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Lois Lerner, the central figure in the IRS scandal, is breaking her silence in an unapologetic interview where she says she's not sorry and maintains she “didn’t do anything wrong” -- despite widely documented evidence that her division targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny. The former head of the tax-exempt unit, speaking with Politico, gave her first media interview since the scandal broke 16 months ago. She has twice refused to answer questions before Congress, but used the interview to publicly assert her innocence. "I know I did the best I could under the circumstances and am not sorry for...

House Republicans have dug up emails from Lois Lerner in which the former IRS official refers to some in the Republican Party as “---holes” and "crazies" – an exchange they say shows her “animus” toward conservatives. The November 2012 emails were released Wednesday by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., as part of his renewed call for the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate. Lerner is the ex-IRS official who led the unit accused of targeting conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status for extra scrutiny. In the email exchange, Lerner appears to be chatting with...

Scandal: The tangled web of IRS deceit unravels a bit more with news recycled backup tapes of lost emails still exist and statements before a federal judge that Lois Lerner's hard drive was irreparably damaged were untrue. Deliberately destroying evidence pertaining to the investigation of possible criminal activity is a crime. So is lying about it to Congress and the courts as part of a cover-up of that activity. On July 11, U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton, at a hearing examining a lawsuit against the IRS by the targeted conservative group True the Vote, told Obama administration lawyers he...

Conservative talk radio host Mark Levin’s legal foundation is asking a federal judge to sanction the Environmental Protection Agency for destroying public records. The Landmark Legal Foundation asked federal District Judge Royce Lamberth to sanction the EPA for the destruction of emails and text messages concerning the delay of large new environmental regulations until after the 2012 election.

Scandal: An internationally accredited information-technology asset-management firm says the IRS has some explaining to do as our patience is taxed with tales of even more convenient computer crashes. Private-sector organizations as vast as the Internal Revenue Service typically have redundancy built into their information technology systems, as secure record keeping is the key to managing their businesses and staying in business. Such records, if nothing else, are often required to be kept by law, and often by the IRS itself. As we have noted, Lois Lerner's lost emails from the critical period when the IRS was serving as a political...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is currently claiming that seven different IRS officials experienced computer crashes that erased their emails and made it impossible for the IRS to cooperate with congressional investigations into the IRS targeting matter. The wave of computer crashes apparently struck both Washington, D.C. — where Lois Lerner oversaw the agency’s Exempt Organizations division — and also Cincinnati, Ohio — where agents processed tax-exempt applications. The Federal Records Act requires IRS employees to save all of their emails pertaining to agency business and to also print those emails out in case they have a computer crash.

"Lois Lerner Caught Granting Muslim Brotherhood front groups Tax Exempt status as far back as BUSH ADMINISTRATION" One of the reasons Republicans like Rep. Mike Kelly from Pennsylvania won’t come forward with the truth about Malik Obama’s tax exempt status and Lois Lerner’s role in it likely has to do with what she was permitted to do when a Republican president was in office. Calling attention to Lerner’s signature being at the bottom of the Barack H. Obama Foundation’s (BHOF) approval letter is certain to cause the Republican Party headaches over its complicity in taking the country to where it...

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said Tuesday that IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has done “a terrible job communicating” in the investigation into former IRS official Lois Lerner’s missing emails. “Obviously, I think he is doing a terrible job communicating, and obviously, they made huge mistakes as far as how they’ve retained records and whether or not they’ve been upfront and whether or not those records were available,” McCaskill said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “This guy did a terrible job being arrogant yesterday. We all think of the IRS as being arrogant, and he kind of confirmed that,” she added about his...

Scandal: The IRS canceled a contract with an email storage contractor weeks after Lois Lerner reported lost personal files and before other IRS officials had their hard drives crash as Tea Party-targeting investigations began. Timing is everything, the saying goes, and sometimes the timing of events is also very curious, as in the case of the lost emails of Lerner and at least six other officials at the very same time the IRS canceled its contract to back up and preserve those emails as required by federal law. Lerner's computer supposedly crashed in June 2011, an alleged event the IRS...

On his Monday radio show, conservative talk show Mark Levin reacted to how congressional Democrats in a House Oversight Hearing had conducted themselves earlier over the committee’s inquiry into missing emails related to an investigation of former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner. Levin said it was clear to him the response from congressional Democrats was orchestrated in advance in tandem with the highest level of the Obama White House to obstruct the inquiry into the Internal Revenue Service missing emails congressional hearing. “So let me be very blunt about it – the Democratic Party now is conducting itself as...

One of the reasons Republicans like Rep. Mike Kelly from Pennsylvania won’t come forward with the truth about Malik Obama’s tax exempt status and Lois Lerner’s role in it likely has to do with what she was permitted to do when a Republican president was in office. Calling attention to Lerner’s signature being at the bottom of the Barack H. Obama Foundation’s (BHOF) approval letter is certain to cause the Republican Party headaches over its complicity in taking the country to where it is today.Lois Lerner has been caught granting 501(c)(3) tax exempt status to yet another group that should...

Live link to today's 7:00Est congressional hearing with IRS commissioner http://www.c-span.org/video/?320097-1/irs-targeting-investigation

When the news trickled out a year ago that the head of the IRS union, Colleen ("fat and ugly") Kelley, met with President Obama the day before the agency began targeting the Tea Party, I finally saw the link. The story was picked up by many news sources on the right but did not develop any further. It's my opinion that this is the connection that the "lost" emails are trying to hide. And it's a big connection -- the White House, the POTUS, the union boss, and the government agency all collaborating, and conspiring, to thwart the actions of...

According to a report published late last night in POLITICO, the hard drive belonging to Lois Lerner where the IRS claims her emails to outside agencies and groups like the White House, Department of Justice, FEC, Democrat members of Congress, etc. were stored has been...destroyed. Ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s crashed hard drive has been recycled, making it likely the lost emails of the lightening rod in the tea party targeting controversy will never be found, according to multiple sources. “We’ve been informed that the hard drive has been thrown away,” Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the...

Lois G. Lerner, the employee at the center of the IRS tea party targeting scandal, wanted to recover files from her computer hard drive after it crashed in 2011, but when told it was impossible, she took a philosophical view. “Sometimes stuff just happens,” she said in a 2011 email to the IRS tech staff that tried to recover documents from the hard drive.

The news came late in the day on Friday the 13th.According to the House Ways and Means Committee, the IRS reports having “lost” former IRS manager Lois Lerner’s emails to and from other IRS employees sent between January of 2009 and April of 2011 due to a ‘computer crash.’In light of the disclosure, these are some of the logical requests that should be made of the IRS: Please provide a timeline of the crash and documentation covering when it was first discovered and by whom; when, how and by whom it was learned that materials were lost; the official documentation reporting the crash...

Well, in the Friday afternoon news dump, the IRS slipped i the little tidbit that it had an "OOPSIE!" It had somehow managed to lose all the emails that Lois Lerner had sent prior to 2011. We're already starting to get some interesting reactions...

Catherine Engelbrecht became the face of the IRS scandal with her riveting testimony before Congress on how her group True the Vote was targeted by the IRS for selective persecution and harassment. Recently, it was discovered that Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings had a hand in the IRS targeting True the Vote. You might remember Cummings as the grandstanding Democrat who railed against Darrell Issa’s investigation of the scandal after a Congressional hearing with IRS official Lois Lerner had closed (and then implied that Issa was racist): Further making the situation ironic and unsightly for justice-avoiding Democrats is that emails show...

This may come as a shock to Lois Lerner, but the House of Representatives has the authority to jail her unless she changes her mind about refusing to answer questions about her role in the IRS scandal. Essentially, what is required for that to happen is for a House majority to vote for a motion holding her in contempt and House Speaker John Boehner to then direct the House sergeant at arms to arrest and confine her. Under the Constitution, the House can do that under its “inherent contempt” authority, which was initially exercised in 1795 during the First Congress...

March 15, 2014 Enough! Patriot lawsuit demands money from IRS Tea party challenges 'crushing bureaucracy' unleashed on those who disagree with Obama Bob Unruh Just imagine sending to the Internal Revenue Service a bill for: Actual damages for violating the Privacy Act. The costs of complying with additional demands for information about an application. Loss of donors. Loss of membership fees. Damages for the violation of constitutional rights. Damages for loss of the benefit of tax-exempt status. Damages for impairment of constitutionally protected rights. Punitive damages. Litigation costs. Attorneys’ fees. And more. A case of that kind has been filed,...

Mr. Dershowitz thinks the federal campaign fraud charges against the conservative filmmaker and author are an example of “selective prosecution.” Weighing in on the case Friday in an interview with Law Blog, Mr. Dershowitz was withering in his opinion of the Manhattan U.S. attorney office’s prosecution of Mr. D’Souza, who pleaded not guilty last week to making illegal campaign contributions to a Republican U.S. Senate candidate in 2012. “The idea of charging him with a felony for this doesn’t sound like a proper exercise of prosecutorial discretion,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “I can’t help but think that [D'Souza's] politics have something...

Lois Lerner fears for her life if she testifies openly before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Wednesday, according to her attorney. House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa announced Sunday that Lerner will testify at Wednesday’s hearing, but Lerner’s attorney Bill Taylor said that Lerner will seek to continue invoking her Fifth Amendment rights and will also seek a one-week delay of her testimony. Oversight members are reportedly open to granting Lerner a one-week delay if she petitions for one in person at Wednesday’s hearing. The delay would allow Lerner’s lawyers to continue negotiating for immunity, which they...

Yesterday on Fox News Sunday House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa announced Lois Lerner, former head of tax exempt groups at the IRS, would be back in front of Congress this week to testify about the inappropriate targeting of conservative, tea party and patriot groups. Issa cited Lerner's attorney, William Taylor, as the source of confirmation of her agreement to testify on Wednesday, March 5. Shortly after that appearance, Taylor told POLITICO an agreement Lerner would testify was not made, that he didn't know where Issa was coming from and that Lerner would continue to plead the Fifth. “As...

There are emails between Issa and Lerner’s attorney and now she is asking for more time. She is coming Wed., but may testify at a later time as well. Why did Lerner do what what she did ? We have the evidence and it is save yourself or go down in flames.

House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa (R-CA) appeared on Fox News Sunday this morning with some “late breaking news”: “[Lois Lerner´s] attorney indicates that she now will testify,” Issa said, referring to the chief witness in his investigation of the IRS’ alleged targeting of conservative groups. Lerner, who was the Director of the IRS Exempt Organizations division during the supposed targeting, has thus far invoked the Fifth Amendment in front of Issa’s committee. “We believe the evidence we’ve gathered causes her, in her best interest, to be someone who should testify,” Issa said. Host Chris Wallace even double-checked that Lerner...

Today Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, confirmed that 100% of the established 501(c)(4) groups the IRS selected for audit were conservative. But Obama says their was not a smidgen of corruption in the IRS. The Wall Street Journal reported: A Republican House committee chairman said the Internal Revenue Service targeted tax-exempt conservative groups for audits, widening the scope of GOP ire over the agency’s oversight of political activities. House Democrats pushed back, saying Republicans were seeking to use the IRS controversy to score political points with their conservative base in an election...

Suppose you're President Obama. Who would be your ideal candidate to head up the Justice Department's investigation into IRS targeting of conservative groups? How about someone who gave thousands of dollars to your senate campaign as well as your presidential races? The confidence that the president and AG Holder have in the press ignoring this IRS "investigation" must be so great that they simply don't care who knows that it's set up to be a whitewash.[snip] Bosserman donated a combined $6,750 to President Obama's election campaigns and the Democratic National Committee between 2004 and 2012, according to federal campaign finance...

Bill Elliot was a cancer patient who lost his insurance due to ObamaCare and couldn’t pay the expensive new premiums. He was talking about paying the ObamaCare fine, going without health insurance and “letting nature take its course.�CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO He went on FOX News where his story was picked up by C. Steven Tucker, a health insurance broker who helped him keep his insurance.Now suddenly Bill Elliot is being audited for 2009 with an interview only scheduled in April 2014. Assuming he lives that long. That might be a coincidence, but Tucker is being audited...

I have compiled a list, which some of you have seen, of Obamacare's violations to the Constitution. It is here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3075257/posts I compiled that list with the help of various people and sources, but one of them, #4, states "The Federal government (HHS/IRS) having full access to your bank account against your will, to make sure that you are paying your Obamacare premiums, infringes upon your right to be secure in your person, papers, and effects, as do unreasonable searches into personal health insurance records." Does it really have access to our bank accounts? Under what circumstances, if so?

Embattled IRS official Lois Lerner is retiring from the agency effective Monday, two congressional aides told POLITICO. Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/lois-lerner-retires-irs-97217.html#ixzz2fkIfmJUs Lerner sparked the IRS scandal in May when she acknowledged that the agency wrongly targeted tea party groups applying for a tax exemption. She was placed on administrative leave later that month and is under a subpoena to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

All same-sex couples who are legally married will be recognized as such for federal tax purposes, even if the state where they live does not recognize their union, the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service said Thursday. It is the broadest federal rule change to come out of the landmark Supreme Court decision in June that struck down the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, and a sign of how quickly the government is moving to treat gay couples in the same way that it does straight couples. The June decision found that same-sex couples were entitled to federal benefits,...

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. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the committee, told...

More than two years after her upstart Senate campaign rocked the Delaware political world, Christine O'Donnell got an unexpected contact from a U.S. Treasury Department agent warning that her private tax records may have been breached. The phone message earlier this year shocked the battled-scarred candidate, a tea party favorite who knocked off Republican mainstay Michael Castle in the primary before losing in a bid to win Vice President Joseph R. Biden's former seat. "Ms. O'Donnell, this is Dennis Martel, special agent with the U.S. Department of Treasury in Baltimore, Md. ... We received information that your personal federal tax...

More than two years after her upstart Senate campaign rocked the Delaware political world, Christine O’Donnell got an unexpected contact from a U.S. Treasury Department agent warning that her private tax records may have been breached. The phone message earlier this year shocked the battled-scarred candidate, a tea party favorite who knocked off Republican mainstay Michael Castle in the primary before losing in a bid to win Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s former seat. “Ms. O’Donnell, this is Dennis Martel, special agent with the U.S. Department of Treasury in Baltimore, Md. … We received information that your personal federal tax...

Patterico unearthed something that, to my knowledge, had not been reported previously: a November 2011 Business Week article about the business operations of non-profit universities that concludes with this: Lois Lerner, the IRS’s director of tax-exempt organizations who is overseeing the investigation, says many schools are rethinking how and what they report to the government. Receiving a thick questionnaire from the IRS, she says, is a “behavior changer.”

With the new acting commissioner of the IRS Daniel Werfel releasing the first report on the agency’s targeting of conservative groups comes a big revelation: liberal groups received very similar treatment. CNN’s Dana Bash reported Monday afternoon that the term “progressive” was used by the IRS, in addition to conservative buzz words like “tea party” and “patriot” to identify applications by groups for tax-exempt status. As Bash pointed out, “this is a very big development with regard to the IRS controversy because of course we have seen hearings and investigations for months now looking into why conservative groups

Mitch McConnell delivered a speech today at the American Enterprise Institute to officially signal that the IRS scandal has entered its post-fact phase. When the IRS first revealed that its Cincinnati office had attempted to enforce its nonprofit laws using a search function that disproportionately impacted conservatives, Republicans were certain it must have come from the White House. They were going to follow the facts. But all of the facts point in the same direction, which is that the Obama administration had nothing to do with it at all. That was the conclusion of the agency’s inspector-general report, as well...

Despite being under heavy scrutiny from both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill and all over the country for inappropriately targeting conservative groups, IRS employees are about to receive $70 million in bonuses. The Internal Revenue Service is about to pay $70 million in employee bonuses despite an Obama administration directive to cancel discretionary bonuses because of automatic spending cuts enacted this year, according to a GOP senator. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa says his office has learned that the IRS is executing an agreement with the employees' union on Wednesday to pay the bonuses. Grassley says the bonuses should...

...Paz described an agency in which IRS supervisors in Washington worked closely with agents in the field but didn't fully understand what those agents were doing. Paz said agents in Cincinnati openly talked about handling "tea party" cases, but she thought the term was merely shorthand for all applications from groups that were politically active -- conservative and liberal. Paz said dozens of tea party applications sat untouched for more than a year while field agents waited for guidance from Washington on how to handle them. At the time, she said, Washington officials thought the agents in Cincinnati were processing...

A Washington-based IRS supervisor acknowledged she was personally involved in reviewing Tea Party applications for tax-exempt status as far back as 2010, Fox News confirms -- a detail that further challenges the agency's initial claim that the practice of singling out those groups was limited to a handful of employees in Ohio. Congressional sources confirmed to Fox News that Holly Paz, who until recently was a top deputy in the division that handles applications for tax-exempt status, told congressional investigators she reviewed 20 to 30 applications. Some requests languished for more than a year without action. The account undercuts the...

This is comforting… The far left government agency that targets conservatives is now training with AR15s. WYFF4 reported: Republican Jeff Duncan said he made the discovery at a Maryland Federal Law Enforcement Training Center on May 23. The congressman was touring the facility with Homeland Security officials as part of his investigation into the amount of ammunition purchases the agency conducts. Duncan told News 4’s Sean Muserallo he saw about eight or nine shooters identified to him as IRS agents practicing at an indoor 100-yard range. “While we were sitting there,” said Duncan, “the gentleman told them to sling their...

On CNN’s State of the Union this morning, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) told Candy Crowley that the IRS scandal involving targeting of conservatives had been “solved.” Crowley asked, “As far as you are concerned, based on the information that you now have, which in its totality is greater than ours, is this case over, have you solved the case of the IRS and how this came to be?” Cummings answered, “Based upon everything I’ve seen, the case is solved. If it were me, I’d wrap this case up and move on.” Cummings added that he would release transcripts of IRS...

Published on Jun 6, 2013 Americans targeted by the IRS testify about the effects of an over-reaching government on their lives.

The New York Times has been noticeably unenthusiastic in covering the IRS/Tea Party scandal. A news story about it on their web page now is headlined: “IRS focus on conservatives give G.O.P. an issue to seize on.” As far as it is concerned, the big issue here is that the IRS’s abuses may have helped the GOP, not the core fact that the IRS abused its power. There may be a reason why the Times thinks this way: Just 14 months ago it was actually cheerleading the targeting of Tea Party groups by the Internal Revenue Service. In an unsigned...

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli joked at the Virginia Republican Convention, where he was nominated by the state GOP for governor, that the Obama administration must not think he's a conservative: He hasn't been audited by the IRS. The IRS nevertheless found a way to exact vengeance on the slayer of government-lawbreaking, who has sued several federal government agencies -- and even wrote a book about why the Obama administration is America's biggest lawbreaker. Yesterday Cuccinelli blasted the IRS for withholding payment of $125 million in money owed to Virginia. Cuccinelli won the second largest Medicaid fraud settlement is U.S....

The IRS has notified congressional staff that top officials in the agency’s Affordable Care Act implementation team were recently placed on administrative leave for potential improprieties, according to a congressional source. The agency told lawmakers that Fred Schindler, who is Sarah Hall Ingram’s deputy, and another staffer in the division were put on leave. The move is the result of gifts the staffers allegedly received — including $1,100 in free food and other items — while attending a 2010 health care conference. The IRS didn’t immediately comment. The agency is surrounded in scandal after acknowledging last month that it wrongly...

Some Democrats participating in the House IRS hearings have used the opportunity to ask tough questions and promise to punish any government employees who unfairly singled out conservative non-profit applicants for unfair treatment. Not Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore...He even took the opportunity to trash 501 c(4) advocacy groups that advocate things he doesn’t like, such as the traditional legal definition of marriage:

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) not only blamed the victims of the IRS's targeting on Tuesday--he also implied the IRS would have been justified targeting conservative and Tea Party groups if the agency did so based on what the groups stood for instead of on the words in their names. At a House Ways and Means hearing in which six leaders of organizations the IRS had targeted were testifying, McDermott said the "mistake here was the staff used the names of the organizatiions instead of the work they do." [video] McDermott lashed out at the witnesses, saying "each of your groups...

Testifying on Capitol Hill Tuesday, witnesses from Tea Party, pro-life and patriotic educational groups from around the country testified about their experience of intimidation and targeting from the Internal Revenue Service. Witnesses described being sent hundreds of pages from the IRS asking invasive questions about members, books, contents of prayers and the names of anyone attending meetings, including children. "The IRS sought documentation of our meetings, rallies, events, or candidate forums. That included video and audio transcriptions, notes, copies of all handouts; the political party of speakers, and an “issues” list. The IRS sought identifying information on employees; data on...

Another great speech from Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PN):