One of the hallmarks of the American identity is the belief that the American people can trust our government to be fair and honest. To undermine this legitimacy would be the death knell of this republic. The weaponization of any portion of our government for an ideology and the use of taxpayer money of meet an agenda is unacceptable to the people of this country.
Under Obama the weight of the various agencies were brought to bear on an unsuspecting populous through the progressive socialists within the government and with the full imprimatur of the Obama administration. From Fast and Furious to the IRS and even up to today we are still cleaning up after the damage the Obama left behind.
My intent today is to focus on the IRS and what the Obama administration did with that agency to do lasting damage to this country by suppressing the conservative Tea Party movement. As a political movement the Tea Party was harassed for many years, and even to this day there are many Tea Party organizations that still have not received the non-profit status that they were requesting.
The major player in the IRS fiasco was and remains Lois Lerner. It has been proven that there were contacts with Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings and Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse about the True the Vote organization.
Cummings staffers first contacted the IRS about True the Vote was in August 2012, asking for information on the Organization and Ms. Engelbrecht. In January 2013 Cummings staff requested further information about the organization from the IRS. Lerner and Deputy Holly Paz went out of their way to obtain as much information as they could which was then sent to Rep. Cummings and was then hidden from the Majority of members of the Oversight Committee. At the end of January Deputy Director of the tax exempt division Holly Paz sent True the Vote’s 990 forms to Cummings staff, a clear violation of federal law. During this entire time Rep. Cummings denied any contact with the IRS . In fact during the time that Ms. Engelbrecht testified before a Subcommittee hearing on this matter which occurred on February sixth 2014, Rep. Cummings used all the black victim rage he could muster to vehemently denounce this woman and deny and contact or coordination with the IRS against True the Vote.
The purposes of these discussions were to discuss the criminal prosecution of conservative c4s who report they are not involved in any political activity and how to go about proving that they were. It was discussed how just one IRS prosecution would impact these groups of conservative Tea Party members and stifle the work they were doing
This line of reasoning moved further up the chain to the Department of Justice led by Eric Holder,( the only Attorney General ever found in Contempt of Congress), before being shut down. Including the DOJ in going after these targeted groups would assure great difficulty in obtaining the documents needed to set the timeline for the illegal activities including the coordination and improper sharing of the taxpayer information connected to the Tea Party groups involved.
Lerner was more than happy to discuss hiding all facets of this illegal activity and even went as far as giving an interview to Politico to tell her lies to the American public and attempt to place herself as the victim. The only group she refused to explain these actions to was the Oversight Committee, the only group whose only purpose is the root out the illegal activities and prosecute those who break the law. Asking for members’ lists, what books they read, the text of prayers and where they and their members go to church are outside the purview of investigation for c4 applications. Lerner and her equally culpable replacement John Koskinen actually told the House ways and Means committee that
“Whenever we can, we follow the law”.
Under Obama, anything was possible and breaking the law was just something to ignore. It was our President who prejudged the investigation that took place over four years and declared there was not a “smidgen of corruption” when he fully knew the facts were pointing to jail time for IRS officials.
Those who worked in the IRS, including Lois Lerner, Holly Paz and later. John Koskinen were knee deep in a criminal enterprise whose only purpose was to harass intimidate, attempt tp criminalize and bankrupt those who political ideology was different from the progressive socialist line. The basic premise was that they could use their public positions in the government to shut down those with opposing views. The bureaucrats in Washington were allowed to use the budget and power of the federal government to target free speech an abuse of power that went far beyond anything that Richard Nixon ever contemplated and these thugs should be held accountable.
A recent settlement of $3.5 million in a class action lawsuit does not go far enough. Lerner and the rest if the swamp at the IRS need to be held accountable. While the taxpayers are paying for the misdeeds of the Lerner IRS, she is now retired with a full government pension provided by the taxpayers.
And now Lois Lerner and Holly Paz have requested that the sworn depositions that they were forced to give be sealed because they are afraid that harm may come to them from the American Public if it were to be made public. But if they did nothing wrong why should the public not be able have those depositions made available. Is it because the actions they took to humiliate and damage others with whom that have a political disagreement were illegal?
The largest miscarriage of justice in this whole debacle was the DOJ, who worked in collusion with the IRS in this whole matter, decided not to prosecute. And although Lois Lerner intentionally misled both federal investigators and the American public about what transpired, the DOJ claimed that they couldn’t prosecute because here was no Intent. Sound familiar?
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TRUMP DOJ LETS SWAMP THING LOIS LERNER SKATE
By
Daniel John Sobieski
Critics may be forgiven for doubting the seriousness of President Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp” in light of his Department of Justice’s decision to give one of D.C.’s swamp things a get out of jail free and not charge former IRS official Lois Lerner in the Tea Party targeting scandal:
The Trump administration has no plans to charge former IRS official Lois Lerner over her role in the Tea Party targeting scandal, the Justice Department said Friday in response to calls by Republican lawmakers to revisit the case.
In a letter to the lawmakers, the Justice Department said that "reopening the criminal investigation would not be appropriate based on the available evidence."
This past April, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, and Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., had asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to take a "fresh look" at the case.
Despite numerous hearings and inquiries into the tough treatment of conservative groups by the tax agency during the 2010 and 2012 elections, the Obama Justice Department had announced in 2015 that no one at the IRS would be prosecuted. They said at the time that investigators had "found no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution.".
The Republicans who requested a fresh look at the case were disappointed in the Trump DOJ's response.
"This is a terrible decision," Brady said. "It sends the message that the same legal, ethical, and constitutional standards we all live by do not apply to Washington political appointees."…
Brady said appointees "will now have the green light to target Americans for their political beliefs and mislead investigators without ever being held accountable for their lawlessness."
Based on the available evidence Lois Lerner should have been measured for an orange jump suit a long time ago. Lerner was a key participant in the scheme to turn the most feared and powerful agency of the federal government, the IRS, into a political weapon and campaign arm of the Obama administration. If nothing else, Lois Lerner should be prosecuted for contempt of Congress for her semi-testimony regarding her own missing emails and smashed hard drives. As Investors Business Daily editorialized in April of 2015:
After pleading her innocence at that 2013 hearing, Lerner went on to invoke her Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. This raised the question of whether the Constitution let her remain silent after she was not silent and pleaded her case.
The House decided that no, it doesn't. In May of last year it voted to hold her in contempt of Congress. The Ways and Means Committee went so far as to send the Justice Department a criminal referral with potential charges that could have meant 11 years in jail.
Lerner waived her rights not only when she pleaded her innocence before Congress, but also when she shared with DOJ information she was withholding from Congress.
Hans Von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, says government officials can't pick and choose when and where they invoke their Fifth Amendment rights. They can't legally give information to the DOJ that they withhold from Congress.
When Lerner gave a lengthy interview to the government, she waived the Fifth. There's no doubt about it," says Von Spakovsky. "The law is crystal clear here in the District of Columbia."
Certainly the actions Lerner was covering up with the help of others like the current head of the IRS, John Koskinen, warrant prosecution. Her deliberate and orchestrated targeting of political opponents like the Tea Party for daring to oppose the Obama administration’s implementation of ObamaCare is more worthy of dictatorships like Venezuela than democracies like the United States. In defending her curious 2013 non-testimony in Politico, Lerner asked us to feel sorry for her and not her intended political victims:
As when she cooperated with the Justice Department but not Congress, Lerner's record-setting assault on the truth continued in Politico with her tale of woe. Still insisting she did nothing wrong, she feels she has to tell her side of the story. She just won't tell it to Congress and the American people under oath.
Lerner fails to appreciate the irony of invoking her right against self-incrimination while trampling on the rights of others. It was her IRS that demanded to know from Tea Party members what books they read and the text of their prayers.
Frankly, we are more inclined to feel sorry for the likes of Becky Gerritson of the Wetumpka, Ala., Tea Party. Along with other IRS targets, she gave Lerner and the rest of the Obama administration a well-needed civics lesson in her congressional testimony.
"In Wetumpka," she said, "we are patriotic Americans; we peacefully assemble; we petition our government; we exercise our right to free speech. We don't understand why the government tried to stop us."
Though she sought and received the protection of the Fifth Amendment, Lerner tried to strip from the Tea Party and other conservative groups the protection of the First Amendment. If she needs a shoulder to cry on, we might advise her to call Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote, an organization dedicated to clean elections without vote fraud. Engelbrecht couldn't invoke the Fifth or refuse to answer questions when Washington came down on her….
Before July 2010, when Engelbrecht filed with Lerner's IRS seeking tax-exempt status for her group, she and her family had no contact with any government agency of any kind. But after her filing, she was buried by an alphabet soup of government harassers, from the IRS to the ATF and OSHA.
"This is what the beginning of tyranny looks like," she told Breitbart.com.
Indeed it is. Along with mystery of why Lois Lerner is not already in prison is the mystery of why IRS Chief John Koskinen isn’t as well for participating in the cover-up involving destruction or records and emails, conveniently destroyed hard drives and withholding evidence from Congress. An impeachment resolution, introduced by .House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), Rep. James Jordan (R-OH) and 18 other committee members, accuses Koskinen of making false statements under oath, failing to comply with a subpoena, and failing to notify Congress that key evidence was missing or destroyed. As they explained it to Fox News’ Sean Hannity:
"The heart of this concern is that they had in their possession documents that were under subpoena and they destroyed those," Chaffetz said. "Imagine, Sean, if the IRS had asked you for those documents and you said, 'Well, I had them, but I went ahead and destroyed them.' What would happen to you?"
Likely we would be incarcerated and not just impeached. As the Washington Times notes, Koskinen is knee-deep in the IRS corruption and itse cover-up:
Among the specific charges leveled by Mr. Chaffetz and 18 of his fellow Republicans on the committee were that Mr. Koskinen, appointed by President Obama in December 2013 after the targeting scandal broke, misled Congress when he said he had turned over all of former IRS senior executive Lois G. Lerner’s emails and that he oversaw destruction of evidence when his agency got rid of backup tapes that contained the emails.
Lying to Congress and destruction of evidence under subpoena are federal crimes, and that includes the arrogeant Mr. Koskinen, who is just one example of being an Obama donor can get you a good job with the administration. As
Investor’s Business Daily noted:
Certainly it might be argued that Koskinen's current position is owed to four decades of being a prodigious Democratic donor.
Koskinen has contributed to every Democratic presidential candidate since 1980, including $2,300 to Obama in 2008, and $5,000 to Obama in 2012.
Of course, being an Obama donor with a government job in and of itself is not a crime, but how Koskinen has used that job is positively criminal. Koskinen once confessed before Congress that obeying the law was a difficult task for him and Lerner:
Whenever we can, we follow the law," IRS chief John Koskinen recently told the House Ways and Committee in a Freudian slip of the truth that says it all.
It is worth noting that one of the charges in the impeachment of Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal was just considering the use of the IRS for political purposes. People went to jail in Watergate for participating in and covering up a crime. So to should John Koskinen, along with Lois Lerner.
How can you drain the swamp and let the lizards slither away>.
Daniel John Sobieski is a free lance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.
For my adult years, I have considered myself an informed person. I have never claimed perfection nor do I believe I am the smartest person around. Indeed there are those who are far more intelligent than I am.
I own and have built websites. I know how to work several systems on my computer. I am not a computer whiz but I’m better than some and worse than others. I have had a computer crash on me and knew all was not lost because my hard-drive was still intact.
No one really likes the IRS but we have tolerated them as a part of our lives. One email getting lost can cause concern but thousands of emails being ‘lost’ is be unheard of. A big organization, such as the IRS, would have back-up systems. I have a back-up system. It’s not unusual to have one and it was not difficult to install.
Lois Lerner said she deleted emails, then recycled her hard-drive? Who does that unless they are hiding something? Lois Lerner was never held accountable.
How does the government and its associates believe that they can just tell the people and investigative committees that they deleted emails? Are there still people out there without basic knowledge of this? Okay, maybe a few who do not understand that an organization as big as the Internal Revenue Service cannot just delete emails without a back-up system or hard-drive to retrieve them. This would be illegal, in my opinion.
A House committee voted on Wednesday to censure IRS Commissioner John Koskinem. They said he failed to provide information demanded by Congress and lied under oath. Allegations were made the IRS targeted tea party groups that had applied for tax-exempt status.
In this country, destroying potential damaging evidence is an illegal act. No one is being punished but I suppose someone will get thrown under the bus and then probably receive a bonus of sorts while they fade into oblivion.
For this country to have fallen into such depraved government who allow lawlessness to exist while the people of this nation are prosecuted in a court of law, if they are part of a crime, disgusts me.
Daveda Gruber
I understand that some Tea Party organizations are still having trouble getting the proper tax exempt status. If that is the case, I would suggest that we handle it the way the Scientologists handled the IRS. The group that's having trouble could post the info to the rest of us, nationally. We could all join that group and then individually sue a specific member of the IRS. Reportedly, this tactic worked for the Scientologists.
An Open Letter to Speaker of the House; Congressman John Boehner
15 May 2014
Greetings Speaker Boehner!
I am one of those pesky “Veterans” you keep hearing about – one of those who Mr. Obama thinks he has given himself legal precedent to designate as “potential domestic terrorists” (DHS document IA-0257-09, Operation Vigilant Eagle, etcetera).
I am writing today in the hopes I can convince you to act for the Nation, in the best interests of the Nation. I believe there is still room for you to “fix” some of the things wrong in the Congressional equation... The “System of Checks and Balances”.
I firmly and strongly believe you should immediately arrest and incarcerate Lois Lerner – as well as Eric Holder.
Period.
From a Intelligence viewpoint, I do not believe you will ever find a paper-trail leading back to Mr. Obama, he and his sycophants are too smart for that – I believe the vast majority of the communications between these people have been verbal. The White House Register should tell you quite a bit.
That being said; With the recent additional release, courtesy of Judicial Watch, of yet another email that IS a paper-trail directly back to IRS HQ in DC – if Lois Lerner is arrested and incarcerated – facing life in prison without parole for perjury and treasonous acts against the People – I believe she will talk, as will Mr. Holder for his unconstitutional acts and failure to follow his Oath of Office (federal crime under U.S. Code)
None of these people are going to be willing to face life in prison for Mr. Obama and his agenda – regardless who the puppet master really is. Mr. Obama sits at the top of the food chain and he is ultimately responsible for all of the actions.
Speaker, for the good of the Nation I urge you to order Lois Lerner and Eric Holder arrested immediately. This is the only way Congress will ever discover the truth in any of these “scandal's”.
Respectfully,
SFC (USA Retired) Aubrey Mason
San Antonio, Texas
cc: Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott
Texas Governor Rick Perry
Congressman Louie Gohmert
Senator Ted Cruz
Tea Party Command Center
Social Media (multiple)
