Mark Tapscott of the Daily Caller highlights news about Lois Lerner that should surprise no one.
Six years before she became the central figure in the IRS’s 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 non-profit. “Based on the information submitted, we have determined that the merger does not affect your tax exempt status.”