WOAH – BOMBSHELL !!
The plot thickens.  We might just have found a biggie….
In a recent Politico interview  (publish date 6/27/14) with the Lois Lerner’s attorney William Taylor III an interesting aspect is buried midway through page #2.
During part of the interview Politico author Rachel Bade inquires about the 1.1 million pages of documents Lerner sent to the Department of Justice that became an issue when discovered by the House Oversight Committee on June 9th 2014.   BACKSTORY HERE.
The documents were sent from IRS to DOJ on a series of 21 discs (CD ROMS) and, according to the admission from the DOJ, “contained legally protected taxpayer information that should not have ever been sent to the FBI“.
Some of the 501(c)(4) documentation included confidential tax records “Schedule B” of IRS filings.   These Schedule B’s outline parties who contribute to, affiliate with, or people who support the 501 organization.   Those tax filing schedules are illegal to distribute.
Why the DOJ waited to inform congress, and why they only did so after Daryl Issa found out about their existence, was a matter congressional consternation but no-one made a big deal about it.
Indeed all prior details and media reports of the interaction have been framed around the substance of legality, and illegality,  for the IRS to actually send the confidential taxpayer data.  This is indeed a concerning aspect – but we think we’ve uncovered something considerably more alarming about both the timing, and the substance.
Inside the Politico article is an explosively revealing defensively framed answer from attorney Taylor.   He is specifically and directly stating it was NOT Lerner who initiated the inquiry:

…” […]  Taylor said Lerner didn’t know [about the unlawful confidential aspect] and sent them because Justice requested the documents”…

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(more…)

(Via Daily Caller) Leave it to Texas to take matters into their own hands. This time, two Texas Congressmen introduced a bill, the Identify and Recover Lost Emails (IRS) Act (H.R. 4958), offering a $1 million reward for the recovery of former IRS director Lois Lerner’s missing emails, or a $500,000 reward for information concerning their whereabouts.

The bill, introduced by Republican congressmen Louie Gohmert and Bill Flores, also proposes a 20 percent salary cut for IRS employees until the emails are found.
“A Tea Party group in my district was one of the first conservative groups to be targeted,” Flores told Breitbart Texas. “Then one of my donors appeared to be targeted… They’re all frustrated with the IRS. Then when this news [about the lost emails] came out, they were all even more agitated.” (more…)

Last Monday:

Last April:

FLASHBACK APRIL IBD […] On Feb. 6, in a subcommittee hearing that heard the testimony of Catherine Engelbrecht — founder of True the Vote, who was targeted by the IRS, FBI and other federal agencies — Cummings vehemently denied having any contact or coordination in targeting True the Vote.
Responding, attorney Cleta Mitchell, who is representing True the Vote, indicated that staff on the committee had been involved in communication with the IRS. In short, Cummings was not telling the truth.
After the hearing, Engelbrecht filed a formal ethics complaint accusing the Maryland Democrat of trying to intimidate her by causing the targeting. (more…)

Washington, DC – Today, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) announced the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) targeting of conservative individuals includes a sitting United States Senator.
According to emails reviewed by the Committee under its Section 6103 authority, which allows the Committee to review confidential taxpayer information, Lois Lerner sought to have Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) referred for IRS examination.
“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 Camp. “At every turn, Lerner was using the IRS as a tool for political purposes in defiance of taxpayer rights. We may never know the full extent of the abuse since the IRS conveniently lost two years of Lerner emails, not to mention those of other key figures in this scandal. The fact that DOJ refuses to investigate the IRS’s abuses or appoint a special counsel demonstrates, yet again, this Administration’s unwillingness to uphold the rule of law.”  (read more)

Before the Lois Lerner issues hit the news, the IRS was sending the identity of conservative Traditional Marriage Defenders to liberal/gay opposition groups so the Rainbow Mafia could target them.   The IRS has admitted doing this.

Yet, with Lois Lerner, and essentially the same claims, the institutional Democrat Party within the IRS claim there is no “there” there.

WASHINGTON – The IRS has agreed to pay $50,000 in damages to the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) for unlawfully releasing its private information to a gay rights group that is a political rival, the Daily Signal has learned.
NOM expressed relief at the settlement agreement.

“Congress made the disclosure of confidential tax return information a serious matter for a reason,” NOM chairman John D. Eastman told The Daily Signal. “We’re delighted that the IRS has now been held accountable for the illegal disclosure of our list of major donors from our tax return.”

(more…)

WASHINGTON DC – The top U.S. official in charge of archiving federal records testified Tuesday that the IRS ran afoul of the law by neglecting to tell his office that a trove of emails from the woman at the center of the targeting scandal disappeared after an apparent hard drive crash.

Archivist of the U.S. David Ferriero, speaking before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, made clear that federal agencies are supposed to report whenever their records are destroyed or even accidentally deleted. But he said that after emails from embattled IRS official Lois Lerner vanished after a computer failure in 2011, nobody told the National Archives.
“They did not follow the law,” Ferriero said.  (read more)

(Washington Post)  Noted management expert and Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen was apparently called out of retirement — like the Ted Williams of evasive, unapologetic bureaucrats — to destroy what is left of his agency’s credibility.

At immediate issue is two years of subpoenaed e-mails from former IRS official Lois Lerner to outside agencies, lost in a convenient computer crash. The possible involvement of other agencies is one focus of a congressional investigation into the heightened IRS scrutiny of conservative nonprofit groups before the 2012 election.
In recent congressional testimony, Koskinen admitted that the e-mails were irretrievably gone; that the “backup tapes” had been erased; and that Lerner’s hard drive was apparently destroyed in an aggressive act of recycling. With that settled, Koskinen expressed his “hope that the investigations  can be concluded in the very near future.”
(more…)

Article and video(s) below:

(Via Daily Mail) Republicans dropped a hammer on IRS Commissioner John Koskinen during a testy hearing covering the disappearance of emails tied to the agency’s tea party targeting scandal.
The emails, covering the period January 2009 to April 2011, belonged to embattled former official Lois Lerner and could shed light on whether an expansive scheme to single out conservative groups for special scrutiny was guided by members of Congress or administration officials outside the IRS.

‘The committee requested all of Lois Lerner’s emails over a year ago,’ said House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa. ‘And we subpoenaed the emails in August 2013 and again in February 2014. … You worked to cover up the fact they were missing and only came forward to fess up on a Friday afternoon after you had been caught red-handed.’
‘You personally did not cause the targeting,’ he told Koskinen, referring to the tea party scandal. ‘You personally did not destroy the emails. But by your actions and your deception, you now own this scandal.’ (more…)

(Daily Caller) The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) cancelled its longtime relationship with an email-storage contractor just weeks after ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s computer crashed and shortly before other IRS officials’ computers allegedly crashed.
The IRS signed a contract with Sonasoft, an email-archiving company based in San Jose, California, each year from 2005 to 2010. The company, which partners with Microsoft and counts The New York Times among its clients, claims in its company slogans that it provides “Email Archiving Done Right” and “Point-Click Recovery.” Sonasoft in 2009 tweeted, “If the IRS uses Sonasoft products to backup their servers why wouldn’t you choose them to protect your servers?” (more…)