Wednesday, October 09, 2013

IRS-GATE EXPLODES: White House and IRS Illegally Traded Confidential Taxpayer Info to Attack Political Enemies

Patrick Howley reports at The Daily Caller:

Top Internal Revenue Service Obamacare official Sarah Hall Ingram discussed confidential taxpayer information with senior Obama White House officials, according to 2012 emails... Lois Lerner, then head of the IRS Tax Exempt Organizations division, also received an email alongside White House officials that contained confidential information.

Ingram attempted to counsel the White House on a lawsuit from religious organizations opposing Obamacare’s contraception mandate. Email exchanges involving Ingram and White House officials — including White House health policy advisor Ellen Montz and deputy assistant to the president for health policy Jeanne Lambrew — contained confidential taxpayer information, according to Oversight.

The emails ... had numerous redactions with the signifier “6103.” ... Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code forbids a federal employee from “disclos[ing] any return or return information obtained by him in any manner in connection with his service as such an officer or an employee.”

Federal employees who illegally disclose confidential taxpayer information could face five years in prison.

“Thanks, David. Thanks for the information on [6103],” White House official Lambrew wrote to IRS official David Fish in a July 20, 2012 exchange. “I am still hoping to understand whether the 50 percent rule is moot if the organization does not offer goods and services for sale to the general public. Do we assume that organizations like [6103] do offer goods and services for sale?”

Another email from Montz to Ingram and others refers to the “[6103] memo” and the “[6103] letter” while discussing organizations that are not required to file 990′s.

Ingram appeared before Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Oversight Committee Wednesday and claimed she could not recall a document that contained confidential taxpayer information... Issa has requested unredacted copies of the emails, citing a prohibition from misusing Section 6103 “for the purpose of concealing information from a congressional inquiry.”

Ingram headed the scandal-ridden IRS office responsible for overseeing tax-exempt nonprofit groups before leaving to head the agency’s office in charge of Obamacare implementation.

Misuse of the IRS was one of the articles of impeachment to be used against Richard Nixon had he not resigned.

Heads need to roll at the White House and the IRS.


Hat tip: BadBlue News and BB.

4 comments:

jdm said...

At the moment, I happen to be reading Victor Lasky's "It Didn't Start With Watergate". In case you're curious, none of these shenanigans are new. The Kennedys were just as bad. Possibly even worse, because they actively plotted the deaths of those who crossed them. And the media covered up for them just as much.

From what I can tell, Nixon's only crime in relation to these Democrat administrations before and after was having an 'R' after his name.

TheFineReport.com said...

Until we boot Boehner out of the GOP Speaker position, we have an erratic, backstabbing coward leading the fight for the GOP.

His mad-dog poodle Darryl Issa talks a lot, and does nothing.

IRS-Gate may explode in the public's mind, but the GOP will idiotically actually be persuaded by the democrat media's news blackout about it that the public does not care about this outrage.

Boehner is poison, as is every top person in the GOP leadership.

We have Ted Cruz and Mike Lee: they are our future.


Anonymous said...

In a sane and honorable world, Obama would have been removed/impeached/indicted a hundred times over by now. In fact, he would never have been tolerated as Senator, much less a pretend President.

Anonymous said...

Kennedy was just rich slime.