It’s well past time to lock Lois Lerner up and throw away the key. This new House Oversight Committee report really exposes Lois Lerner and her corruption. I’ve got a new idea. How about we refuse to pay our taxes until this corrupt hag is sent to jail for targeting conservative and tea party groups? You can also see from this report just why racist Elijah Cummings threw his temper tantrum last week. He knew this report was going to go public, and that it could hurt him and other corrupt Democrats. Here is an executive summary from the report:
In February 2012, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform began
investigating allegations that the Internal Revenue Service inappropriately scrutinized certain
applicants seeking tax-exempt status. Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code permits
incorporation of organizations that meet certain criteria and focus on advancing “social welfare”
goals.1
With a 501(c)(4) designation, such organizations are not subject to federal income tax.
Donations to these organizations are not tax deductible. Consistent with the Constitutionally
protected right to free speech, these organizations – commonly referred to as “501(c)(4)s” – may
engage in campaign-related activities provided that these activities do not comprise a majority of
the organizations’ efforts.2On May 12, 2013, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA)
released a report that found that the Exempt Organizations (EO) division of the IRS
inappropriately targeted “Tea Party” and other conservative applicants for tax-exempt status and
subjected them to heightened scrutiny.3
This additional scrutiny resulted in extended delays that,
in most cases, sidelined applicants during the 2012 election cycle, in spite of their Constitutional
right to participate. Meanwhile, the majority of liberal and left-leaning 501(c)(4) applicants won
approval.4Documents and information obtained by the Committee since the release of the TIGTA
report show that Lois G. Lerner, the now-retired Director of IRS Exempt Organizations (EO),
was extensively involved in targeting conservative-oriented tax-exempt applicants for
inappropriate scrutiny. This report details her role in the targeting of conservative-oriented
organizations, which would later result in some level of increased scrutiny of applicants from
across the political spectrum. It also outlines her obstruction of the Committee’s investigation.Prior to joining the IRS, Lerner was the Associate General Counsel and Head of the
Enforcement Office at the Federal Elections Commission (FEC).5
During her tenure at the FEC,
she also engaged in questionable tactics to target conservative groups seeking to expand their
political involvement, often subjecting them to heightened scrutiny.6
Her political ideology was
evident to her FEC colleagues. She brazenly subjected Republican groups to rigorous
investigations. Similar Democratic groups did not receive the same scrutiny.7The Committee’s investigation of Lerner’s role in the IRS’s targeting of tax-exempt
organizations found that she led efforts to scrutinize conservative groups while working to maintain a veneer of objective enforcement. Following the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the IRS faced pressure from voices on the left
to heighten scrutiny of applicants for tax-exempt status. IRS EO employees in Cincinnati
identified the first Tea Party applicants and promptly forwarded these applications to IRS
headquarters in Washington, D.C. for further guidance. Officials in Washington, D.C. directed
IRS employees in Cincinnati to isolate Tea Party applicants even though the IRS had not
developed a process for approving their applications.While IRS employees were screening applications, documents show that Lerner and other
senior officials contemplated concerns about the “hugely influential Koch brothers,” and that
Lerner advised her IRS colleagues that her unit should “do a c4 project next year” focusing on
existing organizations.8
Lerner even showed her recognition that such an effort would approach
dangerous ground and would have to be engineered as not a “per se political project.”9Underscoring a political bias against the lawful activity of such groups, Lerner referenced the
political pressure on the IRS to “fix the problem” of 501(c)(4) groups engaging in political
speech at an event sponsored by Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy.10Lerner not only proposed ways for the IRS to scrutinize groups with 501(c)(4) status, but
also helped implement and manage hurdles that hindered and delayed the approval of groups
applying for 501(c)(4) status. In early 2011, Lerner directed the manager of the IRS’s EO
Technical Unit to subject Tea Party cases to a “multi-tier review” system.11 She characterized
these Tea Party cases as “very dangerous,” and believed that the Chief Counsel’s office should
“be in on” the review process.12 Lerner was extensively involved in handling the Tea Party
cases—from directing the review process to receiving periodic status updates.13 Other IRS
employees would later testify that the level of scrutiny Lerner ordered for the Tea Party cases
was unprecedented.14Eventually, Lerner became uncomfortable with the burgeoning number of conservative
organizations facing immensely heightened scrutiny from a purportedly apolitical agency.
Consistent with her past concerns that scrutiny could not be “per se political,” she ordered the
implementation of a new screening method. Without doing anything to inform applicants that
they had been subject to inappropriate treatment, this sleight of hand added a level of deniability
for the IRS that officials would eventually use to dismiss accusations of political motivations –
she broadened the spectrum of groups that would be scrutinized going forward.