Report: IRS Sent Database Containing Confidential Taxpayer Information to FBI

[WestVirginiaRebel]

National Review:

 

The Internal Revenue Service may have been caught violating federal tax law: In October 2010, the agency sent a database on 501©(4) social-welfare groups containing confidential taxpayer information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to documents obtained by a House panel.

 

The information was transmitted in advance of former IRS official Lois Lerner’s meeting the same month with Justice Department officials about the possibility of using campaign-finance laws to prosecute certain nonprofit groups. E-mails between Lerner and Richard Pilger, the director of the Justice Department’s election-crimes branch, obtained through a subpoena to Attorney General Eric Holder, show Lerner asking about the format in which the FBI preferred the data to be sent.

 

“This revelation that the IRS sent 1.1 million pages of nonprofit tax-return data — including confidential taxpayer information — to the FBI confirms suspicions that the IRS worked with the Justice Department to facilitate the potential investigation of nonprofit groups engaged in lawful political speech,” Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa, a California Republican, and subcommittee chairman Jim Jordan wrote in a letter to IRS commissioner John Koskinen. The two lawmakers also raise questions about the timing of the meeting, just weeks before the 2010 midterm elections, when Republicans recaptured a majority in the House of Representatives.

 

The Justice Department never prosecuted social-welfare groups, and e-mails from IRS officials show their awareness that, as a result of the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in the Citizens United case, which allowed unlimited amounts of money from nonprofit groups and labor unions to flow into the political process, the law did not favor a crackdown on anonymous donations to politically orientated nonprofits, which sprouted up on all sides in the wake of the ruling. “We don’t have the law to do something,” an IRS official responsible for tax-exempt organizations said in a September 2010 e-mail.

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Of course not. The Obama administration likes those groups...

[Valin]

I'm madder than hell about this, and I'm going to find out who is behind this!!

[Valin]

 

H/T Katie Pavlich

[Valin]

What Happened to the 1.1 Million Pages of Data on Nonprofits that IRS Gave the FBI? Comey Explains
John Hinderaker
June 19, 2014

We wrote here and here about the IRS’s transfer of 1.1 million pages of documents about 501©(4) organizations to the FBI in October 2010. We now know that the documents included confidential taxpayer information, which means that it was a criminal offense for Lois Lerner to transmit them to the FBI. Presumably this is one reason (not necessarily the only one) why Lerner sought refuge in the privilege against self-incrimination.

 

Within a few days of transmitting the documents, Lerner met with Department of Justice officials to encourage them to prosecute 501©(4) groups and individuals associated with them. In view of these events, an obvious question is: what did the FBI do with the materials it got from the IRS?

 

On June 11, FBI Director James Comey testified before a House oversight committee and was asked that question. His answer was: nothing. Comey didn’t have first-hand knowledge, but based on discussions with others at the Bureau, a single FBI employee looked at the index to the documents and then did nothing, waiting for instructions from DOJ that never came. On this account, the documents sat in FBI headquarters for more than 3 1/2 years without anyone looking at them. Comey said that within the past week, the Bureau had sent them to DOJ.

 

(Snip)

 

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C-Span Vid at link

[Geee]

Obama Administration REFUSES To Release Documents About White House Role in IRS Scandal

 

The Obama administration said that it is withholding all of the thousands of pages of documents related to the White House’s coordination with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) during the IRS conservative targeting scandal.

 

Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew, Obama’s former White House Chief of Staff, took the documents that were set to be released and now refuses to ever turn them over. His rationale? Lew cannot release information about improper disclosures of confidential taxpayer information because that would be an improper disclosure of confidential taxpayer information.

 

http://dailycaller.com/2014/12/03/obama-administration-refuses-to-release-documents-about-white-house-role-in-irs-scandal/