In May this column noted that the targeting of conservatives started in 2008, when liberals began a coordinated campaign of siccing the federal government on political opponents. The Obama campaign helped pioneer this tactic.
In late summer of 2008, Obama lawyer Bob Bauer took issue with ads run against his boss by a 501(c)(4) conservative outfit called American Issues Project. Mr. Bauer filed a complaint with the FEC, called on the criminal division of the Justice Department to prosecute AIP, and demanded to see documents the group had filed with the IRS.
Thanks to Congress’s newly released emails, we now know that FEC attorneys went to Ms. Lerner to pry out information about AIP—the organization the Obama campaign wanted targeted. An email from Feb. 3, 2009, shows an FEC attorney asking Ms. Lerner “whether the IRS had issued an exemption letter” to AIP, and requesting that she share “any information” on the group. Nine minutes after Ms. Lerner received this FEC email, she directed IRS attorneys to fulfill the request.
This matters because FEC staff didn’t have permission from the Commission to conduct this inquiry. It matters because the IRS is prohibited from sharing confidential information, even with the FEC. What the IRS divulged is unclear. Congressional investigators are demanding to see all communications between the IRS and FEC since 2008, and given that Ms. Lerner came out of the FEC’s office of the general counsel, that correspondence could prove illuminating.
It also matters because we now know FEC staff engaged in a multiyear effort to deliver to the Obama campaign its win against AIP. This past week, FEC Vice Chairman Don McGahn, joined by his two fellow Republican commissioners, wrote an extraordinary statement recounting the staff’s behavior in the case.
When the FEC receives a complaint, it falls to the general counsel’s office to first issue a report on the merits of the alleged campaign violations. The six-person commission then votes on whether there is a “reason to believe” a violation occurred. No formal investigations are to take place before that point.
The Obama team’s complaint broadly claimed AIP was masquerading as a nonprofit, when it should have registered as a highly regulated political action committee. It was a ludicrous claim (see below), yet the FEC staff issued a report in April 2009 recommending the commission go after AIP, not long after its attorneys had been in touch with Ms. Lerner.
When the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC made most of the Obama complaint irrelevant, the staff withdrew its first report, then took 18 months to come up with a second rationale for why the commission should pursue AIP. All this time, FEC staff—Mr. McGahn recounts—were conducting an unauthorized investigation into AIP. The staff was also improperly withholding the results of its research from AIP.