Top IRS officials specifically targeted tea party groups and misled the public about its secret political targeting program led by ex-official Lois Lerner, according to a bombshell new congressional report.

The Daily Caller has obtained an advance copy of a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee report set to be released Tuesday morning that definitively proves malicious intent by the IRS to improperly block conservative groups that an IRS adviser deemed “icky.” (That’s right. “Icky.”)

“The Committee has identified eight senior leaders who were in a position to prevent or to stop the IRS’s targeting of conservative applicants,” the Oversight report states. “Each of these leaders could have and should have done more to prevent the IRS’s targeting of conservative tax-exempt applicants.”

Here are six major takeaways from the report:

1. The IRS admitted that the front office was “spinning” about the targeting rumors as early as 2012, after IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman denied the tea party targeting to Congress.

“This is what the front office and [IRS Chief of Communications and Liaison] Frank [Keith] are spinning about now,” an IRS legislative affairs office employee wrote in an email to co-workers, referring to a news article on Shulman’s dishonest testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, in which he denied rumors of improper targeting.

2. Then-IRS commissioner Steven T. Miller almost broke down and told the truth about the tea party targeting at a July 2012 hearing, but Lerner’s sidekick Nikole Flax told him not to.

“I am beginning to wonder whether I should do [Chairman] Boustany[’s hearing] and affirmatively use it to put a stake in politics and c4,” Miller wrote in an email to Flax.

Flax replied, “[I]f the hearing is as generic as I recall, seems like you are too senior. Would be silly to think the c4 issues won’t come up – but I think Sarah [Hall Ingram] could handle it fine as well.”

3. The IRS definitely treated tea party applications by a different standard than applications from other (c)(4) groups.

“Normal (c)(4) cases we must develop the concept of social welfare, such as the community newspapers, or the poor, that types,” Lerner underling Stephen Seok said in testimony published in the report. “These [Tea Party] organizations mostly concentrate on their activities on the limiting government, limiting government role, or reducing government size, or paying less tax. I think it[‘]s different from the other social welfare organizations which are (c)(4).”

4. Lois Lerner expressed her frustration about having to potentially approve a lot of groups, and her colleagues in the agency assured her that she wouldn’t have to.

“Lois [Lerner] would like to discuss our planned approach for dealing with these cases. We suspect we will have to approve the majority of the c4 applications,” IRS official Holly Paz wrote to colleagues.

IRS official Don Spellman replied, “This line in particular stood out: ‘We suspect we will have to approve the majority of c4 applications.’ That’s an interesting posture.”

Deputy Division Counsel Janine Cook replied, “[G]uess they are thinking they’ll have suspicions about reality but the paper/reps will pass muster.”

5. So the IRS reached out to outside advisers to help come up with ways to deny tax-exempt status to “icky” organizations.

“It appears that the org is funneling money to other orgs for political purposes,” a Cincinnati-based IRS agent working under Lois Lerner wrote to tax law specialist Hilary Goehausen in April 2013. ”However, I’m not sure we can deny them because, technically, I don’t know that I can deny them simply for donating to another 501(c)(4). . . . Any thoughts or feedback would be greatly appreciated.”

“I think there may be a number of ways to deny them,” Goehausen replied. “Let me talk to Sharon [Light] tomorrow about it and get some ideas from her as well. . . .This sounds like a bad org. :/ . . . This org gives me an icky feeling.”

6. A May 2011 email from a lawyer in the IRS chief counsel’s office made clear that the agency sought to use a new “gift tax” to target donors to nonprofit political groups.

The lawyer wrote that the “plan is to elevate the issue of asserting gift tax on donors to 501(c)(4) organizations to the Chief Counsel and the Commissioner.”

The Obama administration is refusing to publicly release more than 500 documents on the IRS’s targeting of Tea Party groups.

Twenty months after the IRS scandal broke, there are still many unanswered questions about who was spearheading the agency’s scrutiny of conservative-leaning organizations.

The Hill sought access to government documents that might provide a glimpse of the decision-making through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
The Hill asked for 2013 emails and other correspondence between the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). The request specifically sought emails from former IRS official Lois Lerner and Treasury officials, including Secretary Jack Lew, while the inspector general was working on its explosive May 2013 report that the IRS used “inappropriate criteria” to review the political activities of tax-exempt groups.

TIGTA opted not to release any of the 512 documents covered by the request, citing various exemptions in the law. The Hill recently appealed the FOIA decision, but TIGTA denied the appeal. TIGTA also declined to comment for this article.


Will anyone be charged?

In its written response to The Hill, TIGTA cited FOIA exemptions ranging from interagency communication to personal privacy. It also claimed it cannot release relevant documents “when interference with the law enforcement proceedings can be reasonably expected.”

Yet, congressional Republicans say there is no evidence of any prosecution in the works, and media outlets have indicated that the Department of Justice and the FBI have already determined that no charges will be filed.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) notes that eight months after Lerner was held in contempt of Congress for not testifying at two hearings, the matter has not yet been referred to a grand jury. The contempt citation is in the hands of Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia who was appointed by President Obama.

Asked for comment on the administration’s FOIA response to The Hill, Jordan said, “It’s par for the course. We’ve had a difficult time getting information from the IRS and the Department of Justice.” Jordan, a senior member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has held numerous hearings on the IRS scandal.

Last week, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said the IRS recently delivered 86,000 pages of new documents to the panel. Hatch added, “These documents ... were given to us without notice or explanation roughly twenty months after we made our initial document request [on the targeting].”

Republicans in both the House and Senate are stepping up their investigations of the IRS. They have criticized the IRS and TIGTA for not informing Congress about the Tea Party targeting before the 2012 presidential election. GOP lawmakers say the administration has largely stonewalled them, while Democrats have called the probes “a witch hunt.”


Who knew what when?

The crux of the GOP’s IRS targeting investigations is: Who knew what when?

On Friday, May 10, 2013, Lerner famously planted a question at an American Bar Association (ABA) conference where she acknowledged “inappropriate” handling of tax-exempt applications in 2012. Lerner, who has since said she did nothing wrong, released the news before the TIGTA report came out the following week.

The Obama administration considered several other options on how to release the information, including an April conference at Georgetown University and an April 25, 2013, Ways and Means subcommittee hearing. Then-Treasury chief of staff Mark Patterson told Republican investigators that he informed the White House about the IRS plan to disclose the targeting “so that the White House wouldn’t be surprised by the news.”

Soon after Lerner’s comments attracted national attention, White House officials acknowledged they knew about the report but didn’t tell Obama about it.

Lew told Congress he first heard about the IRS matter at a “getting to know you” meeting with TIGTA chief J. Russell George in March 2013. But he said he didn’t learn the full extent of the findings until the media reported Lerner’s remarks at the ABA meeting.

Lew served as White House chief of staff before succeeding Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in 2013. Republicans on Capitol Hill are considering asking Geithner questions later this year on what he knew about the IRS’s targeting.



Weekly activity reports

TIGTA sends the Treasury secretary “weekly activity reports” on what it is working on. These reports, which are common in the executive branch and obtained through a FOIA request, serve as a “heads up” to Cabinet heads from inspectors general. They include categories such as “potential or expected press stories,” “upcoming hearings” and TIGTA reports that are awaiting public release.

From January through early May 2013, TIGTA referenced 25 reports that were subsequently issued in the weekly activity reports to Lew. But the agency’s most explosive report was not included in any of these weekly memos. It is unclear why, though a government official pointed out that Lerner spoke about the targeting at the ABA conference before TIGTA released its report. Her comments likely accelerated the Treasury Department’s clearance process.

Regardless, TIGTA officials briefed IRS and Treasury officials in 2012 and 2013, according to TIGTA memos provided to Congress. On May 30, 2012, TIGTA informed then-IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman and his deputies that criteria targeting Tea Party groups “were being used. ...”

Jordan said neither the IRS nor TIGTA informed the Congress at that time — less than six months before the 2012 elections. He also pointed out Shulman didn’t correct his March 22, 2012, testimony to the Ways and Means oversight subcommittee where he said “there is absolutely no targeting” of Tea Party groups.

TIGTA’s FOIA practices have come under criticism before. In the fall of last year, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia admonished the agency for its use of FOIA exemptions. Cause of Action, a nonprofit group that has sued TIGTA, announced in December that the agency declined to fork over more than 2,000 documents related to a FOIA request.

Judicial Watch, another group that has sued the Obama administration on FOIA, said in December that the DOJ withheld 832 documents pertaining to meetings between the IRS and the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section and Election Crimes Division.

Some of the documents that The Hill requested were released to Judicial Watch last year after a judge ruled in favor of the conservative group’s lawsuit.

Attorney General Eric Holder said last week that the DOJ will soon release a report on the IRS targeting that will include “some final recommendations.”

Lerner, who pleaded the Fifth Amendment before Congress, has given a lengthy interview to DOJ officials.

Washington (CNN)The IRS watchdog investigating the disappearance of Lois Lerner's emails told a congressional panel on Thursday night they are looking into the possibility of criminal activity.

Lerner was the IRS official at the center of allegations that the Internal Revenue Service targeted tea party groups applying for nonprofit status. Congress requested Lerner's emails from the IRS and agency officials told lawmakers an unknown number of emails had been lost when Lerner's computer crashed.

READ: Issa's final IRS report spreads blame

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has since recovered a number of those emails.

"There is potential criminal activity," Treasury Deputy Inspector General Timothy Camus told the House Oversight Committee Thursday.

Camus did not elaborate on who may have committed possible criminal acts. And, he cautioned that the investigation is not complete and cautioned against drawing conclusions until all the facts are in.

"What we're looking at is potential criminal wrongdoing. This has the looks, feel and smells of being criminal. And the IG confirmed tonight that's what they're looking into," House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz told CNN after the hearing.

Chaffetz invited the inspector general to testify in order to provide an update on the investigation.

Camus told the committee that less than two weeks ago, officials discovered an additional 424 backup tapes and are trying to determine what emails, if any, are on them. The tapes are in addition to about 750 backup tapes the inspector general found in July, some of which contained Lerner emails.

The IRS had told Congress that backup tapes no longer existed.

"The IRS has a lot of explaining to do," Chaffetz told CNN. "Because what (the inspector general) told us tonight means what the IRS told us is just factually not true."

No IRS representatives were present at the hearing.

 dogma wrote:
The crazed Nicolas Cage meme doesn't help your case, Whembly.

 whembly wrote:

 dogma wrote:
The crazed Nicolas Cage meme doesn't help your case, Whembly.

It's funny.

*shrug*

Peeling one onion layer at a time...

They've found this:


Can we say... Government Coverup in Action™?

 streamdragon wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 dogma wrote:
The crazed Nicolas Cage meme doesn't help your case, Whembly.

It's funny.

*shrug*

Peeling one onion layer at a time...

They've found this:


Can we say... Government Coverup in Action™?

"Life is strange" sort of sets the context of the email though. It's not "OMG NO ONE WILL ACCEPT THIS", it's more "can you believe it?"

I mean, that's how I'd read it anyway.

Edit: especially when you consider there are 3 people CCed on the message.

 d-usa wrote:
I took out narcotics out of the drug cabinet once, then had the patient change his mind so I hat do flush it down the drain. This happened twice in one shift. When he asked a third time I told my coworker that nobody is going to believe that I'm not diverting narcotics.

I guess that was my admission of guild and I should be investigated.

 whembly wrote:
It's funny.

 whembly wrote:
They did NOT want these emails released, so there's obviously some malfeasance in that office.

 Ouze wrote:

 whembly wrote:
They did NOT want these emails released, so there's obviously some malfeasance in that office.

I don't want anyone seeing my browsing history, but I haven't committed a crime.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:
It's funny.

It is trite.

 whembly wrote:

Are you legally required to save your browsing history has part of permanent records?

 whembly wrote:

Okay... I'll own up to that.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Okay... I'll own up to that.

Will you also own up to "desperate"?

 whembly wrote:

Why plead the 5th?

 whembly wrote:

Why all this stonewalling?

 whembly wrote:

Instead, we'd get spin, deflection, manipulation and arguably institutional malfeasance.

Print out & staple to your blank tax return. http://t.co/y2uOMZSTZN

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) April 1, 2015

 Ouze wrote:
I agree she wasn't in contempt. You want to compel her to testify? Offer her transactional immunity. Otherwise, she has a right not to incriminate herself. Pretty simple stuff.

Whether or not she broke the law in the original matter is a wholly undecided issue, however.

 Ouze wrote:
I agree she wasn't in contempt. You want to compel her to testify? Offer her transactional immunity. Otherwise, she has a right not to incriminate herself. Pretty simple stuff.

The Department of Justice made news in two stories yesterday, both involving official corruption -- abuse of power and improper influence are central to both investigations. However, the DOJ offered two very different actions, leaving open the question of whether convenience and politics drove decisions on whether to indict, and whether the DOJ has the integrity to ensure the public trust.

The first announcement from Justice concerned former IRS executive Lois Lerner, who has been at the heart of a scandal involving the deliberate targeting of political opponents of the Obama administration. This scandal erupted almost two years ago, when Lerner herself apologized for targeting Tea Party groups attempting to qualify for tax-exempt status, as a means to spinning the story before a damning Inspector General report was released.

Related: Lost IRS Emails Point to an Abuse of Power and Cover-Up

When Congress demanded answers from IRS personnel, including Lerner as the executive who ran the unit handling tax-exempt requests, Lerner declared her innocence in a prepared statement – and then pleaded the Fifth.

Congress responded by subpoenaing Lerner, arguing that they had the right to cross-examine her based on the statement she read into the record. Legal experts split on whether Lerner had inadvertently waived her right to deprive Congress of its oversight after that statement.

Some, including famed appellate attorney Alan Dershowitz, argued that she had. When Lerner refused again to testify, Congress responded with a criminal complaint of contempt of Congress, and passed it along to the Department of Justice to enforce.

Nearly eleven months later, the Department of Justice has decided to pass on enforcing the contempt charge. Even though Lerner offered testimony in her opening statement and her declaration of innocence, and even though Congress has a compelling interest in oversight over corruption in the executive branch, Ronald Machen informed John Boehner that the Justice Department decided that Lerner didn’t waive her Fifth Amendment rights even while opening with a statement declaring her innocence 17 separate times.

Related: 32,774 ‘Found’ IRS Emails Prompt Criminal Probe

Those were only “general” assertions of innocence, Machen decided. “Given that assessment, we have further concluded that it is not appropriate for a United States attorney to present the matter to the grand jury for action where, as here, the Constitution prevents the witness from being prosecuted for contempt.”

Left unstated: when (or if) the Department of Justice plans to take action about the targeting itself, and Lerner for her role in it. The DOJ and the FBI claimed to have a probe in progress, but months went by while the victims waited to hear from investigators.

The targeting took place over the two years between the rise of the Tea Party in early 2010 and the election cycle in 2012, and at least appeared intended to squelch President Obama’s political opponents and their attempts to organize effectively – a corrosive abuse of power, if substantiated. Yet the DOJ has demonstrated very little sense of urgency for its investigation.

Later on Wednesday, though, the wheels of Justice turned a lot more vigorously in another case of alleged corruption. A federal grand jury indicted Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) on charges of bribery, conspiracy, making false statements, and using his office to improperly benefit a key donor.

Related: Lerner Computer Damage May Have Been Intentional

This case has also taken two years to come to this stage with the FBI raiding the offices of Dr. Salomon Mengel in January 2013 after corruption allegations first arose. Menendez intervened on Melgen’s behalf on a Medicare billing dispute of nearly $9 million. He also accepted private jet travel from Melgen, creating at least the appearance of quid pro quo. What

Still, the timing looks intriguing, even while the basis for a probe looks solid. A federal grand jury began reviewing evidence in February 2013, but the effort’s conclusion comes weeks after Menendez publicly split with Obama on both his Cuba policy and especially on the question of negotiating with Iran. Menendez, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee until Republicans won control of the upper chamber, vehemently opposed the easing of sanctions by the White House as a teaser to get Iran to make concessions of their own. Menendez predicted – accurately, as it turns out – that Iran would use the windfall of cash to strengthen its regional efforts while giving nothing of value back to the P5+1 group on nuclear weapons.

That has some Obama opponents crying foul, but Menendez’ relationship has looked suspect for more than two years. The Department of Justice has jurisdiction to investigate when corruption may be taking place, and the circumstances surrounding Menendez and Melgen certainly prompt questions about the Senator’s intervention. Besides, forcing Menendez out would only slow down Congressional opposition to the pursuit of a deal with Iran, and likely would leave Chris Christie with an opportunity to add to the GOP’s majority, at least temporarily. Torpedoing Menendez doesn’t make much sense.

Yet these two cases provide a remarkable contrast in Justice’s reaction to two types of corruption. Personal corruption seems to get plenty of effort -- almost immediately calling a grand jury, and what looks like energetic prosecution – as it should. Corrupting the tax process and potentially two different electoral cycles, coupled with false testimony to Congress, exposure of private taxpayer data, and a government official found in contempt of Congress merit a much different level of enthusiasm and due diligence.

Taxpayers, especially as they submit their records to the IRS over the next couple of weeks, can be forgiven for wondering why.

 Ouze wrote:
A general declaration of innocence shouldn't in any way waive your fifth amendment rights, and I gotta be honest, I have a hard time believing you think it should.

She's still under FBI investigation. Maybe she broke the law, maybe she'll go to jail. I don't know, I haven't seen enough evidence one way or the other to make up my mind. But the fact that she refused to roll over and confess to whatever she may have done without an actual indictment, or trial or promise of some sort of immunity isn't some damning evidence of... anything, other than the common sense any person in this thread would use in a similar situation.

 whembly wrote:

It was a little bit more than a "general declaration" Ouze...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/lois-lerner-invokes-fifth-amendment-in-house-hearing-on-irs-targeting/2013/05/22/03539900-c2e6-11e2-8c3b-0b5e9247e8ca_story.html

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

It was a little bit more than a "general declaration" Ouze...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/lois-lerner-invokes-fifth-amendment-in-house-hearing-on-irs-targeting/2013/05/22/03539900-c2e6-11e2-8c3b-0b5e9247e8ca_story.html

So she didn't wave her Fifth Amendment Rights but, in fact, invoked them while also declaring her innocence.

“Now it turns out that 422 backup tapes from the crucial period were routinely erased by IRS workers. The tapes were destroyed in March 2014, according to the Treasury inspector general for the IRS, J. Russell George. That is long after lawmakers started trying to obtain all of Ms. Lerner’s emails, and long after the IRS issued instructions for employees to cease routine destruction of documents that might relate to the probes.”

 whembly wrote:
Awfully convienent to announce this after the Obamacare/SSM rulings on a Friday...
http://www.wsj.com/articles/former-irs-officials-email-lost-when-backup-tapes-routinely-erased-1435234390

“Now it turns out that 422 backup tapes from the crucial period were routinely erased by IRS workers. The tapes were destroyed in March 2014, according to the Treasury inspector general for the IRS, J. Russell George. That is long after lawmakers started trying to obtain all of Ms. Lerner’s emails, and long after the IRS issued instructions for employees to cease routine destruction of documents that might relate to the probes.”

Even some Democrats said they were troubled.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D), the top Democrat on the panel. “That really does concern me.”

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Awfully convienent to announce this after the Obamacare/SSM rulings on a Friday...
http://www.wsj.com/articles/former-irs-officials-email-lost-when-backup-tapes-routinely-erased-1435234390

“Now it turns out that 422 backup tapes from the crucial period were routinely erased by IRS workers. The tapes were destroyed in March 2014, according to the Treasury inspector general for the IRS, J. Russell George. That is long after lawmakers started trying to obtain all of Ms. Lerner’s emails, and long after the IRS issued instructions for employees to cease routine destruction of documents that might relate to the probes.”

Even some Democrats said they were troubled.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D), the top Democrat on the panel. “That really does concern me.”

Gee, lots of bad things just seem to happen to her emails.

Judge Sullivan Demands Answers from the IRS by Month’s End

Just a day after our most recent article about our “Shameless IRS” and its continued stonewalling, federal Judge Emmet G. Sullivan has demanded that the IRS answer his questions and respond to Judicial Watch in a report that the IRS must file by June 29th. In its “supplemental report,” the IRS must disclose “any new information regarding: (1) [The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration] TIGTA’s recovery of emails from the backup tapes; (2) TIGTA’s production of emails to the IRS; (3) the IRS’s review of emails and production to the plaintiff; and (4) the status of the TIGTA investigation. This report shall be filed by no later than June 29, 2015.”

As we previously reported, Judge Sullivan is the federal judge who appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the Department of Justice and its “Public Integrity Section” prosecutors upon their corrupted prosecution of former United States Senator Ted Stevens. Now Judge Sullivan is presiding over the Freedom of Information Act Suit brought by Judicial Watch to recover, among other things, the “missing” emails of Lois Lerner and her comrades in their efforts to harass and discriminate against conservative groups seeking tax exempt status.

All thinking Americans are fed up with the arrogance, entitlement and disdain for the law demonstrated repeatedly by the IRS officials, especially Commissioner Koskinen, who is now proved by his own Inspector General to have lied to Congress when he claimed the IRS had made every effort to find the missing emails and backup tapes.

It took the Inspector General’s office only one day on the job to locate more than 700 of them, with 400 more discovered later. Americans are also fed up with all the stalling and stonewalling. No taxpayer on whom the IRS had set its sights could possibly get by with the tactics the IRS has used—from multiple simultaneous computer crashes to deliberately destroying Lois Lerner’s Blackberry after the Congressional Inquiry began and after the twenty-some computers had mysteriously crashed. To any of us, that’s called obstruction of justice and perjury. In fact, the Department of Injustice destroyed Arthur Andersen LLP and 85,000 jobs for allegations of destruction of evidence that did not even constitute a crime.

Judge Sullivan has also set a hearing for July 1 at 1:30 in his courtroom. If the IRS has not sufficiently answered his questions in writing, there’s no doubt they will be called upon to do so in person. This hearing may be worthy of concession sales. It’s past time for “orange to be the new black” for some people in the IRS.