Lois Lerner Biography | Where Is Lois Lerner Now
Lois Lerner(full name: Lois Gail Lerner) is an American attorney and former United States federal civil service employee. Lerner became director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 2005, and subsequently became the central figure in the 2013 IRS targeting controversy in the targeting of conservative and liberal groups, either denying them tax-exempt status outright or delaying that status until they could no longer take effective part in the 2012 election. Both conservative and liberal groups were scrutinized. Only three groups – all branches of the Democratic group Emerge America – had tax exemptions revoked. Lerner resigned over the controversy. The Obama Administration attempted to clear itself of wrongdoing in a 2015 investigation that claimed to find “substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment, and institutional inertia” but “no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt, or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution.
Lois Lerner Age
Lois is 68 years old as of 2018. She was born on 12 October 1950.
Lois Lerner Husband
Lerner is a past president of the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL).
She is married to tax lawyer Michael R. Miles.
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Lois Lerner Emails
Testifying in June 2015, the IRS Deputy Inspector General Timothy P. Camus said that 424 back-up tapes, most likely to have contained the missing emails, were erased in March 2014—a month after the IRS said it realized it was missing some of Lerner’s emails because of a hard-drive crash, and although the emails were then under subpoena from the Oversight Committee. He stated, however, that their investigation “did not uncover evidence that the erasure was done … to destroy evidence or conceal information from Congress,” and noted that there was a “remote possibility” that additional emails might still be found. He said that officials were examining the possibility, however, of criminal activity.
Testifying in June 2015, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration Russell George and his deputy, Timothy Camus, told the Oversight Committee an investigation by them had been able to recover more than 1,000 emails that the IRS did not turn over to Congress. Their investigation could not determine why Lerner’s computer crashed, but that, “Prior to our investigation, and our efforts to recover Ms. Lerner’s missing e-mails, the IRS did not search for, review or examine the two separate sources of backup tapes, the server hard drives, or the loaner laptops that ultimately produced new, previously undisclosed e-mails.”
In a statement released June 25, 2015, the IRS said it has “fully cooperated with the investigation,” but acknowledged the backup tapes should not have been erased. “The IRS recognizes there was a clear breakdown of communication in one part of the organization regarding the need to preserve and retain the back-up tapes and information,” the statement said, noting that an internal review found the erasure wasn’t intentional.
Lois Lerner Irs
In 2013, the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) revealed that it had selected political groups applying for tax-exempt status for intensive scrutiny based on their names or political themes. This led to wide condemnation of the agency and triggered several investigations, including a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) criminal probe ordered by United States Attorney General Eric Holder.
Initial reports described the selections as nearly exclusively of conservative groups with terms such as “Tea Party” in their names. According to Republican lawmakers, liberal-leaning groups and the Occupy movement had also triggered additional scrutiny, but at a lower rate than conservative groups. The Republican majority on the House Oversight Committee issued a report, which concluded that although some liberal groups were selected for additional review, the scrutiny that these groups received did not amount to targeting when compared to the greater scrutiny received by conservative groups. The report was criticized by the committee’s Democratic minority, which said that the report ignored evidence that the IRS used keywords to identify both liberal and conservative groups.
In January 2014, James Comey, who at the time was the FBI director, told Fox News that its investigation had found no evidence so far warranting the filing of federal criminal charges in connection with the controversy, as it had not found any evidence of “enemy hunting”, and that the investigation continued. On October 23, 2015, the Justice Department declared that no criminal charges would be filed. On September 8, 2017, the Trump Justice Department declined to reopen the criminal investigation into Lois Lerner, a central figure in the controversy.
In late September 2017, an exhaustive report by the Treasury Department’s inspector general found that from 2004 to 2013, the IRS used both conservative and liberal keywords to choose targets for further scrutiny.
In October 2017, the Trump Administration agreed to settle a lawsuit filed on behalf of more than four hundred conservative nonprofit groups who claimed that they had been discriminated against by the Internal Revenue Service for an undisclosed amount described by plaintiffs’ counsel as “very substantial.” The Trump Administration also agreed to settle a second lawsuit brought by forty-one conservative organizations with an apology and an admission that subjecting them to “heightened scrutiny and inordinate delays” was wrongful.
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Conservative Groups Targeted in Lois Lerner’s IRS Scandal Receive Settlement Checks
Adopted:https://www.dailysignal.com
Published: January 11, 2019
MADISON, Wis.—Dozens of conservative organizations are receiving late Christmas presents years after the IRS handed them a lump of coal.
The federal government in recent days has been issuing settlement checks to 100 right-of-center groups wrongfully targeted for their political beliefs under the Obama administration’s Internal Revenue Service, according to an attorney for the firm that represented plaintiffs in NorCal v. the United States.
Three of the claimants in the $3.5 million national class-action suit are based in the Badger State.
“This is really a groundbreaking case. Hopefully, it sets a precedent and will serve as a warning to government officials who further feel tempted to discriminate against U.S. citizens based on their viewpoints,” Edward Greim, attorney for Kansas City, Missouri-based Graves Garrett LLC told MacIver News Service.
Most of the claimants will each receive a check for approximately $14,000, Greim said. Five conservative groups that were integrally involved in the lawsuit get a bonus payment of $10,000 each, the attorney said.
About $2 million of the settlement goes to cover the legal costs of five long years of litigation. IRS attorneys attempted delay after delay, objection after objection, trying to use the very taxpayer protection statutes the plaintiffs were suing under to suppress documents.
The agency has admitted no wrongdoing in what a federal report found to be incidents of intrusive inspections of organizations seeking nonprofit status. Greim has said the seven-figure settlement suggests otherwise.
An IRS spokesman declined to comment.
Brandon Scholz, managing director of Wisconsin Small Businesses United, one of the groups receiving a settlement check, said the IRS’ conduct had a “chilling effect” on free speech.
“Shame on those people at the IRS who engaged in putting their foot down on the throats of people who were simply trying to advocate for an issue or express an opinion,” he said. “That stain on the IRS should remain there as a reminder that this should never take place again.”
Consumer Rights Wisconsin is the other conservative organization receiving a settlement check, according to Greim.
Disgraced former bureaucrat Lois Lerner led the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt groups. A 2013 inspector general’s report found the IRS had singled out conservative and tea party organizations for intense scrutiny, oftentimes simply based on their conservative-sounding or tea party names. The IRS delayed for months, even years, the applications, and some groups were improperly questioned about their donors and their religious affiliations and practices.
Lerner claims she did nothing wrong. In clearing her of wrongdoing, an Obama administration Department of Justice review described Lerner as a hero. But she invoked her Fifth Amendment right in refusing to answer questions before a congressional committee. The plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit took the first and only deposition of Lerner, a document that the former IRS official and her attorneys have fought to keep sealed.
“At one level, it’s hard to even assess a dollar amount to what they did, it’s so contrary to what we think our bureaucrats in Washington should be doing. It boggles the mind,” Greim said.
In signing off on the agreement in August, federal Judge Michael R. Barrett said the settlement was “fair, reasonable, and adequate.”
Greim said the money recovered in the settlement approximates the number of IRS violations involved.
“That’s about what the evidence showed,” the attorney said. “We felt like we got about everything we could.”
Originally the class-action included some 400 potential claimants.
Conservative activists are skeptical of the IRS’ public apologies and its pledge to end such targeting practices.
“The message does not let up on the gas pedal. Do not be intimidated,” Scholz said.
This story has been updated to include the following account:
Autonomous Solidarity Organization Inc., a Madison-based grassroots organization, is among a handful of liberal organizations receiving a settlement check. The vast majority of groups targeted were conservative, but the IRS began adding liberal organizations to its intense-scrutiny initiative after the agency got caught.
“In the spirit of democracy, we would have of course preferred that our organization, as well as all of the others in the class, had been treated fairly and equitably in the first place,” Sara Gilbertson, Autonomous Solidarity treasurer, wrote in an email to MacIver News Service. “As generous as the settlement is, there are fundamental differences in the work we were doing and planning in 2013 and 2014 and what is needed today, and money cannot change the past.”
Gilbertson said it took nearly two years for the organization’s 501(c)(3) status to be granted.
“Today, we are pleased that this class action lawsuit has been settled favorably and hope that going forward, no organization will face such unlawful and arbitrary heightened scrutiny,” she added. “We also find it delightfully ironic that the efforts of the NorCal Tea Party and their attorneys have benefited organizations like ours that are working to uphold human rights, social justice, and worker justice since we would not have had the resources to pursue legal action on our own.”