True The Vote Totally Wasn't Politically Targeted, No Sirree Bob
PS, Ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings' Staff Requested, and Received, Information About True the Vote from the IRS

None dare call it political repression.

Read the whole thing. I would quote it, but you'd think my quote was everything, and it's not.

Also, read this.

In a letter signed by his five subcommittee chairmen, Issa raises the possibility that Cummings coordinated with the IRS by “surreptitiously” contacting the agency to request information about True the Vote.

E-mails unearthed in the course of Issa’s investigation into the IRS’s inappropriate targeting of right-leaning groups show that in August 2012, a member of Cummings’s staff contacted the IRS asking for any publicly available information on True the Vote. The matter was discussed by IRS officials that included Lois Lerner, the former exempt-organizations chief who retired in the wake of the targeting scandal. One of Lerner’s deputies, Holly Paz, subsequently sent the organization’s 990 forms to Cummings and his staff. The correspondence does not indicate, however, whether the action the IRS took with relation to True the Vote was prompted by the request from Cummings’s office.

Nonetheless, Engelbrecht’s True the Vote received a letter from the IRS with inquiries that agency officials have testified were unprecedented in scope. Cummings’s letter contained questions that closely mirrored those posed by the IRS, and Issa details them in his letter, strongly implying that one was modeled on the other.

Somewhat extraordinary is that Issa is now demanding answers-- from Elijah Cummings.

Although you have previously denied that your staff made inquiries to the IRS about conservative organization True the Vote that may have led to additional agency scrutiny, communication records between your staff and IRS officials – which you did not disclose to Majority Members or staff – indicates otherwise...

"As the Committee is scheduled to consider a resolution holding Ms. Lerner, a participant in responding to your communications that you failed to disclose, in contempt of Congress, you have an obligation to fully explain your staff’s undisclosed contacts with the IRS.”

Exit question: Re: Cummings's staffers' request for information (derogatory, one assumes) on True the Vote -- Did we find anything?

posted by Ace at 04:52 PM

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