• Tag Archives FEC

  • Lois Lerner’s Former FEC Colleague Has Emails Go Missing Too

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    The FEC’s Office of Inspector General sought to conduct a criminal investigation into Sands’ activities but were stymied when they found that the agency had recycled her computer hard drive.

    “Therefore the OIG was unable to show that Ms. Sands’ solicitations and political activity were done from an FEC computer,” reads the letter.

    Because of this, the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia declined criminal prosecution.

    “The FEC’s failure to retain Ms. Sands’ hard drive prevented the FEC OIG from fully pursuing appropriate criminal sanctions for Ms. Sands’ admitted violation of federal law,” wrote Issa and Jordan.

    “Like the IRS’s destruction of Lois Lerner’s hard drive, the FEC’s recycling of Ms. Sands’ hard drive may have also destroyed material responsive to Freedom of Information Act and congressional oversight requests,” the letter continued.

    Lerner’s computer hard drive crashed in the middle of 2011, right around the time that questions were being raised over whether the IRS’s enforcement agency was targeting conservative non-profit groups while considering whether to grant them tax-exempt status.

    via Lois Lerner’s Former FEC Colleague Has Emails Go Missing Too


    📂This entry was posted in News and Politics 📎and tagged

  • Issa investigating alleged collusion between IRS and FEC

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) sent a letter to the Federal Election Committee (FEC) on Wednesday requesting documents he says are potentially related to “inappropriate coordination” between the independent regulatory agency and the IRS.

    “Documents recently produced to the Committee demonstrate that FEC personnel communicated with IRS personnel about tax-exempt groups engaged in political activities,” Issa wrote.

    The chairman of the House Oversight Committee cited emails between an FEC official and then-IRS Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner, who earlier this year plead the fifth in testimony before Congress, in which the FEC official asked Lerner about tax-exempt applications pertaining to two conservative groups.

    Issa said the communications between the two groups “raise the prospect of inappropriate coordination between the IRS and the FEC about tax-exempt entities.” He’s requested documentation for all communication between FEC and IRS employees from Jan. 1, 2008, to the present.

    Full article: http://thehill.com/b … -between-irs-and-fec


    📂This entry was posted in News and Politics 📎and tagged

  • New Links Emerge in the IRS Scandal

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Congressional investigators this week released emails suggesting that staff at the Federal Election Commission have been engaged in their own conservative targeting, with help from the IRS’s infamous Lois Lerner. This means more than just an expansion of the probe to the FEC. It’s a new link to the Obama team.

    In May this column noted that the targeting of conservatives started in 2008, when liberals began a coordinated campaign of siccing the federal government on political opponents. The Obama campaign helped pioneer this tactic.

    In late summer of 2008, Obama lawyer Bob Bauer took issue with ads run against his boss by a 501(c)(4) conservative outfit called American Issues Project. Mr. Bauer filed a complaint with the FEC, called on the criminal division of the Justice Department to prosecute AIP, and demanded to see documents the group had filed with the IRS.

    Thanks to Congress’s newly released emails, we now know that FEC attorneys went to Ms. Lerner to pry out information about AIP—the organization the Obama campaign wanted targeted. An email from Feb. 3, 2009, shows an FEC attorney asking Ms. Lerner “whether the IRS had issued an exemption letter” to AIP, and requesting that she share “any information” on the group. Nine minutes after Ms. Lerner received this FEC email, she directed IRS attorneys to fulfill the request.

    This matters because FEC staff didn’t have permission from the Commission to conduct this inquiry. It matters because the IRS is prohibited from sharing confidential information, even with the FEC. What the IRS divulged is unclear. Congressional investigators are demanding to see all communications between the IRS and FEC since 2008, and given that Ms. Lerner came out of the FEC’s office of the general counsel, that correspondence could prove illuminating.

    It also matters because we now know FEC staff engaged in a multiyear effort to deliver to the Obama campaign its win against AIP.

    Full article: http://online.wsj.co … 642180886421040.html


    📂This entry was posted in News and Politics 📎and tagged