IRS reveals more emails missing and secret conservative donor research unit
You may be paranoid, but that doesn’t mean the IRS isn’t out to get you.
Stay awake on Fridays if you want to follow the IRS targeting scandal.
First, via The Hill, IRS: Five more staffers lost emails:
The IRS told lawmakers Friday that five staffers connected to the agency’s Tea Party controversy besides Lois Lerner probably lost emails due to computer problems.
Those five staffers include officials key to the various investigations into the IRS’s improper scrutiny of Tea Party groups – including Judith Kindell, who was a senior adviser to Lerner, the former agency official at the center of the controversy….
Issa said Friday’s letter showed once more that the IRS wasn’t being straight with Congress, and pushed again for the Obama administration to appoint a special prosecutor.
“The so-called ‘most transparent administration in history’ has given Congress inconsistent information since the beginning of the targeting scandal,” Issa said. “The IRS’s ever-changing story is practically impossible to follow at this point, as they modify it each time to accommodate new facts.”
Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration is currently investigating the missing emails, while conservative groups are suing the IRS in federal court over Lerner’s emails as well.
As Lerner’s senior adviser, Kindell was a key figure in dealing with tax-exempt applications. In a February 2011 email, Lerner insisted that Kindell be looped in on Tea Party cases, calling them “very dangerous.”
Sharyl Attkisson reports that the IRS has not been straightforward as to missing emails, Missing emails: What is the IRS not telling Congress?:
In June, IRS commissioner John Koskinen testified he had no idea who tipped off Obama officials, much sooner than Congress, about missing IRS emails.
“Did you cause someone to find out at the White House, at Treasury, or your IG?” Representative Darrell Issa asked Koskinen on June 23rd.
“I did not,” answered Koskinen. “And if you have any evidence of that, I’d be happy to see it.”
“I asked a question,” said Issa.
“And i answered it,” replied Koskinen.
In a new development, we’ve learned it was IRS Commission John Koskinen’s own chief legal advisor at the IRS, Catherine Duval, who informed someone at the Treasury Department, who told someone at the White House that emails were missing, while Congress, which subpoenaed the documents, was left in the dark.
Duval disclosed that she was the source when she gave closed-door testimony to the House Oversight Committee before Congress’ summer break. The emails in question are from IRS manager Lois Lerner who’s implicated in the agency’s improper targeting of conservative groups.
Duval acknowledged she told Treasury’s senior counsel there were “issues” finding emails.
“We are friends, we talk,” Duval testified. “I believe we talked about it in mid to late April.”
Second, via Judicial Watch, IRS Had “Secret Research Project” For Conservative Donor Lists:
On September 4, we released a new batch of IRS email documents revealing that under former IRS official Lois Lerner, the agency seems to acknowledge having needlessly solicited donor lists from non-profit political groups. According to a May 21, 2012, memo from the IRS Deputy Associate Chief Counsel: “such information was not needed across-the-board and not used in making the agency’s determination on exempt status.” Outrageously, it wasn’t until one year later, on May 10, 2013, that Lerner finally conceded that the requests for donor names were “not appropriate, not usual.” (These remarks by Lerner were staged and were the first IRS admission of its improper targeting of Obama’s perceived enemies.)
Not surprisingly, the new documents JW obtained also reveal that 75% of the groups from which the lists were solicited were apparently conservative, with only 5% being liberal. So, Lerner and her IRS collaborators knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the donor lists they had wrongly solicited would be filled with the names of those who had opposed the Obama policies.
These new smoking gun documents came in response to a court order from our October 2013 FOIA lawsuit (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Internal Revenue Service (No. 1:13-cv-01559)) filed against the IRS after the agency unlawfully refused to respond to four FOIA requests dating back to May 2013. The emails are contained in the sixth batch of documents the IRS has been forced to produce in response to the Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit.
Stay awake on Fridays.
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Comments
Throughout the country, Republican politicians are being charged with crimes. (for doing things that Democrats do as a matter of course).
All of the charges added together (even if all were actually true) do not come close to the violations of law by the IRS and the administration in supporting, encouraging and covering up their actions.
But with Eric Holder controlling the justice department, and the White House using all of its powers to prevent any action, they will get away with all they have done.
I’m telling you: HOLD THEM IN CONTEMPT UNTIL EVERY E-MAIL IS PRODUCED AND THEN START JAILING IRS OFFICIALS AND ATTORNEYS THAT APPEAR IN COURT!!!!
That will get the ball moving REALLY fast. Start by jailing Lerner, Koskinen, Kindell, and their senior staff members. Make civil forfeiture motions against their property as acquired via payment while committing illegal acts under color of law (no civil immunity). Take their houses, cars and other property. Put their families on the street.
One or more of them will break within two weeks. Guaranteed.
Yeeeeup. Start impeachment proceedings against Koskinen AND Holder right now in the House.
They’ll be nice and ripe for the NEW Senate to take up.
Heh!
How are you going to jail them when the Justice Department will refuse to enforce the contempt citations?
Congress has its own Jail. It’s in the Capitol Police’s facility (off site from the capitol building, but under Congress’ control). Congress has the Sergent At Arms go and pick the Contempt cited person up and takes them to Jail until they rectify the contempt action. The challenge is in Federal Court, as a habeas corpus hearing (probably directly to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, now that I’m thinking about it, given the DC’s particular structure).
The Democrat Controlled Congress in 2007 threatened to do this to Joshua Bolton and Harriet Miers in regard to the purge of “Federal Prosecutors” (which is a NORMAL PRACTICE when administrations change, BTW). See NYT article encouraging them to do so, and claiming that if Congress were to hold someone in contempt, that the Justice Department SHOULD enforce that citation.
Quote: This country has seen far too much of this sort of dismissal of Congress’s authority. There is a simple way to avoid a constitutional showdown: If Congress holds witnesses in contempt, the Justice Department should enforce the subpoenas. Mr. Mukasey would need to focus not on the White House’s interests, but rather on his duty to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/opinion/04tue4.html?_r=0
I bet The Gray Lady’s editors would start SCREAMING now if it were done. Isn’t hypocrisy grand?
Alternatively, either of the Federal Judges hearing the cases before them has the inherent power to pull in the individuals, hold them in contempt and immediately jail them for repeatedly violating court orders. Happens ALL the time in lower courts when Attorneys and parties decide to flout the Court’s orders. I’ve known a couple of people who have actively done it on purpose to bring attention to a particular Judge who is issuing orders which are of dubious constitutionality to their client’s position. Most of those were exonerated, but a couple of them got disbarred because they calculated wrong.
There are jail cells directly across from each Family Law court room in the Harris County Family Law Center.
And, brother, they ARE put to use. A few days or weeks in the slammer has a decided sobering effect on scofflaw moms and dads. They get religion…quick.
Here in El Paso, the Downtown County Jail Facility is directly across the street from the County Courthouse, connected by tunnel in the basement.
Joy of having a unified Courthouse facility: We’ve got the 8th Court of Appeals, 7 General Jurisdiction County Courts, 4 Exclusive County Criminal Courts, a dedicated Family District Court (with 4 associate Judges), 16 other District Courts, 2 Probate Courts and a Title IV-D Child Support Court IN THE SAME 12 STORY BUILDING.
Contempt here means you get put in handcuffs right then and there by the Baliff, moved to the holding cells behind the Court until the Jailers come and get you, take you to the basement via the prisoner elevators and processed.
Depending on what day of the week it is and that Judge’s trial load, the Judge might, maybe bring you back the following Monday to see if you’re ready to do what you’ve been ordered to do.
The House should cut IRS funding to $1.00 a year until all of the e-mails are found. In the meantime, pass a Fair Tax bill and send it to the Senate. Tell We The People to start hammering the Senate to pass the bill. Since everybody hates the IRS, it should pass.
Also, suspend all pensions and benefits of anyone implicated in the scandal. (I know they can’t, but it sure felt good writing that!)
The House should cut funding for the IRS to zero.
The IRS conspired with the DNC and the White House to target the Tea Party in order to marginalize conservative participation in the 2012 Presidential Election.
You know how the Dems are always crying about voter disenfranchisement? Well, here it is in Spades.
Yep. And that’s one of the big things that I bring up every time I see or hear someone screaming about how “Voter ID” results in disenfranchisement.
“Oh, you mean disenfranchisement like the IRS has been doing to Conservatives through abuse of the Tax Code for the last two election cycles? Do you agree that political organizations should be attacked because of their stance on the issues? (if yes) Oh, so you’re FOR disenfranchisement when it suits your purposes? So, you’re a hypocrite? Good to know. (walk away).
It would be interesting to find out how many of the donors on the “secret” list were subsequently audited. Cross-checking these lists with IRS audit files would do it — if the IRS would permit access to those files, which it probably won’t. An IG could do it, I presume.
Also, how many of those lists were illegally provided to non-IRS groups, either governmental or private? That’s a clear legal violation.
I used to respect and admire Issa but now I believe that he has been turned somehow and is nothing but a whiner. This latest disgrace is nothing but a bald face lie! Why can’t he come out and say that? He is beginning to use terms that obama uses when he wants to be obscure his bias. These IRS people are the biggest and lousiest liars I have ever seen in the US government and the msms has zero interest in any of it. I’m afraid that with Issa running the committee we will never see one person brought to justice.
Monopolies, most notably “government”, are predisposed to sponsor or nurture corruption, which is why wiser people limit the concentration of capital and power, especially when it is accompanied by force.