The Department of Justice (DoJ) recently announced that it will not pursue a criminal investigation into Lois Lerner, the former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), who admitted to targeting and aggressively harassing Tea Party groups. With Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s affinity for the IRS—and the recent news that he asked to use a military jet to ferry him and his wife on their honeymoon—raises questions about his influence on the DoJ’s decision not to pursue Lerner for her illegal actions.
As CRC contributor Joely Friedman wrote following the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in January 2010 (a major defeat in the eyes of many on the Left), the Obama IRS began targeting conservative groups critical of the president’s administration. Lerner later admitted that IRS employees in the agency’s Cincinnati, Ohio, office singled out conservative 501(c)(4) groups which they identified by words such as “tea party,” “patriot,” and “Israel.”
