A Smoking Gun Memo and One Sorry Apology from the IRS

 

IBDEditorials.com

Scandal: As a new IRS boss vows that targeting the right will never happen again, a new memo shows the agency knew its acts were illegal but proceeded anyway. Seems there's more than a "smidgen" of corruption here.

Smoking Gun Memo On The Tea Party And One Sorry Apology From The IRS

Just the apology offered by John Koskinen, the new commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, to reporters after a House Ways and Means hearing belied President Obama's claim over the weekend that the agency was simon-pure.

Singling out organizations such as the Tea Party was "intolerable," he intoned, and "to the extent that people suffered accordingly, I apologize for that."

So if there wasn't "even a smidgen of corruption," as our president insisted, why the apology?

The answer can be found in a memo unearthed at the House committee hearing, showing that the IRS targeted the Tea Party, knew the action was illegal and tried to cover it up with new regulations that would silence the conservative group once and for all.

"Don't know who in your organizations is keeping tabs on c4s, but since we mentioned potentially addressing them (off-plan) in 2013, I've got my radar up and this seemed interesting," emailed Treasury official Ruth Madrigal to a group of IRS officials, including the IRS' chief of its tax-exempt organizations, Lois Lerner.

What Madrigal forwarded was a blog item about a useful court ruling that would support new IRS regulations in the works as early as 2011 as a "remedy to the target" of 501(c)4 Tea Party groups. And, as early as June 14, 2012, the IRS sought a new policy to justify targeting the Tea Party to legally silence it.

Note that around that time, Mitt Romney was rising in the polls, meaning the agency may also have feared a housecleaning from a new administration.

Then there's that curious turn of phrase, "off plan." As Subcommittee Chairman Dave Camp noted at the hearing, "I'm pretty sure it means 'hidden from the public.'"

As for Koskinen being sorry, he didn't act that way to the committee. He continued to stonewall its request for documents about the timeline of that rule making, claiming that any daylight would "interfere" with IRS operations.

Then he whined about the probe taking up IRS resources, something he could stop immediately by releasing the documents.

But it's not really about saving taxpayers money.

Even as he admitted wrongdoing, Koskinen awarded $62.5 million in bonuses to IRS employees. It looks like hush money. Whatever it is, it's not being sorry.