Ongoing criminal conspiracy.
Six years before she became the central figure in the IRS’ illegal targeting of tea party tax-exemption applicants, Lois Lerner cleared the way for the Clinton Foundation’s transformation from building a presidential library to being a $2 billion global political influence peddling machine, according to documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group.
She helped accomplish this feat through a 2007 letter on two legal issues of such magnitude that it’s unlikely the Clinton nonprofit could have become what it is in 2017, 20 years after its creation.
The first issue concerned an otherwise innocuous sounding merger of two nonprofits, while the second issue centered around an unprecedented expansion of the foundation’s activities far beyond its tax-exempt mission.
“You recently furnished us information that the Clinton Foundation HIV-AIDS Initiative, Inc. merged with The William J. Clinton Foundation on Dec. 31, 2005,” Lerner wrote in an April 5, 2007, letter to the former president’s nonprofit. “Based on the information submitted, we have determined that the merger does not affect your tax-exempt status.”
Lerner was responding to a Dec. 28, 2006, letter to the IRS from Clinton Foundation Chief Executive Officer Bruce R. Lindsey. She made no mention in her response to a key sentence in Lindsey’s letter, which noted that “the Clinton Foundation HIV-AIDS Initiative continues to use its Employer Identification Number (EIN) … ”
The IRS provided the Lerner and Lindsey Letters on May 11, 2017, to the Cause of Action Institute, a nonprofit government watchdog that represents TheDCNF in joint Freedom of Information Act litigation concerning Clinton Foundation tax documents.
Continued use of the IRS-provided EIN should have been a red flag for Lerner because the HIV-AIDS Initiative ceased to exist as a legal entity in the merger. She would have known this fact from the Plan of Merger filed with Arkansas authorities. Lindsey gave the IRS a copy of the Articles of Merger Certificate issued by Arkansas Secretary of State Charlie Daniels, but not of the Plan of Merger.