http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/weekly-updates/irs-scandal-gets-worse/
Weekly
Update: IRS Scandal Gets Worse
SEPTEMBER 16, 2016
Democratic Senator Sought DOJ and
IRS Prosecutions of Conservatives
It wasn’t just Obama’s Internal
Revenue Service that sought to suppress conservative voices in order to help
him retain the presidency in 2012.
We learned further of a dangerous
enterprise involving a key Democratic Senator and the Obama Justice Department
from 72
pages of Justice documents we released this week. They reveal email conversations between
Department of Justice officials and the staff of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
regarding the criminal prosecution of Tea Party and other conservative groups
for fanciful violation of IRS rules.
The conversations were in
preparation for a briefing by Justice Department officials for Sen. Whitehouse’s
staff and for a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism hearing on
April 9, 2013. One internal agency email
exchange indicates Sen. Whitehouse’s interest in seeking criminal
prosecution of groups targeted by the IRS:
From: Erb,
William (OLA)
Sent: Monday, April 08, 2013 4:54 PM
To: Raman, Mythill
(CRM) [REDACTED] (CRM);Wroblewski, Jonathan
(CRM); Hulser,
Raymond (CRM); Smith, Jack (CRM); Burton, Faith
(OLA); Levine, Doug (OLA); Suleiman, Daniel (CRM); Lenerz, Daniel J.
(CRM); Shatz,
Eileen M. (TAX); OBrien,
Paul (CRM); [REDACTED] (CRM); [REDACTED] (CRM); Cimino, Ronald A.
(TAX)
Cc: Buretta, John
(CRM): Agrast,
Mark D. (OLA); [REDACTED]
(CRM)
Subject: RE: New Whitehouse question regarding
Campaign Finance Investigation and Prosecution
Importance: High
All:
New question from Sen. Whitehouse.
Sen. Whitehouse is likely to ask AAAG Raman whether the Department of
Justice is too deferential to IRS in deciding to prosecute 501(c) organizations
that make fraudulent statements regarding their political activities in their
IRS filings. Sen. Whitehouse is curious
why, for example, if a 501(c) tax organization files were leaked, and they
clearly showed that make false statements, why the Department of Justice
wouldn’t prosecute the case by itself and not wait for the IRS. Looping in the Tax Division
who also can help CRIM come up with a quick response. Thanks, Bill.
We uncovered the documents through a
federal court
order in a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit
(Judicial
Watch v Department of Justice (No. 1:14-cv-01239)).
Later, at the Judiciary Subcommittee
hearing, Sen. Whitehouse asked
why the Department of Justice wasn’t prosecuting political groups on its own,
independently of the IRS.
“I would urge that the Department
and the Service get together and rethink whether in these two specific areas,
which I think bear little resemblance to traditional tax violations and are in
fact very plain-vanilla criminal cases, whether or not that deference to the
IRS is actually serving the public interest at this point, or whether the
Department could not proceed to … put together a criminal case showing a fairly
straightforward false statement or a fairly [straightforward] shell corporation
disclosure violation.”
The newly released emails show that
following the hearing, at the request of Justice Department lawyers, Sen.
Whitehouse’s staff sent over examples of the organizations Whitehouse had in
mind for prosecution. They included
American Future Fund, Crossroads GPS, Americans for Responsible Leadership,
Freedom Path, American is Not Stupid, Inc.,
RightChange.com II, and A Better America Now.
All of these are conservative organizations.
The new emails also show collaboration
in the Department of Justice with officials in the IRS in preparing for the
hearing. The IRS sent a draft of its planned
testimony for the hearing to the Justice Department. Judicial Watch previously exposed a plan
by the Obama IRS and Justice Department prosecutors to pursue criminal charges
against the very Tea Party and anti-Obama groups that the IRS was
targeting. We uncovered two years ago
how Lerner described the impetus for the left-wing prosecution effort in 2013 email
to top IRS staff:
As I mentioned yesterday — there are
several groups of folks from the FEC world that are pushing tax fraud
prosecution for c4s who report they are not conducting political activity when
they are (or these folks think they are).
One is my ex-boss Larry Noble (former General Counsel at the FEC), who
is now president of Americans for Campaign Reform. This is their latest push to shut these
down. One IRS prosecution would make an
impact and they wouldn’t feel so comfortable doing the stuff.
So, don’t be fooled about how this
is being articulated – it is ALL about 501(c)(4) orgs
and political activity.
But in an email
sent a few minutes earlier, Lerner acknowledged prosecutions would evidently be
at odds with the law:
Whether there was a false statement
or fraud regarding an [sic]
description of an alleged political expenditure that doesn’t say vote for or
vote against is not realistic under current law. Everyone is looking for a magic bullet or
scapegoat — there isn’t one. The law in
this area is just hard.
The Obama administration prosecution
effort seemingly ended with the exposure of the IRS targeting in a May 2013 report
by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). IRS official Lois Lerner did not reveal the targeting
until just before the report’s release, in response to a planted
question at an American Bar Association conference.
What’s going on here is
obvious: an abuse of power by Democrats
in Congress, who wanted to intimidate and possibly jail Obama’s political
opponents to help secure Obama’s reelection.
Americans should know that the courts have recently concluded that the
Obama IRS abuses haven’t stopped – even as we approach another presidential
election.
A 2013 study
by scholars from the American Enterprise Institute and the John F. Kennedy
School of Government at Harvard University found that, “had the Tea Party
groups continued to grow at the pace seen in 2009 and 2010, and had their
effect on the 2012 vote been similar to that seen in 2010, they would have
brought the Republican Party as many as 5 – 8.5 million votes compared to Obama’s
victory margin of 5 million.”
Will the IRS help the Left steal another election in 2016?