Becket Adams:
The top Democrat on a House committee tasked with investigating the IRS scandal may have been involved in the targeting of a Texas-based conservative group, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said Wednesday.
Citing documents obtained last week, Issa suggested in a memo that Rep. Elijah Cummings’ (D-Md.) supposed eagerness to end the IRS investigation may be due to the fact that the Maryland congressman’s office in August 2012 communicated with the IRS about True the Vote, a non-profit group dedicated to preventing voter fraud.
“The IRS and the Oversight Minority made numerous requests for virtually identical information from True the Vote, raising concerns that the IRS improperly shared protected taxpayer information with Rep. Cummings’ staff,” the Oversight panel said in a statement on its website.
The communications between Cummings’ office and the IRS included Lois Lerner, the former IRS official at the center of the targeting scandal. However, Issa’s documents show that she didn’t get involved in the True the Vote matter until January 2013.
The documents obtained by Issa show that Cummings’ staff told the IRS it was interested in obtaining “copies of all training materials used for volunteers, affiliates, or other entities,” from True the Vote.
About five days after Cummings’ office mentioned its interest in the conservative group, True the Vote received an email from the IRS requesting “a copy of [True the Vote’s] volunteer registration form,” “…the process you use to assign volunteers,” “how you keep your volunteers in teams,” and “how your volunteers are deployed … following the training they receive by you.”
Holly Paz, the former director of the IRS exempt organizations office in Cincinnati, later sent True the Vote’s 990 forms to Cummings’ staff.
An email obtained by Issa’s office shows that Lerner at one point asked Paz of the True the Vote investigation: “Did we find anything?”
Paz responded that she had not.
“[T]hanks – check tomorrow please,” Lerner responded in an email.
True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht has testified before Congress about her experiences dealing with dozens of visits and intrusive questions from the IRS and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Explosives.
No wonder Cummings was adamant that this investigation was ”over,” several months ago.
He didn’t want any more digging.
He knew HE was involved.
He feared his involvement would be exposed.
And now it has been.
Crickets in the leftist media?
Or coverage?
Only 650 news stories as of today.
Many of them from blogs and web sites instead of major media.