"Assume a Scandal"

[applegrove]

Assume a Scandal

By David Weigel at Slate

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/08/darrell_issa_s_search_for_scandal_republican_efforts_to_find_more_irs_misconduct.html

"SNIP.............................


Before their summer recess began, House Republicans got a booklet full of advice. Suggestion No. 1: Go fishing for more IRS scandals. “Invite local 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 group leaders to your district office to hear stories of how they could have been targeted by the IRS,” advised party leaders. “Hold a press conference.”

The none-too-subtle message was that the furor over the IRS’s nosy letters to political groups—mostly conservative groups—was not phony. Republicans would pursue any lead of any kind, anywhere. And yesterday, they claimed to have found another lead at the offices of the Federal Election Commission. The House’s own investigations had turned up emails from FEC staffers to the IRS’s tax exemption division—run by Lois Lerner, the Darth Vader of the scandal—asking for current exemption info on 501(c)3s called the American Future Fund and the American Principles Project. In an interview with CNN, outgoing Republican FEC Commissioner Donald McGahn called this “probably out of the ordinary.”

Darrell Issa heard his cue. The chairman of the House oversight committee sent a letter to FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub—a Democratic appointee—wondering whether the FEC-IRS emails might “indicate some coordination.” Based on that, the FEC had two weeks to scour and copy its records for “all documents and communications between or among any FEC official or employee and any IRS official or employee for the period January 1, 2008 to the present.”

...

Issa was going fishing, but fishing for what? The allegation here is that the FEC’s counsel might have asked not just for the tax-exempt status of a group—that’s public information—but for something private. The IRS then might have responded with private information, though the emails released thus far don’t indicate that. Weintraub has said she’s “not aware of requesting or receiving any confidential taxpayer information,” and while flank-covering statements from public officials don’t have a 100 percent record of accuracy, Weintraub has also requested that the FEC’s inspector general conduct an “impartial, independent review” of the scandal charge. She announced this a day before the Issa letter; for some reason, Issa’s play got more media attention.


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