The Brody File
Lois Lerner's Lawsuit Crusade Against Christian Coalition?
Lois Lerner’s past history may be catching up with her. She’s in trouble right now because of her role in the IRS scandal but the practices she employed while head of the Enforcement Office at the Federal Election Commission (FEC) is also raising some red flags. It appears that she doesn’t necessarily have a fondness for conservative Christian groups.
We already know that besides Tea Party groups, the IRS asked a religious pro-life group to details information about their prayers and religious activity. Well, maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised that this was coming under Lerner’s watch. Why? In turns out that when Lerner headed up the Enforcement Office of the FEC in the 1990’s, they brought a lawsuit against the Christian Coalition and during the process, many of the FEC attorneys asked invasive questions centering on personal faith and prayer practices. They made the Christian Coalition jump through hoop after hoop to try and prove that they were not coordinating issue advocacy expenditures with public officials running for office.
James Bopp, who was lead counsel for the Christian Coalition back then, said the following in his 2003 congressional testimony:
“The FEC conducted a large amount of paper discovery during the administrative investigation and then served four massive discovery requests during the litigation stage that included 127 document requests, 32 interrogatories, and 1,813 requests for admission. Three of the interrogatories required the Coalition to explain each request for admission that it did not admit in full, for a total of 481 additional written answers that had to be provided. The Coalition was required to produce tens of thousands of pages of documents, many of them containing sensitive and proprietary information about ?nances and donor information. Each of the 49 state af?liates were asked to provide documents and many states were individually subpoenaed. In all, the Coalition searched both its offices and warehouse, where millions of pages of documents are stored, in order to produce over 100,000 pages of documents.”
Over the top? Sounds like it to me. There’s much more, especially as it relates to inquiring about personal faith practices. The Weekly Standard details more here.
We already know that besides Tea Party groups, the IRS asked a religious pro-life group to details information about their prayers and religious activity. Well, maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised that this was coming under Lerner’s watch. Why? In turns out that when Lerner headed up the Enforcement Office of the FEC in the 1990’s, they brought a lawsuit against the Christian Coalition and during the process, many of the FEC attorneys asked invasive questions centering on personal faith and prayer practices. They made the Christian Coalition jump through hoop after hoop to try and prove that they were not coordinating issue advocacy expenditures with public officials running for office.
James Bopp, who was lead counsel for the Christian Coalition back then, said the following in his 2003 congressional testimony:
“The FEC conducted a large amount of paper discovery during the administrative investigation and then served four massive discovery requests during the litigation stage that included 127 document requests, 32 interrogatories, and 1,813 requests for admission. Three of the interrogatories required the Coalition to explain each request for admission that it did not admit in full, for a total of 481 additional written answers that had to be provided. The Coalition was required to produce tens of thousands of pages of documents, many of them containing sensitive and proprietary information about ?nances and donor information. Each of the 49 state af?liates were asked to provide documents and many states were individually subpoenaed. In all, the Coalition searched both its offices and warehouse, where millions of pages of documents are stored, in order to produce over 100,000 pages of documents.”
Over the top? Sounds like it to me. There’s much more, especially as it relates to inquiring about personal faith practices. The Weekly Standard details more here.