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The e-mails I have been getting from Jenny Beth Martin, Chairman of the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, have me thinking about Lois Lerner and Teapartygate. I went back and took another look at a report prepared by the staff of Darrell Issas Committee on Oversight and Government. The report is titled Lois Lerners Involvement in the IRS Targeting of Tax-Exempt Organizations. It is well worth reading the whole report and I recommend it. I still dont think it adds up to some sort of crusade against conservatives, but thats just me. You can read it yourself. It seems that Lerner was strongly against money in politics and sensitive to the criticism that IRS was letting 501(c)(4) organizations get away with too much political activity. And along comes the Tea Party, which Lerner sees as very dangerous.

One GD thing after another and now we are on Day 542 of the IRS Scandal, by TaxProf count, with no end in sight. Here is the question that is troubling me right now thanks to the e-mails I have been getting from Jenny Beth Martin. If there is a pretty compelling case that Tea Party Patriots Inc was intended from day 1 to be a political organization, rather than a social welfare organization, would that make any difference in how we view Lois Lerner?

The Jenny Beth Email

Jenny Beth and I have a strong, though one-sided e-mail relationship. There is quite a bit from her in my in-box. On Saturday I heard from Jenny about an urgent and agonizing decision that comes from not having enough moneyto fund all our grassroots efforts in all the critical Senate elections. Here is the part that I found kind of interesting:

I didnt get involved in the Tea Party movement for fun. Like you, I got involved to stop Barack Obama and to help save America. Now Im being told by my staff that were probably going to have to let some leftist like Bruce Braley in Iowa or Kay Hagan in North Carolina win because we cant afford to fight back in every important state.

Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, the PAC, which by definition, can make lots of political expenditures is a relative newcomer to the movement. This is the clearest statement Ive noted so far indicating that there is something of a seamless relationship between the PAC and the 501(c)(4) organization Tea Party Patriots Inc, which, according to its Form 990 for the year ended May 31, 2013,paid Jenny Beth Martin $272,010 to be its President. Apparently she still has that job. On September 1 I got an e-mail from Jenny Beth Martin in her capacity as Co-founder and National Coordinator of TPP Inc (the social welfare organization) that indicated:

Your gift today will be sent immediately to the front lines to enable our grassroots volunteers and staffers to contact these voters and move them to the polls to fire Harry Reid. If we succeed this year, we will shock the political world. And most importantly, we will halt the Obama agenda for the next two years.

Some Numbers

TPP Inc raised just over $20 million in the year ended May 31, 2013. It spent all of that plus just over $350,000 of the surplus raised in the previous fiscal year. Less than $500,000 of that went out in the form of grants to the grass roots organizations. The largest grant $100,000 went to the Georgia Integrity Project, a massive statewide precinct organization project. Quite a bit went for fundraising over eight million.

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What If Lois Lerner Was Right About The Tea Party?