Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who announced his resignation Thursday afternoon, certainly isn’t the most popular figure at the 2014 Values Voter Summit. And Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, said the Justice Department’s handling of the IRS tea party targeting scandal is one reason he’s not exactly sad to see him go.
“Your Second Amendment rights are under attack,” Mr. Jordan said. “Respect for human life, respect for the institution of marriage and family — all those things are under attack from this administration.”
“But [there’s] probably no better example of your freedoms being attacked than what the Internal Revenue Service did through a sustained period of time where it systematically targeted people just like us for exercising their most fundamental rights,” he said.
Mr. Jordan cited an interview former IRS official Lois Lerner recently gave to Politico as evidence that the Justice Department wasn’t doing enough on its end.
Ms. Lerner ran the IRS division that oversaw nonprofit groups’ applications for tax-exempt status. That is the branch that reviewed, delayed and, in many cases, posed intrusive questions to groups seeking tax-exempt status, most of which were conservative or tea party-affiliated.
“She can talk to the press, she can talk to the Justice Department, but she can’t answer Congress’s questions. … Unbelievable,” he said. “The reason she’s willing to do that is because she knows that the Justice Department, their investigation is a sham.
“Eric Holder can’t go fast enough,” he said.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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