Posted on 07/10/2015 11:28:19 PM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
MADISON, Wis. – The reaction from Republican lawmakers was outrage and the response was swift Friday following the Wall Street Journal’s bombshell revelations that the director of the state’s political speech regulator and the head of the IRS division accused of targeting conservative groups may have shared information about Wisconsin’s political John Doe investigation.
Republican leadership called on the Legislature to “double down” on finalizing reforms to the state’s Government Accountability Board, the agency that oversees, election, campaign finance and ethics laws.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and Rep. Dean Knudson, R-Hudson, called for a reform bill to be ready for consideration this fall.
“Those reforms will include a means to change the way the GAB operates,” the lawmakers said in a joint statement.
State Rep. David Craig, R-Town of Vernon, told Wisconsin Watchdog on the Vicki McKenna Show, on NewsTalk 1310 WIBA, that he plans to have a bill ready next week that would create a legislative committee with “inherent subpoena power” to get to the bottom of the GAB’s activities in the John Doe and its communications with the IRS.
He said the John Doe investigation would have to first be inactive. It has been stalled since January 2014, when the presiding John Doe judge threw out several subpoenas because the prosecutors did no show probable cause of any wrongdoing.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is expected any day to issue its ruling on multiple challenges related to the secret probe that targeted dozens of conservative advocacy groups and the campaign of Gov. Scott Walker. To be determined is whether the probe must be shut down for good.
“Now is the time for the state Legislature to get control of the situation,” Craig said “Was there wrongdoing? Was the law abided by? Do officials need to be impeached from office?”
Craig called on GAB Director Kevin Kennedy and the agency’s staff to produce records sent to or received by IRS officials from Jan. 1, 2010 to present.
The lawmaker points out that the Government Accountability Board “hid behind the law when shielding John Doe investigation documents from legislators and the Legislative Audit Bureau, all the while sharing information with an unrelated federal agency that has nothing to do with the administration of elections.”
“Even more disturbing is the fact that the very IRS officials in communication with the GAB were the same IRS officials at the heart of a scandal targeting conservative political groups,” Craig added.
The Wall Street Journal opinion piece hit one year to the day after the GAB got out of having to turn over documents related to the investigation thanks to an opinion by then-state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen. The Republican determined there “is no specific authorization” in the law for the agency to turn over investigative records, even at the request of agencies like the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau.
The Journal reported that Kennedy is a longtime “professional friend” of former IRS tax-exempt director Lois Lerner.
Lerner led the Obama administration’s IRS division accused of targeting conservative groups seeking 501(c)(4) nonprofit status. The Senate Finance Committee is looking into more than 6,000 emails from Lerner once thought to be lost.
The piece, headlined “Wisconsin’s friend at the IRS” reveals that Lerner and Wisconsin Government Accountability Board’s Kennedy were in contact at the same time the GAB assisted partisan prosecutors in investigating scores of conservatives and in raiding several of their homes.
“Emails we’ve seen show that between 2011 and 2013 the two were in contact on multiple occasions, sharing articles on topics including greater donor disclosure and Wisconsin’s recall elections,” the op-ed notes.
The emails indicate the two were also personal friends who met for dinner and kept in professional touch. ‘Are you available for the 25th?’ Ms. Lerner wrote in January 2012. ‘If so, perhaps we could work two nights in a row.’”
While all of this was going on, the IRS was increasing its harassment of conservative nonprofits.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Lerner’s lawyer declined to comment. Kennedy, in an email, told the newspaper “Ms. Lerner is a professional friend who I have known for 20 years.” He declined to say more.
The opinion piece notes:
“In an email exchange in July 2011, Mr. Kennedy sent Ms. Lerner an article in the Racine Journal-Times on the declining relevance of public campaign financing amid more private and ‘special interest’ money. ‘Note the last paragraph where the paper supports more transparency,’ Mr. Kennedy writes to Ms. Lerner. ‘The Legislature has killed our corporate disclosure rules.’”
The newspaper asserts that the GAB’s “work also became ammunition for other investigators pursuing high-profile conservative nonprofits.” On that list was Texas-based True the Vote.
After filing for tax-exempt status, True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht says she was “subjected to two IRS business audits, two personal audits, and was contacted several times by the FBI and inspected by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and Occupational Safety and Health Administration,” the opinion piece reports.
Meanwhile, John Doe investigators asked the IRS to look into a conservative group that was a primary target of the probe, sources told the Journal.
“The IRS doesn’t appear to have followed up, but the request shows Wisconsin prosecutors saw their pursuit of independent groups as part of a common agenda with national Democrats,” the op-ed states.
That’s the point, the Wall Street Journal contends. John Doe transcends Wisconsin, with interconnections revealing “the use of tax and campaign laws to limit political speech was part of a larger and systematic Democratic campaign.”
Vos and Knudson said the agency’s leadership needs to be accountable to the former judges who preside over the accountability board “and the board needs to be accountable to the legislature and the citizens of Wisconsin.”
Part 219 of 218 in the series Wisconsin's Secret War
CALL FOR ACTION: Republican lawmakers on Friday say they will seek legislative subpoena power to get to the bottom of the state Government Accountability Board’s activities in the political John Doe investigation and its director’s communications with the IRS’ Lois Lerner.
Wisconsin Watchdog’s take on the latest GAB/IRS controversy. You have to hand it to M. D. Kittle for doing work above and beyond any other reporter on these scandals.
FReep Mail me if you want on, or off, this Wisconsin interest ping list.
None Bother Call It Conspiracy.
This shit ain’t funny no more.
Wide: multiple federal agencies
Deep: multiple governments - fed & state
Hang em high. Hang em slow.
BUMP!
Matt Kittle has been filling in this week for Vicki McKenna on WIBA AM1310. He has a great radio voice, too - and hands it to the Libs with a big old SMILE!
Oh, I wish that I’d known. I don’t listen to Vicki often because her voice grates on me. I like the way she thinks — I just can’ttake her voice.
Kittle is appearing at a fund raiser our local GOP group is having later this summer. I’m looking forward to it.
DISMANTLE the GESTAPO. Prison for the apparatchiks.
6. But the grand nostrum will be a public debt...
8. (4) A great debt will require great taxes; great taxes, many taxgatherers and other officers; and all officers are auxiliaries of power.
11. As soon as sufficient progress in the intended change shall have been made, and the public mind duly prepared according to the rules already laid down, it will be proper to venture on another and a bolder step toward a removal of the constitutional landmarks.
http://www.constitution.org/cmt/freneau/republic2monarchy.htm
Debates in the House of Representatives on the First Report on Public Credit 9–18 February 1790
James Jackson (Ga.)
But it is doubted with me whether a permanent funded debt is beneficial or not to any country.
The same effect must be produced that has taken place in other nations; it must either bring on a national bankruptcy or annihilate her existence as an independent empire. Hence I contend, sir, that a funding system, in this country, will be highly dangerous to the welfare of the republic; it may, for a moment, raise our credit and increase the circulation, by multiplying a new species of currency; but it must, in times afterward, settle upon our posterity a burthen which they can neither bear nor relieve themselves from. It will establish a precedent in America that may, and in all probability will, be pursued by the sovereign authority until it brings upon us that ruin which it has never failed to bring, or is inevitably bringing, upon all the nations of the earth who have had the temerity to make the experiment.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/875
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html
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