How Many Smoking Guns Do Holder and Obama Need to Act on the IRS Scandal?

QUESTION -- How many smoking guns does it take to make one Obama administration smoking gun? ~~~~~ FACTS. ** On May 10, 2013, before the public release of audit findings by the US Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration reported that the IRS had selected political groups applying for tax-exempt status for intensive scrutiny based on their names or political themes, the Director of the IRS Exempt Organizations division, Lois Lerner, answered what was later revealed to be a planted question by stating that the IRS was "apologetic" for what she termed "absolutely inappropriate" actions. Wide condemnation of the IRS followed and led to several investigations, including an FBI criminal probe ordered by United States Attorney General Eric Holder. Initial reports described the selections as nearly exclusively of conservative groups with terms such as "Tea Party" in their name. Lerner's boss, then-Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, later testified to Congress that he had discussed with Lerner how she was to make the revelation and apology using a planted question at a meeting of the American Bar Association, rather than during an appearance two days earlier before the House Ways & Means Committee in Congress. She asserted that the practice had not been generalized but localized in the Cincinnati IRS office. Media found that at least two other IRS regional offices were harassing conservative groups and that these applicants were told their cases were being reviewed by a Washington IRS taskforce. The Inspector General report also revealed that Lous Lerner was told about tbe harassment practice at a meeting on June 29, 2011. ** "In an email to an aide responding to a request for information from a Washington Post reporter, Lerner admits that she “can’t confirm that there was anyone on the other side of the political spectrum” who had been targeted by the IRS. She adds that “The one with the names used were only know [sic] because they have been very loud in the press.” In other words, only conservative groups were being looked at for criminal prosecution. Among groups singled out for special scrutiny were the Tea Party Patriots; True the Vote, the voter-rights organization based in Houston, and Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, the nonprofit political group advised by GOP strategist Karl Rove. ** On March 27, 2013, just days before the congressional hearing took place, Lerner described the purpose for the hearing to IRS staff in an email : "There are several groups of folks from the FEC world that are pushing tax fraud prosecution for c4s who report they are not conducting political activity when they are (or these folks think they are). One is my ex-boss Larry Noble (former General Counsel at the FEC), who is now president of Americans for Campaign Reform. This is their latest push to shut these down. One IRS prosecution would make an impact and they wouldn't feel so comfortable doing the stuff. So, don't be fooled about how this is being articulated – it is ALL about 501(c)(4) orgs and political activity." Lerner later acknowledged pursuing prosecutions of these groups would not fit well with the law. ** According to IRS emails obtained in 2014 through a Freedom of Information Act request from Judicial Watch, Lois Lerner was in contact with the Department of Justice in May 2013 about whether tax exempt groups could be criminally prosecuted for "lying" about political activity. Lerner wrote in a May 8, 2013 email to Nikole C. Flax, who was Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller's chief of staff : "I got a call today from Richard Pilger Director Elections Crimes Branch at DOJ....He wanted to know who at IRS the DOJ folks could talk to about Sen. Whitehouse idea at the hearing that DOJ could piece together false statement cases about applicants who "lied" on their 1024s --saying they weren't planning on doing political activity, and then turning around and making large visible political expenditures. DOJ is feeling like it needs to respond, but want to talk to the right folks at IRS to see whether there are impediments from our side and what, if any damage this might do to IRS programs. I told him that sounded like we might need several folks from IRS. I think we should do it – also need to include CI [Criminal Investigation Division], which we can help coordinate. Also, we need to reach out to FEC. Does it make sense to consider including them in this or keep it separate." ** Lerner emailed colleagues urging them to be careful about what they put in their own messages because the information could be discovered by congressional investigators, in an email later released by Representative Darrell Issa. Her April 9, 2013 email that warned about the dangers of such electronic communications : "I was cautioning folks about email and how we have several occasions where Congress has asked for emails. We need to be cautious about what we say in emails." The April 2013 email trail began with Lerner's query to Maria Hooke, an IRS technology employee, and Nanette Downing, the manager of the unit that evaluated the applications. Lerner referenced "conversations" by "OCS" - the Microsoft instant-messaging system the IRS used. Lerner apparently was concerned about whether such messages were regularly saved and could be part of any subpoena for data by congressional investigators. Hooke noted that such conversations could be saved - and included in a congressional subpoena : "To date, OCS conversations are not specifically identified as part of the Electronic Data Request…for information, however, if one of the parties saved the conversation as an email or file they would become part of the electronic search. My general recommendation is to treat the conversation as if it could/is being saved somewhere, as it is possible for either party of the conversation to retain the information and have it turn up as part of an electronic search," Hooke concluded. Lerner's April 2013 message was written 12 days after she read a draft report on the targeting of tea party and conservative groups by the IRS inspector general and suggested that top agency officials communicated among themselves via an instant-messaging system that was not regularly archived. The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released the email at a hearing with IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. The emails were turned over to the Committee more than a year after it was subpoenaed, in a demand for all documents relating to the 2010 to 2012 targeting scandal. ** Representative Jim Jordan, one of the Oversight Committee's GOP members, challenged Koskinen about the Lerner emails. The IRS chief responded that he had never seen them and was unfamiliar with the instant messaging system. During the exchange with Jordan, Koskinen seemed to find nothing suspicious about Lois Lerner's interest in whether IRS instant messages were "searchable" and could be turned over to Congress. Jordan repeated that Lerner said it was "perfect" when she learns that it is not traceable, not trackable, not stored : "What I want to know is, why did it take us this long to get these emails? We've been after these for 6 months and you dump them on us on July 3rd. Have you ever seen this email...have you ever seen this stuff before, Commissioner Koskinen?" Koskinen answered "No, and I don't see anything in here where Lois Lerner says "wow, I got rid of my earlier emails and now I got to check on these." ** Lerner, who retired last year, was held in contempt of Congress in May 2014 for refusing to testify before Issa's committee. ** The IRS disclosed in June 2014 that it had lost thousands of Lerner's emails because her computer crashed in the summer of 2011. The hard drives of at least seven other employees connected to the tea party investigation also crashed. Acting IRS Commissioner Koskinen acknowledged that Lerner's hard drive was recycled and presumably destroyed. Backup tapes also were routinely reused after six months. The IRS generated 24,000 Lerner emails from 2009 to 2011 for investigators because she had copied in other agency employees. The IRS said that it pieced together the emails from the computers of 83 other workers. ~~~~~ Dear readers, to answer the question at the top of this blog, it seems to take many many smoking guns to make one smoking gun capable of either forcing Attorney General Holder to prosecute Lois Lerner for contempt or begin a serious investigation of the IRS scandal that violated the constitutional rights of Americans trying to exercise political free speech. It takes many many guns to get cooperation instead of delaying tactics from Obama's IRS Commissioner Koskinen. As for President Obama, his last public comment about the IRS scandal was that there's "not one smidgen of corruption" in it. After the November elections creates a GOP Congress, perhaps we will present Holder and Obama with the smoking gun of Articles of Impeachment.