Monday, March 18, AD 2024 9:04pm

“Maverick” Strikes Again

As I said in 2008, I was voting for Palin:

 

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released newly obtained internal IRS documents, including material revealing that Sen. John McCain’s former staff director and chief counsel on the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee, Henry Kerner, urged top IRS officials, including then-director of exempt organizations Lois Lerner, to “audit so many that it becomes financially ruinous.”  Kerner was appointed by President Trump as Special Counsel for the United States Office of Special Counsel.

The explosive exchange was contained in notes taken by IRS employees at an April 30, 2013, meeting between Kerner, Lerner, and other high-ranking IRS officials. Just ten days following the meeting, former IRS director of exempt organizations Lois Lerner admitted that the IRS had a policy of improperly and deliberately delaying applications for tax-exempt status from conservative non-profit groups.

Lerner and other IRS officials met with select top staffers from the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in a “marathon” meeting to discuss concerns raised by both Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) that the IRS was not reining in political advocacy groups in response to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.  Senator McCain had been the chief sponsor of the McCain-Feingold Act and called the Citizens United decision, which overturned portions of the Act, one of the “worst decisions I have ever seen.”

In the full notes of an April 30 meeting, McCain’s high-ranking staffer Kerner recommends harassing non-profit groups until they are unable to continue operating. Kerner tells Lerner, Steve Miller, then chief of staff to IRS commissioner, Nikole Flax, and other IRS officials, “Maybe the solution is to audit so many that it is financially ruinous.” In response, Lerner responded that “it is her job to oversee it all:”

Henry Kerner asked how to get to the abuse of organizations claiming section 501 (c)(4) but designed to be primarily political. Lois Lerner said the system works, but not in real time. Henry Kerner noted that these organizations don’t disclose donors. Lois Lerner said that if they don’t meet the requirements, we can come in and revoke, but it doesn’t happen timely. Nan Marks said if the concern is that organizations engaging in this activity don’t disclose donors, then the system doesn’t work. Henry Kerner said that maybe the solution is to audit so many that it is financially ruinous. Nikole noted that we have budget constraints. Elise Bean suggested using the list of organizations that made independent expenditures. Lois Lerner said that it is her job to oversee it all, not just political campaign activity.

Judicial Watch previously reported on the 2013 meeting.  Senator McCain then issued a statement decrying “false reports claiming that his office was somehow involved in IRS targeting of conservative groups.”   The IRS previously blacked out the notes of the meeting but Judicial Watch found the notes among subsequent documents released by the agency.

Judicial Watch separately uncovered that Lerner was under significant pressure from both Democrats in Congress and the Obama DOJ and FBI to prosecute and jail the groups the IRS was already improperly targeting. In discussing pressure from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (Democrat-Rhode Island) to prosecute these “political groups,” Lerner admitted, “it is ALL about 501(c)(4) orgs and political activity.”

The April 30, 2013 meeting came just under two weeks prior to Lerner’s admission during an ABA meeting that the IRS had “inappropriately” targeted conservative groups.  In her May 2013 answer to a planted question, in which she admitted to the “absolutely incorrect, insensitive, and inappropriate” targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups, Lerner suggested the IRS targeting occurred due to an “uptick” in 501 (c)(4) applications to the IRS but in actuality, there had been a decrease in such applications in 2010.

On May 14, 2013, a report by Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration revealed: “Early in Calendar Year 2010, the IRS began using inappropriate criteria to identify organizations applying for tax-exempt status” (e.g., lists of past and future donors). The illegal IRS reviews continued “for more than 18 months” and “delayed processing of targeted groups’ applications” in advance of the 2012 presidential election.

 

Go here to read the rest.  McCain was always a member in good standing of the bi-partisan Swamp Party.  His run for President in 2008 was always Kabuki Theater as he spent much of his campaign trying to call off campaigning for “the good of the country” and chiding his supporters for harsh things said about Obama.  His entire career has been spent in sabotaging policies embraced by rank and file Republicans while, in election years, mendaciously embracing those policies.  The completely dishonest “Maverick” is the living, currently, embodiment of why Donald Trump is President.

 

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Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, June 23, AD 2018 9:04am

I’d be more inclined to be critical of your last paragraph if he hadn’t been so abrasive the last several months.

Actually, McCain’s overall voting record has been starboard throughout his career, though there was a modest phase change ca. 1995. It’s just that at critical junctures he’s been perverse and disruptive (and also has a strange allergy to enforcing the immigration laws).

For about 8 years now, it’s been plain there is something pathological about him. There wasn’t any grand reason for him to stay in Congress. There wasn’t any manifest petty reason, either. (With 50 years as a federal employee under his belt, his pension would have been ample even if his wife hadn’t been a centimilionaire). Very few members of Congress accomplish much that anyone outside of a Capitol Hill subculture would care much about and he wasn’t going to get anything done in the minority caucus of the Senate. Yet he runs for re-election twice and one of these contests requires a mendacious primary campaign to boot. You see this again and again. It’s bizarre.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, June 23, AD 2018 9:07am

Have a gander at the career path of the two grifters who managed McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. Circumstances being what they were, McCain wasn’t going to win in any conceivable circumstance, but he might have done better had he the sense not to hire that shady pair.

Steve Phoenix
Steve Phoenix
Wednesday, June 27, AD 2018 9:15am

I subscribe to Judicial Watch and have been aware of this production of documents (originally “withheld” for security purposes, but mistakenly released in another batch of emails) that shows the true face of ever-bitter Man-Without-A-Just-Cause McCain.

From my 18 years in Arizona, again, insiders in the “R” party who know the facts, paid their dues and worked hard to have good legislation have long accused McCain of being the ultimate double-agent for the Left. Here is the final proof.

This man has a very difficult reckoning coming with the Just One. There is only so much deceit one can allow, even in politics.

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