| | | by IAN TUTTLE May 15, 2017 7:19 PM @IPTUTTLE The chutzpah of these folks will never cease to amaze: Details about tea party bias claims against the IRS could remain secret because current and former agency officials say their lives are in danger if they publicly testify about the case. Lois Lerner and Holly Paz both have argued in recent court filings that the threat to their lives outweighs the public’s right to hear their testimony about how IRS employees in Cincinnati and Washington D.C. handled applications for tax-exempt status from tea party groups. [Cincinnati Enquirer] No. I have no doubt that Ms. Lerner and Ms. Paz have experienced no little amount of unfriendly mail. (Welcome to the Internet Age, gals!) But let’s recall precisely what led to the present situation: In the lead-up to the 2012 election, agents in the IRS’s Tax Exempt Division systematically harassed conservative nonprofit groups, or groups critical of President Obama. Their applications for tax-exempt status were delayed or denied. Their members had their Facebook posts scrutinized, their family members’ political ambitions questioned, the content of their prayers examined. Some groups were audited. The National Organization for Marriage had its donor list leaked to political opponents. Then, when this scheme was discovered, IRS agents stonewalled Congress and federal investigators, hard drives mysteriously went missing, and the IRS destroyed tens of thousands of pertinent e-mails under congressional subpoena. The head of the Tax Exempt Division through most of these shenanigans was Lois Lerner, who walked away from it all with a $129,000 bonus and a pension. Her second-in-command was Paz, who as head of the Office of Rulings and Agreements oversaw determinations of tax-exempt organizations. Everyone who is so concerned about our constitutional republic turning into a banana one might consider that for years the federal government’s revenue-collecting agency used its considerable powers to bully the president’s political opponents — then covered it up, with the help of an unconcerned White House and an incurious media. Now, facing a class-action lawsuit brought by more than 400 groups, the people centrally responsible for this inarguable malfeasance are — incredibly — trying to play the victims. Lerner and Paz are pretending like they’re testifying against the Mob; if what we know is true, for thousands of Americans they were the Mob.
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