IRS Official Lois Lerner Called Lawyer To Plant Targeting Question

[Tx4obama]

IRS Official Lois Lerner Called Lawyer To Plant Targeting Question

The veteran tax lawyer whose pre-arranged question to an IRS official at a panel last week prompted the admission that the agency had targeted conservative groups said in a written statement on Friday that she did not know what the answer to the question would be.

Celia Roady, a partner in the Washington D.C. office of Morgan Lewis and a member of the the IRS’ Advisory Committee on Tax-Exempt and Government Entities, said she got a call from Lois Lerner, head of the IRS’ tax-exempt organizations division, on May 9, the day before Lerner appeared on a panel at the American Bar Association tax section’s annual meeting.

“On May 9, I received a call from Lois Lerner, who told me that she wanted to address an issue after her prepared remarks at the ABA Tax Section’s Exempt Organizations Committee Meeting, and asked if I would pose a question to her after her remarks," Roady said in the statement, obtained by TPM. "I agreed to do so, and she then gave me the question that I asked at the meeting the next day. We had no discussion thereafter on the topic of the question, nor had we spoken about any of this before I received her call. She did not tell me, and I did not know, how she would answer the question.”

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/irs-official-lois-lerner-called-lawyer-to-plant

[Scuba]

1. I thought there was something in the lawyer's credo about not asking questions ....

... unless you already knew the answer. No?

[TheDebbieDee]

2. This is the second time that I have read the term "plant" used in connection

with Lois Lerner's name.

I had wondered who told her that she should apologize, on behalf of an entire government agency, for something of which the general public was unaware.

[LeftInTX]

6. It was done to "gently leak" information that was going to be coming

out in a report.

I believe the report was supposed to be presented to congress this week.

The report was released on Monday.

[grasswire]

3. what do we know about Lois Lerner?

??

[John2]

4. Learner was

appointed during the Bush Administration. The more and more I think about all this fuss, it gets more and more confusing to me. For example, what methodology did Miss Lerner or others come up with to determine conservative groups were targeted? I know they put out specific numbers, but how did they determine that there were as many of these Democratic groups as there were conservatives overall? Considering most of these were new organizations, were there equal numbers of new groups on both sides?

If you had more of these conservative groups trying to get Tax exempt status, then wouldn't the result be that more of them would be scrutinize, just because there were more than Democratic groups applying? I think more questions need to be asked of the IG and Miss Lerner what methods they used to make the presumption a group was targeted more than one. If there are more conservative groups applying than Democratic or Liberal groups, then wouldn't this give you a skewed perception?

[glinda]

5. Exactly but you won't hear any intelligent person asking.

[ZRT2209]

7. I find it hard to believe the lawyer would not have at least attempted

to get a heads up on the answer to the question on the call from Lerner.

Did she really just say "yes I will ask your planted question" and hang up the phone? really?

Just as a natural part of conversation, wouldn't she have asked, What's this all about? or Oh, is this about X?

And if Lerner wanted to talk about it, why not just add it herself at the end of her own prepared remarks? WHY plant a question? And at first, Lerner tried to hide the fact she planted the question. In an earlier WaPo article she reportedly said "This info came out in response to a question" and did not acknowledge it was a question she had planted.

WTH is going on here?

[grasswire]

8. it"s war

And Rove is involved. He is now attacking some senators who urged for more oversight of c4s.