IRS Mafia Tactics Proven in Wisconsin Against Gov. Walker

It begins with something in Wisconsin called the ‘Wisconsin Government Accountability Board’….what is in a name after all. How bad can it be?

Fire all of them and then prosecute all of them.

Alright, start here with the lawsuit against GAB and Kevin Kennedy.

From The Watchdog:  Kevin Kennedy, the director of Wisconsin’s speech regulator integrally tied to the probe into dozens of conservative organizations, is a longtime “professional friend” of former IRS tax-exempt director Lois Lerner.

Lerner led the Obama administration’s IRS division accused of targeting conservative groups seeking 501(c)(4) nonprofit status. The Senate Finance Committee is looking into more than 6,000 emails from Lerner once thought to be lost.

The Wall Street Journal opinion piece published Thursday and headlined “Wisconsin’s friend at the IRS” reveals that Lerner and Wisconsin Government Accountability Board’s Kennedy were in contact between 2011 and 2013 — when the GAB assisted partisan prosecutors in investigating scores of conservatives and in raiding several of their homes.

“Emails we’ve seen show that between 2011 and 2013 the two were in contact on multiple occasions, sharing articles on topics including greater donor disclosure and Wisconsin’s recall elections,” the op-ed notes.

“The emails indicate the two were also personal friends who met for dinner and kept in professional touch. ‘Are you available for the 25th?’ Ms. Lerner wrote in January 2012. ‘If so, perhaps we could work two nights in a row.’”

Kennedy’s GAB is Wisconsin’s political speech regulator. It oversees elections, campaign finance and lobbying laws.

It is also the subject of a state lawsuit that claims the agency manipulated state campaign finance laws and regulations in advising Democrat Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, his assistants and other prosecutors in their political probe.

The multi-year, multi-county investigation included pre-dawn, paramilitary-style raids at the homes of John Doe targets, including a raid that, according to a recent story in National Review, victimized a 16-year-old boy who was home alone at the time.

As Wisconsin Watchdog has reported, John Doe prosecutors conducted an extensive spying operation on conservatives described by one target as worse than the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program. Affidavits reviewed by Wisconsin Watchdog show prosecutors seeking and receiving warrants and subpoenas to tap into conservatives’ Internet service providers, some of whom still don’t know they were targets of the investigation.

The probe followed the partisan recall campaigns by unions and the Democratic Party of Wisconsin against Republican Gov. Scott Walker and several state senators. Walker and most of the senators survived.

But the secret John Doe investigation would drag Walker and his conservative allies through the political mud for years to come, thanks to many, many leaks.

POLITICAL SPEECH COP: Kevin Kennedy and the GAB are the subject of a state lawsuit alleging the agency manipulated campaign finance laws in an abusive investigation at taxpayers expense. Sources say top GAB officials have been deposed in the lawsuit.

Prosecutors confiscated more than 3 million records — a conservative count in a Wisconsin Watchdog analysis — of targets. The investigation has been based on the idea the groups illegally coordinated with Walker’s campaign during the recall campaigns. Multiple courts have rejected that theory, including the John Doe presiding judge, who tossed out several subpoenas because they had failed to show evidence a campaign finance crime had been committed.

While all of this was going on, the IRS was increasing its harassment of conservative nonprofits.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Lerner’s lawyer declined to comment. Kennedy, in an email, told the newspaper “Ms. Lerner is a professional friend who I have known for 20 years.” He declined to say more.

The opinion piece notes:

“In an email exchange in July 2011, Mr. Kennedy sent Ms. Lerner an article in the Racine Journal-Times on the declining relevance of public campaign financing amid more private and ‘special interest’ money. ‘Note the last paragraph where the paper supports more transparency,’ Mr. Kennedy writes to Ms. Lerner. ‘The Legislature has killed our corporate disclosure rules.’”

John Doe investigators asked the IRS to look into a conservative group that was a primary target of the probe, sources told the Journal.

“The IRS doesn’t appear to have followed up, but the request shows Wisconsin prosecutors saw their pursuit of independent groups as part of a common agenda with national Democrats,” the op-ed states.

That’s the point, the Wall Street Journal contends. John Doe transcends Wisconsin, with interconnections revealing “the use of tax and campaign laws to limit political speech was part of a larger and systematic Democratic campaign.”

President Obama laid it all out at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2010 when he blasted the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.

“Thanks to a recent Supreme Court decision, (Republicans) are being helped along this year, as I said, by special interest groups that are allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money on attack ads. They don’t even have to disclose who’s behind the ads,” Obama said.

“Conservative nonprofits like the Wisconsin Club for Growth and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce were later subpoenaed and bound by secrecy orders as their fundraising all but ceased,” the opinion piece notes.

“Liberals worked together to turn the IRS and the GAB into partisan political weapons.”

Earlier this week, Judicial Watch reported that newly discovered Department of Justice and IRS documents show there was “an October 2010 meeting between Lois Lerner, DOJ officials and the FBI to plan for the possible criminal prosecution of targeted nonprofit organizations for alleged illegal political activity.”

Eric O’Keefe, director of the Wisconsin Club for Growth, told Wisconsin Watchdog the Wall Street Journal has “exposed a whole new dimension of government abuse.”

“The permanent government does not believe that we, the people, are capable of governing ourselves. They want to control everything,” said O’Keefe, who is suing the GAB for its costly investigation.

Many more details here. Consider: collusion, fraud, RICO, financial terror, targeting, who gave the orders and where it all leads. Imagine that the IRS got with the FBI and the DoJ to investigate and prosecute conservatives too. These are White House mafia tactics…..there is no dispute.