The Justice Department notified members of Congress on Friday that it is closing its two-year investigation into whether the IRS improperly targeted tea party and other conservative groups.There will be no charges against former IRS official Lois Lerner or anyone else at the agency, the Justice Department said in a letter.The probe found “substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia leading to the belief by many tax-exempt applicants that the IRS targeted them based on their political viewpoints. But poor management is not a crime.”
Despite incriminating evidence and findings by IRS inspectors that Tea Party and conservative groups were treated worse than other groups, DOJ found no support for the view that Lerner and others were politically motivated, as CNN further reported:
“We found no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt, or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution,” Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik said in the letter. “We also found no evidence that any official involved in the handling of tax-exempt applications or IRS leadership attempted to obstruct justice. Based on the evidence developed in this investigation and the recommendation of experienced career prosecutors and supervising attorneys at the department, we are closing our investigation and will not seek any criminal charges.”
Remember, the Treasury Inspector General found targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups, and that no such targeting took place against liberal groups.
The first disclosure of the targeting deceptively was made by Lerner herself at a Bar Association meeting when she had someone plant a question to her, since she knew the IG report was coming out.
No political motive? That’s not what the emails showed, Lois Lerner Emails: Republicans are Evil and Dishonest:
No obstruction of justice? What about the secret Toby Miles email account that the IRS didn’t even know about?
Do people who are not concealing anything always make statements like “we need to be cautious about what we say in emails” and suggest use of instant messages to avoid government record keeping of communications?
More to follow.
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