Al Salvi, Dick Durbin, Lois Lerner
Paul Bedard of The Washington Examiner is reporting that newly obtained emails show that the Internal Revenue Service shared highly confidential tax information of several Tea Party groups in the IRS scandal with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), a clear violation of federal law.
The public watchdog group Judicial Watch told Bedard Thursday that it was former IRS boss Lois Lerner who shared the information on groups including the American Future Fund and the American Issues Project.
Illinois Review readers will recall that in 1996 Lerner was working for the FEC and involved in the Salvi/Durbin U.S. Senate race - a story that the Chicago mainstream media has ignored to this day.
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See also:
Lerner intrigue goes back to '96 Durbin/Salvi U.S. Senate race
Lois Lerner to 1996 U.S. Senate Candidate Al Salvi: "We'll get you!"
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These most recent recent emails, obtained by Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, show that the IRS gave the FEC the tax returns of the groups, including income, expenditures and staff pay. The emails also revealed the exact wording of the prying political questions the IRS wanted the groups to reveal, such as their goals and the requests for brochures and ads.
According to Bedard, the email chain began Feb. 3, 2009, when the FEC made it’s request to Lerner. She emailed back 10 minutes later, and said: “I have sent your email out to some of my staff. Will get back to you as soon as I have heard from them.”
According to Judicial Watch, the materials “from the IRS’ files sent from Lerner to the FEC contained detailed, confidential information about the organizations, which under Section 6013 of the Internal Revenue Code, it is a felony for an IRS official to disclose - even to another government agency.”
“These extensive emails and other materials provide a disturbing window into the activities of two out-of-control federal agencies: the IRS and FEC,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And there is the very real question as to whether these documents evidence a crime.”