IRS’ Lois Lerner Illegally Emailed Confidential Tea Party Tax Information to FEC

REMEMBER THIS SCANDAL …

The Washington Examiner is reporting that the IRS broke federal law when it shared highly confidential tax information of several Tea Party groups in the IRS scandal with the Federal Election Commission.  According to emails obtained by Judicial Watch, former IRS official Lois Lerner, who is presently on paid leave,  shared the information with the IRS on conservative Tea Party groups including the American Future Fund and the American Issues Project. As Weasel Zippers opines, remember  “It wasn’t long ago when Lerner was telling the House Oversight Committee, ‘I have done nothing wrong.’”

I guess that is true, if you do not consider committing a felony doing something wrong.

Lois Lerner’s statement before Congress just before she plead the 5th, “I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations … “

The emails obtained by Judicial Watch show that the IRS, which was considering the tax status of the groups, gave the FEC the tax returns of the groups, including income, expenditures and staff pay. The emails also revealed the exact working of the prying political questions the IRS wanted the groups to reveal, such as their goals and the requests for brochures and ads.

The information, sent via email, to the FEC came in response to the organization’s questions about whether the IRS had granted tax-exempt status to the Tea Party groups. It is unclear how the information the IRS sent was going to help the FEC, since the IRS hadn’t determined the tax status of the groups yet.

The emails were produced to Judicial Watch last week by the FEC in response to an Aug. 9, 2013, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

The email chain began Feb. 3, 2009, when the FEC made it’s request to Lerner.

She emailed back 10 minutes later, and said: “I have sent your email out to some of my staff. Will get back to you as soon as I have heard from them.”

More from the Washington Examiner via Judicial Watch and Lerner’s involvement in IRS-gate:

The revealing email chain obtained by Judicial Watch begins with a February 3, 2009, email from a redacted FEC attorney asking Lerner if the IRS had issued an exemption letter for American Future Fund (AFF). The writer of the letter notes, “When we spoke last July, you told us that the American Future Fund had not received an exemption letter from the IRS.”  In the same email, the FEC attorney asked Lerner if she could also advise him if the IRS had granted an exemption letter to American Issues Project (AIP) as well as to AIP’s predecessor organizations, Citizens for the Republic (CFTR) and Avenger, Inc. (AIP).

In her response sent ten minutes later from her irs.gov email address, Lerner indicated that she would require her staff to cooperate fully, saying, “I have sent your email out to some of my staff. Will get back to you as soon as I have heard from them.”

The bulk of the records obtained by Judicial Watch consist of extensive materials from the IRS’ files sent from Lerner to the FEC containing detailed, confidential information about the organizations. These include annual tax returns (Forms 990) and request for exempt recognition forms (Form 1024), Articles of Organization and other corporate documents, and correspondence between the nonprofit organizations and the IRS. Under Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code, it is a felony for an IRS official to disclose either “return information” or “taxpayer return information,” even to another government agency.