Although the House Ways and Means Committee has been diligently keeping notes on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) targeting scandal, a recent statement made by the committee contradicts previous reporting, opening the door to questions as to whether the investigation is really just a dog and pony show.
The statement involved the identity of the IRS employee who leaked confidential donor information to gay activist Matthew Meisel. Meisel recently pleaded the fifth during deliberations that ultimately resulted in a (taxpayer-funded) award for the plaintiff, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), as discussed in detail at Wayne Dupree’s news organization, NewsNinja2012.
Here is the discrepancy:
According to an October 2013 article by Eliana Johnson of National Review Online, the House Ways and Means Committee,
“…identified the individual who divulged the information as an employee in the IRS’s Exempt Organizations Division, [but] it can’t divulge his name to the public or to NOM…”
In fact, Johnson specifically reported that according to the Committee,
“…an IRS agent working in the Exempt Organizations Division…leaked NOM’s Schedule B to Matthew Meisel.”
The NOM ruling prompted calls for immunity for Matthew Meisel so that he could reveal his source at the IRS, evidently by those who either were unaware that the House Ways and Means Committee already had that information, or with the hope that Meisel would be able to legally divulge his source.
In the wake of the NOM ruling, the committee released a curious statement saying in part,
“The Committee is actively investigating the matter, and recently discovered evidence that the individual who received the documents may have had a contact within IRS.” [Emphasis added]
Liberty Unyielding reached out to the author of the 2013 article, Eliana Johnson, who also found the disparity curious and noted that she will contact her source for clarification. This article will be updated if new information is received.
As previously reported at Liberty Unyielding, in the wake of the revelation that Lois Lerner’s computer crashed, effectively destroying all evidence from a critical time period, the Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp posted a statement that called for “an immediate investigation and forensic audit by Department of Justice as well as the Inspector General.”
Frankly, the call for a DOJ investigation at this point, is weak. As Andrew C. McCarthy observes at the National Review Online, Attorney General Eric Holder,
“has already been held in contempt of Congress, owing to his penchant for providing misinformation….[and] assigned this abuse-of-power probe to Barbara Bosserman, a heavy Obama and Democratic-party campaign donor.”
It seems that anyone who is willing to put in the elbow grease can find ample evidence of wrongdoing at the IRS.
What more will it take for elected representatives to do something about it?
