New Congressional Report Shows How Lois Lerner Lied To Congress On IRS Targeting Conservative Groups…

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Weasel Zippers
3/11/2014

Hence the reason she’s been pleading the Fifth.

Via Washington Examiner:

A GOP-led House panel Tuesday released an extensive report that attempts to show former top Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner lied to Congress about her involvement in the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax exempt status.

Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said the 141-page report “offers detailed evidence about steps she took to crack down on organizations that exercised their Constitutional rights to free political speech.” […]

Among the findings in the report:

— Lerner, in emails to other IRS officials, wrote about ways to highlight the agency’s scrutiny of Tea Party applicants, despite secrecy laws, by provoking groups to challenge IRS rulings in a court case…

Read the entire post at Weasel Zippers.

Related:  While IRS Targeted Tea Party, White House Also Illegally Directed Tax-Exempt ‘Center for American Progress’

File this under another story that would be blaring in the headlines if it had happened under a Republican. Even as Lois Lerner continues to obstruct the investigation into the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups, a former  writer at a leftist tax-exempt group has revealed how the group took changed the focus of their activities after being “berated” by the White House, which violates the IRS code for such organizations…

…Soon afterwards all of us ThinkProgress national security bloggers were called into a meeting with CAP senior staff and basically berated for opposing the Afghan war and creating daylight between us and Obama. It confused me a lot because on the one hand, CAP was advertising to donors that it opposed the Afghan war — in our “Progressive Party,” the annual fundraising party we do with both Big Name Progressive Donors and corporate lobbyists (in the same room!) we even advertised that we wanted to end the war in Afghanistan.

But what that meeting with CAP senior staff showed me was that they viewed being closer to Obama and aligning with his policy as more important than demonstrating progressive principle, if that meant breaking with Obama…

 
Read the whole thing.