard Goldberg (@BernardGoldberg) March 14, 2016

This is spot-on. https://t.co/D502iaGoRb

— Brit Hume (@brithume) March 14, 2016

Florida Republicans 'MORE LIKELY' to back after Chicago... https://t.co/nEmMyajXm0

— DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) March 14, 2016

Lois Lerner's Emails Lost, Backups Erased

Well Then... Former IRS Official’s Emails Lost, Backups Erased http://t.co/apA8STHqPi via @RobertDEdelman pic.twitter.com/bjhRNMOeMu

— Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) June 25, 2015

The #IRS story smells so bad, even diehard, committed leftists should be embarrassed to defend it. http://t.co/J3vPP6eQoj

— Brad Thor (@BradThor) June 25, 2015

Mike Rowe Responds To Criticism Of His Post About Hard Work

Mike Rowe Responds to People Criticizing the Tea Party...and it's AWESOME http://t.co/hfosIT6EDa pic.twitter.com/wnGMowRiHk

— Young Conservatives (@YoungCons) June 24, 2015

...Rowe said: “we’re churning out a generation of poorly educated people with no skill, no ambition, no guidance, and no realistic expectations of what it means to go to work.”

Mike Rowe Puts Liberals ON BLAST After They Criticized This Post About Hard Work http://t.co/BwCxS9gL2W

— Libertarian Republic (@TheLibRepublic) June 23, 2015

McCain’s team quietly purging Arizona GOP of tea-party foes before 2016 reelection bid

◼ Control the committeemen and you control the local chairmen. Control the local chairmen and you control the party... - Allahpundit/HotAir
◼ John McCain Engaging in ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ to Purge Tea Party Detractors From Arizona GOP - The Blaze

According to Politico, McCain’s team has been working to reshape the state party, knocking hostile Tea Party-aligned members from local GOP offices and replacing them with allies ahead of the senator’s 2016 re-election bid.

◼ McCain's big purge: The Arizona senator’s team has been ridding the state’s GOP apparatus of his tea party foes. - Politico

The ambitious effort — detailed to POLITICO by nearly a dozen McCain operatives, donors, and friends — has stretched from office buildings in Alexandria, Virginia, where strategists plotted and fundraisers collected cash for a super PAC, to Vietnamese-American communities across Arizona, where recruiters sought out supporters eager to help the incumbent defeat the tea party.

Team McCain’s goal? Unseat conservative activists who hold obscure, but influential, local party offices....

Under the byzantine rules of Arizona Republican Party politics, these elected officials, known as precinct committeemen, vote for local party chairmen. The chairmen, in turn, determine how state and local GOP funds are spent, which candidates are promoted in an election year, and which political issues are highlighted — all matters of central concern for McCain heading into 2016, when the threat of a primary looms.

Prior to Aug. 26, when the races for the party offices were held, the vast majority of the 3,925 precinct slots were filled by people McCain’s team considered opponents. Now, after an influx of candidates were recruited by the senator’s allies, around 40 percent of those offices — 1,531 to be exact — will be held by people McCain’s team regards as friendly. They will have the power to vote down hostile Republican chairmen in each of their respective localities.

“There’s been a huge organizational effort that I’ve never seen before,” said Gordon James, an Arizona public relations executive and longtime McCain confidant. “A lot of the party folks who were hostile to John McCain have been marginalized, and that’s a good thing.”

The biggest foe to fall: Timothy Schwartz, the man who authored the McCain censure resolution....

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

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.

IRS notches legal victory in tea party cases

◼ The IRS may have inadvertently figured out how to win its legal battles against aggrieved tea party groups: Give them what they wanted in the first place — tax-exempt status. - Politico

That was a major reason a Republican-appointed federal judge on Thursday threw out two lawsuits brought by more than 40 conservative groups seeking remedies for being singled out in the tea party targeting scandal, a victory for the IRS.

Judge Reggie Walton of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia dismissed almost all counts brought against the tax-collecting agency in two cases, ruling that both were essentially moot now that the IRS granted the groups their tax-exempt status that had been held up for years.

Republicans said they were outraged at Walton’s decision.

“You get targeted and harassed for three years but, oh, because you finally get [tax-exempt status], the three years of harassment doesn’t mean anything?” asked Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who heads a congressional subpanel investigating the controversy. “I find that argument lacking tremendously in light of what these people went through.” KEEP READING

House border bill implodes, and Ted Cruz stands amid wreckage

◼ (+ video) - Francine Kiefer/Christian Science Monitor

On Thursday, the House GOP imploded over its border bill to solve the child-migrant crisis, pulling the legislation from the floor for lack of votes. And there, standing among the legislative wreckage, stood the proud senator from Texas, Ted Cruz. Not literally, of course. But the tea party Texan is once again smack in the middle of a House Republican debacle.

◼ Republicans deliver another self-inflicted wound - Washington Post

Republicans are asking for the right to govern, to control the legislative machinery starting in 2015. But they continue to struggle with that very responsibility in the one chamber they control. How many times have Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and his top lieutenants suffered similar embarrassments as support for leadership measures suddenly eroded in the face of a conservative revolt?

◼ The GOP Senator who helped spike the Border Bill is not who you think - Betsy Woodruff & David M. Drucker/Washington Examiner
◼ Jeff Sessions Holds The Line, Blocks Democrat Immigration Travesty - John Hinderaker/Powerline
◼ ‘Blame Cruz’ Is the New ‘Blame Bush’ for Whiny Democrats - Stephen Kruiser/PJMedia

No one is living rent free in more Democrats’ heads these days than Ted Cruz. He could take the next six months off and they would be blaming everything on his “failure to come to work and show leadership” or something. He is a convenient fall guy because none of the useful idiot Republican senators from the old guard will openly defend Cruz after he failed to spend his first year in office kissing their backsides.

What Cruz is most guilty of is responding to his constituency rather than the popularity police on Capitol Hill. We have created a permanent ruling class thanks to a lazy electorate who returns idiots to office for decades. These idiots stay in office by mugging for the cameras but not really doing much. Anybody new who shows up and acts like a representative in this — you know –representative republic is just asking for trouble.

Some Republicans frustrated over the last-minute collapse of support for a border bill have been blaming Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. But it turns out they may have the wrong Republican senator in their sights. A number of sources on Capitol Hill say lobbying by Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions helped sway that state´s House delegation against the bill, leading to the collapse.

◼ Rep. Chris Van Hollen: ‘Speaker Cruz’ - Politico

Rep. Chris Van Hollen slammed House Republicans on Thursday, saying members now have to check with “Speaker Cruz” to get any legislation passed. “It was Senator Cruz calling the shots, and that’s why people around here are calling him ‘Speaker Cruz’ today,” the Maryland Democrat said to MSNBC’s Alex Wagner. “It means when Speaker Boehner says he’s going to get something done from now on, he’d better be checking with Senator Cruz to see if he’s gonna get the votes because clearly the new leadership team isn’t up to the task.”

IRS UNION BOSS COLLEEN KELLEY: The Missing Link to Obama?

◼ On March 31, 2010, the day before the Inspector General's report says the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) began its scheme to target tea party and conservative groups, the White House Visitors Log reveals that President Barack Obama met with IRS union boss Colleen Kelley. - Doug Ross/Director Blue

NTEU's Kelley has a long history of interaction with the Obama Administration, first meeting in the White House on January 30, 2008, a mere ten days after his first inauguration, which she described:

"We are looking for a return to what we used to call partnership. I don't really care what it's called. For me, it's about collaboration."

Think about it.

◼ OBAMA AND THE IRS: THE SMOKING GUN? - Jeffrey Lord/American Spectator

President met with anti-Tea Party IRS union chief the day before agency targeted Tea Party.

...Both Mr. Obama and the NTEU’s Kelley have been by turns evasive and tight-lipped about their roles in the blossoming IRS scandal.

Kelley refused to open up to the Washington Post. In an article titled "IRS, union mum on employees held accountable in ‘sin’ of political targeting," the Post quoted the following:

“NTEU is working to get the facts but does not have any specifics at this time. Moreover, IRS employees are not permitted to discuss taxpayer cases. We cannot comment further at this time,” NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said via e-mail.

A call to the NTEU office in Cincinnati resulted in a similar response: “We’ve been directed by national office. We have no comment.”

The President approached things in a more evasive manner.... READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE HERE.

GOP: Lerner warned IRS employees to hide information from Congress

◼ A newly released email from former IRS employee Lois G. Lerner, sent just as the tea party targeting scandal was erupting, warned colleagues to “be cautious” about what information they put in emails because it could be turned over to Congress. - Washington Times

“I was cautioning folks about email and how we have had several occasions where Congress ask asked for emails and there has been an electronic search for responsive emails — so we need to be cautious about what we say in emails,” Ms. Lerner wrote in an April 9, 2013, message.

...The email was turned over to the House oversight committee last week, more than a year after lawmakers sought it as part of their investigation into the IRS targeting.

Republicans said the email shows Ms. Lerner was aware Congress was probing the agency and that she was preparing to intentionally hide agency discussions from lawmakers.

Ms. Lerner’s emails have become a major scandal in and of themselves after the IRS revealed that her computer hard drive crashed in 2011, causing the agency to lose thousands of her messages.

Are the Anti-Illegal Amnesty Protests the New Tea Party?

◼ The Murrieta protest strongly reminded me of what the Tea Party used to do when it came to ObamaCare. A small number of ordinary people used social media to get the word out and organize protests. - Daniel Greenfield/Front Page

The media denounced them. The politicians denounced them. But in the end they helped turned the tide of public opinion.

In the Murrieta protest, much of the organizing seems to have come from Patrice Lynes, a nurse, using ◼ Twitter and ◼ Facebook.

She described what she did: “I just called two friends, we got out on the street to warn all the citizens what was happening … then we started to show up at our Border Patrol station to support the Border Patrol, to say we understand that your hands are tied, we know you’re not allowed to enforce the laws, but we want the illegals repatriated to their home countries.”

“I am willing to help whomever wants to do this,” she said. “I’m inspired because I love America!”

That’s how real populist grass roots action works.

The patriots are pitted against an army of special interests. NBC has been deliberately astroturfing pro-amnesty protesters, right down to pushing a Twitter hashtag. The Republican Party’s top people are pushing amnesty and lying about it.

John Fund: The Flier That Got Thad Cochran Elected?

◼ It’s generally agreed that Thad Cochran squeaked out a win in Mississippi last night in part by getting Democrats, especially African Americans, to turn out. Here’s a flier that was distributed in heavily black precincts suggesting how he accomplished this: - John Fund/National Review Online

◼ What the media aren't telling you about Tuesday's primary results - Best of Cain

◼ I’ve got a question about that anti-McDaniel flyer accusing the Tea Party of suppressing the black vote - neoneocon

I have a question: do you know who put out that flyer? I have found not one scintilla of information to tell me. It was not Cochran’s official campaign. It is not signed by any organization at all, not a PAC or anyone else.

Perhaps Cochran was indeed behind it—which would make his actions even worse, because the thing is awful. But I would like to know who’s behind it.

◼ WHO PAID FOR RACE-BAITING FLIER IN MISSISSIPPI? Smear of Tea Party and McDaniel needs investigation. - Jeffrey Lord/American Spectator

Who paid for it? Who will investigate it? Who will apologize for it? “It” being the flier distributed in the Mississippi Senate GOP primary, as seen here, whose headline reads: "The Tea Party intends to prevent blacks from voting on Tuesday."

The flier says that the Tea Party uses the word “Democrats” as “code” for blacks. In short? Somebody out there in Mississippi put out a race-baiting flier to smear both Thad Cochran’s Tea Party opponent Chris McDaniel and the Tea Party itself. Using the worst lie about Republicans — against a Republican.

More than a blatant untruth, the flier is now big news itself, featured on talk radio and spread across the Internet and conservative media. (Over at National Review, John Fund asks if this was “The Flier That Got Thad Cochran Elected?”) So too has this pro-Cochran robocall, which asks voters to say “NO to their [the Tea Party’s] disrespectful treatment of the first African-American president," come to light. The question on everyone's lips: Whodunit?

...The task now is a simple one: to get to the bottom of the race-baiting flyer and robocall. This cannot be allowed to stand. There is an answer out there as to who is responsible and who paid for this racial garbage — and the Republican Party has an obligation to find it.
__________________

John Fund has a new book out: ◼ Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department. Spoiler: Things are even worse than you think. - via Instapundit
__________________
Buy a copy ◼ HERE,
__________________

GOP Establishment Uses Democratic smear tactics to win Mississippi runoff

◼ Consider the words of this Cochran robo-call: “The time has come to take a stand and say no to the tea party. No to their obstruction. No to their disrespectful treatment of the first African-American president. If we do nothing, tea party candidate Chris McDaniel wins and causes even more problems for President Obama. With your help we can stop this. Please commit to voting against tea party candidate Chris McDaniel next Tuesday and say ‘no’ to the tea party!” - Steve Deace/Washington Times

That’s not a quote from an Al Sharpton race-baiting rant, that’s a robo-call in a Republican primary in perhaps the most conservative state in the union. Furthermore, here’s a video of a race-baiting handout that was making the rounds during the run-off campaign using a whole host of Democratic talking points....

Mississippi is the final proof it’s no longer Republican vs. Democrat. It’s now the ruling class in both parties aligned against the tea party — which is another way of saying it’s the government versus the governed.

◼ This Is Treachery - Daniel Horowitz/Brietbart´s Big Government

In light of last night’s election results in Mississippi, there is one question every conservative should be asking: how much longer can a party survive when its leadership is inexorably against the ethos of its base? While Democrats harness their base supporters to advance the party’s liberal agenda, the Republican establishment works to undermine and disenfranchise its own base the minute they have pocketed their support in the general election. Now, after actively campaigning for Democrat votes in order to win against conservative Chris McDaniel in Mississippi, the GOP establishment has reached a new low in their treachery against those who embody the heart and soul of the party.

◼ The staggering price of crushing the tea party - Alexander Burns/Politico (image source)

National Republican leaders are toasting primary season as a smashing success over activist conservatives that has put the hard right on the ropes and given the Washington GOP the slate of candidates it wanted for 2014.

Those victories, however, have come at a staggering cost — and Republicans are painfully aware of the price of putting down an intraparty insurrection.

"He also posted pictures of license plates allegedly belonging to Tea Party members and asked supporters to identify them, the Examiner notes. Now the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles is “looking into” possible illegal activity by Dickinson as he may have violated federal law."

◼ Democrat Urges Supporters to Call 911 on ‘Tea Partiers’ to Harass Them — But His Plan Could Seriously Backfire - The Blaze

Now the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles is “looking into” possible illegal activity by Dickinson as he may have violated federal law.

“Supreme Court says it’s perfectly legal to call in anonymous tips. A tea partier looks like a terrorist to me,” he wrote on Twitter.... He later tweeted the license plate belonging to a “tea party idiot and Twitchy captured a screengrab in case he decided to delete it. The plate is blacked out for obvious reasons.

One Twitter user recognized the potential violation of the law and passed along the information to the Federal Elections Commission and the Virginia DMV.

“The person who reported the information also suggested Dickinson might also be guilty of violating RICO statutes,” according to the Examiner.

The Virginia DMV replied on Twitter on Monday, saying “We take serious any allegation like this” and driver information “is private & protected.”

“We’ll be looking into it,” the agency said.

We need to expose the leaders and people in the tea party. Names and addresses.

Unhinged:

We need to expose the leaders and people in the tea party. Names and addresses.

— DickinsonForCongress (@VoteMike2014) April 26, 2014

◼ Congressional candidate: ‘When you see tea partiers driving or swerving, call the police’ - Twitchy

Self-defined left-wing liberal Mike Dickinson, who is running to unseat Rep. Eric Cantor in Congress, has made no secret of his hatred of the Tea Party. When he says he wants the names and addresses of Tea Party members, he’s not kidding. Now he’s asking people to collect and run the license plates of Tea Partiers so he can expose the Tea Party “idiots.”

When you see tea partiers driving or swerving call the police- likely they have a gun in vehicle and no carry/concealed. Let the laws work

— DickinsonForCongress (@VoteMike2014) April 26, 2014

◼ Earlier: Candidate takes his ‘war on Fox News’ to Greta Van Susteren [video] - Twitchy

New Emails Show Lois Lerner Wanted To Sic The DOJ On Tax Exempt Groups

◼ Lerner, DoJ discussed criminal prosecution of tax-exempt applicants - HotAir

A FOIA request from Judicial Watch has uncovered e-mails from Lois Lerner that discussed an effort to push criminal prosecution of tax-exempt status applicants — and right before IRS targeting of conservative groups became public knowledge. The e-mail, dated May 8, 2013, shows coordination between Lerner and the DoJ to follow up on the idea first broached by Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)...

The date is very, very interesting, as Katie also points out. Just two days after that e-mail went out from Lerner, she offered an apology for targeting conservative groups in her tax-exempt unit...

The apology came as the Inspector General for Treasury was about to release a report that would have made the issue public anyway. Later, we found that the IRS had deliberately staged the apology in an attempt to spin it. This e-mail confirms that the apology was slightly less than sincere.

◼ New Emails Show Lois Lerner Wanted To Sic The DOJ On Tax Exempt Groups - Nice Deb

And the DOJ official she contacted – the former IRS Commissioner’s Chief of staff (!) – was eager to help.

◼ The Terrifying Implications of the IRS Abuse-DOJ Connection - Bryan Preston/PJ Media

Thank God for Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George. His investigation of what turned out to be the IRS abuse scandal may well have saved the Constitution and the nation.

For his fair and impartial investigation into the Internal Revenue Service’s abuse of Americans who dissent from President Obama’s agenda, Democrats have called for an investigation of him. George should not be investigated, but perhaps the Democrats who want him investigated — Reps. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) and Matt Cartwright (D-PA) — should be. Their call for an investigation of the investigator might constitute interference with the ongoing investigation of the IRS abuse scandal. That would be obstruction of justice, in what may turn out to be the most widespread and damaging scandal in American history.

The implications of today’s email disclosure are stunning and terrifying.

Lois Lerner intended to use her position atop the IRS’ tax exempt approval office to coordinate the prosecution of political speech. The Department of Justice under Attorney General Eric Holder had at least tentatively bought into that. The Federal Elections Commission was being roped in as well. Lerner’s emails prove that beyond doubt.

Democrats in Congress were involved. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) appears to have led the anti-constitutional attack on free speech in the House. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) led it from the Senate.

Two days before Lerner was forced to publicly disclose the scandal, she was moving forward with an insidious plan to stamp out conservatives and Tea Party activists’ ability to organize and raise money, by working with the IRS commissioner’s office and the Department of Justice. At the same time, there was no plan for any government crackdown on groups who agreed with President Obama. The traffic was entirely one-way. It was nakedly political, and everyone involved knew it. They also had reason to believe that they would succeed, or they would not have engaged in it. DOJ would serve two roles: Prosecute conservatives, and protect the bureaucrats who were pushing those prosecutions.

“It was so bizarre. When this all started, it was in the throes of the final weeks before the 2012 election when True the Vote was at its peak of operations, helping to train citizens and getting them ready to serve inside of the polls for the elections,” she said, “out of nowhere, we got this letter from Elijah Cummings."

◼ IRS TARGET: SCANDAL POINTING TO OBAMA - WND

The president of the grassroots organization at the center of the recent IRS scandal says she believes the rabbit trail will lead to the “highest offices in the land.”

Former IRS official Lois Lerner may soon be facing a contempt of Congress citation and even criminal prosecution for her role in directing unlawful scrutiny toward conservative organizations seeking tax-exempt status, but the biggest bombshell of the week is the revelation that Lerner’s office shared sensitive tax information with the top Democrat on the committee investigating the scandal.

However, True the Vote President Catherine Englebrecht said even this development is only one step in discovering just how high this goes in the Obama administration.

This week, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee revealed an email chain showing the IRS passed along confidential information from True the Vote to the office of Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md.

Cummings then launched his own investigation of the group through his position on the committee, even though the committee cannot lawfully investigate a private organization.

Should save this for the Sunday Funnies:

◼ Virginia Democrat Mike Dickinson, who hopes to win his party’s nomination and run against Eric Cantor in November, has pledged to wage “war” on the Tea Party, the NRA and Fox News. Thursday night, he took a few shots at Fox on Greta van Susteren’s show – and was promptly humiliated. IJ Review

◼ ‘Was that a joke?’: Candidate takes his ‘war on Fox News’ to Greta Van Susteren [video] - Twitchy

@VoteMike2014 I will never say again that bad publicity is good publicity. U just proved otherwise on @gretawire

— Bill Stringer (@fishandgameman) April 10, 2014

@VoteMike2014 @gretawire @FoxNews So, I turn on FoxNews and an SNL skit breaks out on Greta VS. Mike -your funny in an unfunny way...

— Jeff Halterman (@Halterman37) April 11, 2014