Thread: May 16, 2014 4:00 AM The Emerging Junta The IRS’s illegal actions — and its efforts

Trey Gowdy Brings the Thunder at the IRS Hearings

By Onan Coca / 27 June 2014

Who doesn’t love watching Trey Gowdy (R-SC) get all fired up? I know I do.


Well, the fiery prosecutor from South Carolina was in full display a couple of days ago when he took on the head of the IRS, Commissioner John Koskinen.

In his questions and comments for the IRS head, Gowdy continually pushes the theory that some kind of criminal action seems to likely be taking place at the IRS. An assertion that IRS head Koskinen repeatedly denies. But Koskinen’s denials only aggravate Rep. Gowdy further – because Koskinen has no way of knowing whether a crime has taken place or not… he can only hope that it hasn’t!



Gowdy seemed especially fired up when he delivered these lines…
When Koskinen said that nothing illegal had happened Gowdy shouted,“You don’t have any idea of criminal wrongdoing or not!”
When Koskinen implied that any conspiracy was simply a Republican fantasy, Gowdy fired back, “You’re repeating a talking point by our colleagues on the other side!”
Trey Gowdy was not pleased with John Koskinen.
The internet was also not pleased with Koskinen… but they sure did love Gowdy’s performance!






Hey internet, we love Gowdy too.

Read more at http://eaglerising.com/7017/trey-gow...UYw8s5ttV3s.99

Gohmert Announces $1M Bounty Bill for Missing IRS Emails





by Fox News Insider // Jun 27 2014 // 11:37am
As seen on America's Newsroom


Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) joined America's Newsroom this morning to announce a bill to offer a $1 million reward to anyone who can find the missing IRS emails. He says the bill stems from the failure of the Justice Department to take any action.


“You can have a Justice Department that is actually involved in justice and they use pressure, and they will get it done. We don’t have a Justice Department. We have a ‘just us’ – or an injustice — department,” he told Bill Hemmer.
He is also proposing an additional $500,000 be offered for any information about someone who destroyed the emails. Gohmert said the idea came from fellow Texas GOP Rep. Jim Flores.
“Don’t forget the other stick,” he said. “We reduce everybody’s salary in the IRS 20 percent until the emails are produced.”
Gohmert said the reward money will come from funds already appropriated for the IRS. He accused Holder of obfuscating in the IRS scandal, and in Operation Fast and Furious, saying the attorney general should be impeached.
Gohmert said House Republicans are looking for a whistleblower who will speak out and "break this thing wide open."
Watch the interview above, including the last few minutes when Martha photo-bombed Bill...

It all started when the congressman, a notorious Capitol Hill photo-bomber, snuck up behind his Republican colleague James Lankford on America's Newsroom yesterday.



video at link below

http://foxnewsinsider.com/2014/06/27/interview-gohmert-announces-1m-bounty-bill-missing-irs-emails

Uh-Oh – IRS Chief Testimony Disputed By Lois Lerner!

By Onan Coca / 3 July 2014

Uh-oh. It seems like the Obama administration might be headed into even more troubling waters as the recent testimony by IRS Chief John “Super-Smug” Koskinen is being disputed by Lois Lerner and her lawyers.

In an attempt to treat Mr. Koskinen with the utmost respect and fairness, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) has offered Mr. Koskinen the chance to recant or revise his original statement. Rep. Issa sent Mr. Koskinen a letter this week informing him of the discrepancy between his testimony and that of Lois Lerner’s.

“Recent public statements from William W. Taylor III, the attorney representing former IRS official Lois Lerner, have raised new questions about Ms. Lerner’s Federal Records Act compliance practices and the circumstances surrounding the loss of e-mails and destruction of her hard drive. Accordingly, I ask that you assist the Committee in reconciling apparent discrepancies between your claims that Ms. Lerner fully maintained records and statements by her attorney that she did not and that it was not her responsibility.”
I don’t understand. If this is a “phony scandal” like the President and his lapdog media would have us believe, then why can’t these people get their stories straight? The entire circus has only been 3 years in the making… isn’t that enough time to get their stuff together? Weird.
Or maybe this scandal isn’t as phony as the media would have us believe.
Where was the discrepancy? Koskinen seemed to defend Lerner and the IRS when he maintained that everyone had indeed complied with the law. However, all of this was news to Lerner and her attorneys who quickly contradicted Koskinen’s testimony.
Here’s what Koskinen said, “The responsibility is, if you have an email that’s a record, you print it out in hard copy . . . My understanding is every employee is supposed to print records . . . that are official records on hard copy and keep them. She had hard copy records.”
But Lerner’s lawyers quickly responded that the IRS Chief was mistaken. “Lerner did not print out official records she may have sent over email because she didn’t know she had to,” Lerner’s lawyer said. “If somebody is supposed to keep archived copies, that’s the IT department’s or her staff’s responsibility.”
So what’s the disconnect here? Either Lerner did follow the law and keep hard copies… or she didn’t. And why would the head of the IRS believe that she had if she hadn’t? Hasn’t he and his subordinates been looking into this matter for months now? That’s a pretty big thing to get wrong. The whole investigation hinges on these emails that they’ve known were missing for months now… so wouldn’t he have made sure to ask if she had hard copies already?
This entire thing just keeps getting more and more convoluted with each passing day.
Which leads us to Issa’s request that Mr. Koskinen come back and clear things up for Congress.
“In light of statements by Ms. Lerner’s attorney, including the statement that she did not believe she was ‘required’ to maintain a printed archive of federal record e-mails, as well as the record of correspondence between Ms. Lerner and the Justice Department that the IRS apparently did not maintain, the Committee would like to offer you the opportunity to amend your testimony that you have no idea ‘whether anything that was lost was an official record or not’ and acknowledge that Ms. Lerner did not follow policies necessary for Federal Records Act compliance that have obstructed the congressional investigation into the IRS’s targeting.”
I’m pretty sure that if Congressman Issa were a character in a Shakespearean play right about now he’d be saying, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”


Read more at http://eaglerising.com/7145/uh-oh-ir...WWxlMTJL8xB.99

Preview: House Committee to Hear Testimony From VA Whistleblowers

Daniel Doherty | Jul 08, 2014









An important hearing is happening tonight on Capitol Hill. The House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs will listen to testimony -- and question -- several key witnesses who alleged that nurses and doctors at the Department of Veteran Affairs covered up a failing health care system and punished anyone who tried to expose it.
Alarmingly, these whistleblowers were all singled out and disciplined for their actions, one of whom was actually fired, because he tried to “institute reforms” that would give veterans access to the medicine and care they needed -- when they needed it. Politico reports:

Jose Mathews, the chief of psychiatry at the St. Louis VA, will discuss how doctors at his hospital “failed the same vulnerable population it was designed to serve.” In prepared testimony, Mathews notes that veterans who came to the outpatient treatment center with “urgent” mental health needs were turned away, in one instance without refills of medication.
But when Mathews said he tried to institute reforms, such as mandating doctors saw at minimum 19 veterans a day and creating a triage system for “high intensity care” patients, he said he met resistance, including being fired from his post as chief.
“There was a significant amount of resistance from many psychiatrists and other specialties. I was yelled at on many occasions, I was told repeatedly, ‘this is the VA’ to explain away the poor access to care,” Mathews wrote.

Another whistleblower will testify she was put on administrative leave shortly after calling attention to the fact that “inexperienced nurses” in her department were constantly misdiagnosing -- and failing to properly treat -- their patients:

The retaliation was pervasive and often carried out in a personal manner, the witnesses will testify. Katherine Mitchell, a 16-year VA employee who worked at facilities in Phoenix, said nurses there refused to care for her patients after she began complaining about issues within the medical center.
“After reporting hundreds of cases, eventually about 20 [percent] of the ER nurses actively began to impede care of my own ER patients. Those nurses stopped initiating protocol orders for me, providing me with verbal patient reports, handing me EKGs, and answering basic questions I asked,” Mitchell wrote.
Mitchell said she raised concerns that inexperienced nurses were missing signs of “internal head bleeding, strokes, heart attacks, pneumonias, and dehydration” in patients at the ER.

I suspect this is only a taste of what's to come. In any case, the hearing will begin tonight at 7:30 PM EST, and you can learn more about it here.


http://townhall.com/tipsheet/danield...owers-n1859895

Lois Lerner Printed Out Infamous Lost Emails

Tim Brown 16 hours ago


After being told that Lois Lerner's computer, along with several others, crashed and that emails from her could not be retrieved, even though there was an independent email backup company employeed by the Internal Revenue Service (fired after the fact), we come to find out that Ms. "I've done nothing wrong, but plead the Fifth" Lerner actually printed out some of those alleged missing emails..

According to her attorney Bill Taylor, she claimed not to have printed out and filed her emails as she is required to do, according to the Federal Records Act. Say it isn't so! Another Obama minion has broken the law! So far that's at least Eric Holder and Kathleen Sebelius that Lerner joins in this respect.
Chairman of the House Oversight and Governement Reform Committee Darrell Issa (R-CA) said, "The Federal Records Act requires agencies to make and preserve records of agency decisions, policies, and essential transactions, and to take steps to safeguard against the loss of agency records."
According to the IRS website:

The Federal Records Act applies to email records just as it does to records you create using other media. Emails are records when they are: Created or received in the transaction of agency business; Appropriate for preservation as evidence of the government's function and activities; or Valuable because of the information they contain.

If you create or receive email messages during the course of your daily work, you are responsible for ensuring that you manage them properly. The Treasury Department's current email policy requires emails and attachments that meet the definition of a federal record be added to the organization's files by printing them (including the essential transmission data) and filing them with related paper records. If transmission and receipt data are not printed by the email system, annotate the paper copy.

Please note that maintaining a copy of an email or its attachments within the IRS email MS Outlook application does not meet the requirements of maintaining an official record. Therefore, print and file email and its attachments if they are either permanent records or if they relate to a specific case.

Politico reports:

Lerner attorney William Taylor, prior to the hearing, walked back previous comments he made to POLITICO that Lerner did not print off and file her official emails because she didn't know she had to.

In an interview last month, he said she did not, later following up with an email, writing: "Did she print out official records and file them[?] Answer. No, and she did not think it was required."


Now he says she may have printed an unspecified number.

"During her tenure as director of exempt organizations, she did print out some emails, although not every one of the thousands she sent and received," he said in a statement Wednesday.


The IRS rules require that all "official" emails — any correspondence dealing with agency policies or operations — be printed off and filed in accordance with the Federal Records Act. As head of a division, many of Lerner's emails would presumably have been "official."

Taylor, in an email exchange after the statement was released, said his answer to POLITICO's original question in the interview several weeks ago stays the same: "Your question was whether she printed out 'official records' and filed them. I am not saying she did that. That presumes a level of scrutiny and process over every email that did not occur."


He said his beef is with the way Issa has used the comments to say she did not print out any emails.

"That is not true. She did print some but not all, by any means," he said.

Taylor in the earlier interview said that "if somebody is supposed to keep archived copies, that's the IT department's or her staff's responsibility." He said such a rule would require her to print off a whole bunch of emails, and "we'd be back to the days of paper. That can't be what they want or intended by this."

"If she didn't [print], it wasn't because she tried to conceal anything."

That wasn't all, Taylor also blasted the panel looking at Lerner and then pressing the issue of her violation of the Federal Record Act violation saying, "What began as an inquiry into the IRS's processing of applications for tax exemption has become an inquiry into the IRS's compliance with the Federal Records Act. This subsequent inquiry is apparently a useful diversion because the initial investigation has demonstrated no wrongdoing."
In other words, she broke the law, but according to her attorney that isn't reason to stick her with it.
Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) said, "For her to be worried right on the heels of this draft IG report that Congress may search her instant messages. … That is very troubling."
Director of business systems planning for tax-exempt division of the IRS Maria Hooke said, ""I was cautioning folks about email and how we have had several occasions where Congress has asked for emails and there has been an electronic search for responsive emails — so we need to be cautious about what we say in emails."
Hooke in the email chain responded to Lerner and cc'd Nan Downing, the head of exempt organizations examinations: "OSC messages are not set to automatically save as the standard; however the functionality exists within the software. … My general recommendation is to treat the conservation as if it could/is being saved somewhere as it is possible for either party of the conversation to retain the information and have it turn up as part of an electric search."
Judicial Watch has a Freedom of Information Act request in to obtain Lerner's printed emails. US District Court Judge is scheduled to rule on Thursday as to whether they can get them or not.
In either case, it seem the IRS has been caught in other lie in order to coverup another Obama "phony" scandal.
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Read more at http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/07/lo...2rrWp5oibLq.99

The West Wire originally shared:


Congressman Files Motion to Arrest Former IRS Director Lois Lerner

http://www.thewestwire.com/congressm...s-lois-lerner/
On Thursday, July 10th, Congressman Steve Stockman has filed a motion that directs the Sergeant at Arms to arrest Lois Lerner on charges of contempt, embodied by her refusal to provide information related to the investigation of the IRS’ targeting of conservative non-profit organizations ...
#Congress, #IRS , #Lerner








Congressman Files Motion to Arrest Former IRS Director Lois Lerner

July 11, 2014

On Thursday, July 10th, Congressman Steve Stockman has filed a motion that directs the Sergeant at Arms to arrest Lois Lerner on charges of contempt, embodied by her refusal to provide information related to the investigation of the IRS’ targeting of conservative non-profit organizations while she was acting director of the Exempt Organizations Unit.
Stockman, stating that“the Obama administration will not prosecute the Obama administration,” holds the view that the House holds the responsibility to bring the Obama administration to a position of accountability for “illegal” activities. This resolution, H. Res 664, would direct the authority of Congress to place Lerner in D.C. jail, where she would retain her legal right to counsel.
“The Obama administration will not prosecute the Obama administration”

Just as an ordinary citizen can be found by a judge to be held in contempt of court, a government official, or anyone participating in an active Congressional investigation, can be held in contempt of Congress. The Sergeant at Arms, a position currently held by Andrew B. Willison, holds the responsibility of enforcing Congressional laws, as well as other duties such as providing security for Senate buildings, as well as Senate computers and technology support services. The Sergeant at Arms holds the authority to arrest anyone that breaks the rules of the Congress, including the President of the United States.
Found on the Congressman’s website, a more detailed look at the directives of H.Res 664 can be understood:
“Now, therefore, be it resolved, That the Speaker issue his warrant, directed to the Sergeant-at-Arms, or his deputy, commanding him to arrest and take into custody forthwith, wherever to be found, the body of Lois G. Lerner, and bring her to the bar of the House without delay to answer to the charge of contempt of its authority, breach of its privileges, and gross and wanton insult to the integrity of its proceedings, and in the meantime keep the body of Lerner in his custody in the common jail of the District of Columbia, subject to the further order of the House. While in custody, Lerner shall enjoy no special privileges beyond those extended to her fellow inmates, shall not access any computer or telephone, and shall not be visited by anyone other than her counsel, clergy, physician, or family.”
Lerner’s initial declaration of intention to observe her 5th amendment rights, floundering on a congressional subpoena, followed more recently by the “loss” of email correspondences have added to the already-corroded perception of the U.S. Government by it’s citizens. Congressman Stockman feels that a democratic Senate will not take action to prosecute the illegalities of a democratically-aligned political action, therefore calling on a Republican House to take responsibility to initiate such a charge of accountability. The division of our country, along with it’s leaders, can be found; exemplified, in the language of this resolution:
“Whereas the executive and judicial branches’ prolonged and dawdling failure to prosecute Attorney General Holder’s insolent contempt of the 112th Congress strongly suggests that a like proceeding against contemnor Lerner would be similarly futile”
There surely was a time in our country’s history where such accusations of misconduct by government officials would have ended in some form of prosecution, be it in the direction of the accused, of redirected towards the accuser in the form a defamation of character suit. The question is how much more finger pointing and name calling will the American people endure before independent candidates start being elected, shifting the us verus them paradigm that has equated the perception of American politics to that of American football?

http://www.thewestwire.com/congressm...s-lois-lerner/











Doesn't she just make you sick to look at her face????

Lois Lerner CAUGHT By Washington Post and CNN As Being Accessory to Terror Funding http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/07/lo...error-funding/



Lois Lerner CAUGHT By Washington Post and CNN As Being Accessory to Terror Funding - Freedom Outpost
freedomoutpost.com
Lois Lerner CAUGHT By Washington Post and CNN As Being Accessory to Terror Funding


Lois Lerner CAUGHT By Washington Post and CNN As Being Accessory to Terror Funding

Walid Shoebat 15 hours ago

Based on a 2009 article that appeared in the Washington Post and a March 2013 report by CNN, Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) – who authored a resolution calling for the Sergeant at Arms to arrest Lois Lerner for contempt of Congress – should perhaps point to a much more significant crime in response to any concerns that Lerner could become a sympathetic figure if she were arrested. That crime involves Lerner's alleged illegal backdating of a tax exempt approval letter for an organization whose founder does business with a State Sponsor of Terrorism, business the Post says is illegal.


video at link below

Here is what the Washington Post's Dan Eggen wrote nearly five years ago:

p>U.S. legal requirements… mandate disclosure of work for foreign governments and which prohibit doing business with Sudan under sanctions first imposed in the 1990s.

Here is what CNN reported in 2013:

…Sudan, which has been under strict U.S. government sanctions and a trade embargo for nearly 20 years for supporting terrorism and violating human rights.

As Shoebat.com has demonstrated for over a year now, Malik Obama – the brother of the President of the United States – has been "doing business with Sudan" since at least 2010, a year prior to when Lerner granted him tax exempt status.
Stockman was interviewed by Megyn Kelly about his resolution and one of the counterarguments raised by Kelly was that if the Sergeant at Arms is ordered to arrest Lerner, Republicans risk making Lerner a sympathetic figure. Stockman, whom we believe is well aware of the Malik Obama angle to the scandal (based on his trips to Egypt earlier this year), didn't seem concerned with Lerner garnering sympathy during his interview:

Read more at http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/07/lo...z1FjFlDoySk.99



If they determine!!!!! Who is they????? Get real here "Eric Holder" is running this looney asylum!!!! What is the GD holdup here, arrest these loons

Congress and DOJ debate about IRS: What they say and why it matters by Michael Vass

On July 17, 2014 as Deputy Attorney General James Cole spoke to the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Job Creation and Regulatory Affairs. For those that may have listened to any of the prior Oversight Committee's hearings on the IRS scandal and Lois Lerner, the lack of a legal dictionary surely has made its impression known. We would feel quite safe in stating that at points (especially once Rep. Gowdy gets on a roll) the average American can become quite lost as various legal precedents, rules and regulations, and legal opinions are cited.

A substantial portion of the more than 3 hour long hearing on July 17th was dedicated to what the Department of Justice (DOJ) is, can, and must do in regard to the investigation of the IRS abusing its power and targeting Americans based on their political beliefs. The simple summary of the hearing was that the DOJ cannot and will not discuss any part of the investigation not already known by the public - which is incredibly little.

Expanding beyond that oversimplified summary, there was a long debate - still unresolved - over the issue if the Attorney General (a political appointee) is being impartial and fulfilling his duties to the full extent of the power of the DOJ. Democrats on the Committee cited questions and testimony trying to support AG Eric Holder and the DOJ as being lambs stalked by the political aspirations of the Republicans. For their part, Republicans cited the disbelief the American public has with regard to the IRS abuse (and sudden loss of emails), President Obama's assertion that there was not a "smidgen" of wrong-doing, and that the DOJ has apparently done nothing to get to hold wrong-doers accountable.

Before we go further, let's clarify where the American people appear to be. In May 2013, a Quinnipiac University national poll found

"American voters say 76 - 17 percent, including 63 - 30 percent among Democrats, that a special prosecutor should be appointed to investigate charges the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups..."

More recently a Fox News poll asked,

"Do you think Congress should continue to investigate the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of hundreds of conservative and tea party groups until someone is held accountable, or not?

Jun 21-23 2014: Yes-74%, No-21%, Don't Know-5%"

Thus, according to polls and not the partisan preferences of Dems in Congress, the IRS hearings are on target. Equally, the DOJ seems to be remiss in their duty to take action. The public wants accountability, and so far a contempt charge has been the only visible example of holding anyone accountable.

Which brings us to Lois Lerner and the contempt charge from Congress. On May 7th the House of Representatives voted 231 to 187 in favor of charging Lerner with contempt. To date the DOJ has taken no action to bring the contempt charge to a grand jury. The reasoning that Deputy AG James Cole stated was the May 30, 1984 Office of Legal Counsel opinion written by Ted Olson. The opinion, called Olson by Cole and several members of the Committee during the testimony, asserts prosecutorial discretion.

At this point more than a few following the hearing got lost. Even several of the Committee members, including ranking Democrat Rep. Cummings was confused. A continuous debate went on for the rest of the hearing focused on a single word "shall".

So lets focus on this and why it is important.

First is prosecutorial discretion. In effect it means that a prosecutor has the right to pick what cases they may bring to trial. In the most broad sense, as used by President Obama, this was the means used to rewrite immigration law in 2012 and allow tens of thousands of illegal aliens to avoid deportation. Regardless of a crime being committed or not, a prosecutor can choose to not bring a case to trial that they think they cannot win - or in the case of President Obama, that political partisanship would prefer not to occur. Prosecutors cannot be forced to go to trial.

A congressional contempt citation - 2 U.S. Code § 192 - Refusal of witness to testify or produce papers - is when any person before Congress or a Committee "refuses to answer any question pertinent to the subject under inquiry". This is what Lois Lerner did when she answered some questions and then enacted her 5th Amendment right on other questions. The penalty

"...shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of not more than $1,000 nor less than $100 and imprisonment in a common jail for not less than one month nor more than twelve months."

The enforcement of the contempt citation is found under 2 U.S. Code § 194, and states

"...it shall be the duty of the said President of the Senate or Speaker of the House, as the case may be, to certify, and he shall so certify, the statement of facts aforesaid under the seal of the Senate or House, as the case may be, to the appropriate United States attorney, whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action."

So to summarize, Lois Lerner initially spoke to Congress and professed her innocence. She then took the 5th when asked about what she did or did not do that seemed to conflict with that claim of innocence. Because of this seesaw of answers, Lerner was held in contempt. The United States attorney, who works for the Department of Justice, is required (that is where the "shall" comes in) to bring this to a grand jury, and if they believe a case can be won, to trial. This has not been done, and Deputy AG Cole claims this is because of prosecutorial discretion via the opinion of Olson.

So what is Olson? It states

"As a matter of statutory construction and separation of powers analysis, a United States Attorney is not required to refer a congressional contempt citation to a grand jury or otherwise to prosecute an Executive Branch official who carries out the President's instruction to invoke the President's claim of executive privilege before a Committee of Congress."

In other words, in the opinion of Ted Olson, 30 years ago, high ranking political appointees of the President cannot be brought before a grand jury. Thus AG Eric Holder, who also was held in contempt of Congress, was not brought before a grand jury - he is a political appointee with Executive privilege. But Lois Lerner was not.

Thus, what Deputy AG Cole tried to present as a reason not to place Lois Lerner in front of a grand jury is a fiction. Not only is this opinion of Ted Olson not law (though it is legally binding on the Executive Branch), more importantly it does not apply. Lerner did not serve at the pleasure of the President, but was an employee of the IRS - which is part of the Executive Branch. If the contempt charge was placed against IRS Director John Koskinen then Olson might apply, but that is not the case.

So why does this matter? What does all the boring legalese come down to in the end?

It matter because this is about accountability. This is about an abuse of power by the IRS, against American citizens who were exercising their 1st Amendment rights. If any Agency or Branch of the Government is allowed to silence any amount of speech based solely on political preferences, and there is no accountability for that violation, then in effect the 1st Amendment ceases to exist.

The rule of law must apply to Lois Lerner, and the IRS. That's why a majority of Americans want a special prosecutor and people held accountable. If the DOJ does nothing, they violate the purpose of the DOJ and the freedoms all Americans enjoy every day. Using a legal opinion that does not apply, to subvert law, even as the President tries to divert the public's attention and opinion, is just a very long-winded way to take freedoms from the people and give that power to the Executive Branch.

It may be boring, but in our non-legal opinion this is a critical issue that most of the mainstream media is ignoring at the detriment of the masses.

http://www.mvass.com/2014/07/19/cong...hy-it-matters/

Rep. Stockman: Still Waiting for NSA Metadata on Lois Lerner's Emails

July 18, 2014 - 5:55 PM

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By Barbara Hollingsworth
Subscribe to Barbara Hollingsworth RSS


Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX)

(CNSNews.com) – Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Tex.) says he’s still waiting for the National Security Agency (NSA) to hand over metadata of emails sent by former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) official Lois Lerner, which he says is an appropriate request by Congress to get to the bottom of the IRS scandal and protect Americans’ First Amendment rights.
On June 13, Stockman sent a letter to NSA Director Michael Rogers requesting that the agency “produce all metadata it has collected on all of Ms. Lerner’s email accounts for the period between January 2009 and April 2011.”
Stockman said he sent the letter just hours after the IRS blamed a “computer glitch” for the allegedly lost emails, which House Republicans subpoenaed in their investigation of whether the IRS inappropriately targeted certain conservative groups for political reasons.
“Your prompt cooperation in this matter will be greatly appreciated and will help establish how IRS and other personnel violated rights protected by the First Amendment,” Stockman said in the letter.
According to a brief filed July 14 by the Obama administration in Klayman v. Obama, the NSA’s information gathering ability “enables analysts to identify, among other things, previously unknown contacts of individuals suspected of being associated with terrorist organizations.” The metadata is used by the spy agency to track the activities of potential terrorists outside the U.S. in order to protect Americans.
But Stockman wants the NSA to use that same ability to protect Americans from possible rogue elements within their own government by determining whether Lerner was in contact with any domestic group or government agency outside the IRS while the division she headed was challenging the tax-exempt status of conservative and Tea Party groups.
“They said they collect all this, and we’re asking for it,” Stockman told CNSNews.com Thursday. “We did not hear back,” he added. “Now I don’t know if they have it or what. That’s kind of a secret what they really do have. It seems to be changing all the time.”
CNSNews.com asked Stockman if getting to the bottom of the IRS scandal was an appropriate use of NSA metadata.
“Well, yeah,” he replied. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but Lois Lerner’s friend at the FEC had the same mysterious loss of hard drives and data that she had. Now that’s pretty coincidental, since Lois used to work at the FEC, and her friend had to quit the Federal Elections Commission because there was apparently some impropriety there.
“And if you constantly see that all the people around her, their data’s missing, what my guess is that they’re looking at the emails and deciding that it’s better to destroy the data than reveal those emails.”

video at link below


Stockman also filed a motion on July 10 to bypass the House Republican leadership and force a vote on whether to order the sergeant-at-arms to arrest Lerner for contempt of Congress.

“It bypasses the leadership if it’s voted on as a privileged motion,” Stockman told CNSNews.com, adding that his staff lawyers are currently conferring with the House parliamentarian on the proper way to proceed since the procedure dates back to 1812 and the last time it was invoked was during the 1930’s.
“My contention is that if you go before a court of law and are found in contempt, the judge usually exercises some kind of solution to that, and it’s usually a threat of incarceration. Now if we pass it, it doesn’t mean she’s going to jail. If she talks and cooperates, as she has done with the Justice Department, then she doesn’t go to jail,” Stockman told CNSNews.com.
“So more or less, it’s just saying hey, go arrest her if she doesn’t talk like in a court of law, except it’s just done in a different branch.”
It’s important that Congress insist that Lerner answer questions to protect its institutional prerogatives, Stockman said.
IRS official Lois Lerner is sworn in on May 22, 2013 before the House Oversight Committee hearing. (AP Photo)

“There is a great deal of frustration on what does contempt of Congress mean? Does it have any kind of meaning?
"I might point out the President exercises his executive prerogative with a lot more frequency. And what I’m arguing is that at some point you have to mean what you say,” Stockman added.
“And that if you say ‘you’re in contempt of Congress,’ then you need to be [held] accountable for those actions.”

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/...lerners-emails