#PhonyScandals Get Almost Phonier If You Can Believe That

Phonies.

Embattled Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner and an attorney in the Federal Election Commission’s general counsel’s office appear to have twice colluded to influence the record before the FEC’s vote in the case of a conservative non-profit organization, according to e-mails unearthed by the House Ways and Means Committee and obtained exclusively by National Review Online. The correspondence suggests the discrimination of conservative groups extended beyond the IRS and into the FEC, where an attorney from the agency’s enforcement division in at least one case sought and received tax information about the status of a conservative group, the American Future Fund, before recommending that the commission prosecute it for violations of campaign-finance law. Lerner, the former head of the IRS’s exempt-organizations division, worked at the FEC from 1986 to 1995, and was known for aggressive investigation of conservative groups during her tenure there, too.

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According to the e-mail correspondence, a month after receiving the American Future Fund’s response, the FEC general counsel’s office — which is prohibited under law from conducting an investigation into an organization before the FEC’s six commissioners have voted to do so — contacted Lerner to investigate the agency’s tax-exempt status.

More at the link. Honestly, I could barely follow it. My brain's a bit burned out.

So, Open Thread. If you've getting here late I actually did my job today and wrote some good posts. The blog is good today, starting off with Gabe and BenK (and Purp late at night for tech-ers). So read that.

Oh and the You Will Mist Up post has a very sweet video.

posted by Ace at 07:33 PM

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