John McCain’s role in the IRS Tea Party targeting scandal

  Shortly before Halloween last year the IRS and the Department of Justice settled the Tea Party targeting scandal and as part of that settlement the IRS admitted to, and apologized for, illegally targeting conservative groups.

  Of course it did not take a lawsuit to understand the IRS was illegally targeting certain groups based on political ideology because the whole scandal came to light when for some unknown reason Lois Lerner admitted to wrongdoing before anybody even heard this was going on.

  You may think that with the lawsuit being settled this would be the end of the story–I know I did–but it is not because Judicial Watch is still on the case and they are now in possession of some new emails which are very interesting to say the least.

  Here is more:

Judicial Watch today released newly obtained internal IRS documents, including material revealing that Sen. John McCain’s former staff director and chief counsel on the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee, Henry Kerner, urged top IRS officials, including then-director of exempt organizations Lois Lerner, to “audit so many that it becomes financially ruinous.”  Kerner was appointed by President Trump as Special Counsel for the United States Office of Special Counsel.

The explosive exchange was contained in notes taken by IRS employees at an April 30, 2013, meeting between Kerner, Lerner, and other high-ranking IRS officials. Just ten days following the meeting, former IRS director of exempt organizations Lois Lerner admitted that the IRS had a policy of improperly and deliberately delaying applications for tax-exempt status from conservative non-profit groups.

Lerner and other IRS officials met with select top staffers from the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in a “marathon” meeting to discuss concerns raised by both Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) that the IRS was not reining in political advocacy groups in response to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.  Senator McCain had been the chief sponsor of the McCain-Feingold Act and called the Citizens United decision, which overturned portions of the Act, one of the “worst decisions I have ever seen.”

  So John McCain was upset that the Supreme Court threw out a law that helped to write so he sent a staffer to a meeting with Lois Lerner and the IRS in which targeting Tea Party groups until “it becomes financially ruinous” was discussed.

  This must be a coincidence because John McCain would never do anything to undermine the Republicans’ chances of winning an election, would he? Well maybe not if it did not include the Russians at least…

malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium