Posted on 07/01/2014 8:32:18 PM PDT by smoothsailing
July 1, 2014
Patrick Howley
Ex-Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner tried to audit Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley after Grassley blocked President Obama’s nominee to head the Department of Justice (DOJ) tax division, an executive branch insider told The Daily Caller.
Grassley made it more difficult for the IRS and DOJ to work together to target conservative groups by blocking Obama’s political appointee Mary L. Smith from taking over the DOJ Tax Division, which prosecutes criminal cases for the IRS. Grassley held up the nomination in early 2010, just as Lerner and fellow IRS officials were mapping out their targeting strategy. The White House later withdrew Smith’s nomination.
The source confirmed to The Daily Caller that the White House and IRS officials “were very upset at Senator Grassley and Republicans for blocking a vote on Mary Smith’s nomination.”
The IRS relies on the DOJ Tax Division to prosecute both criminal and civil cases, and has entire legal teams devoted to making DOJ referrals. Placing a political appointee as assistant attorney general for the DOJ Tax Division was a top priority for the Obama White House.
Grassley made sure that no Obama political nominee got confirmed for the post, and kept in a “career,” or non-political, DOJ tax head for another two years.
“The Assistant Attorney General is not the kind of position that you probably would want someone learning on the job,” Grassley said at a Feb. 4, 2010 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, pointing out Smith’s lack of tax experience.
Lerner’s IRS underling Nikole Flax announced the agency’s new scrutiny of nonprofit groups in February 2010, the very same month that Grassley made his concerns known about Smith. Grassley’s opposition to Smith infuriated top officials at the IRS.
Smith was heavily touted by the administration for her Native American background. Smith worked on President Clinton’s re-election campaign and as Clinton’s Associate Counsel to the President and was a partner at the Chicago law firm Schoeman Updike Kaufman & Scharf when Obama nominated her for the position in 2009.
Grassley remained a thorn in the side of the IRS, scrutinizing the activities of Lerner’s Exempt Organizations division more closely than other lawmakers during Obama’s first term.
Lerner finally tried to drum up a criminal case against Grassley after accidentally receiving some of his mail.
“Perhaps we should refer to exam?” Lerner wrote to colleagues in 2012 after she received an invitation from a group asking Grassley to speak at a December 2012 event and offering to pay Grassley’s wife to attend. Lerner and Grassley were both invited to speak at the same event, hosted by an organization that had its name redacted from released congressional documents. Lerner felt that the group’s offer to pay for Grassley’s wife could be a potential criminal violation.
“We would need to wait for: (i) Grassley to accept and attend the speaking arrangement and (ii) then determine whether [redacted] issues him a 1099,” IRS official Matthew Giuliano replied to Lerner, thinking aloud about the circumstances they would need to make a criminal case against Grassley.
“We have seen a lot of unbelievable things in this investigation, but the fact that Lois Lerner attempted to initiate an apparently baseless IRS examination against a sitting Republican United States Senator is shocking,” said Republican House Ways and Committee chairman Rep. Dave Camp upon the publication of Lerner’s email regarding Grassley.
Will we ever have some honesty again?
Either the elected bodies grow some stones and fix this or.... the “parliment” has essentially been disolved and become vassals of the administrative agencies.
Well howdy. Lois is quite a busy little thuggish bee. She would have fit in very well working for the Stasi.
The Federal agencies are an Augean stable of corruption that would require a considerable effort to set aright.
The list, Ping
Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list
Why isn’t she in prison yet?
They’re probably waiting to see if she gets a job on “The View”.
Because she hasn’t been sentenced. Yet.
How did she “accidentally” receive some of Grassley’s mail?
I choked on my stew.
And didn’t she threaten some other critter with an audit if he ran again for office?
If we ever get a looksee at Lois’s e-mails, it’s going to be ‘Katie bar the door’.
How does that happen? It's a scandal unto itself!
Come on now,
As the Dems point out on TV, Republicans haven't found any incriminating emails sent from Lerner.
None.
I mean incriminating emails couldn't have disappeared into thin air could they? That cant happen in the USA Uncle Sam.
Not in the IRS.
And she admitted to nothing incriminating under oath. Nothing.
"Move on folks, nothing to see here, you are blocking traffic"
She would never be able to fully participate in discussion what with all of her computer problems preventing her from obtaining information...
Bump and ping.
Apparently Lois Lerner and Grassley were invited to speak to the same group.
2:49 - Greta
The Backstory Behind Lois Lerner’s IRS Targeting Of Senator Chuck Grassley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKrA-9JXv-4
Accidentally? Just like they accidentally deleted all of Lois Lerner's hard drives.
Maybe the same dog that ate Lerner's hard drive fetched Grassley's mail from his mailbox.
So when does Dave Camp and the rest of his buddies do something about her and the criminally corrupt organization she worked for?
Christ, what do they need? A picture of her standing over a kids body with the barrel still smoking?
Comey sent Martha Stewart to a federal prison on the supposition that she heard a bit of helpful information on private stocks.
THIS woman conspired to use the police power of a federal agency to inimidate a United States Senator for Gods sake.
She makes Vito Genovese look like a piker.
How long do we have to watch this stunning thug show?
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