A series of e-mails released by the House committee investigating IRS-gate reveals that Lois Lerner and other Obama Administration figures were flat out lying when they claimed conservative groups weren't specifically targeted:
“Tea Party Matter very dangerous,” Ms. Lerner said in the 2011 email, saying that those applications could end up being the “vehicle to go to court” to get more clarity on a 2010 Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance rules.
In another email, from 2012, Ms. Lerner acknowledges that the agency’s handling of the tax-exempt applications had been bungled at the beginning, though she said they had taken steps to correct it.
“It is what it is,” she said in the email, released Thursday by the Ways and Means Committee. “Although the original story isn’t as pretty as we’d like, once we learned this [sic.] were off track, we have done what we can to change the process, better educate our staff and move the cases. So, we will get dinged, but we took steps before the ‘dinging’ to make things better and we have written procedures.”
That email suggests agency employees knew they had gone overboard in their scrutiny — despite top IRS officials telling Congress that there wasn’t any special scrutiny of conservative groups.
In another 2012 email, Ms. Lerner seemed to take sides in a battle between the Federal Election Commission and conservative group tax-exempt groups that were engaging in politics, saying that “perhaps the FEC will save the day.”
Lois Lerner pleaded the Fifth Amendment the last time she was before congress, and is refusing to testify further without immunity.Some committee members, including chairman Darrel Issa committee members say that she actually waived that right because of the way she did it, and should be recalled and forced to answer questions.
Stay tuned....this isn't going away.
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