New E-mails Reveal Intent To Hide Evidence From Congress

The House Oversight Committee has released a  newly surfaced  e-mail chain between former IRS Official Lois Lerner, IRS’ Director for Exempt Organizations Exam Unit Manager Nanette Downing who was in charge of audits and Maria Brooke, an IRS technology employee. It reveals something very important:

 

Here, as of April 9 2013, we have Lois Lerner discussing hiding information from congress after the investigation of IRS-Gate had already started.

She is asking whether communications via OCS (Microsoft Office Communications Server) were automatically saved on the server, because of they weren't, those messages could be used to communicate strategies to stonewall the investigation and hide evidence that was requested by the congressional committees.

When Hooke,the IRS IT worker says that they won't be revealed as part of an electronic request for information unless one of the recipients specifically saved it as an e-mail, Lerner's response is "perfect."

This exchange is important for a number of reasons. Not only does it show that there was a clear intent to avoid the IRS's legal duty to preserve evidence in an ongoing legal matter, AKA obstruction of justice. It clearly shows intent.

'Intent' is a legal strategy lawyers developed some time ago to get certain felons, particular government officials, wealthy businessmen and fellow lawyers off the hook. It's not enough to simply prove that documents were forged or that someone was given information by a trusted adviser that caused them to act in a way detrimental to that person's interest. You have to prove that there was a criminal intent to do so.

Normally, to prove intent, you need evidence from someone else involved in the crime willing to testify to communication between themselves and the accused about the crime in question. That, by the way, is why Hillary Clinton never went to jail over Whitewater. Even though forged documents were definitely prepared by her in connection with Whitewater, the prosecutor was unable to prove intent because Web Hubbel and Susan McDougal decided to stick it out in jail and keep their mouths shut until Mr. Bill could come through with a presidential pardon, and whatever other considerations they might have been promised.

In Lerner's case, such testimony isn't needed, because Lerner's email clearly reveals an intent to hide evidence and obstruct justice when the investigation by congress was still ongoing.

The only real way out for her is either to come clean in exchange for immunity or to hold out for a presidential pardon from Barack Obama.Of course, if he does so, an absolute firestorm would develop because it would be clear proof of something most of us already realize - that the directions to the IRS to illegally target the president's perceived political enemies came directly from the White House.

 

UPDATE: My pal Terresa over at the always essential site The Noisy Room has an in depth take on this well worth reading.

IRS-Gate: Suit Filed For Illegal Destruction of Evidence

Attorney Cleta Mitchell represents Truth The Vote, one of the groups illegally targeted by the IRS. She has filed suit in federal court not only on behalf of the group for the illegal targeting in violation of the law but for serial harassment of True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht by federal law enforcement authorities representing three different federal agencies, which has been documented elsewhere and came up in her testimony to the House Oversight Committee.

 

The latest on this is that Ms. Mitchell has filed a motion calling for advanced discovery to investigate all those 'lost' e-mails. The rules of discovery, for those of you unfamiliar, require both sides to turn over all evidence and a list of witnesses and experts who may be called to opposing counsel prior to trial. Contrary to the world of movies and TV, there are no surprise last minute witnesses or evidence allowed in order to make time for that final love scene or commercial break.

In this particular instance, the federal lawyers are arrogantly denying that until the judge rules on the motions the government has to dismiss the case, any documents and emails in the possession of the defendants don't even constitute evidence.Of course, this also gives them more time to search and destroy anything they want.

 

So Ms. Mitchell cleverly responded with this motion, asking the judge in the case to order the defendants and their lawyers to disclose under oath exactly what they've have done to preserve evidence in the case or to recover any “lost” e-mails and document. She's also asking the court to allow her and a forensic team access to a number of computers and files so that they can conduct their own examinations and investigation, and asked for a court order specifically prohibiting further destruction of evidence. She argues that without that, evidence will continue to be 'lost' or destroyed.

The judge apparently took her motion seriously, a good sign, because a hearing on it is going to be held July 11, next week.

Powerline, who have been on top of this story from day one has another interesting observation that could come in to play. As John Hinderaker writes, federal law mandates that there is is a legal duty to preserve data that may be relevant to any actual or likely lawsuit:

This duty arises from the party’s own knowledge; it is not necessary for a court to tell it not to destroy information, or for an adverse party to make such a request. The fundamental, shocking fact that is emphasized in True the Vote’s brief is this: at the time of Lois Lerner’s hard drive crash in June 2011, the IRS was already under a legal duty to take steps to ensure that information was not lost, and had been under such a duty for nearly a year, at a minimum. I am speaking here only of the normal requirements that are imposed on any party to a lawsuit, or potential lawsuit. Federal law probably imposes a higher duty on federal agencies, but that is a subject for another day.

True the Vote’s brief points out that the first lawsuit alleging discriminatory targeting of conservative groups was filed by a pro-Israel group called Z Street, Inc., on August 25, 2010. On that date, at the very latest, the IRS had a legal duty to take measures to ensure that no emails, correspondence, memoranda, notes, or other evidence of any sort that could be relevant to the case was lost or destroyed. (Congressional investigations, or other information known to the IRS, may have triggered the duty at an earlier date.) Lois Lerner’s communications would have been at the very top of the list of materials that the IRS had a legal duty to go out of its way to preserve.

But, according to IRS representatives who have testified before Congressional committees, the IRS ignored the law. Instead of making sure that relevant information was preserved, the IRS blithely continued erasing back-up email tapes every 90 days. Further, the IRS continued its policy of assigning each employee a ridiculously small space on an email server, and then authorizing employees (like Lois Lerner) to delete at will to keep space open. And, finally, when Lerner’s hard drive crashed ten months after the Z Street case was commenced, the IRS made no effort to preserve it, but rather, by its own account, recycled the hard drive in a business-as-usual manner.

Any private company that conducted itself in this way would be crucified. It happens from time to time, but rather rarely nowadays, as the duty to preserve evidence is well known in the business world. The IRS’s account of its own behavior is, frankly, shocking. I can hardly imagine what a federal judge would do to a party that took no steps to preserve documents, erased backup tapes, allowed employees to delete relevant emails and memos, and “recycled” the crashed hard drive of its principal witness, all while the lawsuit was pending.

What this means is that even if the 'lost' e-mails can't be found (and I find that hard to believe, given how difficult it is to totally destroy digital data) the IRS defendants can be prosecuted for willful negligence and possibly obstruction of justice if intent can be proven. These are felony busts.
And that in itself may loosen a few tongues.

Stay tuned....

Bombshell! Proof The IRS Is Lying About Lois Lerner's 'Lost' E-mails

 

As I reported previously, the IRS has refused to provide two years worth of formed IRS Exempt Organizations Director Lois Lerner's e-mails with the excuse that her computer crashed.

How convenient! Who would have believed that our own IRS has absolutely no data backup system!

John Hinderaker at Powerline takes this apart even further, and has unearthed a bombshell at the very end that pretty much proves the IRS is lying through its teeth - again.

As Powerline points out, the IRS' own website reveals that their system of storing e-mail is ridiculously inadequate if they're actually telling the truth..which they may not be. We're expected to believe that no records were being kept prior to May of 2013 of all of the evidence on various cases, the decisions made and the actions taken by the IRS' employees.Prior to that, the IRS claims they were storing e-mails on tape which was erased and reused every six months to - wait for it - save taxpayers money. Since May of 2013, they say they now have a new policy of archiving all e-mails, but more about that below.

Of course, the IRS isn't claiming that the subpoenaed e-mails were recycled, remember. They're saying they were never archived at all because Lerner's computer crashed.And apparently, they want us to believe there was no success at all in any attempt to recover the lost data? With all the resources for doing so that the IRS must possess to deal with audits and attempts at fraud and concealing records?

Here's a little something that pretty much proves the IRS may not be telling the truth about this:

 

The IRS supplied this, the end of a supposed exchange of e-mails about the crash to congress as 'proof' Lerner's computer crashed.

First, note the date on this e-mail...July 19th, 2011. That's well before the supposed change in policy of May 2013 took place. So if what the IRS is telling us about their former methods is the truth, this e-mail should have been on those tapes that were 'recycled' and the IRS, if they're telling the truth shouldn't have been able to produce it..

That means that they are either lying about the recycling the e-mail tapes or that they manufactured this one and just backdated it, either of which constitutes lying to congress and obstruction of justice, which are felonies.Anyone else besides me think that they might have been instructed to do this this by someone higher up at the White House?

 

The other interesting point, as Hinderaker points out, is the wording of Lerner's e-mail:

It is remarkable that Lerner does not say: “Oh no! My hard drive crashed, and the IRS’s only copy of two years’ worth of my highly important work has been lost!” No: she is concerned about “my lost personal files,” because “there were some documents in the files that are irreplaceable.” That is a clearly stated and entirely reasonable concern, but it has nothing to do with losing the agency’s only record of two years of work. 

 

Puts a very different connotation on that 'crash', doesn't it?

IRS: 'Sorry, We Lost All Of Lois Lerner's E-Mails'

That, essentially was the response of the Internal Revenue Service to congressional subpoenas for two years of emails from Lois Lerner to the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, the White House or to Democrats on Capitol Hill.

The IRS is blaming - wait for it - a computer crash. Apparently, they would have congress and the American people believe the IRS has no backup system for its data! Try using that one back at them if you're ever audited.

Lerner, the former IRS Director of Exempt Organizations still won't testify before Congress about how the IRS targeted conservative and pro-Israel groups. So this convenient computer crash is a neat tactic to try to ensure that we never know whose orders she was following, or what orders she was giving and to whom.

'Not even a smidgeon of corruption', Mr. President? If nothing else, aside from being obstruction of justice, this is pretty clear evidence in itself that the stench from IRS-Gate leads directly to the White House. After all, how can you have a reasonable presumption of innocence hen the White House is ordering a former IRS top executive not to testify, stonewalling aninvestigation at every turn and destroying evidence through convenient 'computer crashes?' ?

This is especially interesting since it's now come to light that days before the 2010 election, the IRS sent a 1.1 million page database about tax-exempt groups to the FBI. Why they did it and who ordered them to do it is something the IRS is still hiding, but let's remember that Rep. Darrell Issa's House Oversight Committee has already uncovered e-mails showing that Lerner was working with officials in the Obama Department of Justice to to investigate and possibly prosecute any groups critical of the president.

Organizations can retain their tax exempt status provided they spend less than 50% of their resources on politics. The normal procedure in cases where the IRS suspects this statute has been violated is to assign an agent to investigate and then revoke the group's 501 C3 status if necessary. There's no criminal prosecution.

But what we know now is that Lerner shipped a huge database of conservative tax exempt organization's confidential tax records including confidential information on their donors to the FBI, which is the Justice Department's official office for investigating criminal activities. And that a separate email from September 2010 shows Jack Smith, the head of Justice's Public Integrity Unit in its Criminal Division, was openly discussing ways of criminally prosecuting conservative groups under "371" a fairly broad section of the U.S. Code of Justice that allows prosecutors to claim a conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government.

Meanwhile, we also know that the IRS used this information to create 'individualized questions' to target groups’ donors, seize training information, demand personal information on college interns, and even target individuals by name.

There's even a whole series of letters  between Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Subcommittee on Investigations, and top IRS officials throughout 2012 discuss how better to target conservative groups.And Levin wasn't alone by any means. Several nonprofit groups have filed complaints with the Senate Ethics Committee against nine Democratic Senators for improperly interacting with the IRS to urge the targeting and possible criminal prosecution of specific groups and even individuals and/or to hand over confidential nonprofit tax information.

So where do we go from here?

It's blatantly obvious the White House is deeply involved, or they wouldn't be spending this much energy on trying to hide evidence and quash the scandal. We may very well be talking about something impeachment worthy, not that there's be any shortage of that in this lawless, corrupt regime.

Ron Fournier over at the National Journal could best be described as a former Obama fan whose fallen out of love with the president. His latest piece "Let A Special Prosecutor Find The Missing E-Mails" is an outraged call for the president of the United States to appoint an independent prosecutor to get to the bottom of this.

Fournier isn't stupid by any means,but it ought to be fairly obvious  that President Barack Obama has no desire to get to the bottom of Fast And Furious, Benghazi, the VA scandal, NSA-Gate, IRS-Gateor any of the other scandals this president and his people have been involved in. As Michael Barone, one of America's most long serving and well regarded political writers one referred to them, they are, quite simply a lawless gang.

This president is not going to appoint a special prosecutor who has any intention of cooperating with congress and getting to the truth. The president's new RS Commissioner John Koskinen promised to cooperate with Congress, and it was supposed to be a whole new ballgame.

Does it sound like it? "Oops, sorry, heh heh, we lost two years worth of e-mails."

Thanks to Bill Clinton, there is no such thing as a truly independent special prosecutor's office any more. When the Democrats dominated congress after Watergate, they passed the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 that created a special prosecutor, later called an Independent Counsel position, which could be used by either Congress or the Attorney General investigations of Officials in the executive branch. It was totally independent of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice. That's who Kenneth Starr worked for, whose work led to President Clinton's impeachment for the felonies if perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of office.

As I've mentioned before of Mr. Bill's last 'gifts' to the country before he left office in 2000 was to eliminate the Office of the Independent Counsel totally and replace it with the very different Office of Special Counsel, controlled by the Attorney General as part of the Justice Department.

Exactly what kind of Special Counsel do you think Eric Holder is going to appoint to investigate IRS-Gate?

The key to solving this problem lies in congress allotting funds to hire its own independent prosecutor to investigate this and other sordid scandals. That will be especially effective after November, when the Republicans stand a good chance of taking the4 Senate with its subpoena powers as well.

IRS-Gate..All Roads Lead To The Same Cesspool

Today, the House Ways And Means Committee voted along party lines to refer former IRS official Lois Lerner to Attorney General Eric Holder and request him to file criminal charges:

“The Ways and Means Committee, led by Chairman [Dave] Camp [R-Mich.], has conducted a serious and thorough investigation of the IRS, uncovering abuses and criminal acts that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said of the referral. "As I've said, if Lois Lerner continues to refuse to testify, then the House will hold her in contempt. And we will continue to shine the light on the administration's abusive actions and use every tool at our disposal to expose the truth and ensure the American people get the answers they deserve.”

OK, now that you've stopped laughing, what's going on here is a sort of ritual dance. No one seriously believes Holder is actually going to investigate one of his minions for selectively targeting the president's political enemies in something that could very well end up not working out to well for our AG and the president if the truth came to light, which is why they've been stonewalling. No one expects him seriously to file any charges.Let's remember that Eric Holder is the only attorney general in our history to be held in contempt of congress, and he has essentially laughed it off.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was our attorney general himself who talked to Lois Lerner after the nasty stuff hit the fan and worked out a deal from the Regime in exchange for her keeping her mouth shut. That's mere speculation on my part, but there are elements of Holder's work history - shilling for fugitive and Democrat donor Marc Rich, for example during Mr. Bill's final days - that shows he at least is an experienced hand at this kind of thing.

The committee is referring it to Holder because that's process, it's how things are done in DC. Holder can do his own mickey mouse investigation and say he finds no grounds for charges (the most likely scenario, IMO), he can simply ignore the request of the committee or he can appoint a special prosecutor from an office totally controlled by the Department of Justice, since President Clinton got rid of the Independent Prosecutor's office as one of his last tricks he turned in office.

As a sideshow, House Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa openly accused ranking Democrat member Elijah Cummings of colluding with the Internal Revenue Service in its targeting of the conservative nonprofit group True the Vote.

Cummings, (who deserves one of President Obama's presidential medals of freedom for his service to the Regime in delaying the committee's attempt to perform its legal function) apparently made a special project out of True The Vote.

Issa on Wednesday accused the Maryland Democrat of colluding with the Internal Revenue Service in its targeting of the conservative nonprofit group True the Vote, whose founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, said she received multiple letters from Cummings in 2012 and personal visits from the IRS and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Explosives. Engelbrecht’s True the Vote is one of the many conservative groups that claims to have been improperly targeted by the IRS while it scrutinized the applications of tea-party groups.

In a letter signed by his five subcommittee chairmen, Issa raised the possibility that Cummings coordinated with the IRS, “surreptitiously” contacting the agency to request information about True the Vote.

E-mails unearthed in the course of Issa’s investigation into the IRS’s inappropriate targeting of right-leaning groups show that in January 2013, a member of Cummings’s staff contacted the IRS asking for any publicly available information on True the Vote. The matter was discussed by IRS officials that included Lois Lerner, the former exempt-organizations chief who retired in the wake of the targeting scandal.

The bottom line? It's patently obvious that President Obama used the IRS as his personal hit squad to go after those he perceived as his political enemies.The House can initiate legal proceedings on its own, but going through the courts takes years. Realistically congress has one remedy, the House's “inherent contempt” authority under the Constitution, which could put Lois Lerner in the slammer until 2015 when the new congress sits, after which a new subpoena can be issued to toss her in jail again for another two years if she still refuses to testify.

The nuclear option if that happens is a presidential pardon, which the president can issue any time he feels like it for any reason he wants to.They're almost always issued in a president's last days in office, so as not to affect election prospects ala' Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon. But President Barack Hussein Obama can issue a pardon for Lerner, Eric Holder or anyone else he deems necessary if things get hot. And it's solid gold, inviolate.

Normally, the check on presidents pardoning associates of theirs who might have been involved in criminal proceedings is media fallout that generates public outrage and bad PR. Given the state of much of the media today, that won't happen. The media won't even mention that our attorney general and our president aren't exactly neutral when investigating their tools or themselves.

Our Founders envisioned a lot of what a democratic republic would have to face, and made provisions for it. They unfortunately had no idea how dumbed down and dependent on government patronage and welfare a portion of the electorate would become, and they certainly never imagined anyone as corrupt and utterly lawless as President Obama sitting in the Oval Office.They never dreamed that we would someday have an attorney general boasting about how he and the president he served were only going to uphold the laws they felt like enforcing and ignore any others they didn't, based on their political agenda.

They did, however leave us a remedy. It's called impeachment.And if we're unable to at least bring charges and examine them honestly after the blatant way this sort of thing has been foisted upon us,  perhaps we're no longer worthy of the gift our Founders bequeathed to us.

If I were Speaker John Boehner, I'd be filing charges right now, voting on them in the House and forcing Democrats to go on record as voting against them in the House and Senate. Come next January, when there might just be enough senators in office willing to vote for something other than their opwn partisan values, things might be different. But Boehner owes it to the country to at least make an attempt and get the numerous high crimes and misdemeanors of President Obama on the record.

Needless to say, he's not that kind of man and certainly not that kind of Speaker. But we'll see what happens in November.

Attorney Cleta Mitchell Tells Congress Exactly What's Going In With IRS Scandal

Cleta Mitchell is a tax attorney who represents several of the conservative groups that have been targeted by the IRS. Today, she testified before the House Government Reform and Oversight committee, and what she had to say should be the leading news story all across America.

Talking about President Obama’s claim on Sunday during his interview with Bill O'Reilly that there is no IRS scandal, and “not even a smidgen of corruption” in the agency’s targeting of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status, she said in no uncertain terms that the scandal is real, that there is criminal behavior involved and that “The IRS scandal is not over. It is continuing to this day. And the Department of Justice investigation is a sham. It is a nonexistent investigation.”

The attorney testified that she was aware as far back as October of 2011 that the targeting was being coordinated outof Washington D.C., because when she contacted the Cincinnati IRS agent assigned to one of her clients and offered to try to help the application process along she was told, “Oh, there’s a task force in Washington; we can’t do anything until we hear back from Washington.”

Mitchell.who has years of experience dealing with the IRS in these matters said flatly that the Obama Administration took what had been for decades a process of reviewing applications for exempt status that used to take three to four weeks and “converted that process into one that took three to four years, and in some cases is still not over.” At least for conservative groups.

She bluntly went over several outright Federal crimes that have been committed in the course of this sorry episode and wondwered out loud where the FBI was.

Former federal prosecutor Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., also took weighed in on President Obama’s claim that there was no corruption in the IRS targeting conservative groups, especially in the tax-exempt division formerly headed by Lois Lerner.

“How can the president say there’s not a smidgen of criminality when Lois Lerner invoked the 5th Amendment, 41 witnesses haven’t been interviewed – including the two that are here right now? How can he possibly draw that conclusion?!” Gowdy asked.

The congressman also maintained the president’s claims tainted the Department of Justice investigation into the IRS and called for Obama to appoint a special counsel.

Right now, the person conducting the Justice Department investigation into the IRS scandal just happens to be one Barbara Bosserman, a political appointee who donated $6,750 to President Obama’s election campaigns and the Democratic National Committee since 2004, most of it during the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.

The Justice Department, of course, declined to allow her to appear before the Committee, citing it as 'standard practice' during an investigation. They stuck to that story even though they attempted to counter accusations concerning the appropriateness of her investigating a scandal that directly touched the White House by changing their story about her leading the investigation and downgrading her status to merely 'a member of the investigative team.'

Want to bet she finds that nothing illegal occurred? And of course, it will be after th e2014 elections.

This stinks to high heaven. And the Justice department's tactics, along with the e-mails revealing collusion between Lois Lerner and the Treasury Department make it a certainty that the White House was involved up to its collective neck.

'Not A Smidgen Of Corruption' - IRS Secretly Drafted Rules To Restrict Conservative Groups

The president may have been able to lie with a straight face to Bill O'Reilly about IRS-Gate being a phony scandal involving "..not a smidgen of corruption", but the facts, once again, indicate something a lot more sinister...and with a lot more of an indicatation that the trail leads right to the White House.

A chain of e-mails has surfaced revealing that the IRS's former director Lois Lerner conspired with the Obama Administration's Treasury Department to secretly concoct new 501(c)(4) regulations designed to restrict the activity of conservative groups in a way that wouldn't have to be disclosed publicly, according to the House Committee on Ways and Means:

The Treasury Department and Lerner started devising the new rules “off-plan,” meaning that their plans would not be published on the public schedule. They planned the new rules in 2012, while the IRS targeting of conservative groups was in full swing, and not after the scandal broke in order to clarify regulations as the administration has suggested.

The rules place would place much more stringent controls on what would be considered political activity by the IRS, effectively limiting the standard practices of a wide array of non-profit groups.
“Don’t know who in your organizations is keeping tabs on c4s, but since we mentioned potentially addressing them (off -plan) in 2013, I’ve got my radar up and this seemed interesting…,” Treasury official Ruth Madrigal wrote in a June 14, 2012 email to Lerner and others obtained by Ways and Means and provided to The Daily Caller.

Ways and Means chairman Rep.Dave Camp exploded over this during a hearing with IRS commissioner John Koskinen. He wants these 'new' rules postponed until until criminal investigations into the IRS targeting scandal are complete.

“If Treasury and the IRS fabricated the rationale for a rule change it would tend to raise questions about the integrity of the rule-making process,” Camp said.

“I want to be perfectly clear – this committee will fight any and all efforts to restrict the rights of groups to organize, speak out and educate the public, just as unions are allowed to do so. We will get to the bottom of this, and I expect the IRS to produce – quickly – the outstanding documents the committee has requested,” Camp said.

“I believe the IRS has a long way to go in restoring its credibility. But, you can take a first step by complying with this committee’s request and stopping all action against 501(c)(4) groups until the appropriate investigations are completed.”

Of course they fabricated them, with restricting fund raising and organizing by conservative groups in mind.

The 'new' rules' define communications and activities like voter registration drives and publishing voter guides, as political activity. Grants and donations that 501(c)(4)’s give to other nonprofits are now subject to new record-keeping and increased scrutiny to prevent the money’s use for political activity....while needless to say, Democrat groups like unions and the NAACP are allowed to continue doing exactly that without their 501(c) status being questioned.

According to what the new IRS commissioner Koskinen had to say, these new rules were designed to “put to rest all of the issues surrounding applications for tax-exempt status.”

Notice that word 'applications'. Only groups newly applying are going to be targeted.

But Madrigal’s email to Lerner proves that the secret rules were developed long before the scandal broke, and before there was any need for the IRS to throw something together to look good. Nor was the scandal the reason for the secret rule changes. The Obama Administration wanted something in place in time for the 2014 midterms.

And need I also mention that the likelihood of the president being unaware of what was going on is severely diminished by the spectacle of two federal agencies in his administration conspiring together to target the president's political 'enemies'?

Obama's IRS Still In Action - Against 'Political Enemies'

 

In spite of IRS-Gate, the hunting season on conservative groups is still open, as two of the latest targets show.

Hollywood is overwhelmingly Leftist and Democrat, at least publicly. That's especially true of th epeopl eon the lower rungs of the ladder or who are not established yet, as it's well known that being a Republican or espousing conservative beliefs is a sure way not to get hired.

But there is a small group in Hollywood known as Friends of Abe, a group for conservatives in the entertainment industry. Aside from people who are already established or outed themselves like actors Gary Sinise, Jon Voight and Kelsey Grammer, or the writer-producer Lionel Chetwynd, most of the membership remains secret for the above reasons.

The group recently applied for 501(c)(3) nonprofit status to the IRS, to assist their fundraising. Big mistake, according to the New York Times.

Not only was their application held up far longer than similar Leftist groups, but the IRS launched a formal investigation of the group, demanding “detailed information about its meetings”, a list of members and “enhanced access to the website" which also would reveal members names and personal details about them.According to the Times, the investigation is due to "guests who speak to the group who tend to be conservative."

Friends of Abe doesn't even permit cameras at its meetings, so you can bet the Obama Administration is salivating at the idea of outing the 1,500 or so members.And it's not just audits from the IRS for 'incorrect thought'.

Here's how it works in real life. Actress Maria Conchita Alonso, best known for her role in “Moscow on the Hudson,” had been hired to appear in a Spanish language version of Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues” in San Francisco - until she made a campaign ad with a conservative California candidate for governor, Tim Donnelly.

She was immediately fired.

Various pro-Amnestia groups threatened to protest the show if she appeared and complainedabout 'raa-aa-cism' even though Alonso is of Cuban descent and Donnelly is married to a Filipina, with a Mexican daughter-in-law.The producer was quoted as saying “We really cannot have her in the show, unfortunately. Of course she has the right to say whatever she wants. But we’re in the middle of the Mission. Doing what she is doing is against what we believe.”

And this is by no means an isolated incident. For instance, conservative-themed films and documentaries routinely have difficulty getting booked at film festivals.

Meanwhile, far-Left groups with 501(c)(3) groups like producer Norman Lear's People For the American Way received and enjoy tax exempt status even though their programs, fund raising and activities are blatantly political. And then there's the blatantly political offerings of theater companies, performance groups and independent filmmakers who also enjoy 501(c)(3) status..and we haven even discussed NPR or Pacifica yet.

The next time you hear Lefties whining about 'McCarthyism', be sure to laugh in their faces. They're the real practitioners of the blacklist mentality they're describing. We really need a good term to describe how the Left wages jihad against those it disagrees with. I like Left wing Stalinist thought control myself.

But wait, there's more. Another famous conservative who has run afoul of the president's IRS goon squad is none other than James O'Keefe and Project Veritas, who brought down ACORN, exposed NPR and Planned Parenthood, union teachers at play in New Jersey and most recently, Wendy Davis' radical supporters bashing her political opponent for being disabled.

As O'Keefe reports, this is a double team effort by both the IRS and Governor 'We don;t want no conservative here' Cuomo, who has unleashed the state's Labor Department on the organization.

According to O'Keefe, Cuomo has been targeting Project Veritas for months now:

Despite the fact that Project Veritas’s finances are meticulously maintained to the penny, Governor Cuomo and the New York Department of Labor is on a witch-hunt, demanding all documents and financials since our founding.

This is nothing more than meritless, politically-driven targeting. Governor Cuomo said it himself – we don’t belong in New York.

Still, we complied with the government and prepared all the requested documentation for a meeting scheduled on December 13, 2013.

But guess what? The New York Department of Labor’s compliance officers never showed up.

That’s because they know we’ve done nothing wrong. Just like the IRS, they are simply intimidating and targeting us.

Now we are being subpoenaed and I must show up in court with accountants and attorneys to prove we’ve done nothing wrong.

Ah, but doing nothing wrong is no longer a defense. Not in Obama's America.

Coverup- White House Picks Obama Partisan To Head 'Probe' Into IRS Tea Party Targeting

 

The Obama Justice Department has finally picked someone to to lead what's supposed to be an investigation into the use of the IRS to suppress conservative political activity and target conservative donors.

And surprise, surprise! It's Barbara Kay Bosserman, a trial lawyer in the Justice Department whose an Obama donor as well as a hardline Obama partisan and Democrat. She's listed as having donated more than $6,000 to the president’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns, as well as several hundred dollars to the national Democratic Party.

Needless to say,Reps. Darrell Issa and Regulatory affairs subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan are livid.

“The department has created a startling conflict of interest,” Mr. Issa and Mr. Jordan said in a letter sent Wednesday and reviewed by The Washington Times. “It is unbelievable that the department would choose such an individual to examine the federal government’s systematic targeting and harassment of organizations opposed to the president’s policies.”

No kidding. After it was discovered (after numerous outright lies and stonewalling) that the IRS had been used for partisan purposes to deliberately target conservative groups for delays an denial of 501C status as well as to audit and harass conservative donors, President Obama promised that the FBI and the Justice Department would conduct a full investigation.

Of course, eight months later absolutely nothing's been done and there have been no results, and the FBI and Justice Department are refusing to give him any information at all. In fact, the FBI is actually using the fact that there's supposedly an ongoing investigation gong on as an excuse to refuse to release any of the documents Issa has asked them for.

And to add to this travesty, the Justice Department is claiming that their policies forbid them from considering an employees political affiliation when giving out assignments.If anyone seriously believes that if Barbara Kay Bosserman were a Republican who donated to Romney, she would have had any chance at all of getting the job, you probably still think that if you like your health insurance you can keep it.

Issa and Jordan warned Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that the refusal FBI to cooperate could rise “to the level of criminal obstruction” of Congress’. oversight responsibilities. In response, the Justice Department promised to at least brief congressional investigators on the status of the FBI investigation, but then refused to follow through.

A good example of the4 level of IRS corruption we're talking about here is a brief response to Rep. Issa concerning a different letter by Stephen D. Kelly, assistant director of the FBI’s office of congressional affairs:

Catherine Engelbrecht, a chief organizer of King Street Patriots, said she felt the government was targeting her after the FBI made repeated inquiries about someone who attended a King Street Patriots meeting.

In its letter to Mr. Issa, the FBI said it contacted the King Street Patriots after receiving a complaint in 2010 that a member of the group had said he wanted to start a revolution and had visited a firing range.

Mr. Kelly said FBI agents checked with the group, which said the man attended a training session but was asked to leave. Mr. Kelly said the group provided an address the man had given, but that address turned out to be false. When the FBI ultimately tracked down the man, he “indicated that his remarks were made in jest.”

“The King Street Patriots were questioned concerning their limited relationship with the individual in question,” Mr. Kelly said in the FBI letter.

But that doesn’t jibe with Ms. Engelbrecht’s recollection, nor with the paper record that was released. In a heavily redacted copy of one of the FBI’s contact reports, which Ms. Engelbrecht obtained, the FBI makes no mention of the individual Mr. Kelly said the agency was investigating. Instead, the report lists the contact as part of “community outreach.”

Ms. Engelbrecht said the FBI made a half-dozen inquiries over the course of a year. She said she also fielded inquiries at her business from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; faced an audit by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration of Engelbrecht Manufacturing; and underwent an IRS audit of her personal tax returns.

She's by no means the only one.

Rep. Issa and his colleagues in the House are never going to get a straight answer on anything from the Obama Administration.They need to get the Select Committee going and appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate this and the myriad other scandals swarming around the Obama White House like flies around manure.

Otherwise, nothings going to happen.

Your IRS At Work - Billions In Tax Credits to Illegal Aliens

This is an old story to regular readers of Joshuapundit, but a new survey from the Center for Immigration Studies puts into perspective on how widespread and costly the bilking of the U.S. treasury via bogus tax credits give to illegal aliens is:

The report, written by CIS fellow David North, says the Internal Revenue Service doled out $4.2 billion in what is known as the “additional child tax credit” in 2010 to those using an individual taxpayer identification number, or ITIN, which is usually a signal of an illegal immigrant.

The issue has been known for some time. But Mr. North went deep into the data to try to look at why it’s happening, and said it’s a story of a tax credit expanding beyond its initial scope, and midlevel IRS managers twisting the law, leaving billions of dollars going to illegal immigrants.{...}

Nobody was answering the phones at the IRS during the government shutdown, which began Oct. 1.

But the agency in the past repeatedly has said it doesn’t believe the law allows it to deny illegal immigrants the tax credit, and also disputes that it has the legal authority to deny claims even when they aren’t backed up by documents showing that the children actually live in the U.S.

“The IRS does not have the legal authority to deny credits during processing when documentation is not provided,” the agency told its inspector general in 2011.

The “additional child tax credit” was created to help out those who make too little to qualify for the full child tax credit. The ACTC is refundable, meaning that even if the taxpayer doesn’t owe income tax, he or she could get a payout the IRS.

That becomes an avenue for fraud, particularly when combined with illegal immigrant workers, whose use of the tax credit has jumped from 796,000 filers in 2005 to 1.5 million in 2008 and 2.3 million in 2010, according to the IRS‘ official auditor.

Investigators identified one address in Atlanta where 23,994 ITIN-related tax refunds were sent — including 8,393 refunds deposited to a single bank account. Mr. North said those were pretty good indications of fraud.

He said the IRS should also look for cases where an ITIN filer goes from claiming no dependents to claiming four or five dependents the next year.

Mr. North used an auditor’s report to identify a town in Delaware and another on Virginia’s Eastern Shore with large concentrations of ITIN filers.

Frankford, Del., had one address where 627 ITINs were registered — despite the town having a population of just 862. Parksley, Va., had a single address with 100 ITINs registered, in a town of 847 residents.



Why people with no legal right to be in America should even be able to get Employer Identification Numbers (EINs) or ITINs is something no one want to talk about.

And it's not just bogus child credits. Another widespread fraud that is practiced by illegal aliens aside from bogus child credits is bogus filing for the earned income credit, another billion dollar giveaway.You see, a lot of illegal migrants do 'pay' taxes of a sort.

After obtaining an ITIN (individual tax ID number) from the IRS, once known as an EIN (employer identification number) and limited to business owners with employees but now available to anyone for the asking, all an illegal alien needs to do is to use a bogus social security number for work purposes. When tax time comes along he or she  simply tell his tax preparer to write a letter stating that all earnings credited to the social security number in question actually refer to the ITIN, and then apply for an Earned Income credit.  Fraud is rampant.

I disagree with the report's conclusion that this is merely the work of some mid-level bureaucrats. Anyone who has worked in government knows people at that level don't originate policy but simply carry out the orders of higher ups.

All this, of course, reveals another dirty little secret - that the IRS knows exactly where a lot of the illegal migrants can be found, but are choosing (or more likely being ordered) not to cooperate with ICE in enforcing U.S. immigration laws.

Instead, they're busy persecuting the Obama Administration's political enemies and denying 501c status to conservative political groups.

Another Lie Falls Apart - E-mails Show IRS’ Lois Lerner Specifically Targeted Tea Party

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.

Obama's Muslim Brotherhood Brother Got Illegal Tax Exemption For Islamist Foundation

The Egyptian government is apparently opening up another can of worms when it come to President Obama's connection with the Muslim Brotherhood.

The former Chancellor of the Constitutional Court of Egypt and its current adviser, Tahani Al-Jebali openly stated that the reason President Obama favors the Muslim Brotherhood is because his half-brother Malik is a Brotherhood member who,in her words, "is one of the architects of the major investments of the international organization of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

“We will carry out the law and the Americans will not stop us. We need to open the files and begin court sessions. The Obama administration cannot stop us; they know that they supported terrorism. We will open the files so these nations are exposed, to show how they collaborated with them [the terrorists]. It is for this reason why the American administration fights us.” (h/t Walid Shoebat for the vids and translation)






She also appeared on Egyptian television to repeat these allegations and to characterize the upcoming trials as “a gift to the American people” .

Is there anything to this? Quite possibly, although I personally think there's a lot more to President Obama's support for Islamists and the Muslim Brotherhood than just aiding and abetting his half-brother Malik.

President Obama and his half-brother Malik are particularly close - Malik was reportedly Best Man at the Obama's wedding.

Malik Obama is a member of the Brotherhood and the Executive Secretary of the Islamic Da’wa Organization, or IDO, a group created by the government of Sudan. The organization's professed mission is to spread Islamist doctrine throughout Africa.

The group was created by the Sudan's leader Omar Al-Bashir, also a Brotherhood member who is wanted for seven counts of crimes against Humanity by the International Court of Justice for activities mainly relating to the genocide in Darfur. The Sudan is listed by the State Department as a material supporter of terrorism.

Al-Bashir and Malik Obama are also particularly close.

Here's where stuff gets interesting. Malik Obama, also known as Abongo or Roy operates two IRS-approved 501(c)3 organizations operated in the U.S. Both raise funds from U.S. individuals and corporations, and I wouldn't be surprised if such donations were regarded as 'insurance' by people seeking grace and favor from the Obama Administration.

One of them, the the Mama Sarah Obama Foundation, created on behalf of Obama’s step-grandmother in Kenya, was supposedly put together to build homes for widows, orphans and HIV/AIDS victims in Kenya.

The other, the Barack H. Obama Foundation is allegedly to provide 'development projects' also in Kenya.

Both 501(c)3 applications received amazing customer service, receiving their determination letters in a month as opposed to the normal 6 month time frame. Not only that, but since Malik's 'foundation' had been soliciting without a determination letter since 2008, he was granted retroactive tax exempt status by none other than our old friend Lois Lerner. Her signature is at the bottom of Malik Obama’s tax-exempt approval letter and she illegally granted Malik’s foundation retroactive tax exempt status for 38 months, even though the law prohibits going back any further than 27 months.

 

Now the big question is, what were these funds actually used for? Apparently the only thing money from the foundations were found to be used for was to build was a single compound known as The Barack H. Obama Recreation and Rest Center', containing a mosque, a madrassah and housing for Malik and his twelve wives. Sounds a lot like Charlie Rangel, doesn't it? No one knows where the rest of the money seems to have gone or where the current donations are going.

Now Malik's scam seems to be small time - in 2010 he reported $24,250 total gross income derived from contributions, gifts and grants, a small amount here but a huge amount in Africa and the Middle East. Whatever the amount, we have no way of knowing if that's a correct accounting. After all, Malik is not a U.S. citizen, he has nothing the IRS can attach here in America if he was committing tax fraud and no action the IRS can really take except shutting down his Arlington, Virginia mail drops.

Were these foundations used to launder money by the Brotherhood? Did some of it go to IDO?
Is Malik simply a small-time crook trading on his brother's name and protection, or is he a conduit for something bigger?

The Arab media is writing quite a bit about this, but they are notoriously prone to conspiracy theories. Next, they could be saying that Malik is a Mossad agent.

But the connections are definitely interesting, and at the least it looks like the IRS aided, expedited and abetted a tax scam for the president's half-brother..perhaps because they were explicitly told to.

That much, we know for certain.

IRS’s Lerner Caught Using Personal E-mail to Hide Official Business From Congress

 

It has now come out that Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner picked up a trick used by former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, DOJ Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer during Operation Fast and Furious and by recently confirmed Labor Secretary Tom Perez during his time as a DOJ Civil Rights Attorney.
She was caught using a personal e-mail account under an alias to conduct official business so that it would not be captured by records requests by Congress relating to her or Freedom of Information Act requests. It also impedes investigations because personal accounts are not archived by the government. Jackson used 'Richard Windsor' as her alias, while Lerner used 'Lois Home'.

This is also known as obstruction of justice, the last time I checked.

House Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa and his colleague, Ohio congressman Jim Jordan wrote to Lerner, demanding the relevant documents for the period between January 2008 and the present.

“This raises some serious questions concerning your use of a non-official e-mail account to conduct official business,” the GOP lawmakers wrote. “Additional documents related to the Committee’s investigation may exist in these non-official accounts over which you have some control, and the lack of access to this information prevents the Committee from fully assessing your actions.” Issa and Jordan are requesting that Lerner produce the documents they want by August 27.

Lerner is already in hot water because its been discovered that she communicated with an FEC attorney about two conservative groups, and the information she disclosed very likely constitutes a felony, punishable by up to $5,000 in fines or five years in prison, plus the loss of her federal job.

She is refusing to testify before the committee unless she's given immunity.

Yep..just another one of President Obama's 'phony scandals'.

.

The IRS Scandal Now Leads Directly To The White House

While all the oxygen was being taken out of the room by the Trayvon riots, something quite interesting occurred before Rep. Darrell Issa's oversight committee regarding the ongoing scandal of IRS deliberately targeting conservative and pro-Israel organizations for delays in receiving  tax exempt status in order to curtail their fundraising efforts, as well as selective audits of Romney donors and other assorted 'enemies'.

The Administration's story once they were caught red handed at this was that it was limited to a rogue unit in Cincinnati.

That's been a consistent pattern whenever some of the questionable and even illegal doings this president and his friends have been engaged in have come to light - they deliberately lie and then despicably finger the powerless small fish down the ladder for the blame.

Anyone who knows anything about government and the way civil service works realized this was nonsense from the beginning, but now there's proof this came from upstairs...and that there's a solid trail that leads directly to the White House.

When those 'rogue agents' testified in front of the committee they decided to resist being made scapegoats and stated under oath that they were under orders to target conservative and pro-Israel groups for special attention:

Ms. Hofacre of the Cincinnati office testified that when she was given tea-party applications, she had to kick them upstairs. When she was given non-tea-party applications, they were sent on for normal treatment. Was she told to send liberal or progressive groups for special scrutiny? No, she did not scrutinize the applications of liberal or progressive groups. "I would send those to general inventory." Who got extra scrutiny? "They were all tea-party and patriot cases." She became "very frustrated" by the "micromanagement" from Washington. "It was like working in lost luggage." She applied to be transferred.

House investigators soon talked to workers in the Cincinnati office, who said everything they did came from Washington. Elizabeth Hofacre, in charge of processing tea-party applications in Cincinnati, told investigators that her work was overseen and directed by a lawyer in the IRS Washington office named Carter Hull.

Now comes Mr. Hull’s testimony. And like Ms. Hofacre, he pointed his finger upward. Mr. Hull—a 48-year IRS veteran and an expert on tax exemption law—told investigators that tea-party applications under his review were sent upstairs within the Washington office, at the direction of Lois Lerner.

In April 2010, Hull was assigned to scrutinize certain tea-party applications. He requested more information from the groups. After he received responses, he felt he knew enough to determine whether the applications should be approved or denied.

But his recommendations were not carried out.

Michael Seto, head of Mr. Hull’s unit, also spoke to investigators. He told them Lois Lerner made an unusual decision: Tea-party applications would undergo additional scrutiny—a multilayered review.

Mr. Hull told House investigators that at some point in the winter of 2010-11, Ms. Lerner’s senior adviser, whose name is withheld in the publicly released partial interview transcript, told him the applications would require further review:

Q: “Did [the senior adviser to Ms. Lerner] indicate to you whether she agreed with your recommendations?”

A: “She did not say whether she agreed or not. She said it should go to chief counsel.”

Q: “The IRS chief counsel?”

A: “The IRS chief counsel.”


So who is this chief counsel? He's William Wllkins, a loyal Democrat donor, a well connected DC lobbyist and President Obama's personal appointee to the IRS. He also apparently endeared himself to this president by representing Jeremiah Wright's racist Trinity United Church in Chicago pro bono (for free) when they were accused of violating their tax exempt status by endorsing President Obama and turning the church into what almost amounted to a campaign headquarters.

We also know that Wilkins visited the White House on numerous occasions during the time period in question according to the White House visitor's log. I doubt he was there to discuss golf.

As a matter of fact, Wilkins met with Obama a mere two days before helping his IRS colleagues formulate a new set of guideline on flagging and scrutinizing Tea Party, pro-Israel and conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status:

IRS chief counsel William Wilkins, who was named in House Oversight testimony by retiring IRS agent Carter Hull as one of his supervisors in the improper targeting of conservative groups, met with Obama in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on April 23, 2012. Wilkins’ boss, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, visited the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on April 24, 2012, according to White House visitor logs.

On April 25, 2012, Wilkins’ office sent the exempt organizations determinations unit “additional comments on the draft guidance” for approving or denying tea party tax-exempt applications, according to the IRS inspector general’s report.

Between 2010 and 2012, the IRS sent letters demanding groups’ training materials, personal information on groups’ donors and college interns, and even the content of a religious group’s prayers.

Wilkins’ meeting with Obama on April 23 was attended by 13 people.

The White House deliberately lied when they called this a “rogue” operation. This was official policy designed to retard and curtail fundraising on the part of opposition by denying them the tax exempt status that was rushed through for Left wing groups and those supporting the president, and President Obama's personal appointee to the IRS had a huge role in creating and implementing that policy.The IRS was used as a political weapon that only targeted President Obama’s political enemies and the whole thing was done cleverly, using endless delays and tying the targets up in paperwork rather than in outright refusals which could have been appealed.

Chew on this for a minute. Here we have a situation where half the country is being shown that the IRS, the revenue-gathering arm of its federal government responsible for taxing them with almost unbelievable police powers to back it up is politically corrupt, and that they can very easily be made targets if they vote wrong, donate wrong or oppose the regime in power in any way openly.

This is not America.

Normally, the next step would be a special prosecutor named by the Attorney General. We all know that isn't going to happen. The House is going to have to confront Wilkins and use it's subpoena powers to get him to testify under oath. And they are going to have to name their own prosecutor via the courts since the U.S. Office of the Independent Counsel people like Kenneth Starr operated out of no longer exists as of 1999 and has been replaced by the Justice Department controlled Office of Special Counsel, run by an Obama appointee.

In any event, this is not something that can or should be swept under the rug. The stakes are too high.

Smoking Gun: The White House Fiction On IRS-Gate Begins To Implode

The White House narrative on IRS-gate is rapidly falling to pieces.

Originally, the spin was that the deliberate targeting of conservative, pro-Israel and Tea Party groups applying for 501C tax exempt status was just the work of a couple of rogue agents in Cincinnati, Ohio. The multiple audits performed on Romney donors and conservative leaders were dismissed in the same way, just coincidental, with Lois Lerner, then the head of the IRS' tax exempt division refusing to answer questions after say she 'did nothing wrong'.

Remember Benghazi? First we were told that it was all because of some Islamophobic bigot who made a YouTube video, that it was a spontaneous 'demonstration' and that there was was no possible way to save the Americans who were murdered. As that horse manure became readily apparent and started to smell, all of the loyal apparatchniks at the White House, including the president who lied to the American people now want everybody to forget about it. After all, as Secretary Clinton said, "what does it matter?" And as White House spokeshole Jay Carney keeps reminding us , it was a long time ago.

IRS-Gate is going the same way.

Anyone who knew anything about the IRS knew that it was a national agency, and that a couple of misbehaving agents don't initiate this kind of political jihad. The agency itself is now admitting this by default, by locking down computers with any information on the scandal while refusing requests from both the House and Senate investigating committees for documents. Over 88 agents at various locations have been implicated. And indeed, as Darrell Issa's committee continues and more to delve into this, a number of these agents are admitting what we all knew anyway....the the directions to target conservatives during an election cycle and hurt their efforts to raise donations came from Washington DC:

Q: In early 2010, was there a time when you became aware of applications that referenced Tea Party or other conservative groups?
A: In March of 2010, I was made aware.

******
Q: Okay. Now, was there a point around this time period when [your supervisor] asked you to do a search for similar applications?
A: Yes.
Q: To the best of your recollection, when was this request made?
A: Sometime in early March of 2010.

******
Q: Did [your supervisor] give you any indication of the need for the search, any more context?
A: He told me that Washington, D.C., wanted some cases.

Q: So as of April 2010, these 40 cases were held at that moment in your group; is that right?
A: Some were.
Q: How many were held there?
A: Less than 40. Some went to Washington, D.C.
Q: Okay. How many went to Washington, D.C.?
A: I sent seven.

******

Q: So you prepared seven hard copy versions of the applications to go to Washington, D.C.?
A: Correct.

******

Q: Did he give you any sort of indication as to why he requested you to do that?

[…]
A: He said Washington, D.C. wanted seven. Because at one point I believe I heard they were thinking 10, but it came down to seven. I said okay, seven.
Q: How did you decide which seven were sent?
A: Just the first seven.
Q: The first seven to come into the system?
A: Yes.

*****

Q: Did anyone else ever make a request that you send any cases to Washington?
A: [Different IRS employee] wanted to have two cases that she couldn't ‑‑ Washington, D.C. wanted them, but she couldn't find the paper. So she requested me, through an email, to find these cases for her and to send them to Washington, D.C.
Q: When was this, what time frame?
A: I don't recall the time frame, maybe May of 2010.

******

Q: But just to be clear, she told you the specific names of these applicants.
A: Yes.
Q: And she told you that Washington, D.C. had requested these two specific applications be sent to D.C.
A: Yes, or parts of them.

******

Q: Okay. So she asked you to send particular parts of these applications.
A: Mm‑hmm.
Q: And that was unusual. Did you say that?
A: Yes.
Q: And she indicated that Washington had requested these specific parts of these specific applications; is that right?
A: Correct.

******

Q: So what do you think about this, that allegation has been made, I think as you have seen in lots of press reports, that there were two rogue agents in Cincinnati that are sort of responsible for all of the issues that we have been talking about today. What do you think about those allegations?
[…]
A: It's impossible. As an agent we are controlled by many, many people. We have to submit many, many reports. So the chance of two agents being rogue and doing things like that could never happen.

******

Q: And you've heard, I'm sure, news reports about individuals here in Washington saying this is a problem that was originated in and contained in the Cincinnati office, and that it was the Cincinnati office that was at fault. What is your reaction to those types of stories?
[…]
A: Well, it's hard to answer the question because in my mind I still hear people saying we were low‑level employees, so we were lower than dirt, according to people in D.C. So, take it for what it is. They were basically throwing us underneath the bus.

******

Q: So is it your perspective that ultimately the responsible parties for the decisions that were reported by the IG are not in the Cincinnati office?
A: I don't know how to answer that question. I mean, from an agent standpoint, we didn't do anything wrong. We followed directions based on other people telling us what to do.
Q: And you ultimately followed directions from Washington; is that correct?
A: If direction had come down from Washington, yes.
Q: But with respect to the particular scrutiny that was given to Tea Party applications, those directions emanated from Washington; is that right?
A: I believe so.


And another more senior IRS Cincinnati employee complained about micromanagement from D.C.:

Q: But you specifically recall that the BOLO terms included "Tea Party?"
A: Yes, I do.
Q: And it was your understanding ‑‑ was it your understanding that the purpose of the BOLO was to identify Tea Party groups?
A: That is correct.
Q: Was it your understanding that the purpose of the BOLO was to identify conservative groups?
A: Yes, it was.
Q: Was it your understanding that the purpose of the BOLO was to identify Republican groups?
A: Yes, it was.

******

Q: Earlier I believe you informed us that the primary reason for applying for another job in July [2010] was because of the micromanagement from [Washington, DC, IRS Attorney], is that correct?
A: Right. It was the whole Tea Party. It was the whole picture. I mean, it was the micromanagement. The fact that the subject area was extremely sensitive and it was something that I didn't want to be associated with.
Q: Why didn't you want to be associated with it?
A: For what happened now. I mean, rogue agent? Even though I was taking all my direction from EO Technical [Washington, D.C], I didn't want my name in the paper for being this rogue agent for a project I had no control over.
Q: Did you think there was something inappropriate about what was happening in 2010?
A: Yes. The inappropriateness was not processing these applications fairly and timely.

******

Q: You have stated you had concerns with the fairness and the timeliness of the application process. Did you have concerns with just the fact that these cases were grouped together and you were the only one handling them?
A: I was the only one handling the Tea Party's, that is correct.
Q: Did that specifically cause you concern?
A: Yes, it did. And I was the only person handling them.
Q: Were you concerned that you didn't have the capacity to process all of the applications in a timely manner?
A: That is correct. And it is just ‑‑ I mean, like you brought up, the micromanagement, the fact that the topic was just weirdly handled was a huge concern to me.

But wait, there's more.

Remember President Obama's deputy campaign manager, Stephanie Cutter? We last saw here being caught in a number of blatant lies during the 2012 campaign, including accusing Mitt Romney of being a felon..

She now appears to have stepped in it once again.

On Jake Tapper's Sunday show The Lead on CNN, Cutter said this during the interview:



“A couple of facts here that I think are important for us to stick by, number one, the only reason we know about these visits is because the president makes everything public. Number two, what we’re really looking at some of these visits… What we are looking at the number of times that Mr. Shulman was cleared into the White House. It doesn’t necessarily mean he went to a meeting. Number three, many of those meetings were for healthcare implementation. I was in them with him.

Entire transcript of the segment is here.

The 'Mr. Shulman' she's talking about is Doug Shulman, a partisan Democrat and Obama donor who ran the IRS from March 24, 2008 to November 9, 2012.

When Shulman was asked in the wake of IRS-gate whether he had ever attended meetings at the White House, his flip response was to admit to taking his children to the annual Easter egg roll hosted by the president and first lady, but he claimed in testimony before the House Oversight Committee that he never discussed the agency's tax exempt programs at all.

In fact he was there 157 times last year, more than any other IRS commissioner in history. His predecessor went exactly one time.

And now Stephanie Cutter just admitted on national television that she, the deputy campaign chairman of President Obama's re-election campaign was at those meetings with him, yet there was never any discussion of targeting conservativ3e groups and GOP donors in order to help the president's campaign.

Why was she at those meetings then, in the middle of a major political campaign? Was she just a huge fan of talking about the subtlties of the tax code? Was it his cologne? Or maybe, just maybe were they co-ordinating strategy to help the Obama campaign by using the IRS as a weapon to target political opponents?

If I were Darrell Issa, I'd put Ms. Cutter under oath and grill her forthwith.

IRS Ignores Senate Deadline to Answer Questions About Targeting Scandal

Ah well.

The Internal Revenue Service has cavalierly ignored a deadline from the Senate Finance Committee to answer detailed questions about the IRS scandal. The questions had been submitted jointly nearly two weeks ago by Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and Ranking Member Orrin Hatch (R-UT).

Imagine what would happen to you if you didn't keep an appointment with the IRS for an audit!

Perhaps the IRS was busy burning files, deleting e-mails and making some phone call records and meeting minutes go away.

The original letter and those inconvenient questions can be found here.

Obama Blames WH Counsel For Benghazi And IRS-Gate

 

It looks like we now know why Ezra Klein and a number of other Lefty media types made a special trip to the White House yesterday.

They were briefed that this 'leak' was coming and to spread this narrative around like manure.

The new fall-person (to keep things politically correct)for both Benghazi and IRS-Gate is none other than the president's own lawyer, White House Counsel to the President  Kathryn Ruemmler.

The reliably Left wing site BuzzFeed 'leaked' statements by 'White House Advisers' blaming her for both scandals...one scapegoat for both debacles, you might say:

BuzzFeed has learned that key members of President Obama’s national security team, including deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes, pushed to release a comprehensive timeline of events documenting the attack that would also synthesize the views of the various government agencies into one report. The CIA also wanted the White House to put out such a timeline, according to sources with knowledge of the situation.

Those plans were quashed, however, when the White House Counsel’s office, which is led by Kathryn Ruemmler, advised the officials to not release any information to the public out of fear it could be used against them in any subsequent investigations and other legal complications. {...}

“It was aggravating,” one administration official said. “It comes back to Kathryn Ruemmler, Kathyrn Ruemmler, Kathryn Ruemmler. I hate to say it, as it sounds like piling on, but it’s on her doorstep too.”

Ruemmler has also come under fire this week for not making the president and others aware of the IRS investigation.

You see, it was Kathryn Ruemmler, Kathyrn Ruemmler, Kathryn Ruemmler who was responsible for everything. President Obama really, really would have come clean about IRS-Gate before the election, even woulda apologized to the Tea Party, Evangelicals and Pro-Israel groups on national TV.But his nasty, evil lawyer stopped him.

Same with Benghazi.It was Kathryn Ruemmler, Kathyrn Ruemmler, Kathryn Ruemmler who forced those brave souls in the White House to edit those talking points twelve times. She made everyone go on the Sunday news shows and push the lie about how this was all due to a video.It was Kathryn Ruemmler, Kathyrn Ruemmler, Kathryn Ruemmler who forced Hillary Clinton to lie her head off in front of Congress to protect Mrs. Clinton's reputation. Hillary, truthful soul that she is fought it tooth and nail, but Kathryn Ruemmler, Kathyrn Ruemmler, Kathryn Ruemmler overruled her and made her say those things.She made all of them say those things..the president, Susan Rice, Victoria Nuland, Jay Carney.She threatened to whip them if they didn't.

 

Give them another week and they'll probably be saying that it was Kathryn Ruemmler, Kathyrn Ruemmler, Kathryn Ruemmler who ordered Ambassador Stevens to Benghazi in the first place, took away his security and ordered the Special forces twice to stand down and not rescue the Americans there after the attack. Hillary and President Obama wanted to save them, but she just wouldn't let them.

I know that some single women voted for this president because they thought he was cool, and because they bought the bogus 'Republican War On Women' schtick.

Ask yourselves this. Do you think Mitt Romney, for all his faults would act this cravenly towards a female subordinate and make her a scapegoat for his own mistakes? George W. Bush, whom I have very little good to say about at least had that level of manly behavior, and goodness knows Condi Rice screwed up enough that he could have shoveled the blame for a lot of things he caught hell for on her.

I bet you can't even imagine Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan or Marco Rubio doing it..in fact, there are probably a lot of Democrats you can't imagine doing it either.

Not only is it moral cowardice, but this kind of behavior shows a deeply engrained contempt for all of us. This president and his team think we're all stupid, that we would buy that his lawyer had this kind of power over him and the rest of the White House.

Think about it.

And while you're at it, check out Twitchy on this..among other things, there are some tweets that are too good to miss.

BREAKING:Issa To Haul Lerner Back Before Committee,Says She Waived 5th Amendment Rights With Opening Statement

Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Darrell Issa has instructed to committee to subpoena IRS official Lori Lerner to appear again before his committee, saying that her opening statement waived her Fif the Amendment rights against self-incrimination. If you listen to it, he appears to be entirely correct:



You're not allowed to place a self-serving statement on the record and then claim the Fifth - you have to do it from the outset.

“When I asked her her questions from the very beginning, I did so so she could assert her rights prior to any statement,” Issa told POLITICO. “She chose not to do so — so she waived.”

“The precedents are clear that this is not something you can turn on and turn off,” he told POLITICO. “She made testimony after she was sworn in, asserted her innocence in a number of areas, even answered questions asserting that a document was true … So she gave partial testimony and then tried to revoke that.”

He said he was not expecting that.

“I understand from her counsel that there was a plan to assert her Fifth Amendment rights,” he continued. “She went ahead and made a statement, so counsel let her effectively under the precedent, waive — so we now have someone who no longer has that ability.”

That's why Issa had Lerner look at a transcript of the previous fairy tales she told the committee under oath and acknowledge that these were her statements.

In other words, her tits are in the wringer, to use a quaint Southernism I've always liked.

Issa doesn't want Lerner, or at least not Lerner alone. He wants to put the fear of G-d into her so that she'll see the wisdom of cutting a deal by selling out some of the other rats above her in the pecking order on the SS Obama.

All roads on this one lead to the White House.

IRS-Gate Update- Stonewalling And Denials As The Fiction Falls Apart

Aside from Senior IRS official Lori Lerner taking the Fifth and refusing to answer any questions, there are a number of other disturbing developments taking place on IRS-Gate.

For starters, the IRS has defied congress's request for all communications between the agency and the White House about targeting conservative, evangelical and pro-Israel groups.

In a May 14 letter signed by Rep. Dave Camp and Sander Levin, Chairman and Ranking Member respectively of the House Ways and Means Committee, the IRS was given a deadline of Tuesday, May 21 to comply with their committee’s demand for the information and records, including records of any communications between IRS and the Treasury on the matter.

The IRS missed the deadline and has apparently decided to stonewall...and we all know they didn't make that decision without guidance from the White House. No federal agency would.

It's also come out that the IRS' own internal investigation ended May 12th, 2012, six months before the election but was deliberately hidden from Congress.I wonder who gave that order:

Rep. Darrel Issa, the committee's chairman, said that the committee learned just yesterday that the IRS completed its own investigation a year before a Treasury Department Inspector General report was completed.

But despite the IRS recognizing in May 2012 that its employees were treating right-wing groups differently from other organizations, Issa said, IRS personnel withheld those conclusions from legislators.

'Just yesterday the committee interviewed Holly Paz, the director of exempt organizations, rulings and agreements, division of the IRS,' Issa said. 'While a tremendous amount of attention is centered about the Inspector General's report, or investigation, the committee has learned from Ms. Paz that she in fact participated in an IRS internal investigation that concluded in May of 2012 - May 3 of 2012 - and found essentially the same thing that Mr. George found more than a year later.'

'Think about it,' he continued: 'For more than a year, the IRS knew that it had inappropriately targeted groups of Americans based on their political beliefs, and without mentioning it, and in fact without honestly answering questions that were the result of this internal investigation.'

Moreover,the Administration's claim that the wrongdoing was limited to 'a few low level agents' is falling apart like a paper in the rain.

In fact, the IRS' own system makes a few low level IRS employees conducting as jihad on groups selected for their ideology impossible:

When an application for tax exempt status comes into the IRS, agents have 270 days to work through that application. If the application is not processed within those 270 days it automatically triggers flags in the system. When that happens, individual agents are required to input a status update on that individual case once a month, every month until the case is resolved.

Keep in mind, at least 300 groups were targeted out of Cincinnati alone. Those applications spent anywhere from 18 months to nearly 3 years in the system and some still don't have their non-profit status. 300 groups multiplied by at least 18 months for each group, means thousands of red flags would have been generated in the system.

So who in the chain of command would have received all these flags? The answer, according to the IRS directory, one woman in Cincinnati, Cindy Thomas, the Program Manager of the Tax Exempt Division. Because all six of our IRS workers have different individual and territory managers, Cindy Thomas is one manager they all have common.

It turns out Cindy Thomas' name is one we have heard before. The independent journalism group ProPublica says in November of 2012 they had requested information on conservatives groups that had received non-profit status.

Cindy Thomas, says Swann, is the highest-ranking employee in the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Department in Cincinnati.

Even the Washington Post is saying that a Special prosecutor is not a matter of if but when.

Personally, I think the president is just arrogant enough to try and brazen this out.

IRS official Lois Lerner To Plead the Fifth At Congressional Hearing Tomorrow

Lois Lerner, the IRS head of the tax exempt organizations division is going to plead the Fifth tomorrow in front of Darrel Issa's committee rather than answer questions on the IRS scandal:

Lois Lerner, the head of the exempt organizations division of the IRS, won’t answer questions about what she knew about the improper screening – or why she didn’t reveal it to Congress, according to a letter from her defense lawyer, William W. Taylor 3rd.

Lerner was scheduled to appear before the House Oversight committee Wednesday.

“She has not committed any crime or made any misrepresentation but under the circumstances she has no choice but to take this course,” said a letter by Taylor to committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, R-Calif. The letter, sent Monday, was obtained Tuesday by the Los Angeles Times…

Since Lerner won’t answer questions, Taylor asked that she be excused from appearing, saying that would “have no purpose other than to embarrass or burden her.” There was no immediate word whether the committee will grant her request.

Obviously someone from the White House has spoken to her about how Presidential pardons work and what you need to do to earn them.

Let's remember what we're talking about here.No matter what Lerner's attorney says, the Fifth Amendment is only used to guard against self-incrimination for criminal acts. For starters, aside from the applicable civil-rights laws there's the Hatch Act, plus some of the IRS’s own regulations for employee conduct.She obviously has been implicated in illegal acts.

Meanwhile, Rep. Issa quite properly said no, and issued a subpoena for Lerner anyway.

This is exactly the right tactic. Let this foul government apparatchnik earn her pardon. Let her sit there sweating from every corrupt pore while Issa and the committee members grill her on the obvious lies she told when this started two weeks ago. Let her refuse to answer each question on grounds that she might incriminate herself and let the American people see.

Aside from the political theater benefits, this will set the stage for Congressman Issa to have a little chat with Lerner and her attorney afterwards about what could happen if her part in this disgraceful business comes to light from other sources, and why now might be a smart time to protect herself and make a deal.


Lest you feel sorry for Ms. Lerner's deer-in-the-headlights demeanor, keep in mind that this is not the first time she's abused an official position to try to bully and intimidate her fellow Americans for daring to exercise their constitutional rights.

Mark Hemingway at the Weekly Standard has a great piece on Lerner's behavior while she was working for the FEC. She viciously targeted the Christian Coalition, and while they were cleared eventually of any wrongdoing, they had to spend huge amounts in legal fees and expenses to fight what amounted to a jihad against them. It was so bad and so biased that according to Hemmingway's story, when the Christian Coalition's lead attorney heard she'd moved over to the IRS, he claims he remembers thinking, “Wow, this means the not for profit division is gearing up politically.”

He certainly had that right.