The Obama administration revealed in court yesterday that Lois Lerner (who led the IRS field troops in the operation to stop conservative and Christian groups from getting tax exemptions to which they were entitled) had a second personal email account under the name "Toby Miles". Lerner used the account for official government business. Until now, all that the Obamacrats had admitted was that Lerner used an account entitled "Lois Home" on a few occasions to send work emails.
The disclosure that Lerner was improperly sending emails from a personal account is shocking, but much more shocking is the admission that the feds have known about this for more than a year without disclosing it to the court or to Judicial Watch which has been prosecuting a lawsuit to obtain Lerner's business emails under the Freedom of Information Act. Thus far, the government attorneys have offered no explanation for the failure to disclose this second Lerner account.
For Lerner, unlike for Hillary Clinton, there is no issue of classified national security information being sent on a private unsecured email system. Lerner, however, may have sent the private tax information of individual taxpayers on this new account. By law, it would be a crime to disclose that information to those outside the IRS. We already know that Lerner is accused of having disclosed confidential information about contributors to various conservative groups to political operatives of the 2012 Obama campaign. Did she send that sort of info under the name Toby Miles? That would certainly explain the need for Lerner to use an email account which could not be traced by name to her.
I hope that the judge in the Judicial Watch case comes down hard on the government for this. The judge ought to call in those officials who concealed the existence of the new Lerner private account for all this time and then interrogate those officials to find out just who chose to violate the orders of the court. The truth is that whoever did this ought to be held in contempt of court and put in prison for a week. We cannot have a government that just ignores the orders of the court in this manner.
The disclosure that Lerner was improperly sending emails from a personal account is shocking, but much more shocking is the admission that the feds have known about this for more than a year without disclosing it to the court or to Judicial Watch which has been prosecuting a lawsuit to obtain Lerner's business emails under the Freedom of Information Act. Thus far, the government attorneys have offered no explanation for the failure to disclose this second Lerner account.
For Lerner, unlike for Hillary Clinton, there is no issue of classified national security information being sent on a private unsecured email system. Lerner, however, may have sent the private tax information of individual taxpayers on this new account. By law, it would be a crime to disclose that information to those outside the IRS. We already know that Lerner is accused of having disclosed confidential information about contributors to various conservative groups to political operatives of the 2012 Obama campaign. Did she send that sort of info under the name Toby Miles? That would certainly explain the need for Lerner to use an email account which could not be traced by name to her.
I hope that the judge in the Judicial Watch case comes down hard on the government for this. The judge ought to call in those officials who concealed the existence of the new Lerner private account for all this time and then interrogate those officials to find out just who chose to violate the orders of the court. The truth is that whoever did this ought to be held in contempt of court and put in prison for a week. We cannot have a government that just ignores the orders of the court in this manner.
No comments:
Post a Comment