Lois Lerner’s words have resurfaced, and they remain sharp enough to create howls of protest and anger from some conservatives.
Lerner was the head of the IRS tax-exempt status department in 2013 during an investigation to determine her role in preventing conservative organizations from obtaining tax-exempt status as nonprofit organizations. Groups with the words “Tea Party,” “patriot,” “9/12” or other such terms were closely studied to determine if they merited the tax status.
Lerner was deposed on June 8, 2017, by attorneys representing the NorCal Tea Party Patriots and other conservative groups that alleged she improperly sidelined their applications for nonprofit status.
A federal judge sealed the deposition because Lerner’s attorneys claimed her statements could pose a risk to her safety or the safety of others. But on Aug. 1, 2022, the judge granted a motion by the conservative groups to unseal her words.
On June 1, 2012, an email exchange took place between Lerner and another person whose name was redacted.
The other person wrote, “Okay, speaking of regressive politics, does ‘Citizens United’ scare you as much as it scares me?”
Lerner agreed.
“‘Citizens United’ is by far the worst thing that has ever happened to this country,” she replied. “More on that later.”
The other person, identified only as “he” wrote back: “Those words are exactly the same ones I use to describe ‘Citizens United.’ It’s absolutely unbelievable and a total disgrace that the Supreme Court has endorsed this concept. My take on this is that the right wing and five of the Supreme Court Justices have concluded the wealthy among us are entitled to decide what happens here.”
Lerner raised the stakes in her reply.
“We are witnessing the end of America. There has always been a struggle between the capitalistic ideals and the humanistic ideals,” she wrote. “Religion has usually tempered the selfishness of capitalism, but the rabid hellfire piece of religion has hijacked the game and in the end, we will all lose out. It’s all tied together. Money can buy Congress and the presidency, so in turn money packs the Supreme Court and the Court backs the money. The ‘old boys’ still win.”
Lerner was then asked if she believed money influenced the Citizens United ruling, or if Tea Party groups were agents in money coming into the campaign finance system. She said no to both questions.
Further reporting revealed progressive groups using the terms “Progressive,” “Occupy,” “Green Energy” and “Acorn” also were targeted for extra scrutiny by the IRS.
Lerner stated in an email — referenced in the deposition — about the Citizens United impact (that corporations have First Amendment rights and the prohibitions on corporate spending in elections are unconstitutional): “While I don’t think that changes our legal position that tax exemption is a privilege and if you want the privilege you have to play by the rules.”
In an email recovered on March 6, 2014, Lerner assailed President Abraham Lincoln and questions why the Civil War resulted in the reunification of the country.
“(Lincoln) was our worst president and not our best,” Lerner wrote. “He should have let the South go. We really do seem to have two totally different mindsets.”
During her 2017 deposition, Lerner said she could not recall making that statement.
In another recovered communication, a person wrote to Lerner, “Well, you should hear the wacko wing of the GOP,” to which Lerner responded, “Great. Maybe we are through if there are that many assholes.”
As of Aug. 8, 2022, the deposition is part of the public record in the case in the Southern District of Ohio (1:13-cv-00341). Per the court’s order, the names of Lerner’s family members were redacted.
Lerner was deposed at a Washington, D.C., law office on June 8, 2017, by attorneys representing the NorCal Tea Party Patriots and other conservative groups that claimed she improperly sidelined their applications for nonprofit status. Her deposition, which started at 9:05 a.m. and lasted until 6:42 p.m., with some breaks, was sealed — until August.
In the deposition, Lerner said she was willing to accept responsibility for errors made by her unit.
“I’m head of the office. If my people did not get sufficient training or whatever they needed to do their job and they did it in a less than stellar fashion, ultimately I’m the one responsible,” she said. “But my real query with him here is it was my understanding that this audit was to look into what we’d done and determine whether the IRS was politically motivated with the way that it handled these cases, and that was what I was talking to him about. Mistakes being made in cases do not translate into IRS is politically motivated.”
Lerner was in the public spotlight nearly a decade ago when conservative groups said they had been unfairly targeted by the IRS while seeking tax-exempt status.
On May 23, 2013, she was placed on administrative leave. Lerner, who issued a public apology, refused to testify before Congress about the investigation, and later retired on Sept. 30, 2013, with a full pension. The case settled for about $3.5 million, and the final settlement was approved by a federal court on Aug. 8, 2018.
In 2014, congressional investigators demanded that the IRS turn over emails to and from Lerner relating to apparent targeting of conservative nonprofits for harassment, but the IRS informed the investigators on June 13, 2014, that it could not recover emails from her during the critical years of 2009-11.
On May 7, 2014, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 231–187 to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress for her refusal to testify before a congressional committee. The Justice Department declined to press charges.
Lerner, 71, had a long career with the federal government. She served as director of the Internal Revenue Service’s Exempt Organizations Unit, which oversees nonprofit groups, from 2005-13. Prior to that, she had worked for the U.S. Department of Justice, and then for the Federal Election Commission for two decades before joining the IRS in 2001.
In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court, voted 5-4 to allow corporations and other organizations to spend as much money as they wished in election campaigns in the Citizens United ruling.
A 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court sided with Citizens United, ruling that corporations and other outside groups can spend unlimited money on elections. Citizens United, founded in 2008, is a conservative political advocacy group that had produced a documentary titled “Hillary: The Movie,” which was sharply critical of former first lady Hillary Clinton, who was then a New York senator and the favorite to be the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee.
Citizens United wanted to release the movie for video-on-demand on cable TV, but that was blocked by the FEC, which ruled it violated the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. It ruled, and federal courts agreed, that the 90-minute film was in essence a political ad against Clinton and if aired on TV, the organizations and companies that paid for the movie and its advertising should be revealed.
But the Supreme Court, in a vote split on partisan lines, overruled that decision, opening the door for a deluge of campaign spending. When that decision was announced, Clinton was serving as secretary of state under President Barack Obama, who had defeated her in the 2008 contest for the Democratic nomination.