Trump looking to purge Obama political appointees if he wins

From Rick Moran at The American Thinker Blog:

Reuters is reporting that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie told Trump donors in a closed door meeting that the nominee would seek to reform the Civil Service Act to make it easier to fire Obama political appointees.

Christie, who is governor of New Jersey and leads Trump's White House transition team, said the campaign was drawing up a list of federal government employees to fire if Trump defeats Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 presidential election.
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Trump's transition advisers fear that Obama may convert these appointees to civil servants, who have more job security than officials who have been politically appointed. This would allow officials to keep their jobs in a new, possibly Republican, administration, Christie said.

“It’s called burrowing," Christie said. "You take them from the political appointee side into the civil service side, in order to try to set up ... roadblocks for your successor, kind of like when all the Clinton people took all the Ws off the keyboard when George Bush was coming into the White House.”

People like Lerner or Koskinen. Embedded people, who are partisans.

New Documents Suggest IRS’s Lerner Likely Broke the Law

From National Review:

Recently obtained documents raise new questions about Lois Lerner’s role in sending confidential tax returns to the Justice Department. It is likely the largest unauthorized disclosure of tax-return information in history: the transfer of some 1.25 million pages of confidential tax returns to the Department of Justice in October of 2010.

Frog march!

Sixth Circuit Loses Patience With IRS

From The Washington Post via H/T at Instapundit:

Among the most serious allegations a federal court can address are that an executive agency has targeted citizens for mistreatment based on their political views. No citizen—Republican or Democrat, socialist or libertarian —should be targeted or even have to fear being targeted on those grounds. Yet those are the grounds on which the plaintiffs allege they were mistreated by the IRS here. The allegations are substantial: most are drawn from findings made by the Treasury Department’s own Inspector General for Tax Administration. Those findings include that the IRS used political criteria to round up applications for tax-exempt status filed by so called tea-party groups; that the IRS often took four times as long to process tea-party applications as other applications; and that the IRS served tea-party applicants with crushing demands for what the Inspector General called “unnecessary information.”

Yet in this lawsuit the IRS has only compounded the conduct that gave rise to it. The plaintiffs seek damages on behalf of themselves and other groups whose applications the IRS treated in the manner described by the Inspector General. The lawsuit has progressed as slowly as the underlying applications themselves: at every turn the IRS has resisted the plaintiffs’ requests for information regarding the IRS’s treatment of the plaintiff class, eventually to the open frustration of the district court. At issue here are IRS “Be On the Lookout” lists of organizations allegedly targeted for unfavorable treatment because of their political beliefs. Those organizations in turn make up the plaintiff class. The district court ordered production of those lists, and did so again over an IRS motion to reconsider. Yet, almost a year later, the IRS still has not complied with the court’s orders. Instead the IRS now seeks from this court a writ of mandamus, an extraordinary remedy reserved to correct only the clearest abuses of power by a district court. We deny the petition. . . .

In closing, we echo the district court’s observations about this case. The lawyers in the Department of Justice have a long and storied tradition of defending the nation’s interests and enforcing its laws—all of them, not just selective ones—in a manner worthy of the Department’s name. The conduct of the IRS’s attorneys in the district court falls outside that tradition. We expect that the IRS will do better going forward. And we order that the IRS comply with the district court’s discovery orders of April 1 and June 16, 2015—without redactions, and without further delay.

I expect nothing of the kind.

Lois Lerner, you're next on the list!

Mrs. Clinton Is Professor Click

From National Review:

If you are a Democrat, the safest place in the world to be is under the authority of other Democrats. Lois Lerner, the criminal who used the Internal Revenue Service as a political weapon on behalf of the Democratic party, was never going to be charged, or even disciplined, by her overseers in the IRS or at the Department of Justice. After pulling one of the worst Gestapo stunts in modern American history, she’s receiving a nice, comfortable pension, and those who enabled her crimes were given fat bonuses. There was no way that Eric Holder or Loretta Lynch was going to charge Lerner — what do you imagine the odds are that they’ll discover their integrity in the matter of Hillary Rodham Clinton, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee? Unless President Barack Obama should decide to take this opportunity to rid his party of the Clintons forever (a slim but non-zero possibility), nothing is going to happen.

How spot on.

IRS' Lois Lerner Skates; An Ugly Precedent Is Set

From Investor's Business Daily via H/T at Instapundit:

Lois Lerner skates; an ugly precedent set.

IRS officials now know they can go after any political opponent they want, ruin them any way they wish, swing an election — as occurred with Lerner's actions — and get away with it.

No wonder confidence in government has plunged. Last June, Gallup conducted a survey on confidence in public institutions and found it "below historic norms" and with confidence in justice dropping to its lowest point since Barack Obama took office. Just 23% of the public had high or some confidence in a justice system that could play fairly; 34% had little or no confidence.

The Democrats may giggle with glee at seeing another of their own skate free based on the president's executive actions through his DOJ flunkies.

But two can play that game. If a Republican as unscrupulous as Obama wins the election, the same banana republic politics in government will make Democrats the next victims.

The next GOP president may not be a gentleman of the George W. Bush variety. Political parties should be careful what they wish for.

Great theory, but it would happen in the real world. Why? Nixon wanted to use the IRS to go after his enemies, but found out that it was staffed with a bunch of liberals. It was a non-starter.

I suggest that the hex Republican AG go after Lerner, under obstruction of justice and conspiracy, the same charges they went after Scooter Libby.

Thank You For Your Service: Department of Justice Wraps Up "Investigation" of IRS, Will Not Press Charges Against Incandescantly Corrupt Lois Lerner

From Ace of Spades HQ:

Number the times the press has called upon Obama to appoint a special prosecutor, outside his apparachik chain of command? Zero.

"Ineffective management is not a crime," Assistant Attorney General Peter J. Kadzik said in a letter to the House Ways and Means Committee. "The Department of Justice’s exhaustive probe revealed no evidence that would support a criminal prosecution. What occurred is disquieting and may necessitate corrective action-- but it does not warrant criminal prosecution."
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Some Republicans have questioned the validity of the probe from the beginning, after learning that one of the Justice Department lawyers assigned to the investigation was a contributor to Mr. Obama’s political campaigns.
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Investigators said none of the witnesses they interviewed believed Ms. Lerner acted out of political motives, and said that Ms. Lerner seemed to try to correct the inappropriate scrutiny once she "recognized that it was wrong."

"None of the witnesses" -- that is, her colleagues. I'm sure the people whose tax information was illegally forwarded, or who were put through years of abuse, would disagree. But they weren't, apparently, "witnesses" to the wonderful Ms. Lerner's style of operating.

Unexpectedly!!

As if this is really a surprise to anyone, not a Democrat.

Should Government Employees be Allowed the Fifth Amendment Plea?

From The American Thinker Blog:

When a person is in the public service, when that person is compensated by the taxpayer, is it not demanded of the arrangement that there be transparency?

We all know Lois Lerner’s Fifth Amendment plea, and now we are going to learn of Hillary’s State Department’s computer expert doing same. He doesn’t want to tell us, his employer, what he was up to.
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Does the taxpayer, the citizen, not have the inherent right to know what that servant was doing with the powers and appointments of his or her position? Let’s take this to the absurd. Imagine the President, upon being asked a question regarding his use of power, replied, “I don’t want to tell you. I don’t have to tell you.”

If a situation exists where testimony is required by the “public servant” to explain how the powers endowed to him or her, by the people, were indeed executed, should not the person be required to reply or be terminated?

The employee must be accountable to the employer.
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Thomas Lifson adds: There may be legal problems in requiring suspension of a constitutional right as a condition of employment. Perhaps a more viable approach would be the suspension of all pay and benefits, including pension, for government employees who invoke the Fifth.

I like this idea!

Lois Lerner Had Another Secret Email Account, Under The Name “Toby Miles.”

From The Washington Times via H/T at Instapundit:

Not even a smidgen.

Lois Lerner had yet another personal email account used to conduct some IRS business, the tax agency confirmed in a new court filing late Monday that further complicates the administration’s efforts to be transparent about Ms. Lerner’s actions during the tea party targeting scandal.

The admission came in an open-records lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm that has sued to get a look at emails Ms. Lerner sent during the targeting.

So the IRS, suddenly (unexpectedly), finds that Lois Lerner used a SECOND private email address to conduct IRS business. Like Lisa Jackson at the EPA, like Hillary Clinton at State.

The Dear Leader is correct, it's not a smidgen, it's a pattern.

UPDATE: Looks like Carolyn Kennedy used a personal email account too.

Wow, another one at the State Department.

Federal Judge Threatens to Hold IRS Commissioner, Justice Attorneys in Contempt over Lerner Emails

From Breitbart's Big Government:

This has been quite a time for those of us demanding that the Obama IRS be held accountable to the rule of law for its abuse of innocent taxpayers. Judicial Watch received more documents that expose more Obama administration misconduct and lies in the IRS scandal. Now a federal court judge threatened to hold the IRS Commissioner personally in contempt over the agency’s violation of his court orders.

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan recently threatened to hold the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department attorneys in contempt of court after the IRS failed to produce status reports and newly recovered emails of Lois Lerner, former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the IRS, as he had ordered on July 1, 2015.

During the a status hearing Wednesday, Sullivan warned that the failure to follow his order was serious and that the IRS and Justice Department’s excuses for not following his July 1 order were “indefensible, ridiculous, and absurd.” He asked the IRS’ Justice Department lawyer Geoffrey Klimas “why didn’t the IRS comply” with his court order and “why shouldn’t the court hold the commissioner of the IRS in contempt?” Judge Sullivan referenced his contempt findings against Justice Department prosecutors in the prosecution of late Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) and reminded the Justice Department attorney the court has the ability to detain him for contempt.

Perp Walk ! Perp Walk ! Perp Walk ! Perp Walk ! Perp Walk !

IRS's fake search for Lois Lerner emails didn't even cover 5 of 6 possible sources

From Thomas Lifson at American Thinker:

Face it: the IRS is a rogue agency, politicized, and contemptuously failing to undertake its duty to uncover evidence of political corruption within itself.  The fact that, unique among agencies of the federal government, it can presume guilt and force the taxpayer to prove innocence makes this abuse of power toxic to democratic republicanism.

Americans for Tax Reform has the evidence that the IRS is engaged in a cover-up of the illegal activities of Lois Lerner.

Lois Lerner needs to under go a perp walk!

Newly recovered Lois Lerner email shows IRS tried to cover up tea party targeting

From the Washington Times:

The IRS sent one of its intrusive scrutiny letters to a nonprofit group in order to throw up a smokescreen and prevent the group from complaining to Congress about poor treatment, according to one of Lois G. Lerner’s apparently lost emails, which were recovered by auditors and released by an interest group Tuesday.
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“This material shows that the IRS‘ cover-up began years ago,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. “We now have smoking-gun proof that top officials in the Obama IRS unlawfully harassed taxpayers just to keep them from complaining to Congress about IRS‘ targeting and abuse. No wonder the Obama IRS has had such little interest in preserving or finding Lois Lerner’s emails.”

More proof that the IRS was being used to restrict the activities of the Dear Leader opponents during his 2012 reelection campaign.

Now IRS Reports EVEN MORE Computer Crashes, Doesn’t Know If Emails Still Exist

From The Daily Caller:

IRS Deputy Associate Chief Counsel Thomas Kane said in transcribed congressional testimony that more IRS officials experienced computer crashes, bringing the total number of crash victims to “less than 20,” and also said that the agency does not know if the lost emails are still backed up somewhere.

The new round of computer crash victims includes David Fish, who routinely corresponded with Lois Lerner, as well as Lerner subordinate Andy Megosh, Lerner’s technical adviser Justin Lowe, and Cincinnati-based agent Kimberly Kitchens

What a coincidence! ! !

Lois Lerner Targeted Chuck Grassley After He Blocked Obama’s DOJ Tax Nominee

From The Daily Caller:

Ex-Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner tried to audit Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley after Grassley blocked President Obama’s nominee to head the Department of Justice (DOJ) tax division, an executive branch insider told The Daily Caller.

Grassley made it more difficult for the IRS and DOJ to work together to target conservative groups by blocking Obama’s political appointee Mary L. Smith from taking over the DOJ Tax Division, which prosecutes criminal cases for the IRS. Grassley held up the nomination in early 2010, just as Lerner and fellow IRS officials were mapping out their targeting strategy. The White House later withdrew Smith’s nomination.

The source confirmed to The Daily Caller that the White House and IRS officials “were very upset at Senator Grassley and Republicans for blocking a vote on Mary Smith’s nomination.”

The IRS relies on the DOJ Tax Division to prosecute both criminal and civil cases, and has entire legal teams devoted to making DOJ referrals. Placing a political appointee as assistant attorney general for the DOJ Tax Division was a top priority for the Obama White House.

Grassley made sure that no Obama political nominee got confirmed for the post, and kept in a “career,” or non-political, DOJ tax head for another two years.

Another case where the timing is suspicious.

Hmmmm. Coincidence? Must be.

If Lois Lerner's Computer Gave Her The "Blue Screen of Death," As a Witness Claims, That Means The Data On It The Hard Drive Was Probably Recoverable

From Megan McCardle at Bloomberg News.

[T]he Blue Screen of Death is an operating system error. The operating system lives on the hard drive. Which raises a question: If Lerner’s hard drive was so thoroughly malfunctioning that no one could even get the data off of it, how was it booting up far enough for the operating system to malfunction? This is not the description of the problem that I would have expected to hear; I would have expected to hear that her computer wouldn’t really boot up at all, perhaps while horrible grinding noises emanated from its innards. In most cases, a computer displaying the Blue Screen of Death is a computer with a hard drive functioning well enough for data recovery. If I were Lerner's IT support person, I would waste no time in getting the hard drive to a working computer, where I’d connect it as a secondary drive and transfer off all the files, because the Blue Screen of Death is often a harbinger of future hard drive failure. But it was not, in my experience, usually a symptom of the actual failure.

Hmmmm, so what lie are they going to try next.

BTW, as a guy who has fixed a few computers myself, McCardle's solution to the problem is exactly what I would have done. It does not explain, however, how all the data on the backup system was lost.

Let's label Lerner guilty, just like IRS does to us

From The Arizona Republic via Instapundit:

When I filed my taxes, I was targeted for an audit due to my casualty loss. When I told the wonderful agent at the IRS that all my records (along with most other possessions) had been lost in the hurricane, the sympathetic, caring agent opened up three years for audit. They then computed what they thought I should owe for the three years and demanded payment. As my records were destroyed, I had no way to fight them.

The IRS’ officials rules are that they are right unless I can prove different. In other words, guilty until proven innocent. Why, then, cannot former IRS administrator Lois Lerner be held to the same standards? Guilty until the IRS provides the proof of innocence.

Rules are for the little people.

I like this idea! ! ! !

The Clerisy strikes another blow against freedom.

IRS’s Lois Lerner Tried To Audit GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley Over Email Mix-up

From the Daily Caller:

Investigators in Congress discovered new emails from Lois Lerner Wednesday revealing the former IRS Exempt Organizations director’s attempt to audit GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley in 2012 over an email mixup. ..........................

The invitation from the organizer reportedly included an offer to pay for the attendance of Grassley’s wife, should the two be interested in coming. Upon reading Grassley’s invitation mistakenly sent to her, the IRS official accused of unjustifiably targeting conservative tea party organizations’ tax exempt status forwarded the email to another IRS employee, and suggested auditing the Iowa senator.

Lerner speculated it was “inappropriate” for the organizer to pay for Grassley’s wife to attend.

Legal counsel for the IRS’s Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division Matthew Giuliano shot down Lerner’s suggestion, and said an audit would be an unqualified action.

Targeting a sitting member of the US Senate?

There must be something else in play here.

Trey Gowdy Shreds Partisan IRS Hack Koskinen

From Jammie Wearing Fools via Ace of Spades HQ:

Yet as always whenever he appears on a panel, South Carolina Republican Trey Gowdy stole the show with his interrogation of the pathetic Koskinen. This is just masterful:

By the way, if you have any inkling that Koskinen is anything other than a Democrat hack,  this demolishes that notion.

I'm shocked that the Dear Leader placed a partisan hack as the new head of the IRS. Shocked!

More from Byron York at the Washington Examiner:

The IRS commissioner is pretty sure no laws have been broken despite not being familiar with relevant statutes

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., a former federal prosecutor, interrogated the IRS commissioner with questions about whether the agency engaged in possible criminal misconduct.

Koskinen maintains that no wrongdoing has taken place at the IRS, but Gowdy wanted to see just how much the IRS commissioner has actually looked into the situation.

“You can shake your head all you want to, Commissioner. You have said today that there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing, and I’m asking you what criminal statutes you have reviewed to reach that conclusion,” Gowdy said, adding that Koskinen has “no idea” if the IRS has committed any crimes.

Gowdy was also quick to dismiss Koskinen's suggestion that Republicans are trying to tie the White House to the targeting scandal.
“It was Jay Carney that perpetuated the myth that it was two rogue agents in Ohio, it wasn’t any of us. Was that accurate?” Gowdy asked.
“Not that I know of,” Koskinen said.

“So that was inaccurate and that came from the White House. Who said there’s not a smidgen of corruption?”
“My understanding is that was the president,” the commissioner said.
“So that’s Jay Carney and the president both inserting themselves into the IRS scandal,” Gowdy said. “And you want to blame us for bringing the White House into it?”

Koskinen sheepishly denied suggesting that Republicans are trying to make the scandal about the White House.

The Week in Pictures - The Dog Ate My Trademark Edition

From the guys at Powerline Blog:

GOP Rep. Submits Bill to Let Taxpayers Use Lerner's Excuses to Avoid IRS Audit

From Breitbart:

Why shouldn't taxpayers be allowed to use the same excuses the IRS, and other elements of our imperial government, deploy when they get in trouble?  Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) aims to make it happen with his "The Dog Ate My Tax Receipts Act."

"Taxpayers should be allowed to offer the same flimsy, obviously made-up excuses the Obama Administration uses," Stockman declared, offering legislation that would require the IRS to accept any of the following reasons when we can't meet their demands for documentation:

1.         The dog ate my tax receipts
2.         Convenient, unexplained, miscellaneous computer malfunction
3.         Traded documents for five terrorists
4.         Burned for warmth while lost in the Yukon
5.         Left on table in Hillary’s Book Room
6.         Received water damage in the trunk of Ted Kennedy’s car
7.         Forgot in gun case sold to Mexican drug lords
8.         Forced to recycle by municipal Green Czar
9.         Was short on toilet paper while camping
10.       At this point, what difference does it make?

But don't worry, Stockman's bill would not mean the total collapse of our tax system. "In any case, IRS can see the NSA for a good, high quality copy," the Act concludes.

This would be so funny, if it was from Jimmy Fallon or Jimmy Kimmy, not a member of Congress.

Lois Lerner’s “lost” emails

From Scott Johnson at Powerline Blog:

A reader writes from inside the Department of Justice to comment on the two-year gap in Lois Lerner’s intra-government email messages:

I’m a DOJ lawyer, so you obviously cannot use my name or any identifying information. But the idea that a “hard drive crash” somehow destroyed all of Ms. Lerner’s intra-government email correspondence during the period in question [2009-2011] is laughable. Government email servers are backed up every night. So if she actually had a hard drive fail, her emails would be recoverable from the backup. If the backup was somehow also compromised, then we are talking about a conspiracy.

Keep up the good work.

A conspiracy to protect the Dear Leader at the IRS and the DOJ, say it isn't so