New Oversight report claims Lois Lerner misled Congress on IRS targeting

[Forever_frost]

http://washingtonexaminer.com/new-report-cites-evidence-showing-lerner-misled-congress-on-irs-targeting/article/2545457?custom_click=rss

A GOP-led House panel Tuesday released an extensive report that attempts to show former top Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner lied to Congress about her involvement in the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax exempt status.

Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said the 141-page report “offers detailed evidence about steps she took to crack down on organizations that exercised their Constitutional rights to free political speech.”
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The report comes as Issa weighs whether the committee should vote on holding Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the panel about the targeting activity.

Republicans claim she waived her Fifth Amendment rights by reading a statement proclaiming her innocence at a hearing last year.

The report does not include any of the Lerner emails the IRS recently promised to turn over to the House Ways and Means Committee, but Oversight apparently had enough material to determine, according to Issa, that Lerner “misled Congress about targeting and her own conduct.”

The top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., has accused Issa of turning Lerner into a political target. He is expected to release a statement shortly in response to the report.

Among the findings in the report:

— Lerner, in emails to other IRS officials, wrote about ways to highlight the agency's scrutiny of Tea Party applicants, despite secrecy laws, by provoking groups to challenge IRS rulings in a court case.

— She called for a Washington, D.C.-based, “multi-tier review” for Tea Party groups applying for tax exempt status. “A D.C. IRS employee said this level of scrutiny had no precedent,” the report notes.

— Lerner references “the fabulously rich and hugely influential” Koch brothers, who are GOP donors, in asserting that the agency needed to cautiously conduct a “project” scrutinizing groups seeking 501(c)(4) tax exempt status. The code references the tax exempt category conservative and Tea Party groups were requesting from the IRS.

— Lerner broke IRS rules by using her personal email account to handle protected taxpayer information.

— Lerner expressed concern that the Supreme Court ruling leading to the increase of 501(c)(4) tax-exempt groups would hurt Democratic senators seeking re-election in 2012. The IRS was expected to fix the problem, Lerner wrote.

“The Supreme Court dealt a huge blow, overturning a 100-year old precedent that basically corporations couldn't give directly to political campaigns,” Lerner wrote. “And everyone is up in arms because they don't like it. The Federal Election Commission can't do anything about it. They want the IRS to fix the problem.”

[Forever_frost]

http://washingtonexaminer.com/justice-department-and-irs-lois-lerner-discussed-prosecuting-conservative-groups/article/2547318

ormer IRS official Lois Lerner discussed referring conservative groups for prosecution after the Justice Department inquired about possible tax fraud violations by nonprofits.

Lerner and Justice officials discussed the issue pursuant to a suggestion from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who called for prosecutions during a Senate hearing in April.

"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," Lerner wrote on May 8, 2013, in an email. "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."
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Two days later, Lerner would apologize during a speech at the American Bar Association for the targeting of conservative groups.

The internal IRS emails were obtained by Judicial Watch through a lawsuit after the IRS refused to comply with multiple Freedom of Information Act request filed after Lerner's ABA speech.

“These new emails show that the day before she broke the news of the IRS scandal, Lois Lerner was talking to a top Obama Justice Department official about whether the DOJ could prosecute the very same organizations that the IRS had already improperly targeted,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in publicizing the emails. “The IRS emails show Eric Holder's Department of Justice is now implicated and conflicted in the IRS scandal. No wonder we had to sue in federal court to get these documents.”

Emails show that Lerner had previously concluded that the feds were unlikely to be able to prosecute the non-profit groups.

"Whether there was a false statement or fraud regarding an [sic] description of an alleged political expenditure that doesn't say vote for or vote against is not realistic under current law," she wrote on March 27, 2013. "Everyone is looking for a magic bullet or scapegoat -- there isn't one. The law in this area is just hard."

The federal officials wanted to make an example of at least one group. "As I mentioned yesterday -- there are several groups of folks from the FEC world that are pushing tax fraud prosecution for c4s who report they are not conducting political activity when they are (or these folks think they are)," Lerner wrote in another March 27 email obtained by Judicial Watch. "One is my ex-boss Larry Noble (former General Counsel at the FEC), who is now president of Americans for Campaign Reform. This is their latest push to shut these down. One IRS prosecution would make an impact and they wouldn't feel so comfortable doing the stuff."

The House Ways and Means Committee has asked the Justice Department to prosecute Lerner for her involvement in the scandal, and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted to hold her in contempt for refusing to testify about the issue.

[line-em-up]

Because we can trust Cummings to tell the truth.

E-mails show Cummings' staff asked for info on True the Vote

http://video.foxnews.com/v/3455065888001/e-mails-show-cummings-staff-asked-for-info-on-true-the-vote/#sp=show-clips

[Sean88gt]

Well, no shit.

[dcs13]

Yeah, Cummings is real dirty on this deal. He apparently cut the deal with her lawyer outside of committee. He's even got some dems mad at him on that deal. Apparently Lerners attorney screwed up and let her talk instead of taking the 5th straight up. There's a little law in the DC that if she says anything other than I take the fifth, she waves her fifth...
I bet they cut them both loose pretty quick. That's probably why this is starting to "leak out"... Gonna be a hot summer folks, get the popcorn and beer and watch the show... I still think Lerner comes down with Vince Foster syndrome...

[BP]

Yeah, Cummings is real dirty on this deal.

His wife was Rangel's chief of staff and his predecessor was Kweisi Mfume, he's dirty on a lot of deals just like the guy he learned it all from.

[dcs13]

His wife was Rangel's chief of staff and his predecessor was Kweisi Mfume, he's dirty on a lot of deals just like the guy he learned it all from.

Wow, he is slimmy. They're gonna cut him loose. Watch for emails to "leak out" that will sink him further.

[Forever_frost]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/13/irs-says-it-lost-key-lerner-emails/

IRS says it lost key Lerner emails
Agency blames 2011 hard drive crash for data loss

By Stephen Dinan



The IRS has told Congress that it has lost some of former employee Lois G. Lerner’s emails, including some covering communications with Democrats in Congress and with other parts of the government, the House’s top tax-law writer said Friday.

Rep. Dave Camp, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said he was stunned that it took more than a year into the investigation for the IRS to inform Congress that it didn’t have those emails.

The agency blamed a computer crash for the mishap.

“The fact that I am just learning about this, over a year into the investigation, is completely unacceptable and now calls into question the credibility of the IRS’s response to congressional inquiries,” Mr. Camp said. “There needs to be an immediate investigation and forensic audit by Department of Justice as well as the Inspector General.”

Ms. Lerner ran the division that gave unwarranted scrutiny into tea party groups’ applications for tax-exempt status. She retired from the agency last year while under scrutiny for her actions.

The House has since voted to hold her in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify under oath.

Her lawyer has said she did not break the law, but said she doesn’t trust the congressional investigation.

In emails that were turned over to Congress, Ms. Lerner describes some of the files lost in the 2011 hard drive crash as “irreplaceable.”

Mr. Camp said the emails lost were “critical years” from the beginning of the targeting of conservative groups.

He said the White House must now get involved and demand other federal departments and agencies scour their records for emails to or from Ms. Lerner, since those records will not be available from the IRS.

“Frankly, these are the critical years of the targeting of conservative groups that could explain who knew what when, and what, if any, coordination there was between agencies,” Mr. Camp said. “Instead, because of this loss of documents, we are conveniently left to believe that Lois Lerner acted alone.”

Previous emails did show Ms. Lerner had communicated with the Federal Election Commission about the tax status of some applicants.

In a letter Friday to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, House oversight committee Chairman Darrell Issa, who has issued a subpoena seeking IRS documents, said more than 1 million potentially responsive documents have yet to be produced.

“At this rate, the IRS’ response to the committee’s subpoena will drag on for years,” Mr. Issa wrote.

He gave Mr. Koskinen until Wednesday to produce all of the documents still being withheld, and said if they aren’t turned over, his committee will look at ways to enforce the subpoena.

The IRS says it will eventually produce more than 67,000 Lerner emails.

According to the agency, employees such as Ms. Lerner have some of their “active” emails stored on the IRS centralized network. The rest they can save in their email archive on their hard drive, but those are lost if the hard drive crashes.

The agency said more than 250 employees have spent more than 120,000 hours working to comply with congressional investigations into the tea party targeting, at what the agency said has been a cost of nearly $10 million.

[kingjason]

Yeah I just read that. What a fucking joke.

[Trip McNeely]

Will that excuse work for when taxpayers send in their taxes? Whoops all of my info for the last 2 years suddenly got deleted...

[Forever_frost]

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/06/13/the-clever-way-gop-congressman-is-pushing-back-after-irs-claims-lois-lerner-emails-were-erased-by-a-glitch/

The Clever Way GOP Congressman Is Pushing Back After IRS Claims Lois Lerner Emails Were ‘Erased by a Glitch’
Jun. 13, 2014 5:56pm Jason Howerton
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Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) asked the National Security Agency on Friday to turn over all the metadata it has collected on the email accounts of former IRS official Lois Lerner from January 2009 to April 2011. Stockman’s clever move comes hours after the tax agency apparently claimed it had lost Lerner’s emails from that same time period due to a computer glitch.
Steve Stockman

AP

“I have asked NSA Director Rogers to send me all metadata his agency has collected on Lois Lerner’s email accounts for the period which the House sought records,” Stockman said in a press release. “The metadata will establish who Lerner contacted and when, which helps investigators determine the extent of illegal activity by the IRS.”

“The claim incriminating communications were erased by a glitch conjures memories of Rose Mary Woods,” the congressman added. “Barack Obama has brought us Jimmy Carter’s economy and Richard Nixon’s excuses.”

Congress requested all emails sent from Lerner to and from other IRS employees from early 2009 to April 2011. After promising to turn them over, the IRS said Friday it can’t find any of those emails.

Stockman isn’t the only member of Congress who isn’t buying the excuse. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) asked, “If there wasn’t nefarious conduct that went much higher than Lois Lerner in the IRS targeting scandal, why are they playing these games?”

TheBlaze has reached out to Frederick R. Chang, a recognized national expert in cyber security and SMU professor, to see if there are ways the emails “lost” due to a glitch or crash could be recovered. We will update this story should he respond.

Read Stockman’s letter to NSA Director Admiral Michael Rodgers below:

June 13, 2014
Admiral Michael S. Rogers
Director, National Security Agency
Fort Meade, MD 20755

Admiral Rogers:

First, thank you for your 33 years of, and continued service to, our country.

Second, as you probably read, the Internal Revenue Service informed the House Ways and Means Committee today they claim to “lost” all emails from former Exempt Organizations division director Lois Lerner for the period between January 2009 and April 2011.

According to chairman Camp, “The IRS claims it cannot produce emails written only to or from Lerner and outside agencies or groups, such as the White House, Treasury, Department of Justice, FEC, or Democrat offices” due to a “computer glitch.”

I am writing to request 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.

The data may be transmitted to our Communications Director at Donny@mail.house.gov.

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.

Warmest wishes,
STEVE STOCKMAN
Member of Congress

[talisman]

hahahahahaha

[BP]

Yeah, because government employees never archive anything to cover their asses. What I can't believe is that there haven't been any "rogue" IRS agents doing talk shows and writing books. They must have travel restrictions and one heck of an NDA to be able to keep a lid on this. Then again we know the government back channeled into everything, even if you archived it on a cloud drive somewhere it could have been deleted.

[Forever_frost]

http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/25/irs-prematurely-retired-data-storage-devices/?advD=1248,1623281

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) prematurely “retired” computer data storage devices worth millions of dollars and filed “disposal” documents for computer hardware that still existed, according to an internal inspector general report reviewed by The Daily Caller.

IRS commissioner John Koskinen testified before Congress that ex-official Lois Lerner’s emails were lost in a June 2011 computer crash and that her hard drive storing those emails was “recycled.”

The IRS also claimed that it lost emails from six other employees due to separate computer crashes. U.S. Archivist David Ferriero said that the IRS “did not follow the law,” which requires government agencies to keep email records, to print out emails in case there’s a computer crash, and to notify Ferriero’s office when records are lost or destroyed.
IRS Prematurely ‘Retired’ Data Storage Devices

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) prematurely “retired” computer data storage devices worth millions of dollars and filed “disposal” documents for computer hardware that still existed,...

Koskinen confirmed that IRS employees’ emails during this period were saved on six-month backup tapes. But Koskinen could not explain why the IRS did not inspect Lerner’s backup tape before it was erased. ”It would be difficult, but I don’t know why they didn’t do it,” Koskinen said. “I have no idea or indication that they did.”

The IRS, which spent $44.1 million in information technology (IT) hardware maintenance in fiscal year 2011 and $47.8 million in fiscal year 2012, closed out its six-year business relationship with the email archiving-and-recovery company Sonasoft in September 2011. Meanwhile, sophisticated data storage devices were being thrown away in the agency’s national IT offices in Maryland, even though the IRS was still paying for maintenance on the devices.

The IRS prematurely “retired” data-storage devices and filled out “disposal” documents for hardware that still existed and was supposed to still be in use, according to a Sept. 24, 2013 Treasury Inspector General (TIGTA) report entitled “Increased Oversight of Information Technology Hardware Maintenance Contracts Is Necessary To Ensure Against Paying for Unnecessary Services.”

“In another [maintenance] contract, 22 of 54 storage devices had been retired prior to the end of the service contract or were migrated to a separate storage contract as part of the IRS’s efforts to consolidate data storage,” according to TIGTA.

“When the contract was originally awarded in December 2009, it covered 54 storage devices with an average annual hardware maintenance cost of about $2.5 million,” according to the TIGTA report. ”The current list, dated April 1, 2013, showed 32 storage devices requiring maintenance. The decrease in the number of storage devices is due to the retirement of those hardware assets or the migration to a separate storage contract as part of IRS’s efforts to consolidate and share storage across the IRS.”

The IRS also filled out disposal documentation for IT devices that still existed.

“In another contract reviewed, we compared the asset listing to the information technology asset inventory system and identified four retired assets,” the TIGTA report stated. “The IRS provided the disposal documentation for these four retired assets showing that these assets were ‘written off’ because they could not be located during the inventory. However, as a result of our subsequent inquiries, the IRS confirmed that the assets existed and took steps to correct the information technology asset inventory management system by placing the assets into an ‘in use’ status.”

[Forever_frost]

House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) said Wednesday that former IRS official Lois Lerner suggested investigating Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) before she was forced to leave her position due to the IRS targeting scandal.

According to documents unearthed by Camp, Lerner received an invitation to speak at an event that was intended for Grassley.

Emails show former IRS official Lois Lerner pondered an investigation into Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) for attending an event with his wife, whose participation would be paid for. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

Lerner informed the group of the mistake, but then wrote to a colleague: “Looked like they were inappropriately offering to pay for his wife. Perhaps we should refer to Exam?”

That questioned prompted another IRS official to respond that paying for Grassley’s wife to attend is income for Grassley, and “not prohibited on its face.” The followup email said the proper procedure would be to see if the group files a 1099 form to report the “income” Grassley earned, and see if Grassley reported that income in his annual tax filing.

Lerner replied by saying “thanks,” and added, “Don’t think I want to be on stage with Grassley on this issue.” The emails are redacted and don’t make it clear what event they both might have spoken at.

Camp said it is “shocking” that Lerner would use the email mix-up as a way to attack Grassley.

“At every turn, Lerner was using the IRS as a tool for political purposes in defiance of taxpayer rights,” he said. “We may never know the full extent of the abuse since the IRS conveniently lost two years of Lerner emails, not to mention those of other key figures in this scandal.

“The fact that DOJ refuses to investigate the IRS’s abuses or appoint a special counsel demonstrates, yet again, this administration’s unwillingness to uphold the rule of law.”

Read the Lerner emails here:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/06/25/revealed-the-lois-lerner-emails-that-werent-lost/