Analyst's note:  Mr. Obama and Eric Holder believe that if you can't otherwise change their mind, arrest them.  Have you gotten the message regarding this “smidgen” of corruption?

[.....] it has been discovered that the Justice Department did nothing to stop the IRS abuse when they knew about what was going on, and in fact was complicit in the targeting as they considered arresting Tea Party leaders to send a message to other conservative groups.

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When the IRS targeting of conservative groups scandal first broke, Attorney General Eric Holder declared his outrage along with President Obama and everyone else.  We now know that the IRS was ordered by people in Washington to target certain groups.

When it was discovered that the IRS was giving the confidential tax information of 501(c) applicants to various Democrats in order to help them win elections, a felony crime, many wondered who was the “mystery man” in Washington that would give such a criminal order.

Since then, it has been discovered that the Justice Department did nothing to stop the IRS abuse when they knew about what was going on, and in fact was complicit in the targeting as they considered arresting Tea Party leaders to send a message to other conservative groups.

Now it is being reported by the Washington Examiner that the Justice Department was actively involved in the targeting and worked with disgraced IRS official Lois Lerner to find ways to criminally prosecute nonprofit groups.  House Oversight Committee Chair Darrel Issa and subcommittee chair Jim Jordan are now requesting an interview with Jack Smith, head of the DOJ Public Integrity Unit, who appears to have been in contact with Lerner.

“The Justice Department convened a meeting with former IRS official Lois Lerner in October 2010 to discuss how the IRS could assist in the criminal enforcement of campaign-finance laws against politically active nonprofits,” Jordan and Issa said in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.

 

“This meeting was arranged at the direction of Public Integrity Section Chief Jack Smith.”

 

 

In October 2010, Lerner delivered an address at Duke University in which she told the audience, “everyone is screaming at us” to fix campaign finance before the 2012 election.

 

 

Issa and Jordan said they believe the Justice Department, “contributed to this pressure” on Lerner and other IRS officials to stop right-leaning organizations from achieving tax-exempt status, following a Supreme Court ruling lifting restrictions on their activity.

Democrats were upset over the Citizens United decision because they thought it gave corporations and conservatives too much political speech, when it reality it leveled the playing field between conservative groups and the unions and liberal nonprofits that previously had dominated the political speech and ‘social welfare’ arena.

“By encouraging the IRS to be vigilant in possible campaign-finance crimes by 501(c)(4) groups, the [Justice] Department was certainly among the entities ‘screaming’ at the IRS to do something in the wake of Citizens United before the 2010 election,” Jordan and Issa said to Holder in the Letter.

 

 

Issa and Jordan said they learned of the Justice Department’s involvement from Richard Pilger, the Director of the Department of Justice’s Election Crimes Branch. Issa has subpoenaed Pilger because he would not fully answer the questions asked recently in a closed-door meeting with House oversight investigators, although he did answer some questions and provided a lengthy statement.

 

 

In the letter to Holder, Issa and Jordan said they learned the Justice Department contacted Lerner again in 2013 after Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., suggested the Justice Department “prosecute nonprofits for false statements made on the groups’ application forms about whether they intended to engage in political speech.”

Richard Pilger claims the directive came from Smith, but also said he was unsure if the orders had come from higher up in the DOJ, a likely scenario.

This is just further proof that there is much, much more than just a “smidgen” of corruption.  The corruption in this scandal runs across several agencies and even into Congress, and most likely the White House.

Congressman Jim Jordan has demanded that a ‘special prosecutor‘ be appointed to fully investigate this whole mess, from Lois Lerner and her division at the IRS, up to and including President Obama and his cronies in the White House and DOJ.  Those who have done wrong and violated the Constitutional rights of conservative groups, and violated the integrity of supposed nonpartisan agencies like the IRS and DOJ, must be held accountable.

Please share this on Facebook and Twitter if you think heads need to roll and jail cells need to be filled over how broadly the involvement in this IRS targeting scandal continues to spread.