Lois Lerner was directly involved in the targeting program

Don’t be afraid, America, was placed on “administrative leave“, is a terribly harsh form of discipline that is effectively tantamount to paid leave. During this week’s hearing before the House Oversight Committee, Lerner (rather) invoked her Fifth Amendment rights and refused to answer any questions. She claimed she had done “nothing wrong”, which reportedly explains why this is happening not wanting to resign. The question is: can Lerner be a relatively innocent cutie in all this (down scapegoat from Benghazi)? Eh, probably not, via National Review: :

A series of letters suggest he is a senior IRS official Lois Lerner was directly involved in the agency’s targeting of conservative groups as early as April 2012, more than nine months after she first became aware of the activity. Lerner, director of the IRS’s Washington, D.C., office of tax-exempt organizations, signed letters of interest to: 15 conservative organizations currently represented by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) between March and April 2012. Letters such as this sent to the Ohio Freedom Council on March 16, 2012, informed groups seeking tax-exempt status that the IRS “was unable to make a final decision on your exempt status without additional information” and included a list of detailed questions something like Inspector General of the Treasury revision considered inappropriate. Some of the groups to which Lerner sent letters are still awaiting approval. Lerner denied involvement in the attacksfor which she blamed several “front-line people” in the agency’s Cincinnati field office.

More with ACLJwhich represents a number of clients who claim they have been victims of the IRS’s targeting program:

The timing of her letters coincides with former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman’s March 2012 appearance before Congress, who testified that no such program existed. Lerner appears to have done nothing to stop this offensive behavior. Our evidence suggests that she actively participated in the inappropriate purpose in March 2012. In fact, she appears to have been quite lively in her investigation. In addition to the letter sent to the Ohio Freedom Council, Our records show that between March and April 2012, Lerner sent 14 other letters to 14 of our clients. It is unclear why her name appears in letters to some organizations but not others. But one thing is clear: this correspondence shows her direct involvement in this program. Moreover, the sending of a letter from a top person in the IRS’s tax-exempt organizations division to a compact Tea Party group also highlights the intimidation used in this targeting trick.

Time to add another bullet to growing list It would seem that this is not true for Lerner. Why isn’t this woman on my ear anymore? Simple: he won’t resign of his own volition, and federal employees – especially white-collar workers like Lerner – are behaving unusually, almost comically: hard to start. Additionally, it is unclear whether Lerner will take responsibility for letters sent under her name. Eric Holder basically got away with saying “there are so many notes” excuse in “Fast and Furious,” and Hillary Clinton attempted a similar maneuver over security demands in Benghazi (which a high-ranking whistleblower claims she was “absolutely” on top of). And while we’re on the subject of liability and disclosure, I still want to know how and why Congress wasn’t informed until this week regarding an internal IRS investigation that confirmed improper targeting practices a year ago. anyway Lerner return journey to the Capitol is a must-see show.

In anticipation of this spectacle, I interviewed one of Lerner’s former colleagues on the Federal Election Commission to gain more insight into its operation over her long career in government. (Lerner said this week that she was “very proud” of her record.) Craig Engle is a prominent Washington Republican election law attorney who worked with Lerner in two different positions at the FEC in the mid-1980s and early 1990s. “I’m probably the person in this town who’s known Lois the longest, since 1985,” he says, tracing their story back to when he briefly worked for her as a teenage lawyer. After Engle was promoted to general counsel to FEC Commissioner Lee Ann Elliot, his up-to-date position allowed him to review and read all of Lerner’s memos and recommendations. “What did I see? I saw everything,” he says. “I saw everything the commissioners had to vote on. How did I feel? I’d say Lois is pro-government. The bigger the better. The more demanding the regulations, the better. The broader the investigation, the better Anything that could be considered an activist government is Lois Lerner, who I worked with.

Engle says Lerner saw violations at every turn, even if her legal justification was flimsy. “Under [Lerner]The General Prosecutor’s Office performed the prosecutorial function. Nine times out of ten, her recommendations conflicted with the respondent. I think she was philosophically against money in politics and was very much a critic of people spending money on political causes. She could always find a violation – at least in her mind or mind. In my opinion, her interpretation of the law was sometimes simply wrong.” Engle believes that Lerner enjoyed her role as a regulator that allowed “the government to dictate things to people rather than recognize them as equals, based on neutral law,” she explains. In response to Weekly standard reporting about Lerner’s overzealous (and ultimately fruitless) FEC investigation into the Christian Coalition, Engle claims the episode was closely monitored by her general way of working “It was a very long investigation. It was very deep, unnecessary and, frankly, collapsed under its own weight.” His reaction to recent reports that conservative Christians are once again grouping together they found each other in the government’s crosshairs after Lerner obtained a prominent position at the IRS? “Quite a coincidence, right?”