Right. I'm sure it was just a coinkidink I got audited a month after...
If I refuse to similarly photograph a homosexual pride parade in a favorable light because it conflicts with my Religious and Political beliefs, will I get punished?
Posted on 07/11/2015 1:04:18 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Lois Lerner, the former IRS official accused of targeting conservative non-profit groups, is longtime friends with a Wisconsin state regulator who helped local prosecutors investigate aides and conservative allies of Gov. Scott Walker.
The Wall Street Journal reports in an editorial ["Wisconsin's Friends at the IRS"] that Lerner and Kevin Kennedy, the director of the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB), were in routine contact via email between 2011 and 2013.
Emails viewed by The Journal show that the two regulators discussed issues ranging from the personal to political. They shared news articles about campaign finance and also discussed dinner plans. The pair have known each other for more than 20 years, Kennedy told The Journal.
The revelation raises questions over whether Lerner and Kennedy coordinated in any way in their investigations.
Kennedy helped the Milwaukee County district attorney and prosecutors in several other counties conduct a wide-ranging, multi-year investigation into whether Walker’s gubernatorial campaigns illegally colluded with outside conservative groups. The investigation was sparked after Democrats in the state lost an election to recall Walker and senate Republicans after they busted state employee unions.
The investigation, which has been halted by a judge, saw the homes of Walker associates raided in the middle of the night. Secret subpoenas were filed allowing investigators to obtain phone, text message and email records of conservatives. Many of those targeted in the investigation were never made aware that they were being scrutinized.
Under Kennedy’s stead, GAB hired four investigators to take part in the probe. It also devoted staff to the investigation. The Wisconsin Club for Growth, which was one of the targeted groups, alleged last year that Kennedy cooperated in the investigation for months before getting approval from the six retired judges that sit on GAB’s board. The Club for Growth also asserted that after the board voted that GAB should stop aiding the investigation, staffers with the regulatory agency continued to do so anyway.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Kennedy’s GAB considered subpoenaing Fox News’ Sean Hannity and local radio host Charlie Sykes as part of the probe.
At the same time that Kennedy’s agency was taking part in the Walker witch-hunt, Lerner was directing the IRS’s Exemptions division, which handled applications from organizations seeking non-profit status. Some conservative groups have alleged that they were unfairly audited and investigating after applying for tax exemption. Congressional investigations into whether the audits were politically-motivated have been stymied by the IRS and Lerner.
The Journal points to another connection between the Walker investigation and the IRS.
Sources tell us that in 2012 and 2013 John Doe investigators asked the IRS to look into a conservative group that was among the primary targets of the Wisconsin Doe investigation. 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.
After The Journal’s editorial appeared, Wisconsin state lawmakers called on Kennedy to resign.
“Friday’s Wall Street Journal exposed a coordinated effort by the GAB’s Kevin Kennedy and the disgraced Obama appointee at the IRS Lois Lerner,” reads a joint statement from Republican state senator Alberta Darling and representative John Nygren.
“It is clear that the harassment of conservative groups by Lerner at the federal level directly coincided with the harassment of conservative groups right here in our state.”
"...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 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.”....
...Mr. Kennedy’s GAB work also became ammunition for other investigators pursuing high-profile conservative nonprofits, including Texas-based True the Vote. In an October 2012 letter to True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht, Maryland Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings cited the Wisconsin GAB’s criticism of True the Vote’s methods reviewing petitions to recall Mr. Walker and said the results “would not have survived legal challenges.”
In a memo to “Interested Parties” in 2012, Obama for America General Counsel Bob Bauer praised Mr. Kennedy’s GAB for having taken “swift action in the aftermath of [True the Vote’s] involvement in the June recall elections.” Mr. Bauer described the GAB’s response as evidence that “Elected officials in many swing states are not waiting and taking their chances that True the Vote acts to disrupt the electoral process on November 6th or during the early voting period.”
After filing for tax-exempt status for True the Vote, Ms. Englebrecht 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......
Too bad the GOP can’t be as ruthless as leftists against leftists.
"..........................."And that is why they hate conservatives. They hate you because you are killers of their dream. Because you are defenders of a Constitution that thwarts their cause. They hate you because your "reactionary" commitment to individual rights, to a single standard and to a neutral and limited state obstructs their progressive designs. They hate you because you are believers in property and its rights as the cornerstones of prosperity and human freedom; because you do not see the market economy as a mere instrument for acquiring personal wealth and political war chests, to be overcome in the end by bureaucratic schemes.
Conservatives who think progressives are misinformed idealists will forever be blind-sided by the malice of the left—by the cynicism of those who pride themselves on principle, by the viciousness of those who champion sensitivity, by the intolerance of those who call themselves liberal, and by the ruthless disregard for the well-being of the downtrodden by those who preen themselves as social saints...."
Like this is news????
The apple is rotten to the core.
All the signs are there. An illicit shadow government run by the highest levels of this administration. Fake email accounts, personal accounts and conversations that collude to oppress opposition, and who know what else?
They only thing they don’t show now are the black uniforms, jack boots and their Obama Swastika.
Just like there was, and I am sure is a reconstituted, “journolist” for Leftist, that is mainstream, journalists to coordinate their attacks on conservatives, there’s probably a “regulatolist” of regulators coordinating their hit jobs.
RICO......NOW!!
They’re too preoccupied with stabbing each other in the back and counting their dirty money to notice that the Democrats are doing the same thing to everyone else.
McCain and the GOP were 100% in on this,
so anyone who expects justice from this corrupt
GOP .... is a fool’s fool.
“....Lerner Is Longtime Friends With Regulator Who Targeted Scott Walker”......
Well surprise, surprise, surprise.
Why isn’t she in jail yet? If she were a republican, she would already have been hung.
Alleged? What is known already proves this beyond a shadow of doubt. Just not in a court of law. Yet.
None of this is a surprise to me. During the first 2 years of Scott Walker’s 1st term, the news media was full of the antics and bulling of the leftists and their sympathizers.
Scott Walker stood firm even when the stupid Democrats fled to Illinois to avoid a vote for confirmation of Walker’s proposed new laws on government employee unions.
The lefties occupied the beautiful Wisconsin capitol building and did a lot of damage.
Additionally they are constantly ridiculing the conservatives who live in the Green Bay region. ‘Such idiots, such troglodytes, etc. - doncha know, those backward Catholic pro-lifers in Green Bay’????
I do wish some of our Freepers would keep an open mind about Scott Walker. He has been through hell and back. I can only wonder why he is willing to put himself out there only to be slandered by the media, and now by some so-called Conservatives. If you have a beef with him, let it be about specific issues, not call him a RINO. If Scott Walker is a RINO, than I am too. But, then the tern “RINO” no longer has any meaning at all. I hate to see folks here behave like those idiots in Madison, Wisconsin did against Scott Walker.
bttt!
When sanity returns to our federal government, these people should face trials and a good dose of prison time.
Tell me again why this ugly leftist bimbo is not in jail?
And still Lois sits at home, collecting over $100K per year of taxpayer funded payroll and benefits....
Right. I'm sure it was just a coinkidink I got audited a month after...
If I refuse to similarly photograph a homosexual pride parade in a favorable light because it conflicts with my Religious and Political beliefs, will I get punished?
I have a family member that was audited three straight years after donating to one of the first Tea Party groups.
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