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

IRS Had "Secret Research Project" For Conservative Donor Lists

Judicial Watch continues to blow the lid off of the Obama administration's increasingly feeble attempts to cover up its deliberate targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the months leading up to the 2012 presidential election. And the latest batch of emails JW has obtained in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit portrays an agency potentially willing to go to any lengths to bring down the president's political opponents - including misusing the private, confidential information of those who dared contribute to the groups the IRS had targeted.

But, we really shouldn't be surprised, should we? This is an administration whose chief executive has repeatedly acted as if he is above the law. All he needs to govern, he claims, is "a pen and a phone." His IRS agency, it turns out, has put both to extensive use in harassing and hamstringing conservative organizations - and, perhaps, even individuals it thought might have had a negative impact the president's efforts to retain office in 2012.

But, we really shouldn't be surprised, should we? This is an administration whose chief executive has repeatedly acted as if he is above the law. All he needs to govern, he claims, is "a pen and a phone." His IRS agency, it turns out, has put both to extensive use in harassing and hamstringing conservative organizations - and, perhaps, even individuals it thought might have had a negative impact the president's efforts to retain office in 2012. On September 4, we released a new batch of IRS email documents revealing that under former IRS official Lois Lerner, the agency seems to acknowledge having needlessly solicited donor lists from non-profit political groups. According to a May 21, 2012, memo from the IRS Deputy Associate Chief Counsel: "such information was not needed across-the-board and not used in making the agency's determination on exempt status." Outrageously, it wasn't until one year later, on May 10, 2013, that Lerner finally conceded that the requests for donor names were "not appropriate, not usual." (These remarks by Lerner were staged and were the first IRS admission of its improper targeting of Obama's perceived enemies.) Not surprisingly, the new documents JW obtained also reveal that 75% of the groups from which the lists were solicited were apparently conservative, with only 5% being liberal. So, Lerner and her IRS collaborators knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the donor lists they had wrongly solicited would be filled with the names of those who had opposed the Obama policies. These new smoking gun documents came in response to a court order from our October 2013 FOIA lawsuit (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Internal Revenue Service (No. 1:13-cv-01559)) filed against the IRS after the agency unlawfully refused to respond to four FOIA requests dating back to May 2013. The emails are contained in the sixth batch of documents the IRS has been forced to produce in response to the Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit. This lawsuit, month after month, continues to be the best vehicle for getting to the truth about the massive Obama IRS abuse scandal. As FOX Business' Lou Dobbs said in assessing the IRS scandal in late August, "Who is lying to whom? We would know a lot less about the IRS scandal were it not for the work of the watchdog group Judicial Watch." Sure enough, these latest emails are treasure trove for truth-seekers about this Nixonian scandal. Contained in the newly released IRS documents is an email from Deputy Associate Chief Counsel Margo L. Stevens that was sent in response to a question from Lerner concerning attempts to return donor lists the IRS had inappropriately obtained. In Stevens' May 21, 2012, email to Lerner, she wrote: Lois, I wanted to get back with you with respect to your question whether TEGE [Tax Exempt & Government Entities] could return to those organizations from whom donor names were solicited in questionnaires following their submission of applications for recognition of their tax exempt status (under 501(c)(4)), now that TEGE has reviewed those files and determined that such information was not needed across-the-board and not used in making the agency's determination on exempt status. But these donor lists were "used," as a subsequent IRS email thread on June 27, 2012, revealed that inappropriately obtained donor lists were being used for a "secret research project" and that a top official wanted then-Acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller to decide how to handle the issue. The email exchange, with the subject line "donor names," included the following: • June 27, 2012: 8:59 AM -- David L. Fish, IRS acting director of Exempt Organizations Rulings and Agreements, to Holly Paz: Joseph Urban [IRS Technical Advisor, Tax Exempt and Government Entities] had actually started a secret research project on whether we could, consistent with 6104, argue that [REDACTED] Joe was quite agitated yesterday when I told him what we were doing. (He was involved when the initial question was raised, but we didn't continue reading him in). At one point he started saying that this was a decision for Steve Miller--I told him we were already doing it, and that I didn't know whether Lois had already talked to Nikole [former IRS Chief of Staff to IRS Commissioner Steve Miller] about this. Would not be surprised if he already started working on Lois. • June 27, 2012 9:02 AM -- Holly Paz to David L. Fish: Thanks for the heads up. The decision was made by Steve, based on advice from P and A. [Procedure and Administration] Nor should anyone think that Lerner's belated concerns about how to handle the donor lists obtained contrary to law came as an act of contrition. Her concerns, along with those of other IRS officials, came only after they had received an email from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) in late March 2012 advising them of "an audit we plan to conduct of the IRS's process for reviewing applications for tax exemption by potential section 501(c)(4), 501(c)(5), and 501(c)(6) organizations." The documents produced, by the way, do not detail the "secret research project," nor disclose how the IRS used the donor names the agency improperly obtained. You may recall that then-IRS Commissioner Miller initially testified to Congress on May 17, 2013, that "instructions had been given to destroy any donor lists." But donor lists were actually produced to the House Ways and Means Committee four months later. In addition to using them for some "secret research project," did the Obama IRS otherwise misuse the donor list names the agency knew it had no business having? Well, we have some clues. The Ways and Means Committee announced at May 7, 2014, hearing that, after scores of conservative groups provided donor information "to the IRS, nearly one in ten donors were subject to audit." In 2011, as many as five donors to one conservative (c)(4) organization were audited, according to the Wall Street Journal. And this past June, the IRS admitted wrongdoing in releasing the conservative National Organization for Marriage's (NOM) confidential tax return and donor list, which were published in March 2012 by the Human Rights Campaign. The Human Rights Campaign is the chief political rival to NOM; its outgoing president had been named a national co-chair of the Obama Reelection Campaign. The IRS reportedly agreed to pay NOM $50,000 to settle the lawsuit. To this very day, Democrats in Congress who pressured the IRS to go after their enemies pretend that "progressive" groups were targeted in large numbers, as well - despite their being not a scintilla of evidence that conservative groups were the focus. The IRS confirms this again in these new emails, which also include a July 18, 2012, email to Lerner from Judith Kindell, senior technical adviser to Lois Lerner, showing that 75% of the nearly 200 non-profit 501 (c)(4) political activist groups targeted by the IRS were conservative, and only 5% were liberal: Of the 199 (c)(4) cases, approximately 3/4 appear to be conservative leaning while fewer than 10 appear to be liberal/progressive leaning groups based solely on the name. The remainder do not obviously lean to either side of the political spectrum. Shortly after this email exchange, another email chain on June 28 between Lerner and Holly Paz, the former director of the Office of Rulings and Agreements, shows that Lerner believed that the TIGTA and congressional inquiries into the IRS's practices were so "dangerous" to the IRS that she didn't even trust Paz to talk to the investigators alone: • June 28, 2012 8:57 AM -- Paz to Lerner: "Now TIGTA wants to talk to me. I am guessing they read this morning's paper. [Apparent reference to Wall Street Journal article concerning IRS scrutiny of Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS tax exempt status]Will keep you posted." • June 28, 2012 9:13 AM -- Lerner to Paz: "Not alone. Wait til I am there." • June 28, 2012 09:17 AM -- Paz to Lerner: "Sorry. Too late. He already called me. It was not about WSJ. Just him trying to get better understanding of the scope of the [House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave] Camp [R-MI] request." • June 28, 2012 8:22 AM -- Lerner to Paz: "Just as dangerous. I'll talk to you soon. Be there in half hour." The "dangerous" Camp request to which Paz and Lerner referred was apparently a reference to a letter sent in May by Republican Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee David Camp to IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman requesting copies of all 501(c)(4) applications from 2010 and 2011. Despite the consternation expressed about the "dangerous" Camp applications request, an August 14, 2012, email from Lerner to Paz revealed that as of that date, "...no one from the Hill has shown up to look at them." In short, the email suggests that the Republican-controlled House and Ways Committee in Congress may have missed an opportunity to uncover the scandal in 2012. Imagine how the debate might have turned in an election year if it were known then that the Obama IRS was targeting Obama's enemies list. The new documents also include emails further contradicting President Obama's February 2014 excuse that the IRS targeting was entirely the fault of "bonehead decisions in local offices." Obama was parroting Lois Lerner's May 2013 claim that the targeting of conservative groups was the fault of "low-level" employees in Cincinnati for the targeting of conservative groups. In the months leading up to the 2012 presidential election, Lerner and other top IRS officials made it clear that no "advocacy" applications should be approved or denied without express approval from Lerner's office in Washington, DC: • June 20, 2012: -- Email from IRS attorney Michael C. Seton to managers in Exempt Organizations division defining targeted groups' approval procedures: Please inform the reviewers and staff in your groups that before issuing any favorable or initial denial rulings on any cases with advocacy issues, the reviewers must notify me and you [Lerner and other senior IRS staffers] via e -mail and get our approval. No favorable or initial denial rulings can be issued without your and my approval. The e-mail notification includes the name of the case, and a synopsis of facts and denial rationale. I may require a short briefing depending on the facts and circumstances of the particular case. • June 29, 2012: -- Email from Lois Lerner to Nikole Flax apparently criticizing the IRS Exempt Organizations Determinations Unit for taking too long to categorize non-profits as political and directing that top Washington IRS official Holly Paz would settle disputes over who was to be targeted: Although Quality was on board and involved with the training, we are seeing some tendency for Determs staff to continue to over -develop political activity issue. When asked why, they say they are concerned that if they don't, Quality will ding them. If can't reach agreement, it comes to Holly. • June 26, 2012: -- Email from Lerner to Holly Paz and Cindy Thomas in which Lerner notes that TIGTA asked for files directly from the Federal Records Center and warns that this makes sense in "context of a really sensitive investigation alleging political bias by the IRS." The Federal Records Act (FRA) requires the preservation of official e-mails at the National Archives Federal Record Center. This email from Lerner was dated during the same time period during which the IRS claims her emails were lost and her Blackberry was "wiped clean" and "removed as scrap for disposal ..." In violation of Section 3106 of the FRA, the IRS failed to notify the Archives that Lerner's emails were missing. The IRS also produced an email exchange in which Lerner takes issue with IRS spokesman Dean Patterson, who had revealed March 8, 2012, Roll Call article the existence of a "companion process" for administering applications for tax-exempt status. After Lerner received an advisory from TIGTA asking to discuss the Roll Call article, the following email exchange occurred: • April 2, 2012: 7:00 PM -- Lerner to Patterson: Importance: High. As you can see below [email from TIGTA Audit Manager Thomas Seidell], we are meeting with TIGTA later this week. They have given us a list of topics they want to discuss. I am not familiar with the Roll Call article he sites --can you shoot us a copy please? Thanks • April 3, 2012: 8:59 AM -- IRS Public Affairs Specialist Burke Anthony to Lerner : Lois, per your request, here is the Roll Call article. I put Dean's quote in bold; it's about 17 graphs into the story: "Dean Patterson, a spokesman for the IRS, denied the existence of a special committee but said the IRS has a "companion process that administers the same provisions of the tax law in the context of new applications for tax-exempt status. The legal issues and the information that will inform our discussions will be similar in both contexts." • April 3, 2012: 9:26 AM -- Lerner to Anthony: Thanks--sorry, but I really have no clue what he means by a companion process that "administers the same provisions of the tax law in the context of new applications for tax -exempt status. The legal issues and the information that will inform our discussions will be similar in both contexts." As I will need to talk to TIGTA about this on Thursday, perhaps you can give me a better sense of what he is referring to? I could guess, but don't want to be guessing in this context. As a regular reader of the Weekly Update, you know that the FOIA lawsuit that produced these records asked the court to order the IRS, among other documents, to provide records of communications by former IRS official Lois Lerner. The communications we sought covered portions of the same period for which the IRS on June 13, 2014, notified the Senate Finance Committee that Lerner's emails had been lost or destroyed but did not notify the court or Judicial Watch. In response to our request for more information, U.S. District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan held a July 10 hearing and ordered the IRS to produce sworn declarations about its efforts to find and restore Lerner's allegedly missing emails. Then on August 25, Department of Justice attorneys for the IRS conceded to JW that Lerner's "missing emails" (and all government records) had been backed-up in case of catastrophe, but that it would be too "onerous" to search this back-up system for Lerner's emails. The Justice Department has since put out anonymous statements alleging that we "misheard" what its lawyers said and that the agency did not disclose "new" information about a back-up system. It is not in dispute that the existence of any back-up system was withheld from the court despite two orders demanding specifically sworn declarations about where Lerner's emails may be residing and efforts to obtain them. The Obama administration has refused our requests that they amend the sworn declarations and finally inform Judge Sullivan directly about this back-up system. Administration lawyers have steadfastly refused and subsequently submitted a "status report" to the Court on August 29 that, again, makes no mention of any back-up system. Judicial Watch lawyers are preparing now to ask the court for relief in light of the Obama administration's continuing efforts to thwart Judge Sullivan's orders. It is not surprising that it took a Judicial Watch lawsuit and a federal court order to force the Obama administration to produce these shocking emails from the IRS. And now we have learned the stunning news that Obama's IRS had a "secret research program" that used the illicitly-obtained confidential donor lists of conservative and Tea Party organizations that opposed President Obama's agenda or reelection. With all this IRS abuse, it is no wonder Lois Lerner said that questions by Congress and others were "dangerous." It is well past time that President Obama should be held to account about his repeated and recent falsehoods about his IRS scandal. Judicial Watch Warns of Imminent Terrorist Attack On Friday, August 29, Judicial Watch issued a major news story alerting the American people to an imminent terrorist attack on the Mexican border. And the JW alert set off a firestorm of media coverage: "Despite assurances that no threat to American soil is imminent," FOX News reported, "the watchdog group Judicial Watch said Friday that Islamic State operatives are in Juarez, just across the border from Texas, and are planning to attack the United States with car bombs." The Washington Times headlined its breaking news report, "Watchdog: Fed's denial of Islamic State Mexico threat 'so dishonest,'" informing its readers, "Judicial Watch released a statement that said Islamic terrorist groups who have infiltrated the city of Ciudad Juarez aim to use car bombs to attack American interests." NewsMax.com bannered the story: "Judicial Watch: 'Imminent' Terror Attack Warning on US Border." And National Review Online chimed in, "Judicial Watch: Feds' Bulletin Describes Threat of Imminent Terrorist Attack on Southern Border." The sobering news first appeared Judicial Watch's Corruption Chronicles blog, issued on August 29 and updated on August 31, which spelled out the danger direct terms. And it revealed inside information obtained from exclusive JW sources. Below is full text of this important information, as updated on August 31: Islamic terrorist groups are operating in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez and planning to attack the United States with car bombs or other vehicle borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED). High-level federal law enforcement, intelligence and other sources have confirmed to Judicial Watch that a warning bulletin for an imminent terrorist attack on the border has been issued. Agents across a number of Homeland Security, Justice and Defense agencies have all been placed on alert and instructed to aggressively work all possible leads and sources concerning this imminent terrorist threat. Specifically, the government sources reveal that the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) is confirmed to now be operating in Juarez, a famously crime-infested narcotics hotbed situated across from El Paso, Texas. Violent crimes are so rampant in Juarez that the U.S. State Department has issued a number of travel warnings for anyone planning to go there. The last one was issued just a few days ago. Intelligence officials have picked up radio talk and chatter indicating that the terrorist groups are going to "carry out an attack on the border," according to one JW source. "It's coming very soon," according to another high-level source, who clearly identified the groups planning the plots as "ISIS and Al Qaeda." An attack is so imminent that the commanding general at Ft. Bliss, the U.S. Army post in El Paso, is being briefed, JW's sources say. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not respond to multiple inquiries from Judicial Watch, both telephonic and in writing, about this information. But two days after JW published this report Ft. Bliss implemented increased security measures. The statement that went out to the media attributes the move to several recent security assessments and the constant concern for the safety of military members, families, employees and civilians. However, El Paso's newspaper credited JW's Friday piece about ISIS terrorists planning an attack on U.S. soil from Juarez as a possible factor. The disturbing inside intelligence comes on the heels of news reports revealing that U.S. intelligence has picked up increased chatter among Islamist terror networks approaching the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. While these terrorists reportedly plan their attack just outside the U.S., President Obama admits that "we don't have a strategy yet" to combat ISIS. "I don't want to put the cart before the horse," the commander-in-chief said this week during a White House press briefing. "I think what I've seen in some of the news reports suggest that folks are getting a little further ahead of what we're at than what we currently are." The administration has also covered up, or at the very least downplayed, a serious epidemic of crime along the Mexican border even as heavily armed drug cartels have taken over portions of the region. Judicial Watch has reported that the U.S. Border Patrol actually ordered officers to avoid the most crime-infested stretches because they're "too dangerous" and patrolling them could result in an "international incident" of cross border shooting. In the meantime, who could forget the famous words of Obama's first Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano; the southern border is "as secure as it has ever been." These new revelations are bound to impact the current debate about the border crisis and immigration policy. And what was the Obama administration's response to this stunning terrorist alert? Deny. Deny. Deny. As the Daily Mail reported: The Department of Homeland Security quickly denied claims on Friday from a watchdog group that the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) has militants stationed in Juarez, Mexico who plan an 'imminent' attack against the United States. A DHS spokesman was bewildered, telling MailOnline that 'we are aware of absolutely nothing credible to substantiate this claim' made by Judicial Watch, a center-right group. "In Mexico?" the official said on the phone. "I haven't seen that at all." But the major media has yet to pick up the news of the increase of security of Ft. Bliss, which is major news. As we report on our Corruption Chronicles follow up report: But senior military officials contacted by JW this week reveal that military installations in the U.S. only make changes to security measures when there are clear and present threats. "It's a significant issue when this is done," says retired Army Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, former commander of the Army's elite Delta Force who also served four years as Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. "That means they're getting a threat stream. Ft. Bliss had to have a clear and present threat." I also encourage you to review our Daily Caller opinion piece, "If There's No Imminent Threat To Our Southern Border, Why Is Ft. Bliss Stepping Up Security?" We are proud to have done our part to protect our nation's security by reporting on this threat that the Obama administration dishonestly refuses to acknowledge. So, the president who has "no strategy" for dealing with ISIS terrorism worldwide apparently has no interest in dealing with it here at home. As I note in the Daily Caller piece: As we approach September 11, our public safety warning has boosted the morale of government security personnel on the frontlines, who are now frantically trying to prevent a deadly terrorist attack on our southern border with an urgency that is hard to overstate. Americans should not be reassured by vague denials of DC officials. But Americans can be reassured by our homeland security personnel deployed to the Mexican border - military and civilian - who are doing their best to defend our nation from this imminent threat from our Islamist enemies. You can also trust that we will let you know of any developments. Panel event: 'Holding President Obama Accountable to the Rule of Law' In closing, I just want to give you a reminder of the upcoming Judicial Watch panel discussion entitled, "Holding the Obama Administration Accountable to the Rule of Law." I'll be moderating a dynamic discussion that will include House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and Andrew C. McCarthy, Senior Fellow, National Review Institute and author of Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama's Impeachment. Our panel will discuss various approaches, including a planned lawsuit by the House of Representatives, to challenge President Obama's series of unilateral "executive actions" that critics contend violate federal law, fail to enforce federal law and exceed his constitutionally-enumerated powers. Details are below. I certainly hope you can join us. We will be streaming the event live here. Date: Tuesday, September 9 Time: 2-3:00 pm ET Location: Judicial Watch Main Conference Room Suite 800 425 Third Street SW Washington, DC 20024 Until next week... Tom Fitton President

'This Pattern Must Stop': IRS Loses More Emails Related to Probes










by Fox News Insider // Sep 06 2014 // 1:35pm

As seen on America's News Headquarters


The IRS announced it has lost emails from five other employees involved in congressional probes into the agency's targeting of conservative groups, including Cincinnati processing agents, a group manager, a tax law specialist and a technical adviser to Lois Lerner.

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IRS Bombshell: Lerner's Blackberry 'Wiped Clean' After Congress Began Inquiry
'All Been a Big Lie’: Judicial Watch Says DOJ Atty. Admitted Lerner Emails Exist

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This comes months after the agency lost an untold number of emails to and from Lerner, former head of the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt status, which allegedly disappeared in a 2011 computer crash.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA), whose committee has been investigating the scandal, said, "The IRS’s ever-changing story is practically impossible to follow at this point, as they modify it each time to accommodate new facts."
"This pattern must stop."
FoxNews.com reported:

The disclosure came on the same day the Senate's subcommittee on investigations released competing reports on how the IRS handled applications from political groups during the 2010 and 2012 elections.
The Democratic report, released by Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, said both liberal and conservative groups were mistreated, revealing no political bias by the IRS. The Republican report, issued by Sen. John McCain of Arizona, said conservative groups were clearly treated worse.
The IRS inspector general set off a firestorm last year with an audit that said IRS agents singled out Tea Party and other conservative groups for inappropriate scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status.
Lerner's lost emails prompted a new round of scrutiny by Congress, the Justice Department, the inspector general and at least two federal judges.
The IRS blamed computer crashes for all the lost emails. In a statement, the IRS said all the crashes happened well before Congress launched the investigations.
"Throughout this review, the IRS has found no evidence that any IRS personnel deliberately destroyed any evidence," said the IRS statement. "To the contrary, the computer issues identified appear to be the same sorts of issues routinely experienced by employees within the IRS, in other government agencies and in the private sector."
When Congress started investigating the IRS last year, the agency identified 82 employees who might have documents related to the inquiries. The IRS said 18 of those people had computer problems between September 2009 and February 2014. Of those employees, five probably lost emails -- in addition to Lerner -- the agency said Friday.
Lerner, who was placed on leave and has since retired, has emerged as a central figure in congressional investigations. The other five employees appear to be more junior than she.
In addition to the Cincinnati workers, they include a technical adviser to Lerner, a tax law specialist and a group manager in the tax-exempt division.
In general, the IRS said the workers archived emails on their computer hard drives when their email accounts became too full. When those computers crashed, the emails were lost.
"By all accounts, in each instance the user contacted IT staff and attempted to recover his or her data," said the IRS statement.
The IRS has said it stored emails on backup tapes but those tapes were re-used every six months. The inspector general's office is reviewing those tapes to see if any old emails can be retrieved.
Friday's reports by the Senate subcommittee on investigations mark the conclusion of just one investigation. The Justice Department and three other congressional committees are continuing their probes.

Elizabeth Prann joined Uma Pemmaraju on America's News Headquarters today to discuss the IRS's statement and what this might mean for the probes.
“Throughout this review, the IRS has found no evidence that any IRS personnel deliberately destroyed any evidence,” Prann read from the IRS statement.
“To the contrary, the computer issues identified appear to be the same sorts of issues routinely experienced by employees within the IRS, in other government agencies and in the private sector.”
She added that Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said there are 760 exchange servers that could contain the missing emails.
Jordan has called for IRS commissioner John Koskinen​ to testify whether or not those drives were destroyed due to budget cuts.
Watch the clip from America's News Headquarters above.

video at link below

http://foxnewsinsider.com/2014/09/06...related-probes

IRS Claims Emails Of FIVE More Workers Related To Congressional Investigation Have Been Lost

September 7, 2014


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WASHINGTON (TheBlaze/AP) — The IRS says it has lost emails from five more workers who are part of congressional investigations into the treatment of conservative groups that applied for tax exempt status. The tax agency said in June that it could not locate an untold number of emails to and from Lois Lerner, who headed the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt status. The revelation set off a new round of investigations and congressional hearings.
On Friday, the IRS said it has also lost emails from five other employees related to the probe, including two agents who worked in a Cincinnati office processing applications for tax-exempt status.
The agency blamed computer crashes for the lost emails. In a statement, the IRS said it found no evidence that anyone deliberately destroyed evidence.
The news comes as House Republicans on the Oversight and Government Affairs Committee said there may still be a way to recover the “lost” emails of ex-IRS official Lois Lerner.
IRS Claims Emails Of FIVE More Workers Related To Congressional Investigation Have Been Lost [continued]


Read more at http://libertycrier.com/irs-claims-e...E3BvhLi6kAD.99

Remember these lost emails if you have to produce any kind of document, we can only try!!!

IRS Chief Says he Wants Closure to Lerner Email Investigation – But Does He Really?
http://sonsoflibertymedia.com/2014/0...gation-really/



IRS Chief Says he Wants Closure to Lerner Email Investigation – But Does He Really? - Sons of Liberty Media
sonsoflibertymedia.com
IRS Chief Says he Wants Closure to Lerner Email Investigation – But Does He Really?

IRS Chief Says he Wants Closure to Lerner Email Investigation – But Does He Really?

Published on: September 18, 2014

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told reporters that he wanted to find Lois Lerner’s alleged “missing email” because he wanted “closure” on the issue.
According to WND, Koskinen made statements to that effect before going before the House Oversight Subcommittee.
Gary Kant reports:

He also claimed he wasn’t aware of any system-wide backup consisting of 760 servers that might contain Lerner’s emails, which Judicial Watch said it had learned of in documents obtained with a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, request.


When asked why Lerner’s Blackberry, containing all of her emails, was wiped clean even after she and the IRS came under suspicion for abusing their power and targeting the president’s critics, Koskinen said it was just disposed of under standard IRS recycling procedures because it had become obsolete and was replaced.

Koskinen also told WND Lerner’s Blackberry would not have held all of the emails in her office computer, just those accessed.

After the IRS chief gave the same explanations to the subcommittee looking into the scandal, Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, blasted Koskinen, accusing the IRS and the Obama administration of issuing a constant stream of “false and misleading statements.”

Jordan and his fellow Republicans on the committee did not severely challenge Koskinen’s explanations regarding the servers and Blackberry. But they repeatedly expressed exasperation over learning testimony had been untrue after new revelations had come to light, time and again.

Jordan reeled off a list that included:

• Assurances the IRS was not targeting conservatives
  
• Lerner’s assertion the targeting was part of the ordinary review process
  
• Lerner blaming the targeting on employees in the Cincinnati office
  
• Former White House spokesman Jay Carney blaming the targeting on “lying” Cincinnati employees
  
• And, President Obama blaming the entire scandal on a “bonehead” decision by a Cincinnati employee
  

Though Koskinen admitted twice that the federal agency did target conservatives, but it wasn’t limited to the Cincinnati office.
Koskinen had said back in July, “There are some people who don’t want a straight story. They don’t want this to end.”

Jordan then questioned him about who “they” referred to and the IRS chief blew it off as “a general statement, no one in particular.” Clearly Jordan seemed frustrated since he also pointed out that Koskinen had sponsored a bill that called for a special prosecutor.

Let’s be clear here. This man is heading the Internal Revenue Service. If he can’t get hold of these “lost emails,” which everyone knows is a bogus claim, then who can? Mr. Koskinen, by simple logic here, is continuing to play a game. The reason that “they” (whoever that is) want these hearings to continue is because they will never get anything from them. People will continue to be outraged, it will make for good political banter as the mid-term elections come upon us and no one will ever produce anything. In fact, no one will lose their job and no one will go to jail. Why? Because there is corruption in Washington.

There is no question that House panel voted to hold her in contempt of Congress, and there is no question that she stood before an investigative committee declared her innocence, pointed the blame at others and then said she would plead the Fifth. Then, she did it again. She was chastised for it by members of Congress and yet, nothing has really come of it because of spineless, lawless elected officials. In fact, her punishment is a nice retirement with full pension.

Remember Eric Holder? Congress also voted to hold him in contempt…over two years ago! Meanwhile, a lawsuit lingers in court to do something to make that vote stick because the Justice Department said they would not prosecute him. Imagine that!

We know that Lerner’s emails could be easily accessed. We know that she printed some of them out. If Koskinen really wanted closure in this matter, he could get it in a matter of minutes, but we all know why he isn’t bringing it forward. It would bring more embarrassment and possibly expose more criminal activity in this administration. We know that Lerner was involved in providing tax exempt status to terrorist supporting organizations, including Barack Obama’s own foundation.

While the story in the media has been that many hard drives have crashed, one needs to understand that emails do not require those hard drives. They are sent from one person to another and as we discovered, the IRS had an outside source that backed those emails up. Additionally, the DOJ has admitted the emails exist, so why is this moving along a slow track to nowhere?

There has been talk of arresting Lois Lerner. There was talk of arresting Eric Holder. So far, nothing has been done.

Justice in this matter should be simple and swift, but not when there is corruption all around.

Read more at http://sonsoflibertymedia.com/2014/0...r3c3DcrHgXf.99


They can't do that because everyone knows the truth now ....This is rolling down hill and it isn't going to stop, they are all crooks..



Think all those 3 or 4 letter illegal agency's, that don't work for us...Wake Up America

The Lois Lerner IRS Targeting & Cover Up: All In The Nature Of Big Government

By George Rasley, CHQ Editor | 9/16/14




Our friend Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch and the editors of The Wall Street Journal have done some great work in the past few days exposing the latest twists in the targeting of conservatives by Lois Lerner and her colleagues at President Obama’s IRS.

The latest in what WSJ writers call Obama’s “spin and stall strategy” comes from the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) that astonishingly assigned a lawyer who figured as a witness in the IRS targeting investigation to handle the case for DOJ.

It turns out that attorney Andrew Strelka, the (now former) Justice Department lawyer who was assigned to a case brought against the IRS by Z Street, a pro-Israel group that says its application for tax-exempt status was delayed in 2009 because of a policy giving special scrutiny to groups whose missions conflicted with the White House line previously worked at the IRS office that handled the Z Street case.

That’s right; before becoming the Justice Department's lawyer on the case, The Wall Street Journal reports “Mr. Strelka was a presidential management fellow working in the IRS office that handled the case, presenting a conflict of interest. To wit: Mr. Strelka is likely to be interviewed as a witness in the discovery phase of the trial he was previously litigating. Mr. Strelka has since resigned from the case and left the Justice Department…”

This all came out in the course of a blunder in which a dimwitted Department of Justice spokesman accidentally called the House Republicans instead of the House Democrats and proposed leaking information about the Strelka situation to the media.

Naturally, the suspicion now is that Strelka was intentionally assigned to the Z Street case to help spike it, but that has yet to be investigated, let alone proven.

The conspiracy-minded will see an Obama targeting plan that reaches across the entire government to single out and target “enemies” or those that disagree with Obama’s policies.

And one interesting, but not-so-obvious point worth investigating that the whole Strelka – Z Street imbroglio brings up is how a government employee can move so deftly from the center of one anti-conservative operation to another all in the supposedly non-partisan civil service environment of the IRS and Department of Justice.

But there’s an alternative to a government-wide Obama conspiracy which we see as an even stronger possibility:

What if the IRS targeting and Lois Lerner cover up are inherent in the nature of big government itself?

At the beginning of the IRS targeting and abuse of power investigation some journalists and conservative commentators investigating the scandal began to zero-in on Colleen M. Kelley, President of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) – the union for IRS employees – as a potentially the pivotal figure in the IRS political targeting of conservatives scandal.

Kelley, an ex-14 year IRS agent is pretty much what you would expect of a government employee union president – an arrogant, and exceedingly liberal, inside-the-Beltway operator.

The reasons investigators from The American Spectator, The Daily Caller and even The Washington Post began to zero-in on Kelley were her close ties to the Obama White House and the strangely coincidental meetings at the White House Kelley is documented to have had.

Kelly seems to have disappeared from the public commentary on the scandal, so we don’t know if investigators are still ferreting out who at the White House Kelley met with.

Knowing who Colleen M. Kelley's White House email buddies were during the period the IRS began and executed the targeting of Tea Party, “patriot” and conservative organizations, Christian ministries, right-to-life and pro-Israel Jewish groups and other opponents and critics of the Obama administration for political discrimination in the granting of not-for-profit tax status would be very revealing we suspect.

And Kelley has never denied speaking with any White House staffer, “senior advisor” or Obama campaign operative about targeting the Tea Party and other opponents of Obama’s policies.

Nor has she ever condemned the conduct documented in the Inspector General’s report or other revelations with a statement that the union demands the highest standards of professional conduct from its members, because let’s face it – it doesn’t.

What the National Treasury Employees Union demands, and what Obama stands for, is the same thing – more government.

Once government reaches a certain size its prime directive ceases to be to serve the people who created it to become preserving itself and expanding its power.

This confluence of interest in growing government and government regulation goes straight to the motive of why unionized IRS employees might want to harass Obama’s political opponents to make sure the big government president was re-elected.

Not all of this is obvious to the popular press, but what is obvious, however, is that there is no commitment on the part of the Obama administration to get to the bottom of the IRS targeting scandal, let alone change the policies and culture that allowed it to occur, because they think, deep down inside, that Lois Lerner and the others involved in the IRS targeting of conservatives and the subsequent cover up did, as Lerner put it, “nothing wrong.”

http://www.conservativehq.com/articl...big-government

Lois Lerner tries busting into neighbor's home to avoid questions




Published on Oct 6, 2014
http://amzn.to/1CLaxBv And Lerner's disregard for privacy rights continue. More here: http://amzn.to/1CLaxBv

Saturday, 29 November 2014
Obama Admin. Finds Thousands of “Lost” or Withheld IRS Documents

Written by Michael Tennant



After many delays and denials, the Obama administration is finally releasing thousands of long-sought Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents that may shed light on whether the IRS shared confidential tax information with the White House and whether the agency was used by the administration to target political opponents.
On Monday, the office of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) informed the government-watchdog group Cause of Action that it had “located 2,500 potentially responsive documents” related to the organization’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request concerning TIGTA’s investigation of 2010 remarks by then-Council of Economic Advisers chairman Austan Goolsbee suggesting that Goolsbee had intimate knowledge of a corporation’s tax returns. Specifically, Goolsbee told reporters that “Koch Industries” was one of “a series of entities that do not pay corporate income tax.”
After a Koch Industries attorney told the Weekly Standard “that the administration may have crossed a line by revealing tax information about Koch Industries,” the White House quickly denied that Goolsbee had obtained his information from tax returns. Rather than settle the matter, the denial, which seemed to contain additional information discernible solely from tax returns, only added fuel to the fire. Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee asked TIGTA to investigate the matter; TIGTA agreed to do so.
An August 2011 e-mail from Treasury Special Agent Daniel Carney indicated that the investigation had been completed, but the report was not released to the public, the senators who had requested the investigation, or Koch Industries. Although the e-mail stated that the report could be obtained via a FOIA request, the administration refused to release it to Koch Industries on four separate occasions, once even saying it could neither confirm nor deny that the report had been compiled.
Cause for Action got into the act in October 2012, filing a FOIA request for the report and related documents. Again TIGTA tried the neither-confirm-nor-deny gambit, so Cause for Action took the government to court. Finally, in September 2014, a federal judge — with obvious scorn for the administration’s claim that even admitting the report existed would constitute an illegal release of tax returns — ordered TIGTA to confirm or deny the existence of the report. Apparently sensing that the jig was up, TIGTA not only confirmed that the report had been written but also decided to release the relevant documents. In a November 24 email to Cause for Action, TIGTA informed the group that it had located the 2,500 potentially responsive documents and could process them in full by December 15.
“This disclosure, coming only after Cause of Action sued TIGTA over its refusal to acknowledge whether such investigations took place, and after the Court ordered TIGTA to reveal whether or not documents existed, signals that the White House may have made significant efforts to obtain taxpayers’ personal information,” the organization said in a statement released Tuesday.

Just a few days earlier, on November 21, TIGTA made an even more stunning announcement: Tens of thousands of supposedly lost e-mails from former IRS official Lois Lerner, the central figure in the agency’s targeting of conservative organizations, had been found. From 2006 to 2013, Lerner was the head of the IRS’ Exempt Organizations Division, which approves applications for tax-exempt status. During a roughly two-year period beginning in early 2010, the agency indefinitely delayed the processing of tax-exemption applications from organizations that were perceived to be opposed to the Obama administration.
“Lerner was in charge of the review practice, had knowledge of the practice and allegedly did nothing to stop it,” recalled Forbes’ Kelly Phillips Erb. “It has also been suggested that she may have even encouraged and/or expanded the practice. All of those allegations, however, have been tough to prove because, in addition to Lerner’s refusal to testify before Congress, there’s no real evidence: a number of Lerner’s emails from the time period in question went missing.”
Indeed, in June, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told the House Oversight Committee that because of a (suspicious) series of hard-drive crashes among Lerner’s division, all of the e-mails being sought by Congress were probably gone for good. (Koskinen, by the way, knew about the missing e-mails in April but informed Congress only after the fact was revealed in a court case.) Five months later, the agency would admit in court that it hadn’t even bothered looking for the e-mails, believing they were unrecoverable.
But, lo and behold, TIGTA has now managed to locate “up to 30,000” of the supposedly unrecoverable emails, according to the Washington Examiner. TIGTA “informed congressional staffers from several committees ... that the emails were found among hundreds of ‘disaster recovery tapes’ that were used to back up the IRS email system.”
Investigators have already “combed through 744 disaster recovery tapes,” the Examiner reported, and “they are not finished looking.” By the time they’re done reviewing the 250 million e-mails on the tapes, “officials said it is likely they will find missing emails from other IRS officials who worked under Lerner and who said they suffered computer crashes.”
Koskinen — who, the Wall Street Journal observed, “is pulling off the impossible task of destroying what little credibility [the IRS] has left” — released a boilerplate statement in response to TIGTA’s announcement: “The IRS welcomes TIGTA’s independent review and expert forensic analysis. Commissioner Koskinen has said for some time he would be pleased if additional Lois Lerner emails from this time frame could be found.”
“This is an extraordinary statement, in that it suggests the only way an agency can be held accountable for producing subpoenaed documents is if an outsider tosses the joint,” the Journal remarked. “Either the IRS didn’t bother to investigate these tapes or, more alarming, it did and chose not to produce the results.”
Lawmakers seeking the documents also responded to TIGTA’s recovery of the Lerner e-mails.
“Though it is unclear whether TIGTA has found all of the missing Lois Lerner e-mails, there may be significant information in this discovery,” House Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) told the Examiner. “The Oversight Committee will be looking for information about her mindset and who she was communicating with outside the IRS during a critical period of time when the IRS was targeting conservative groups. This discovery also underscores the lack of cooperation Congress has received from the IRS. The agency first failed to disclose the loss to Congress and then tried to declare Lerner’s e-mails gone and lost forever. Once again it appears the IRS hasn’t been straight with Congress and the American people.”
In a statement, Senate Finance Committee chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and ranking member Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said that their committee’s report on the matter would be delayed beyond the end of the current Congress while they awaited and then reviewed TIGTA’s findings.
The Obama administration insists that any wrongdoing at the IRS was the work of lower-level staffers and certainly did not involve the president or other high-ranking officials. But if that is the case, why has the administration fought to keep documents related to the Goolsbee and Lerner affairs under wraps, even to the point of lying about their existence? When TIGTA finally produces the documents, we may well find out; chances are it won’t be pretty.


http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/19622-obama-admin-finds-thousands-of-lost-or-withheld-irs-documents?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_campaign=20759 37366-The_Editors_Top_Picks_3_12_143_12_2014&utm_medium= email&utm_term=0_8ca494f2d2-2075937366-287785873

Oh my after all this time...and now Lois Lerner must be "Low Level"!!!!

Blockbuster Report PROVES Obama Justice Department WAS involved in IRS Targeting Conservatives

By Onan Coca / 12 December 2014


Conservatives have been awaiting some kind of punishment for Lois Lerner and her IRS allies for their underhanded persecution of politically active conservatives. The IRS malfeasance most certainly affected the 2010, 2012 and 2014 election cycles. Perhaps their efforts didn’t change the outcome of the Presidential race, but it definitely affected the amount of money conservatives raised, and therefore probably coast them at least a few lower level elections.

Slowly but surely over the last year or so, we have learned more about what happened at the IRS and none of it was good. The only question was “how deep does this really go?” It seems that such a large and coordinated effort would have had help (and direction) from within the Obama administration. It seems dubious, at best, to think that this was all the work of lower level IRS officials – especially now that we know this went much higher up the IRS food chain.

We’ve had several big breaks over the last few months on this, but now the folks at Judicial Watch may have just broken the biggest story yet.
It seems that the Department of Justice (and Lois Lerner) may have been considering prosecuting conservatives as far back as 2010! Which is years before she admitted considering the possibility…

From Forbes:
Documents froma Freedom of Information Actlawsuit against the IRS show that Ms. Lerner asked the DOJ whether tax-exempt entities could be criminally prosecuted. ThisMay 8, 2013email by Ms. Lerner went to Nikole C. Flax, Chief of Staff to Acting IRS Commissioner Steven T. Miller, who would later be fired by President Obama:
“I got a call today from Richard Pilger Director Elections Crimes Branch at DOJ … He wanted to know who at IRS the DOJ folk s [sic] could talk to about Sen. Whitehouse idea at the hearing that DOJ could piece together false statement cases about applicants who “lied” on their 1024s–saying they weren’t planning on doing political activity, and then turning around and making large visible political expenditures. DOJ is feeling like it needs to respond, but want to talk to the right folks at IRS to see whether there are impediments from our side and what, if any damage this might do to IRS programs. I told him that sounded like we might need several folks from IRS…”

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton summed up the most recent (and shocking) discovery…

“These new documents dramatically show how the Justice Department is up to its neck in the IRS scandal and can’t be trusted to investigate crimes associated with the IRS abuses that targeted Obama’s critics. And it is of particular concern that the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, which would ordinarily investigate the IRS abuses, is now implicated in the IRS crimes. No wonder the Department of Justice under Eric Holder has done no serious investigation of the Obama IRS scandal. It is shameful how Establishment Washington has let slide by Obama’s abuse of the IRS and the Justice Department. Only as a result of Judicial Watch’s independent investigations did the American people learnabout the IRS-DOJ prosecution discussions of Obama’s political enemies and how the IRS sent, in violation of law, confidential taxpayer informationto the FBI and DOJ in 2010. Richard Nixon was impeached for less.”

So, if the Department of Justice (DOJ) was involved in the illegal targeting of conservative groups by the IRS … are they really they best organization to be investigating the IRS for this crime?

I don’t think so.


Read more at http://eaglerising.com/12557/blockbu...dqTGIPepqtv.99