Is a special prosecutor for the IRS inevitable?
Never say never when it comes to stonewalling from the Obama administration, but it appears that pressure is building on AG Eric Holder to name a special prosecutor to look into the growing number of charges being levelled by Republicans against the IRS.
Two top House Republicans on Friday called for Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the alleged targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., cited a missing batch of IRS emails as part of the reason Holder should appoint an independent investigator to look into the IRS targeting.
They also pointed to new emails showing former IRS officials Lois Lerner sought an audit of Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, over an invitation to a seminar that was mistakenly sent her way.
“It is clear that appointing an outside Special Counsel to investigate this matter would be in the public interest,” Camp and Goodlatte said in the letter to Holder. “ The American people are very concerned that their government has targeted individual American citizens for harassment solely on the basis of their political beliefs. They deserve to know who ordered the targeting, when the targeting was ordered, and why.”
It's been a year since a Treasury Department investigation revealed evidence that Lerner's tax exempt division had improperly singled out conservative and Tea Party groups seeking tax exemption.
Congressional Republicans say they have yet to receive thousands of emails and other documentation related to the matter.
Byeond the fact that the GOP leadership is on board for a push to get a special prosecutor, Hillary Clinton's close advisor Lanny Davis is also calling for one:
A close adviser to Hillary Clinton agrees with Republicans that it’s time for an independent prosecutor to investigate alleged IRS targeting of conservative groups and missing e-mails.
Lanny Davis — who was a counselor to President Bill Clinton — said the IRS needs intense scrutiny from an outside investigator.
“There’s no Democrat that I know of that wouldn’t be asking a Republican administration to conduct an independent investigation” if Republicans were in charge, Davis said Friday.
Davis referenced the disclosure that IRS official Lois Lerner proposed investigating Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) after she received an invitation intended for him. The invite mentioned providing accommodations for Grassley’s wife.
“Looked like they were inappropriately offering to pay for his wife. Perhaps we should refer to Exam?” Lerner wrote to a colleague in 2012.
“It was completely almost yucky to read what she wrote,” Davis said. “If that were known by her superiors, she should have been fired.”
Clinton is trying to climb out from under the Obama administration scandals and may see the writing on the wall as far as a special prosecutor for the IRS is concerned.
Senator Cruz and others have called for Holder's impeachment, but that won't go anywhere as long as Democrats remain in charge in the Senate. It's going to take Democrats like Hillary Clinton and a few others outside Washington to put the pressure on the Obama administration get a special prosectuor named.