New documents show Lois Lerner should’ve been prosecuted for targeting conservative groups

It is getting harder and harder to understand why Lois Lerner was never prosecuted for targeting right-leaning organizations seeking tax exempt status. But new documents unearthed by a government accountability group has clearly revealed Lerner deserves a criminal case brought against her for her actions.

It was 2010 when an illegal transfer of more than one million pages of confidential tax returns, requested by Lerner, happened between the IRS and the Justice Department. This was done just prior to a meeting between Lerner and other lawyers over concerns about the political activity of groups seeking non-profit status.

But it’s new information that is adding to this already sordid tale of government corruption of the highest degree. What we know now, thanks to additional documents obtained by Cause of Action Institute, is that Lerner “almost certainly broke the law when she transferred the documents,” as noted by Eliana Johnson at National Review.

In her article, Cause of Action’s executive director details just how difficult finding this information has been:

“It took an organization over 50 months of investigation and multiple lawsuits to get clarity on the IRS’s own compliance with the rules it enforces against others. The IRS, in the midst of its political targeting of groups engaged in policy advocacy, was engaging in the disclosure of millions of records aimed at ginning up prosecutions of these groups without going through the legally required channels.”

While Lerner and the DOJ were busy trying to seek out tea party groups they believed were trying to avoid Federal Election Committee laws, they were breaking a few laws of their own.

As Johnson explains, “A lawful transfer of the documents would have required a formal request from the DOJ to the IRS but did not make any requests to the IRS for the documents it received.”

Had they gone through the proper channels, their activity would’ve been exposed to public scrutiny through the Joint Committee on Taxation, Johnson adds.

Oversight chair of the House Ways and Means Committee Peter Roskam nailed it when he said, “It is disappointing to be learning significant details in 2016 about how poorly taxpayers were treated in 2010.”

Johnson concludes:

Lerner’s disclosure occurred against the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s January 2010 Citizens United decision, which allowed issue-oriented social-welfare groups to pour unlimited money into the political process and keep their donors anonymous. She shared the documents to aid the DOJ’s preliminary attempts to re-criminalize this activity. DOJ concern about the “misuse of non-profits for indirectly funding campaigns” prompted the meeting between IRS and DOJ officials.

It looks increasingly likely that the file sharing was part of a broader effort on the part of bureaucrats to push back against the Supreme Court’s ruling, an effort that not only almost certainly violated the law but undermined the spirit of the law and the purpose for which it was written in the first place.

There is no reason Lerner should be this easily off the hook. But such is the case when a government thinks its too big to be held accountable. It’s not and a Convention of States is the first step in telling them we’re in control and won’t stand for them breaking the law while accusing us of the same.

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