The Justice Department notified members of Congress on Friday that it is closing its two-year investigation into whether the IRS improperly targeted the tea party and other conservative groups.
There will be no charges against former IRS official Lois Lerner or anyone else at the agency, the Justice Department said in a letter.
The probe found “substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia leading to the belief by many tax-exempt applicants that the IRS targeted them based on their political viewpoints. But poor management is not a crime,” Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik said in the letter.
“We found no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt, or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution,” Kadzik said. “We also found no evidence that any official involved in the handling of tax-exempt applications or IRS leadership attempted to obstruct justice. Based on the evidence developed in this investigation and the recommendation of experienced career prosecutors and supervising attorneys at the department, we are closing our investigation and will not seek any criminal charges.”
This really isn’t news. The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell was all over this more than a year ago. The stats showed that liberal groups were actually turned down while none of the conservative or tea party groups were, so the claim of targeting was demagoguery and nothing more.
The truth is that no political groups should be allowed to operate under the tax status of 501c4 since they don’t meet the criteria for that bracket; or wouldn’t if the IRS hadn’t changed the wording of the law that congress passed.
It is the IRS that should be filing charges, and they should be doing it against all the political groups that wrongfully use this code to skirt the requirements for political contributions. I would love to see some tax cheats go to jail over this and related violations. Wouldn’t hold my breath on that score either.
(Facebook status from this date published on the blog two years later)
