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Justice Dept Official Appears to Contradict Evidence – Key Question of Who Triggered IRS Investigation of Conservative
Deputy Attorney General James Cole
Garth Kant / WND
WASHINGTON – The mystery about who triggered the IRS investigation into conservative groups deepened on Capitol Hill today, as testimony from the No. 2 man at the Justice Department appeared to contradict previously released information.
Deputy Attorney General James Cole testified before a subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee that a Justice Department attorney reached out to the IRS, apparently on his own initiative, but an email from that attorney indicated someone had asked him to look into conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
That attorney appears to have been Richard C. Pilger, director of the Election Crimes Branch in the Public Integrity Section of Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, or DOJ.
The person Pilger contacted at the IRS was former tax-exempt division chief Lois Lerner, the key person in the scandal, who has twice refused to testify before Congress, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
In a statement released before the hearing began, Cole stated that a “Public Integrity Section attorney reached out to the IRS for a meeting” … “for the purpose of understanding what potential criminal violations, related to campaign finance activity, might evolve following the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC.”
Cole testified Pilger “reached out” to Lerner, presumably on his own initiative, but in Pilger’s previously released email, he states, “I have been asked to run something by you.”
That would beg the question, who is that person who contacted Pilger and triggered the inquiry into tea party groups? Investigators would be keen to know if that person was a higher-up at the Department of Justice, or perhaps even the White House.
Read more at WND:
http://www.wnd.com/2014/07/justice-dept-official-appears-to-contradict-evidence/
