Taxable Talk

The IRS scandal hasn’t gone away. More documents have been released, and they’re not flattering towards Lois Lerner. Government Executive has this:

In a June 2012 email responding to an NPR story discussing the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee complaint with the FEC regarding some conservative groups, Lerner speculated to a colleague, “Perhaps the FEC will save the day.”

In a February 2011 email on the Cincinnati-based unit of the Exempt Organizations division assigned to handle tea party groups’ applications, Lerner wrote, “Tea Party Matter very dangerous….Counsel and Judy Kindell need to be in on this one….Cincy should probably NOT have these cases.”

Glenn Reynolds (of Instapundit fame) has a column where he notes Lerner’s statements (from the emails). Mr. Reynolds’ conclusion is that this boils down to trust, and that the IRS and the principals in this scandal have oozed anything but trust.

Politico notes that the players in the IRS scandal have lawyered up with “elite D.C. lawyers.”

Finally, an article in USA Today notes the following:

Newly uncovered IRS documents show the agency flagged political groups based on the content of their literature, raising concerns specifically about “anti-Obama rhetoric,” inflammatory language and “emotional” statements made by non-profits seeking tax-exempt status.

The Administration was probably hoping this scandal would fade into the woodwork. I’m certain that the IRS was hoping for that, too. However, as long as the IRS and the principals involve evade–the official Administration response is still that this was all the work of rogue agents in Cincinnati (nobody believes that anymore)–the scandal will continue to percolate.

Tags: IRS.Scandal

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 17th, 2013 at 7:18 pm and is filed under IRS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.