FEC Official: New Emails Show Agency May Have Colluded With IRS in Political Targeting Scandal The vice chairman of the Federal Election Commission said Monday he had seen undisclosed email exchanges between FEC employees and the Internal Revenue Service that show the two agencies may have worked together to target conservative groups. Don McGahn’s admission would seem to confirm earlier reports that raised questions regarding a possible collusion between the two agencies. An investigator with the FEC had contacted Lois Lerner, the IRS official at the center of the targeting scandal, to discuss the status of the American Future Fund, a conservative political advocacy group, McGahn told CNN. Shortly after Lerner was contacted, the IRS sent a questionnaire to the conservative group. The FEC, is not exempted under Rule 6103, which prohibits the IRS from sharing sensitive taxpayer data. And based on the email exchanges, it looks like Lerner and an unnamed FEC attorney may have been trading confidential taxpayer information. Here’s a troubling line from the FEC attorney: “When we spoke last July, you had told us that the American Future Fund had not received an exemption letter from the IRS.” Again, along with the IRS being prohibited from discussing or disclosing personal tax information, FEC staffers were supposedly never cleared to contact the IRS about these issues. “Things seemed weird to me” McGahn told CNN. “The FEC has not had a good track record with calling balls and strikes. They’ve been criticized for not playing fair.” The emails create “the appearance that people are being selectively targeted. And that’s something that should never happen,” he added.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Aug 2013 01:27:27 +0000
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