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The White House-IRS Nexus: House Votes to Hold Lois Lerner in Contempt of Congress

21st Century Wire says…

Beltway insiders will tell you that Washington DC is a cesspit of secret deals and political bribes: stimulus bills loaded with pork, healthcare reform bills written by the insurance lobbyists, Congress and Senate insider trading, and banker bailouts. It’s a bubble within a bubble, funded by taxpayer money.

But this scandal is another thing altogether…

No one will forget the moment Lois Lerner (photo, left) got up out of her chair and walked out during a Congressional grilling over her agency’s political targeting. Everyone complained, except the White House.

In 2013, the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) admitted that the agency had selected political groups applying for tax-exempt status for closer scrutiny based on where they fell on the right-left political spectrum – in this case, targeting groups who opposed Barrack Obama’s 2012 reelection Democratic Presidential campaign. Critics also contend that public knowledge of aggressive IRS profiling has also put a chilling effect on donations to not-for-profits, charities and political action committees, as private citizens now believe that they are being profiled – and possibly audited by the agency, according to what causes they support.

IMPEACHABLE: White House may have directed the IRS to target it’s political enemies.

The scandal goes much deeper than Lerner however, exposing the worse level of political nepotism and corruption in the bowels of Washington DC. Breitbart revealed in April:

“Lerner, the director of the division that targeted Tea Party groups is being represented by William Taylor of Zuckerman Spaeder, a law firm that is closely connected to the Obama White House. The firm donated $100,534 to Obama’s presidential campaign in the 2007-2008 cycle and $42,225 in 2011-2012.

Taylor gave $2,500 to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2012 and $14,499 to Democratic campaigns and committees in that same year. 

Indeed, the attorneys at Zuckerman Spaeder gave almost exclusively (97%) to Democrats in the 2007-2008 election cycle, donating $149,765 to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) that year, and $10,700 to the DNC in 2011-2012.”

Obama’s White House has a seemingly endless chain of scandals on the boiler at the moment, and all it takes is one of these to explode enough to drag Obama into the impeachment dock for 2015.

Washington Post reports…

Ed O’Keefe
Washington Post

The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to hold a former Internal Revenue Service official in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with an ongoing investigation into the agency’s special targeting of groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names that were seeking tax-exempt status.

On a 231 to  187 vote, the House approved a contempt citation against Lois G. Lerner, whose admission last year that the tax-enforcement agency had targeted conservative groups infuriated lawmakers in both parties, led to an overhaul of the IRS and Lerner’s eventual retirement from government service.

Six Democrats — a band of moderates and others facing difficult reelection challenges — joined with all voting Republicans to approve the contempt charge.

Now the matter will be referred to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. The contempt charge will then be referred to a grand jury for further review, but it is unclear how the Justice Department will proceed. Politically, however, House Republicans will be able to declare victory after working swiftly in the last year to investigate the matter and hold a senior IRS official accountable for the agency’s decision and her unwillingness to cooperate with a congressional investigation.

If ever convicted, Lerner could face between one and 12 months in jail and a fine of up to $100,000.

With Wednesday’s vote, Lerner becomes one of only a handful of government officials found in contempt of Congress in recent years. Most recently, the GOP House voted in 2012 to hold Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in contempt for withholding documents related to a failed gunrunning operation. During the George W. Bush administration, his chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten and the White House counsel, Harriet Miers, were held in contempt by a Democratic-controlled House.

Separately, the House also passed a resolution Wednesday evening that called on Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups. Lawmakers voted 250 to 168 to pass the resolution; 26 Democrats joined all voting Republicans to approve it.

The Justice Department has said it is conducting an investigation of the IRS’s actions and that the case “remains a priority.”

The two votes came 362 days after she admitted during a conference held by the American Bar Association that the agency had targeted certain groups. Her admission appeared to happen by chance and came in response to a question asked during the conference. In the hours and days after her admission, the IRS was exposed as unprepared for the firestorm that ensued…

Continue this story at the Washington Post

READ MORE OBAMA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Obama Files

 

 

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