Archive

Posts Tagged ‘Lois Lerner’
October 8th, 2014 at 3:50 pm
Report: IRS Failed to Disclose Info in 100s of Cases

The IRS is out-of-control.

In the last year we’ve learned that Lois Lerner and other officials in the tax-exempt unit singled out conservative groups for extra scrutiny before approving their requested non-profit status.

That was followed by revelations from IRS higher ups that they mysteriously lost thousands of emails from Lerner and others during the timeframe of interest to congressional investigators.

Last week, a private jet company alleged that the IRS “wiped clean a number of computer hard drives containing emails and other electronic documents that the Government was required to produce.”

And now this.

“The Internal Revenue Service wrongly withheld or failed to adequately search for records in hundreds of Freedom of Information Act requests, while accidentally releasing sensitive taxpayer information in other instances, an independent government watchdog found,” reports the Washington Free Beacon.

The Beacon is summarizing an analysis released by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

“TIGTA sampled FOIA requests to the IRS and found 11 percent ‘in which taxpayer rights may have been violated because the IRS improperly withheld or failed to adequately search for and provide information to the requestors’.”

As an independent federal agency, the IRS has a grave obligation to be accountable to the citizens it serves, either directly through FOIA requests or indirectly through congressional oversight panels. That the IRS seems chronically incapable – and increasingly, it seems, unwilling – to honor due process and the rule of law is reason enough to launch a full-scale reconsideration of what the agency does, how it does it and what kind of people should be entrusted to follow the rules.

September 10th, 2014 at 7:14 pm
IRS re Lost Emails: Oops, We Did It Again

The Obama administration has a penchant for releasing damaging disclosures on Fridays.

The most recent example was last Friday’s admission by the IRS that – in addition to losing potentially incriminating emails from Lois Lerner’s account – it also can’t find emails from five other employees connected to the conservative targeting scandal.

Two of the five worked in the agency’s Cincinnati office where most of the bad behavior took place. The others include Lerner’s technical adviser, a group manager in the tax-exempt division and a tax law specialist, reports Fox News.

The IRS says all five permanently lost access to emails sought by congressional investigators when their hard drives crashed. The agency’s Inspector General is testing the drives to see if any emails can still be recovered.

Republicans in Congress are not amused.

“The IRS’s ever-changing story is practically impossible to follow at this point, as they modify it each time to accommodate new facts,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said. “This pattern must stop.”

More likely it will continue.

August 27th, 2014 at 6:59 pm
IRS Erased Lois Lerner’s Blackberry AFTER Investigation Began

It’s been a rough five days for the Internal Revenue Service.

Last Friday attorneys at Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, said Department of Justice lawyers revealed a second back-up system that stores all government emails.

Presumably, this includes the emails to and from former IRS manager Lois Lerner’s account; emails that are sought by investigators on the House Oversight Committee because of Lerner’s connection to the potentially illegal targeting of conservative advocacy groups.

If true – DOJ officials are disputing Judicial Watch’s account of the conversation – this casts a serious shadow on the IRS’s credibility, since Commissioner John Koskinen told Congress under oath that the emails had been lost in a hard drive crash.

However many back-up systems there are – and whether Koskinen knew the number – the Commissioner has another integrity crisis brewing.

“Thomas Kane, Deputy Assistant Chief Counsel for the IRS, wrote in a declaration, part of a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch against the IRS, that [Lois Lerner’s] BlackBerry was ‘removed or wiped clean of any sensitive or proprietary information and removed as scrap for disposal in June 2012,” reports Fox News.

The date is significant because congressional staff members had already interviewed Lerner about her role in the targeting operation. Deleting messages from her government-owned smartphone after that meeting – but before preserving the contents– looks like a thinly veiled attempt to destroy evidence.

The House Oversight Committee will have its hands full when Congress returns from its August recess.

Expect to see some high-profile hearings.

August 26th, 2014 at 7:57 pm
DOJ: We Have Lois Lerner’s “Lost” Emails

Apparently, you can lie to Congress but not to Judicial Watch.

The conservative watchdog organization is publicizing an admission by the Department of Justice that government officials can access emails reportedly lost in a hard drive crash.

The messages – correspondence to and from former IRS manager Lois Lerner – have been sought by congressional investigators seeking more information about the agency’s targeting of conservative advocacy groups filing for tax-exempt status.

In sworn testimony, IRS officials have told members of Congress that thousands of emails sent from Lerner’s government account could not be retrieved because a back-up system had also been erased.

But now attorneys at the DOJ are singing a different tune.

“Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said Justice Department lawyers informed him that the federal government keeps a back-up copy of every email and record in the event of a government-wide catastrophe,” reports the Washington Examiner.

That includes Lerner’s IRS emails.

But don’t expect them to be produced anytime soon. The DOJ is claiming that the newly revealed back-up system would be “too onerous to search,” but did say that Treasury Department inspectors are looking into it.

While the litigators wrangle, we’re left with yet more evidence that the Obama administration doesn’t mind playing fast and loose with the truth – even under oath.

The House of Representatives already voted back in May to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify; making her the second administration official after Attorney General Eric Holder to receive such a dishonor.

If it’s true that top IRS brass lied under oath to Congress about the whereabouts of Lerner’s potentially damaging emails, one wonders what message House leadership would send to this latest act of executive defiance.

August 14th, 2014 at 3:25 pm
Like IRS, CMS Emails Go Missing

It looks like Lois Lerner – the former IRS manager at the center of the scandal targeting conservative groups – isn’t the only Obama administration official who lost emails subpoenaed by Congress.

Marilyn Tavenner, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is now believed to have deleted emails sought by congressional investigators trying to understand why Healthcare.gov had such a horrendous rollout.

“In order to stay below the agency’s Microsoft Outlook email size limit, Tavenner would regularly delete emails after copying or forwarding them to her staff for retention,” says the MSNBC report that broke the story. “However, Tavenner didn’t follow that procedure every time, meaning some emails never made it to her staff for safekeeping before being deleted.”

That could turn out to be a costly oversight for Tavenner.

As Jillian Kay Melchior points out, “Federal law tasks heads of all federal agencies with ‘mak[ing] and preserv[ing] records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency and designed to furnish the information necessary to protect the legal and financial rights of the Government and of persons directly affected by the agency’s activities.’”

Unlike Lerner who claims her IRS computer crashed taking with it unrecoverable emails – a claim disputed by IT experts inside and outside the tax-gathering agency – Tavenner, at best, is pleading that she’s too busy to follow the law. At worst, she’s the latest Obama administration official caught skirting her legal obligations to hide inconvenient truths.

To my knowledge, Tavenner isn’t considered an overt Obama loyalist, so it’s possible that the missing emails are a genuine oversight by a busy administrator. The trouble is, Tavenner works in an administration seemingly filled with people who are unwilling to comply with the kind of document sharing necessary for the people – through Congress – to understand and judge what unelected bureaucrats are doing. One of the tragedies of bad behavior by some is the suspicion it casts on everyone else on the team.

So be it.

Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has already pledged to hold hearings on alleged wrongdoing by agency heads when Congress returns from its August recess.

Don’t be surprised to see a hearing scheduled to get the truth about Tavenner’s missing emails.

July 7th, 2014 at 8:59 am
Podcast: The “Lost” IRS Emails
Posted by Print

In an interview with CFIF, Hans von Spakovsky, Manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation, discusses Lois Lerner’s “lost” e-mails, how the Justice Department is not taking the IRS investigation seriously and other recent IRS scandals.

Listen to the interview here.

June 25th, 2014 at 2:25 pm
Isn’t Not “Following” the Law the Same as Breaking It?

No one wants to be David Ferriero right now.

He’s the U.S. Archivist, the man in charge of keeping all of the federal government’s records for posterity.

Apparently though, no one told the IRS. Twelve days ago the agency revealed that it has conveniently lost two years’ worth of emails from Lois Lerner, the former IRS supervisor at the center of a scandal that targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny.

“Any agency is required to notify us when they realize they have a problem,” Ferriero told a House Oversight committee panel. One imagines that an alleged hard drive failure vaporizing thousands of emails qualifies as just such a problem.

By law, the IRS is supposed to alert Ferriero within days. He wasn’t notified until earlier this month – about three years after the crash occurred.

When pressed, all Ferriero would say is that the IRS did not “follow” the law. He would not say the agency broke the law.

It doesn’t matter. The truth is obvious. Every new revelation in the IRS scandal only serves to harden the perception that so-called public servants abused their positions.

June 18th, 2014 at 10:26 am
Ramirez Cartoon: Missing
Posted by Print

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

May 12th, 2014 at 3:43 pm
New Poll: Majority of Americans Care About IRS/Lois Lerner Scandal, Too
Posted by Print

In last week’s Liberty Update, we debunked the claim by the Obama Administration, its Democratic Congressional apologists and the mainstream media that the Benghazi scandal is something about which Americans just don’t care.  According to a Rasmussen survey released last week, 51% say that the Benghazi affair merits further investigation, while just 34% disagree:

One can only imagine survey data on the matter if the media had bothered to cover it as it deserves.  Or, perhaps more to the point, if a Republican president presided over the attack and political coverup.  Nevertheless, it’s an encouraging sign that the American public not only expresses concern, but prefers continued investigation.  That should encourage Congressional leaders and media to get to the bottom of this important matter.”

Today, there’s more encouraging news in that regard.  Rasmussen also reports that a clear majority of Americans also say the ongoing IRS/Lois Lerner scandal merits further investigation:

Half of voters still believe the IRS broke the law when it targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups, and even more think the matter needs to be looked into further.  A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% of likely U.S. voters think the Obama administration’s handling of the IRS matter merits further investigation.  Just half as many (28%) say the case should be closed.  Fifteen percent (15%) are not sure.”

Both Benghazi and the IRS persecution of conservative groups are critical matters, and Americans shouldn’t allow the Administration to bury them.  Fortunately, that’s not the case, which should encourage the media and members of Congress to pursue the truth in both cases in a responsible, thorough, public manner.

May 2nd, 2014 at 1:23 pm
Podcast: The IRS, ObamaCare, Keystone XL Pipeline and Other Scandals
Posted by Print

In an interview with CFIF, Phil Kerpen, President of American Commitment, discusses damaging emails between IRS official Lois Lerner and DOJ employees, misleading numbers in ObamaCare, and another delay with the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Listen to the interview here.

June 28th, 2013 at 2:33 pm
IRS Scandal Could Net Congressional Contempt Citation

Lois Lerner impliedly waived her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, according to a party-line vote in the House Government Oversight Committee today.

Lerner entered a brief statement declaring her innocence before invoking the Fifth Amendment during a May 14 appearance before the committee to discuss her role in the IRS scandal targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny.

Soon after, Lerner was placed on administrative leave from the IRS.

The resolution is the first step in a process that could result in a Contempt of Congress citation against Lerner. If so, she would be the second Obama administration political appointee to receive the highest form of censure by a congressional chamber.

The other person: Attorney General Eric Holder.

H/T: Washington Post

May 25th, 2013 at 2:20 pm
IRS Gave Obama Charity Fast-Track Approval while Tea Party Groups Harassed

What’s in a name?

If you’re Lois Lerner, an IRS division head in charge of approving groups for non-profit status, seemingly everything.

By now, just about everyone in America knows that the IRS division tasked with scrutinizing non-profit applications deliberately and consistently targeted groups with the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their name.

No similar litmus test was used for liberal or progressive groups, indicating a clear and convincing bias by the government against ideological opponents of the White House.

In fact, in at least one case, it looks like the very same IRS agents who persecuted conservative groups fast-tracked approval for an outfit whose name practically screamed for – and received – special treatment.

The name of the organization: The Barack H. Obama Foundation (BHOF). Though not formally affiliated with President Obama, the group is headed by one of his half-brothers, Abon’go Malik Obama, and named for their mutual father.

Organized in 2008, “BHOF operated illegally as a non-profit group and falsely claimed tax-exempt status – for which it had not yet formally applied,” according to research released by Discover the Networks, an online database that keeps track of the connections between leftwing groups and activists.

But once BHOF did get around to applying for tax-exempt status, the IRS’ penchant for favoritism really showed itself. Per Discover the Networks, “The foundation finally submitted its 2010 application for non-profit, tax-exempt status on May 23, 2011; seven days later, it submitted its filings for 2008 and 2009. Within just one month of these filings – on June 26, 2011 – Lois Lerner, the senior official who headed the IRS’s tax-exempt organizations office, signed paperwork granting tax-exempt status to BHOF.”

Here’s the best part. Apparently, “Lerner broke with the norms of tax-exemption approval making BHOF’s tax-exempt status retroactive to December 2008.”

Maybe the next time Lois Lerner appears before the House Oversight Committee the members will ask her to explain how, with the Tea Party and BHOF examples in mind, they can draw any other conclusion about her stewardship at the IRS than that it has been characterized by the most obvious case of unethical – and potentially illegal – partisan bias.