Top Internal Revenue Service Obamacare official Sarah Hall Ingram discussed confidential taxpayer information with senior Obama White House officials, according to 2012 emails obtained by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and provided to The Daily Caller.
Lois Lerner, then head of the IRS Tax Exempt Organizations division, also received an email alongside White House officials that contained confidential information.
Ingram attempted to counsel the White House on a lawsuit from religious organizations opposing Obamacare’s contraception mandate. Email exchanges involving Ingram and White House officials — including White House health policy advisor Ellen Montz and deputy assistant to the president for health policy Jeanne Lambrew — contained confidential taxpayer information, according to Oversight.
The emails provided to Oversight investigators by the IRS had numerous redactions with the signifier “6103.”
Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code forbids a federal employee from “disclos[ing] any return or return information obtained by him in any manner in connection with his service as such an officer or an employee.”
Federal employees who illegally disclose confidential taxpayer information could face five years in prison.
More at the Daily Caller
This should be front page news – everywhere in the USA.
It is a tribute to Obama (maybe literally) that the media will try to hide it.
I know Obama is into diversions, but which is the scandal and which the diversion at this point?
Smoking gun? WHAT smoking gun? I read through all of the cited e-mails. I don’t see a damn thing that represents a smoking gun. I don’t see anything in the e-mails other than an honest attempt to clarify the appropriate application of tax regulations in question. The Daily Caller refers to the 6103 redactions as if their presence means incriminating information is being hidden. What’s being hidden are organization identities that the law specifically forbids the IRS from making public.
@Greg:
The IRS is also prohibited from making known those identities to our President, his staff and his re-election camp.
But that’s what happened.
Those redactions were new.
They only keep Issa’s committee from going to these sources to see how they were negatively impacted by the fact that the IRS made their situations known to Obama and co.
@Nan G, #3:
That isn’t what 26 USC § 6103 (g) actually says:
I think the redacted portions are blacked out in copies of the e-mails that have been presented for public inspection. Had that not been done, we wouldn’t be seeing them at all.
@Greg:
There is nothing to say a president may give personal confidential tax information to the Senate Majority Leader or to a political media operation or to his political campaign operatives.
We saw Reid talk on the Senate floor about confidential information from Romney’s taxes.
We saw TEA party information leaked to some leftist organization which used the information.
We saw Obama political operatives use confidential information from their opponents’ organizations amd use that to silence some of those organizations.
All of the above is illegal.
I wonder what Obama said in answer to:
Lies?
Silence?
Quiet dog whistling?
It is a smoking gun. There is mandatory jail time for these releases. Greg would not recognize a smoking gun if it went off in his face which this did!
@Greg:
Greg
Obama could be found with a dead child with a stab wound and a bloody knife in his hand and you would rationalize it away.
@Greg:
They didn’t fight this all the way for nothing.
ARREST THEM ALL FIRE THEM AND GIVE THEM THEIR 5 YEARS IN JAIL,
they have done enough ,they think they are invincible they use their power given by the people to hurt make the people diminish because they irs they are nothing if they abuse their priviledge,
they are as good as junk, and the PEOPLE ARE THEIR MASTER,not the other way around,
they want to be arrogant? okay remind them their job is not as solid as they would think it is,
they need a lesson,
not everyone can handle POWER, SOME ARE DESTROYED BY IT AND THEY MUST BE REMOVE AT ONCE,
the WHITE HOUSE HAS TO PAY THE FAMILIES OF THOSE YOUNG SOLDIERS, NO EXCUSE, YOU SHUT THE GOVERNMENT OWN IT,
BUT YOU DO NOT OWN THE MONEY, IT BELONG TO THE TAX PAYERS AND THE SOLDIERS ARE A PRIORITY,
pay the VETERANS OR YOU ARE THIEVES DIGGING IN MONEY OF THE VETERANS, THE WOUNDED NEED THEIR MONEY NOT IN 5 YEARS,
A 5 YEAR BACKLOG IS UNACCEPTEBLE, THEY DID THEIR WAR THEY WHERE WOUNDED,
BECAUSE OF A STUPID ROW,
NOW PAY THEM ALL,
People forget how this entire IRS/TEA Party story broke.
It was a LIBERAL group named ”Pro-Publica,” which admitted getting these confidential IRS informations (but not admitting who gave them to them).
http://www.propublica.org/article/irs-office-that-targeted-tea-party-also-disclosed-confidential-docs
Again, yes, a president has the right to SPECIFICALLY request IRS information for SPECIFIC reasons.
But no president has the right to share such with his re-election buddies.
It is confidential.
Again, I’m not saying Obama himself picked up tax returns and gave them to Pro-Publica.
Obama blew the DOG WHISTLE.
His faithful IRS workers did the rest.
His attempt to hide that fact behind a ”right” to personally obtain IRS returns and reports is poppycock.
His earlier attempt at a cover-up was that the IRS had one office with 6 ”rogue agents.” LOL!
With the bent logic some trolls use to argue their point I can only conclude that we are being trolled by non other than Rachael Maddow.