Former IRS Tax Exempt Head Sarah Hall Ingram Met with White House Staff 165 Times

The IRS scandal keeps getting curiouser and curiouser. The former head of the tax-exempt office, who reassuringly will now be running the Obamacare division, attended meetings at the White House 165 times.

The Daily Caller reports:

Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS official currently in charge of overseeing the agency’s implementation of Obamacare, has logged 165 recorded visits to the White House 165 times since 2011, according to an analysis of White House visitor records compiled by the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.

Ingram headed the IRS’ tax-exempt division in 2010 when the scandal-ridden agency began improperly targeting the tax-exempt nonprofit status of conservative groups.

Despite logging 165 visits, Ingram’s meetings never overlapped with those of former IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, who, as The Daily Caller reported, has appeared in the White House visitor logs 157 times since September 15, 2009.

The chief of the tax exempt office Sarah Hall Ingram was moved to head the IRS’ Obamacare office right as Lois ‘I’ll take the Fifth’ Lerner took over. That former head of the IRS tax exempt office is now on paid vacation administrative leave.

Lerner personally signed letters granting and denying 501c status to several groups; including a fast-tracking and potentially illegal backdating of the Barack H. Obama Foundation, which is run by Barack Obama’s brother Malik. If you don’t know Malik Obama, he has 12 wives and hangs out with war criminals in the terrorist state of Sudan. But that’s another story.

Ingram left the IRS tax exempt office right as the tea party targeting began in April 2010. Just one day before that started, Colleen Kelley, who is the head of the National Treasury Employees Union representing the IRS, met with “POTUS” or the President of the United States. The NTEU’s political PAC donated 98% of its campaign contributions to the Democrat Party in 2010 and 94% in 2012.

As reported by CNS News:

The White House visitor log shows that NTEU President Colleen Kelley met with Obama–“POTUS,” President of the United States–on March 31, 2010.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration report on the IRS’s targeting of the tax-exempt applications of Tea Party groups for heightened scrutiny includes a “Comprehensive Timeline of Events” that outlines the IRS actions in this matter over the course of more than two years. The fourth item in this timeline says that on “April 1-2, 2010,” the “new Acting Manager, Technical Unit, suggested the need for a Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party cases. The Determinations Unit Program Manager agreed.”

The White House’s numerous meetings with the IRS head, the tax exempt division, and its union head, show that it was highly involved with the tax agency while it was targeting conservative groups. The IRS’ top officials can be proven to have known about the tea party’s targeting in 2011; but they withheld the information from Congress, despite the agency’s reporting requirements, during the president’s election campaign.

There may be no smoking gun tying the president himself to this scandal, which is besides the point. The IRS officials involved in this scandal were acting like political operatives working on the president’s behalf. They were engaged in highly unethical and dangerous behavior violating the Constitution’s First Amendment protections regarding freedom of association.

The president is acting like a bystander in his own administration, while numerous violations of citizens’ rights are taking place. When a president appoints highly partisan officials to wield executive authority, he is responsible. When a president refuses to wield duly granted authority to correct or prevent agency abuse, it is a form of willing complicity. In many cases, what the president isn’t doing is just as important as what he is doing.

Cross-posted at IJReview.com.