After years looking for missing emails and dealing with a perfectly timed email server crash, the Justice Department closed its investigation into former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner on Friday. Its conclusion: Nothing to see here.
A two-year probe into the targeting of conservative organizations by the IRS during the 2010 and 2012 elections ended with no charges being filed against Lerner, who retired in 2013 with a full pension.
“We found no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt, or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution,” Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik said in the letter released Friday, CNN reported. “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.”
The investigation concluded there was “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.”
Lerner, who processed applications by organizations seeking nonprofit status by the IRS, asserted her Fifth Amendment right before Congress May 22, 2013. She was then placed on administrative leave.
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform moved to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress in May 2014, at which time the IRS acknowledged losing many of her emails from 2009 through 2011 due to a broken hard drive.
The U.S. Treasury Department eventually found 6,400 new emails the IRS had not turned over to lawmakers investigating the scandal, WND reported April 29.
“We are at a point now where we need prosecutions. We need perp walks, and we need people to go to jail,” True the Vote President Catherine Englebrecht said June 20, WND reported. Englebrecht’s conservative group was one of many targeted by the IRS.
President Obama has always maintained, “not even a smidgen of corruption” crept into Lois Lerner’s decisions at the IRS, Fox News reported Feb 3, 2014.
