Republican Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) has warned that the special counsel appointed to investigate President Donald Trump has a history of targeting conservatives.
Jordan, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said that Special Counsel Jack Smith tried to find ways to target conservative organizations during the Obama era-IRS scandal.
Speaking during an appearance on Fox Business, Jordan said that he and Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) 2014 report looking into the IRS’s targeting of conservative tax-exempt organizations has potentially troubling context for the investigation into Trump.
Last week, Democrat President Joe Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith to serve as special counsel to investigate alleged wrongdoing by Trump.
The special counsel probe follows the FBI raid on the 45th president’s Mar-a-Lago home in August.
Despite the push against Trump from the AG, Garland is refusing to appoint a special counsel to investigate the president’s son, Hunter Biden.
Jordan asked rhetorically, “Guess who was the lead person at the Justice Department looking for ways to target and prosecute the very people looking into who Lois Lerner went after?
“Jack Smith, the guy Merrick Garland just named as special counsel to go after President Trump.”
Indeed, in September 2010 — Smith, the then-chief of the Justice Department’s public integrity section, criminal division — emailed his senior leadership regarding a New York Times article regarding conservative organizations:
Check out [the] article on front page of ny times [sic] regarding misuse of non-profits for indirectly funding campaigns.
This seems egregious to me – could we ever charge a [18 U.S.C. §] 371 conspiracy to violate laws of the USA for misuse of such non profits to get around existing campaign finance laws + limits?
I know 501s are legal but if they are knowingly using them beyond what they are allowed to use them for (and we could prove that factually)?
IRS Commissioner sarah ingram [sic] oversees these groups.
Let’s discuss tomorrow but maybe we should try to set up a meeting this week.
Smith then proceeded to convene meetings on a “possible 501/campaign finance investigation,” the House Republican report notes:
Smith convened meetings on a “possible 501/campaign finance investigation.”801 At Smith’s direction, Pilger arranged a meeting with Lerner and the IRS to discuss the “evolving legal landscape” of campaign-finance law after the Citizens United decision.
802 Pilger intended to engage with Lerner about being “more vigilant to the opportunities from more crime in the . . . 501(c)(4) area.”
803 He also sought to better understand the “practicalities” of criminally enforcing non-profit political speech, such as whether the IRS could review donor lists of 501(c)(4) organizations for potential violations of campaign-finance law.
804 Similarly, the IRS sought to “walk [the Justice Department] through the basic civil rules within [the IRS’s] jurisdiction and find out what if anything else they are looking for. . . . These are not tax people so [Lerner] may also take [IRS employee] Joe Urban to do clear perimeters about tax info should they want to do any 6103 fishing (as opposed to public record 6104 info).
During an October 2010 meeting, the Public Integrity section’s attorneys, of which Smith was the chief of the section, “expressed concern that certain 501(c) organizations [conservative organizations] are actually political committees ‘posing’ as if they are not subject to FEC law,” and thus could be subject to “criminal liability.”
Last week, Trump said that he would not take partake in the special counsel investigation.
