Facing a possible firing, the Internal Revenue Service official at the center of the agency’s tea party scandal retired Monday, ending one chapter in a ruckus that has engulfed the tax-collection agency since spring.
Lois Lerner headed the IRS division that handles applications for tax-exempt status when she was placed on paid leave in May. While she was in charge, the agency acknowledged that agents improperly targeted tea party groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status during the 2010 and 2012 elections.
Lerner first disclosed the targeting at a law conference in May, when she was asked a planted question about IRS treatment of political groups. Less than two weeks later, she refused to answer questions at a congressional hearing, citing her constitutional right not to incriminate herself.
A day after the hearing she was placed on paid leave at the age of 62.
Lerner’s retirement came as a review board was set to propose that she be fired, said a statement by Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-09-24 01:02:052013-09-24 01:02:05Facing Threats of Termination, Official at Heart Of IRS Scandal “Retiring”
Lois G. Lerner, the woman at the center of the Internal Revenue Service scandal over special scrutiny of conservative groups, specifically targeted tea party applications and directed that they be held up in 2011 in order to come up with an agency policy, according to several of Ms. Lerner’s emails released by a House committee Thursday.
In one 2011 email, Ms. Lerner specifically calls the tea party applications for tax-exempt status problematic, which seems to counter Democrats’ arguments that tea party groups weren’t targeted.
“Tea Party Matter very dangerous,” Ms. Lerner wrote in the 2011 email, saying that those applications could end up being the “vehicle to go to court” to get more clarity on a 2010 Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance rules.
In another email, from 2012, Ms. Lerner acknowledges that the agency’s handling of the tax-exempt applications had been bungled at the beginning, though she said steps had been taken to correct problems.
“It is what it is,” she wrote in the email, released Thursday by the Ways and Means Committee. “Although the original story isn’t as pretty as we’d like, once we learned [that we were] off track, we have done what we can to change the process, better educate our staff and move the cases. So, we will get dinged, but we took steps before the ‘dinging’ to make things better and we have written procedures.”
By Wall Street Journal. We’re starting to understand why Lois Lerner took the Fifth about her role in the IRS targeting of conservative groups. The testimony of at least three more employees in the IRS Washington office is now making clear that Ms. Lerner and other Washington IRS officials had a direct hand in slow rolling the tax-exempt applications of conservative groups in an election season.
The House Oversight Committee holds another hearing Thursday that will showcase some of these witnesses. According to Washington IRS tax law specialist Carter Hull, his supervisor Ronald Shoemaker and Manager of Exempt Organizations Technical Michael Seto, tea party applications were intentionally singled out for extra layers of review and put through an unusual process.
Mr. Hull told House investigators that normally his judgment about applications would have been enough to approve or deny their tax-exempt status. Instead of sending those applications through the normal channel, however, conservative applications were sent through Ms. Lerner’s office for review, and also directed to the IRS chief counsel. That process was highly unusual and created a vetting system in which applications were interminably delayed.
According to Mr. Hull, starting in April 2010, he was told by a supervisor to give extra attention to some tea party applications as a trial run for how the agency might handle such cases going forward. As part of that process, he was instructed to send the applications through Ms. Lerner’s office and the office of IRS Chief Counsel William Wilkins for additional scrutiny.
Once he delivered them, however, the process stalled… Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Fox NewsHow high did it go? Republicans to step up pressure on IRS at scandal hearing
By Fox News. House Republicans plan to ratchet up scrutiny of the IRS during a hearing Thursday morning where agency workers are expected to discuss the involvement of high-level officials in slowing down applications from Tea Party groups.
For the first time, the House oversight committee has invited two key agency officials to testify. Republican leaders of the committee claimed Wednesday that one of them recently revealed that the IRS chief counsel’s office — led by a political appointee — played a role, along with embattled IRS official Lois Lerner, in scrutinizing conservative groups. Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Daily CallerIRS lawyer says scandal was overseen by D.C., names names
By Patrick Howley. Top IRS officials in Washington, D.C. planned and oversaw the agency’s improper targeting of conservative groups, according to the 72-year old retiring IRS lawyer who will testify Thursday before the House Oversight Committee.
Retiring IRS lawyer Carter C. Hull implicated the IRS Chief Counsel’s office, headed by Obama appointee William J. Wilkins, and Lois Lerner, the embattled head of the IRS’ exempt organizations office, in the IRS targeting scandal and made clear that the targeting started in Washington, according to leaked interviews that Hull granted to the Oversight Committee in advance of Thursday’s hearing.
Treasury Inspector General J. Russell George will return to Republican chairman Darrell Issa’s committee Thursday along with two central characters in the IRS saga: Hull and Cincinnati-based IRS employee Elizabeth Hofacre, who previously gave Hull’s name to congressional investigators, fingering him as her Washington-based supervisor. Read more from this story HERE.
By Bob Unruh. The IRS, which has been in trouble for weeks now for targeting conservative, Christian and Jewish organizations seeking tax-exempt status with invasive and probably illegal questions, still is stalling, charges a legal team in the battle.
The federal tax agency had offered an “expedited review” if the groups would agree to “an arbitrary 60/40 standard” requiring them to devote 60 percent of their time and expenditures to activities promoting social welfare and limit their political activity to 40 percent or less.
“The IRS created this standard out of thin air in an effort to placate Americans who have been unlawfully and unconstitutionally targeted by the IRS because of their political beliefs,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice.
“This so-called solution is deeply flawed and does nothing to address and correct the real problem at the IRS: a pervasive and systematic assault on conservative organizations. The IRS remains an agency incapable of self-governance or self-correction. Our federal lawsuit is moving forward to stop this abusive targeting scheme and to hold those responsible for this disturbing conduct accountable,” he said.
The IRS discrimination has been well-documented. One IRS official pleaded the Fifth and declined to respond to questions from Congress, but others in the agency have admitted to cases cited by conservative groups who were told, for example, they had to reveal the content of members’ prayers or make promises about what they would or would not say. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-18 03:06:142016-04-11 11:18:58Now We Know Why Ms. Lerner Took the Fifth: the Tax Exempt Applications Literally Went Through Her Office (+video)
Photo Credit: APEmbattled IRS official Lois Lerner will not testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee unless she’s given immunity from prosecution, her lawyer told POLITICO Tuesday.
“They can obtain her testimony tomorrow by doing it the easy way … immunity,” William W. Taylor III said in a phone interview. “That’s the way to resolve all of this.”
The comments reflect the hard-line approach Lerner, the former head of the IRS division that scrutinized conservative groups, and her legal team are taking in defending her role in the agency’s scandal.
Taylor, a founding partner of Zuckerman Spaeder LLP, is even shrugging off the possibility that the full House might vote to hold Lerner in contempt.
“None of this matters,” he said. “I mean, nobody likes to be held in contempt of Congress, of course, but the real question is one that we’re fairly confident about, and I don’t think any district judge in the country would hold that she waived.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-04 03:21:562016-04-11 11:20:01IRS’s Lois Lerner Who Claimed She “Did Nothing Wrong,” Wants Full Immunity to Testify
A House Republican-led committee approved a resolution Friday declaring that high-ranking IRS official Lois Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination by delivering a statement before the committee in May.
Lerner used to oversee the IRS division that targeted groups for additional scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status. At a May 22 hearing, she invoked her right not to answer lawmakers’ questions after declaring in an opening statement that she had done nothing wrong.
Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted along party lines Friday morning, with 22 Republicans saying she waived the Fifth and 17 Democrats arguing she did not. Lerner remains under subpoena, and the committee believes it could bring the long-time IRS official back and compel her to testify.
Late Friday, her attorney, William Taylor, issued a statement saying, “It is too bad that an issue like this gets put to a vote in a highly polarized forum. A party line vote does not affect anyone’s constitutional rights and this one does not affect Ms. Lerner’s.
“Her rights under the constitution are no different now than they were when she asserted them.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-29 04:03:512013-06-29 04:03:51House Panel Finds IRS’s Lerner Waived Fifth Amendment, Can Be Forced to Testify in Targeting Probe
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) on Thursday proposed legislation that would require federal workers to be fired if they don’t answer questions from Congress.
The bill is a reaction to Lois Lerner, the IRS official who refused to answer questions about the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups during a congressional hearing last month. Lerner told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, “I have not done anything wrong,” then invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination on the advice of her lawyers…
“This is a statement which should not be made by federally appointed officials before a congressional hearing if they are faithfully carrying out the duties of their office,” Brooks told The Hill on Friday of Lerner’s decision to plead the Fifth…
Brooks’s bill says simply, “Any federal employee who refuses to answer questions in a congressional hearing after being granted immunity shall be terminated from employment.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-23 04:26:262013-06-23 04:26:26“Lerner Bill” to Fire Federal Employees Who Refuse to Testify
In 1996 Lois Lerner, the IRS official at the center of the harassment of Tea Party groups seeking tax exempt status, was head of the enforcement division of the Federal Elections Commission(FEC). That year Al Salvi was the Republican nominee for the US Senate from Illinois, his Democrat opponent was then congressman Dick Durbin.
During the final weeks of the campaign Salvi loaned himself over a million dollars to buy ads in the Chicago media market. This in turn prompted the Democrat party’s campaign arms to file complaints with the FEC and in kind the FEC, specifically Lois Lerner, filed charges against Al Salvi.
That is when Mr. Salvi contends Lois Lerner made him the following offer, “Promise me you will never run for office again, and we’ll drop this case.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-30 03:21:452013-05-30 03:21:45IRS Lerner to Politician: ‘If You Don’t Ever Run Again, We’ll Drop our Case’
Photo Credit: scott*ericThe IRS official who refused to testify this week — while claiming she had done nothing wrong — signed letters to Tea Party groups a year ago that asked them to turn over everything from printouts of their Facebook pages to the credentials of speakers who participated in their events.
A group representing more than a dozen Tea Party groups now suing the IRS released a sample of one of the letters overnight, after the official Lois Lerner was placed on administrative leave. According to one lawmaker, she was only placed on leave after she refused to resign.
Jay Sekulow, chief counsel with the American Center for Law and Justice, said the March 2012 letters show a “paper trail” that reveals her “direct involvement in sending intrusive and harassing questionnaires.”
“It appears Lerner did nothing to stop the abusive conduct. And our evidence suggests she was actively participating in the improper targeting in March 2012,” he said in a statement.
It was no secret that Lerner, as head of the exempt organizations division, was aware of the program that had developed in the Cincinnati office under her watch. A timeline provided in the inspector general’s report on the practice showed she was first briefed in June 2011.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-25 04:00:192016-04-11 11:20:26IRS Official Who Refused to Resign or Testify before Congress, Signed Orwellian Tea Party Letters in 2012
