“Smith asked if they could charge the groups with conspiracy to violate US law.”
What is the bona fides of the special prosecutor appointed to go after Trump? The ones you expect.
via I dye.
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland today announced the appointment of former Justice Department career prosecutor and former Chief Prosecutor of The Hague Special Court Jack Smith to serve as special counsel to oversee two ongoing criminal investigations.
“Based on recent events, including the former president’s announcement that he is running for president in the upcoming election, and the incumbent president’s stated intent to run as well, I have concluded that it is in the public interest to appoint an attorney,” said Attorney General Garland. “Such an appointment underscores the Department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters. It also allows prosecutors and agents to continue their work expeditiously and make decisions unquestionably guided only by the facts and the law.”
A special council was long overdue, but there was no way Garland would choose anyone but a loyal soldier to go after the Tories.
How loyal?
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform recently obtained an email addressed to educate IRS official Lois Lerner from Election Crimes Branch Director Richard Pilger at the Department of Justice. The email addressed to Lerner stated that “you have asked me to execute something.” During the Committee’s investigation, Public Integrity Section Chief Jack Smith told investigators that Justice Department officials spoke with Lerner about conservative nonprofit groups as early as October 2010.
Pilger says that Smith asked him to set up a meeting with Lerner. Pilger further stated that the meeting’s agenda was to discuss how the IRS could be “more vigilant about opportunities for more crime in the . . . 501(c)(4) area.”
In its letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, the Committee said: “The Department of Justice convened a meeting with former IRS official Lois Lerner in October 2010 to discuss how the IRS could assist in the criminal enforcement of campaign finance laws. against politically active non-profit organizations. This meeting was organized under the direction of the Chief of the Public Integrity Section, Jack Smith”.
Public integrity indeed.
Who better to choose to go after conservatives than a guy with a track record of doing just that.
What we tend to forget is that the IRS scandal was far worse than popular understanding. Beyond an attempt to block and shut down conservative nonprofit organizations, it had roots in the Department of Justice and the FBI. It was not just about denying tax-exempt status, but actively criminalizing and prosecuting political dissent.
In October 2010, apparently without a court order, the IRS sent 21 computer disks containing 1.1 million pages of tax return documents to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. According to the Justice Department, the massive data dump included public statements from nonprofit groups, but also taxpayer information that the IRS is required by law to keep confidential. Res. Issa and Jordan request in their letter information regarding the preparation and transmission of the data.
How did these documents end up at the FBI? In September 2010, IRS officials, including Lois Lerner and Sarah Hall Ingram, helped The New York Times prepare a story about nonprofit political groups that “heavily favored Republicans” in their ad buys.
The day after the article appeared, the head of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, Jack Smith, brought up the story in an email to his colleagues and asked if they could charge the groups with conspiring to violate US law. .
That’s where this is.
Why is this happening? Because Smith still had his job after all this. And no good deed will go unforgiven.