Nikole Flax worked under Lois Lerner in the Obama administration IRS while the agency infamously targeted conservative political organizations such as the Tea Party by slow-walking and suppressing their tax-exempt applications. She was also one of seven executives whose hard drives mysteriously self-destructed, preventing House investigators from viewing her emails. Now, the career IRS executive has been tapped to establish a new, centralized office in charge of implementing the Democrats’ latest tax and spending bill, including oversight of the 87,000 new IRS agents the bill authorizes.
IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig sent an agency-wide email on Aug. 19, writing, “This is a historic time for the IRS, and we are working to move quickly to begin work on the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law earlier this week.”
He then announced the new department: “A key part of our efforts will be the creation of a new, centralized office for implementation of all IRS-related provisions. Building off our successes implementing other major legislative bills, the IRA 2022 Transformation & Implementation Office will work across the IRS and oversee our implementation efforts.”
Rettig revealed that Nikole Flax, current deputy commissioner in charge of the Large Business & International Division, would be tasked with building the new centralized office.
“We have a unique, once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform the IRS in a way to help taxpayers and fundamentally improve our tax administration work that is vital to the success of our country,” Rettig’s email quoted Flax as saying. “This is an exciting opportunity, and we will be moving quickly with our work.”
Related: IRS Hiring Spree Is the Biggest Expansion of the Police State in American History
It turns out that Flax has been with the IRS since way back in the Obama days. Art Moore at WND reminds us that “In May 2014, the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration concluded in a report that the IRS delayed the processing of applications for tax-exempt status by certain conservative groups and sought private information that was later deemed unnecessary.”
The Eric Holder (aka “Obama’s Wingman”) Justice Dept. spent two years investigating the head of the Exempt Organizations division, Lois Lerner, before deciding — you’ll never believe it! — not to bring any charges.
Moore directs us to a contemporaneous article by journalist and former swamp creature Jeff Bergner. In a historical footnote rendered all the more galling by the recent jackbooted raid of former President Trump’s home in search of missing documents, Moore wrote:
The computer hard drive of former IRS employee Lois Lerner — she who refused to testify so as not to incriminate herself about targeting conservative political groups — crashed. It seems, too, that the IRS has no way to retrieve her email exchanges with other governmental entities (though it could ask these entities for cooperation) because there is no backup system.
Then Bergner discussed the latest intolerable Biden administration appointee:
Less well known is that apparently six other IRS computer hard drives crashed in exactly the same time frame. Every one of these belonged to an IRS employee in Cincinnati’s tax-exempt office or at headquarters in Washington, D.C. Each of these six other employees played a role in targeting tea party groups.…
One of the missing computer hard drives belonged to Nikole Flax, chief of staff to the then-commissioner of the IRS. Flax, by the way, visited the White House no fewer than 31 times during the period the tea party was targeted between 2010 and 2012.
Need more? The Daily Caller also reported in 2014 on a secretive program Lerner and Flax set up in which they collected information from conservative groups:
…Lois Lerner spoke at a 2010 government conference where Lerner’s underling Nikole Flax announced the new IRS program scrutinizing groups applying for tax-exempt status.
Both Lerner and Flax experienced “computer crashes” that led to the permanent deletion of their emails, according to the IRS, which said it cannot hand over their emails to congressional investigators on two House committees.
Both Lerner and Flax briefed fellow government bureaucrats on the new targeting at the conference, where Lerner appeared at a workshop called “Will the IRS Come Knocking?”
Flax announced the new program scrutinizing groups at the Washington Non-Profit Legal & Tax Conference at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C. from February 18-19, 2010. At the time, Flax worked under Lerner in the Exempt Organizations office.…
The IRS began flagging tea party applications in February 2010, the month of the Washington conference.
Flax went on to serve as chief of staff to IRS commissioner Steven T. Miller.
Flax made 31 visits to the White House between July 12, 2010 and May 8, 2013, according to White House visitor logs. Flax’s visits started in the early days of the IRS targeting program and ended just two days before the IRS scandal broke on May 10, 2013. Flax met twice in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building with Jeanne Lambrew, a top adviser to President Obama who exchanged confidential information on conservative groups with Lerner.
In a functioning government, someone like Flax would have been canned and prosecuted for her apparent politicization and abuse of authority. In a Democrat-run swamp, she is given even more power to harass and suppress political opposition.
“We are well beyond the issue of political targeting by a powerful but supposedly neutral government agency,” wrote Bergner back in 2014. “We are into a massive political cover-up, which hints strongly at destruction of records and obstruction of justice. It is no wonder the American public’s confidence in government is at an all-time low.” He was correct, but since no consequences are ever visited upon Leftist governmental operatives, we shouldn’t be surprised to see them continue to clamp down.
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