[WASHINGTONTIMES] Newly released emails show that Lois G. Lerner, the woman at the center of the IRS scandal over special scrutiny of conservative groups' applications for tax-exempt status, specifically targeted tea party applications and directed they be held up in 2011 in order to come up with an agency policy.The email, released by a House committee investigating the IRS, seems to counter Democrats' arguments that tea party groups weren't specifically targeted.
"Tea Party Matter very dangerous," Ms. Lerner said in the 2011 email, saying that those applications could end up being the "vehicle to go to court" to get more clarity on a 2010 Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance rules.
In another email, from 2012, Ms. Lerner acknowledges that the agency's handling of the tax-exempt applications had been bungled at the beginning, though she said they had taken steps to correct it.
"It is what it is," she said in the email, released Thursday by the Boodle Central. "Although the original story isn't as pretty as we'd like, once we learned this [sic.] were off track, we have done what we can to change the process, better educate our staff and move the cases. So, we will get dinged, but we took steps before the 'dinging' to make things better and we have written procedures."