GOP Lawmakers Hope A New DOJ Will Re-Open Investigation Into IRS Targeting Scandal

By Susan Wright | 12:01 PM on April 14, 2017

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Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen testifies under subpoena before the House Oversight Committee as lawmakers continue their probe of whether tea party groups were improperly targeted for increased scrutiny by the IRS, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday, June 23, 2014. The sign in the background was displayed by the Republican majority staff of the committee. The IRS asserts it can't produce emails from seven officials connected to the tea party investigation because of computer crashes, including the emails from Lois Lerner, the former IRS official at the center of the investigation. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Yes, this needs to happen, ASAP.

Two House Republicans, Reps. Peter Roskam (Ill.) and Kevin Brady (Tx.) have written a letter to the Department of Justice asking to have a new investigation of the evidence presented against Lois Lerner, concerning her misconduct in the IRS scandal, where it appeared the tax agency targeted conservatives.

From the Washington Free Beacon:

The IRS began targeting conservative and tea party groups’ applications for tax-exempt status based on their political ideology in 2010 and delayed their approval before the 2012 presidential election. Some groups are still waiting for their status to be approved.

Lois Lerner, who headed the tax-exempt status division of the IRS at the time, confessed in 2013 at an American Bar Association meeting that conservative groups were targeted on political beliefs, but blamed low-level employees for the targeting. That same month, Lerner pleaded the fifth at the Oversight and Government Reform House committee.

You may recall the great “Not a smidgen” debate of 2014, when then-President Obama declared there was not even a smidgen of corruption at the IRS.

This, in spite of mounting evidence and Lerner, who for some reason, didn’t want to testify.

In October 2015, Obama’s Department of (in)Justice decided a mountain isn’t enough evidence to bring charges.

Roskam and Brady wrote:

“The Committee’s nearly three-year investigation uncovered evidence of willful misconduct on the part of Ms. Lerner,” wrote Roskam and Brady. “Despite this fact, and for what many believe were purely partisan reasons, the prior administration refused to review Ms. Lerner’s misconduct.”

“The Committee found that Ms. Lerner used her position to improperly influence IRS action against conservative organizations, denying these groups due process and equal protection rights under the law,” the lawmakers said. “The Committee also found she impeded official investigations by providing misleading statements in response to questions from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.”

“Finally, Lerner risked exposing, and may actually have disclosed, confidential taxpayer information, in apparent violation of Internal Revenue Code section 6103 by using her personal email to conduct official business,” they said.

Good for them.

Let’s hope a new Justice Department will take up this cause and right a horrible wrong.