According to an article in the National Review, the IRS still refuses to tell congress about Lois Lerner's employment status. Lerner is the former head of the IRS’s exempt-organizations division who was placed on paid administrative leave after going public about how the Internal Revenue Service singled out conservative groups for heightened scrutiny and harassment. (Actually "going public" is a poor way to put it. She was really trying to let it slip out unnoticed.) At any rate, it turns out the IRS and the Federal Election Commission worked hand in hand at targeting conservative groups.
Embattled Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner and an attorney in the Federal Election Commission’s general counsel’s office appear to have twice colluded to influence the record before the FEC’s vote in the case of a conservative non-profit organization, according to e-mails unearthed by the House Ways and Means Committee and obtained exclusively by National Review Online. The correspondence suggests the discrimination of conservative groups extended beyond the IRS and into the FEC, where an attorney from the agency’s enforcement division in at least one case sought and received tax information about the status of a conservative group, the American Future Fund, before recommending that the commission prosecute it for violations of campaign-finance law.
The FEC is Lois Lerner's old stomping ground, having worked there from 1986 to 1995 where she was known for her aggressive attitude towards conservative groups. Correspondence from the FEC improperly requested tax information that Lerner was quite willing to provide.
“Several months ago . . . I spoke with you about the American Future Fund, a 501(c)(4) organization that had submitted an exemption application the IRS [sic],” the FEC attorney wrote Lerner in February 2009. The FEC, which polices violations of campaign-finance laws, is not exempted under Rule 6103, which prohibits the IRS from sharing confidential taxpayer information, but the e-mail indicates Lerner provided that information nonetheless: “When we spoke last July, you had told us that the American Future Fund had not received an exemption letter from the IRS,” the FEC attorney wrote.
The timing of the correspondence between Lerner and the FEC suggests the FEC attorney sought information from the IRS in order to influence an upcoming vote by the six FEC commissioners. The FEC received a complaint in March 2008 from the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party alleging that the American Future Fund had violated campaign-finance law by engaging in political advocacy without registering as a political-action committee. The American Future Fund responded to that complaint in June 2008, telling the commission that it had applied for tax exemption in March of that year and was a “501(c)(4) social-welfare organization that was organized to provide Americans with a conservative and free-market viewpoint and mechanism to communicate and advocate on the issues that most interest and concern them.” According to the e-mail correspondence, a month after receiving the American Future Fund’s response, the FEC general counsel’s office — which is prohibited under law from conducting an investigation into an organization before the FEC’s six commissioners have voted to do so — contacted Lerner to investigate the agency’s tax-exempt status.
So here we have the FEC and the IRS, together engaging in extralegal activities for the purpose of preventing conservatives from raising or spending money on politics. Based on this, the likeliest status of Lois Lerner's employment is that she awaits her promotion. The Obama administration is clearly a criminal enterprise.
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