E-mails Suggest Collusion Between FEC, IRS to Target Conservative Groups
Embattled Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner and an attorney in the Federal Election Commission’s general counsel’s office appear to have twice colluded to influence the record before the FEC’s vote in the case of a conservative non-profit organization, according to e-mails unearthed by the House Ways and Means Committee and obtained exclusively by National Review Online. The correspondence suggests the discrimination of conservative groups extended beyond the IRS and into the FEC, where an attorney from the agency’s enforcement division in at least one case sought and received tax information about the status of a conservative group, the American Future Fund, before recommending that the commission prosecute it for violations of campaign-finance law. Lerner, the former head of the IRS’s exempt-organizations division, worked at the FEC from 1986 to 1995, and was known for aggressive investigation of conservative groups during her tenure there, too.
“Several months ago . . . I spoke with you about the American Future Fund, a 501(c)(4) organization that had submitted an exemption application the IRS [sic],” the FEC attorney wrote Lerner in February 2009. The FEC, which polices violations of campaign-finance laws, is not exempted under Rule 6103, which prohibits the IRS from sharing confidential taxpayer information, but the e-mail indicates Lerner may have provided that information nonetheless: “When we spoke last July, you had told us that the American Future Fund had not received an exemption letter from the IRS,” the FEC attorney wrote.
The timing of the correspondence between Lerner and the FEC suggests the FEC attorney sought information from the IRS in order to influence an upcoming vote by the six FEC commissioners....
Report: IRS Scrutiny Worse For Conservatives
...A House Ways and Means Committee staff analysis of the applications of 111 conservative and progressive groups applying for tax exempt status found conservative applicants faced "more questions, more denials, more delays," says committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich.
That is, when the IRS sent groups letters asking for further information, conservative groups were asked more questions — on average, three times more. All of the groups with "progressive" in their name were ultimately approved, while only 46 percent of conservative groups won approval. Others are still waiting for an answer or gave up....
IRS Targeted Existing Conservative Organizations, Too?!
Leaders from existing conservative organizations The Leadership Institute and the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute have made credible claims that they, too, were targeted by the IRS.
The former has been in existence since 1979, yet the IRS chose to investigate its compliance with tax laws in June 2011, costing it $50,000 in legal fees and requiring it to locate and hand over 23,000 pages of paperwork. The latter group learned in January 2011 that the IRS had selected 2008 to audit -- the year one of its leaders went off the payroll temporarily to work for (gasp!) Sarah Palin....
