Breitbart: New Docs Show IRS, DOJ Collusion to Prosecute Tax Exempt Groups

The IRS abuse of conservatives has expanded to the Department of Justice. From breitbart.com:

Judicial Watch obtained a new batch of internal IRS documents revealing that Lerner directly communicated with the Department of Justice (DOJ) about whether it was possible to criminally prosecute certain tax-exempt entities.

The documents were dragged out of the Obama administration thanks to our October 2013 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the IRS, after the agency refused to respond to four FOIA requests dating back to May 2013.

The newly obtained IRS documents contain a revealing email exchange between Lerner and Nikole C. Flax, then-Chief of Staff, to then-Acting IRS Commissioner Steven T. Miller, discussing plans to work with the DOJ to prosecute nonprofit groups that “lied” (Lerner’s quotation marks) about political activities. The tell-tale exchange includes the following:

• May 8, 2013: Lerner to Flax:

I got a call today from Richard Pilger Director Elections Crimes Branch at DOJ … He wanted to know who at IRS the DOJ folk s [sic] could talk to about Sen. Whitehouse idea at the hearing that DOJ could piece together false statement cases about applicants who “lied” on their 1024s –saying they weren’t planning on doing political activity, and then turning around and making large visible political expenditures. DOJ is feeling like it needs to respond, but want to talk to the right folks at IRS to see whether there are impediments from our side and what, if any damage this might do to IRS programs.

I told him that sounded like we might need several folks from IRS…

• May 9, 2013: Flax to Lerner:

I think we should do it – also need to include CI [Criminal Investigation Division], which we can help coordinate. Also, we need to reach out to FEC. Does it make sense to consider including them in this or keep it separate?

Lerner then “handed off” scheduling the issue to Senior Technical Adviser, Attorney Nancy Marks, who was then supposed to set up the meeting with the DOJ. Lerner also decided that it would be DOJ’s decision as to whether her old co-conspirators from the Federal Election Commission would attend.