Lois Lerner targeted US Sen. Chuck Grassley for an audit- for having done nothing wrong.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional investigators say they uncovered emails Wednesday showing that a former Internal Revenue Service official at the heart of the tea party investigation sought an audit involving a Republican senator in 2012.
Now catch this:
The emails show former IRS official Lois Lerner mistakenly received an invitation to an event that was meant to go to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. Grassley presumably received Lerner’s invitation.
She “mistakenly” received his invitation? Because G and L are next to each other in the alphabet? Bullspit.
The event organizer apparently offered to pay for Grassley’s wife to attend the event. In an email to another IRS official, Lerner suggests referring the matter for an audit, saying it might be inappropriate for the group to pay for his wife.
“Perhaps we should refer to exam?” Lerner wrote.
It was unclear from the emails whether Lerner was suggesting that Grassley or the group be audited — or both.
The other IRS official, Matthew Giuliano, waived her off, saying an audit would be premature because Grassley hadn’t even accepted the invitation.
“It would be Grassley who would need to report the income,” Giuliano said.
Lerner was ready to have Grassley audited before he done anything wrong.
Question: if Grassley got Lerner’s invitation, how the hell could he know the organizer offered to pay for his wife and how could he even do anything wrong?
Rep. Dave Camp wasn’t taking this too well:
“We have seen a lot of unbelievable things in this investigation, but the fact that Lois Lerner attempted to initiate an apparently baseless IRS examination against a sitting Republican United States senator is shocking,” Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said. “At every turn, Lerner was using the IRS as a tool for political purposes in defiance of taxpayer rights.”
Grassley has long been a critic of the IRS. Lerner wanted him pay for it.
This is the most filthy, corrupt administration in the history of the planet.
Lerner decided not to attend:
“Don’t think I want to be on the stage with Grassley on this issue,” she wrote.
Exit question- what kind of event would find Lois Lerner and Sen. Chuck Grassley on the same stage?
See author page
Oh oh Greggie, looks like your line of BS is blowing up again!!
Maybe Ms. Lerner should have included a smiley face emoticon for the benefit of former short bus passengers such as Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich. Of course, she probably didn’t realize humorless people looking to lynch her would be pawing through her presumably internal email comments at some point.
That’s not humor, by the way. It’s sarcasm.
@Greg: In other words you have NO valid feedback. I thought so!! I’ll just add it to the ever growing list of excuses you make for the ongoing corruption!!
I think the clue is the set up line, which is that Lerner received an invitation intended for Sen. Charles Grassley by mistake. What’s the possibility that such a thing could actually happen?
It was a joke. Funny only to IRS employees, perhaps, but a joke, nevertheless. Nobody ever claimed IRS employees are comedians.
@Greg:
You have absolutely no proof of that. NONE. Once again, you’re just throwing sh!t against the wall to see if it will stick.
Only that anyone who thinks Lerner would seriously claim that she accidentally received an invitation that was intended for Sen. Charles Grassley would have to be a moron.
@Greg:
Yeah, she just made that up so that later on in her career she could trick Republicans.
Really, Greggie, get some mental health treatment because you are going off the deep end.
It admittedly doesn’t take much to trick republicans. The GOP demonstrates this on a regular basis.
Wait for it…..
You’re all hitting Greg too soon with this.
Within a day or two Greg will read what his talking points should be.
Then we will see him run with his talking points du jour.
@Greg: Sorry to say but that kind of thing happens a lot especially when there is a building with thousands of people and sometimes the mail isn’t sorted as it should be. Have you ever received any of your neighbor’s mail?
As far as a joke, pray tell how do you know it was a joke? Were you there when the comment was made? Are you privy to conversation that stated it was a joke? The bottom line is you are speculating.
@Greg: I expect she received no errant invitations addressed to Charlie Rangel, known and proven tax cheat, since the IRS has paid no attention to him.
She had an email showing she notified Grassley of the mix-up but……
Her real crime was opening someone else’s mail…. a federal offense.
Then there was the issue of pre-emptively auditing someone who had NOT committed any tax crime, since Grassley didn’t ever know his wife might get a free meal.
Finally she, a supposedly top official at IRS had to be told repeatedly that she would be in the wrong to act in that way.
Its not a coincidence that the IRS savaged” True the vote”. Today I read on Town Hall, that True the vote discovered close to 7 million double registrations in 28 states, excluding N York, Commieformia, and Texas. They found hacker software in many computerized voting systems, which could adjust winning percentages. Ohio and other battleground states were victimized. Remember that Soros owns the Spanish company that tabulates the results,and various unions adjust the equipment. Paper ballots and scrutineers are the answer. I conclude that the gimme crowd can ensure handouts by voting multiple times, and those that don’t vote assure fixed results.
@Greg: Amazing how you can look at the written word and conclude a completely off the wall outcome. O-blama said if you like your health insurance and/or doctor you can keep them “period” and yet you can’t admit it!! Your credibility is less than zero!! Any proof on Romney’s taxes yet??
@Common Sense: Heck, CS, if you are going to defend this administration, you HAVE to invent your own meaning.
Fact: The IRS Targeted 104 Conservative and Tea Party groups to deny them tax exempt status during the 2012 election cycle.
Fact: Not a single progressive group (of the 7 audited) was denied tax exempt status in this period.
Fact: Lois Lerner’s computer hard drive “crashed” within ten days of Congress beginning an inquiry into the IRS targeting of Conservative groups. According to the IRS, this resulted in the loss of all of her emails to outside agencies, including the White House.
Fact: Six other people with close ties to the IRS targeting of Conservative groups also had all of their emails destroyed.
Fact: The IRS abruptly canceled its contract with a company that backed up its emails externally after Congress initiated an inquiry.
Links:
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2013/06/25/report-irs-screened-but-didnt-target-progressive-groups-n1627588
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/07/30/207080580/report-irs-scrutiny-worse-for-conservatives
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/irs-conservative-group-2009-members-pray-193833144.html
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/05/irs-asks-for-reading-list-tea-party-group-sends-constitution/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/05/14/irs-tea-party-progressive-groups/2158831/
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/carolplattliebau/2013/07/30/irs-targeted-existing-conservative-nonprofits-too-n1652858
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/06/09/elijah-cummings-case-is-solved-on-irs/
http://menrec.com/flashback-irs-commissoner-asked-repeatedly-theyll-provide-lois-lerner/
http://online.wsj.com/articles/kim-strassel-about-those-missing-emails-1403220814
http://thehill.com/policy/finance/197224-obama-not-a-smidgen-of-corruption-behind-irs-targeting
http://www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/jw1559-00105/
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/380576/irs-has-lost-more-e-mails-eliana-johnson
http://government-contracts.findthebest.com/?launch_filters=title_field%3A%3A%3A%2A%3A%22sonasoft%3AKV&sort=__WEIGHT:DESC
http://www.fedspending.org/fpds/fpds.php?fiscal_year=2011&company_name=SONASOFT+CORP.&sortp=r&datype=T&reptype=r&database=fpds&detail=4&submit=GO
If you ever wonder how cult members follow their leaders to death, just listen to the logic of a prog defending their community organizer’s regime.
@Common Sense, #14:
I’m amazed that people wouldn’t raise their eyebrows at the extreme improbability of Lois Lerner accidentally receiving an invitation to an event that was actually meant to go to Charles Grassley. Seriously. What are the odds?
At the very least, I would expect some sort of explanation or theory about how so unlikely a thing could have happened, but those telling the story as factual haven’t even bothered. That includes not only members of the investigative committee, but innumerable media outlets.
This is likely the same sort of horse manure we saw with the committee’s jump-the-gun public announcement that Nicole Flax was also missing email following a hard drive crash, clearly indicating a pervasive IRS cover-up. In fact, all of Nicole Flax’s requested email was recovered at the committee’s request:
Commissioner Koskinen:
Doesn’t anyone else grasp the fact that such behavior on the part of a Congressional investigative committee is both highly irregular and totally irresponsible? These people and their abuses of power and public trust are what ought to be under investigation.
IRS scandal gets the Jon Stewart treatment
Serious points follow the comedic interlude.
@Greg: Sure. I’ll send you over some Rush Limbaugh or O’Rielly or analogous biased pundit.
Jon Stewart…
I tend to not take political opinions seriously from anyone who hasn’t outgrown Jon Stewart.
Seriously, he’s for children.
You got nothing. Move along.
How could anyone not appreciate this opening Darrell Issa moment? It’s every bit as funny as this earlier closing moment.
This guy actually behaves like a child.
If anyone has the definitive answers to the following questions could someone please provide them for me?
How many of the organizations that applied for tax exempt status were denied said status?
How did the denial of tax exempt status affect these organizations ?
Do they still exist and if so, have any sued the Government for redress?
What period of time did the deleted e-mails cover?
Was Senator Grassley audited by the IRS?
I haven’t been able to find any good answers to these questions (Damned MSM!).
@SGT. Rock: According to Lerner:
After two years only 1/3rd of applicants who were targeted had been approved as 501(c)4 tax exempt orgs.
Over 200 of the targeted orgs simply went under.
Sen. Grassley was NOT audited. Ms. Lerner was roundly corrected by her own subordinates for even considering it.
“Looked like they were inappropriately offering to pay for his wife. Perhaps we should refer to Exam?” Lerner wrote to Matthew Giuliano, then a tax law specialist.
Giuliano disagreed, responding that he was “not sure we should send to exam” and offering several reason why he didn’t think the rules were broken.
“We would need to wait for: (i) Grassley to accept and attend the speaking arrangement, and (ii) then determine whether [Group] issues him a 1099. And even without the 1099, it would be Grassley who would need to report the income on his 1040.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/lois-lerner-irs-chuck-grassley-108322.html#ixzz35zqcYkpC
True the Vote http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/04/09/new-emaisl-show-lois-lerner-fed-information-about-true-the-vote-to-democrat-elijah-cummings-n1822247 founder Ms. Engelbrecht filed a formal ethics complaint against Cummings.
True the Vote filed suit in federal court in May 2013 against the Internal Revenue Service over the agency’s processing of its request for tax-exempt status. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/05/21/conservative-group-true-the-vote-sues-irs-over-being-subject-to-heightened-scrutiny/
The 7 IRS workers whose emails are lost:
Lois Lerner: Lerner was the Washington-based head of the IRS Exempt Organizations division
Nikole Flax, former chief of staff to IRS commissioner Steven Miller. She worked for Lerner in the exempt organizations division among other roles. Flax made 31 visits to the White House between July 12, 2010 and May 8, 2013, according to White House visitor logs. Flax’s visits started in the early days of the IRS targeting program and ended just two days before the IRS scandal broke on May 10, 2013.
Michelle Eldridge, IRS national media relations chief.
Kimberly Kitchens, agent: Kitchens worked in the IRS Exempt Organizations Rulings and Agreements office in Cincinnati in 2012. The IRS’ plague of computer crashes, therefore, was not merely confined to Washington, D.C., but also ensnared the Cincinnati office that Lerner oversaw and initially tried to blame the entire scandal on.
Nancy Heagney, agent: Another Cincinnati-based Exempt Organizations official that worked under Lerner.
Julie Chen, agent: Chen is another Exempt Organizations official.
Tyler Chumny, supervisory agent, served as a Cincinnati-based contact person on at least one tax-exempt decision letter signed by Lerner.
http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/26/meet-the-seven-irs-employees-whose-computers-crashed/#ixzz35zsflkm9
@Nanny G:
Thanks Nanny G.
So to summarize your findings:
– You didn’t find how many were denied approval, but about 2/3 of these applications are still pending
– Learner e-mailed a colleague concerning a potential legal matter and he gave her advice
– One conservative group is suing because the IRS division tasked with investigating 501(c)4 exemption requests investigated them when they applied for a 501(c)4 exemption
– Another group is suing because this whole mess makes its clear that the rules governing these exemption requests are unworkable and unclear
– Not just Learner but a bunch of other folks involved in this “lost” e-mails as well
So:
– Not sure anybody was denied but a bunch were inconvenienced
– Sen. Grassley was not investigated
– Two groups are suing the IRS
– Government bureaucrats are inefficient and confused
– Government officials have crappy computers and don’t use adequate back-up procedures