DOJ Official Named in FBI Politicization Allegations Played Role in Lois Lerner IRS Scandal

A senior Justice Department official recently flagged by a U.S. senator in an FBI whistleblower probe into alleged politicization of prosecutions played a key role in the Lois Lerner IRS scandal a decade ago in which conservative Tea Party groups were improperly targeted for scrutiny, government emails and congressional evidence shows.

Richard Pilger, the current chief of the DOJ Elections Crime Branch of the department’s Public Integrity Section, engaged in discussions in 2010 and 2013 with Lerner and other IRS officials about ways to pursue criminal prosecutions of conservative nonprofits, the records show.

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Judge Okays $3.5 Million to Tea Partiers in IRS Smackdown

Tennessee Star

Oh, happy day. Once in a while, justice is served, the good guy does win and the Big Bad Wolf at the Little American’s door gets the kick in the arse it deserves. The Internal Revenue Service was just smacked with a preliminary order from a federal judge to pay up $3.5 million in settlement monies to tea party and conservative groups who were targeted for political abuse by “wayward agents.”

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Eric Holder: DOJ Wrong to Apologize to Tea Party Groups for IRS Scandal

Former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said the Trump administration was wrong to have apologized to tea party groups snared in the IRS’s targeting scandal, saying it was another example of the new team undercutting career people at the Justice Department who’d initially cleared the IRS of wrongdoing. “That apology was unnecessary, unfounded and inconsistent, it seems to me, with the responsibilities that somebody who would seek to lead the Justice Department should have done,” Mr. Holder said.

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Feds to Pay ‘Generous’ Settlement to Tea Party Groups for Targeting

The government apologized Thursday for illegally targeting tea party groups for intrusive scrutiny and agreed to settlements with hundreds of organizations snared in the targeting, bringing to a close one of the more embarrassing episodes of the Obama administration. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the IRS owed the groups an apology after years of poor treatment…

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