The latest chapter in the IRS-Lois Lerner saga is making the rounds, having come to light yesterday.

Despite the IRS losing two-years-worth of Lois Lane Lerner’s emails in a computer crash, thousands of her emails have been recovered from other computers that miraculously survived the crash. In this latest episode, the House Ways and Means Committee discovered an email exchange between Lerner and an IRS employee named Matthew Giuliano that transpired in December of 2012.

A little side note here before we get to the controversy. Matthew Giuliano is one of the named parties to the controversial emails. Giuliano was a tax law specialist at the IRS from September 2009 to September 2012, at which time he was promoted to a manager position. He stayed at that job for less than a year, until March of 2013, when he was hired by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) as the Assistant General Counsel. The USCCB offices are on Fourth Street, NE, in the District of Columbia, a few miles away from the IRS building on Constitution Avenue, NW.

The proximate location of these two organizations has no bearing on the story, other than for me to make these two points:

(1) I wonder if Giuliano left the IRS because he suspected wrong-doing was happening and wanted to “distance himself” from the scandal that was inevitably going to erupt. After all, it was only two months after Giuliano’s departure that Lerner made her now infamous “apology” for targeting groups that had names inclusive of such terms as “tea party” and “patriot.”

(2) I credit Giuliano with saving Lerner’s … backside … three months before his departure (as explained below). So, in addition to the above wonderment, I wonder it Lerner should have driven the 3.5 miles up Fourth Street or hopped on the Metro red line and paid a visit to Giuliano at the USCCB to get some additional career-saving advice. And while she was there she could have gone to Confession to one of the plethora of priests available at that location. Confession can be a very cathartic experience (speaking from experience).

Now back to the scandal. There is no dearth of coverage on this story. The more conservative news media are reporting the facts about the new discovery, while the mainstream media and other left-leaning sources are hammering the more conservative media for what they say is making a mountain out of an ant-hill (not even a mole-hill).

The media report that has me laughing is that of Slate.com’s David Weigel. One need only look at the headlines he writes (I would not subject our readers to the excruciating pain of having to actually read his stuff) to know that he is as liberal as a metrosexual’s application of Preparation H. What’s laughable is how Weigel tries so hard to minimize the importance of the latest twist in the Lerner-IRS scandal. Try as he might, he cannot do it. The best Weigel can manage is to say “I’m not sure this strange and less-than-it-seems story amounts to Chernobyl.” In fact, even he has to note that the IRS losing Lerner’s emails is the BIG scandal.

I’d argue that the vanishing of the IRS’s and EPA’s tranches of emails, for reasons that confound techies, are much more scandalous than the hour Lerner apparently spent wondering if she had to refer a senatorial speaking invitation to the exam department.

In his attempt to explain away the Lerner-Giuliano email exchange, Weigel posts copies of the redacted emails along with his commentary. I will do the same here, while explaining why he is wrong about his skewed observations.

Email # 1

This appears to be an email from the organization (that issued the Lerner/Grassley invitations) to Giuliano and which he then forwarded to “Dawn.” It is not clear who Dawn is, but likely she is an assistant to Lerner. Her last name, Marx, appears in the email version on the House Ways and Means Committee webpage. The P.S. at the bottom appears to be in the organization’s email to Giuliano since he went to the University of Texas Law School, and suggests a familiarity between Giuliano and the email writer. Giuliano must have assisted with clearing up the invitation mix-up.  The email image below was not in the Weigel article, but it confirms this theory.

Email #1a

SO, clearly, Giuliano was assisting Lerner with straightening out the invitation mix-up.

Email #2

Weigel notes that Lerner responded directly to Giuliano the next morning, probably after Dawn informed her that the situation with the invitations had been rectified. Contrary to what Weigel says, I do not see Lerner’s questions as an indication that the she was ascertaining that the “invitation was kosher,” but rather making sure she was recalling the right invitation (she gets so many invites, apparently). Indeed, she had pretty good recall of the note to Senator Grassley with regard to his wife. She obviously had spent longer than an hour pondering the mixed-up email since she recalled it well enough to make the remark underlined in blue above: “Looked like they were inappropriately offering to pay for his wife. Perhaps we should refer to Exam?” Notice she said “WE” and not “I.” Passing the buck maybe? Planting a seed? Hoping for an enthusiastic “Yes, great idea!” That is not what she got, however.

Email #3

The time stamp issue is attributable to the fact that Lerner was on her Blackberry, so she must have been TDY (temporary duty), somewhere west of the Eastern time zone. The fourth email below shows that the time she responded is prior to the time that Giuliano wrote to her in Email #3 above. Time zone differences could account for that.

Although it is suggested in various accounts that the original invitation was sent via email, Emails #1a and #3 suggest that the initial invitations were hard copies, and that they were individually addressed. That would explain how a mix-up could occur. Someone from the organization put Lerner’s and Senator Grassley’s invitations in the wrong envelopes and mailed them or delivered them.

Let’s look at the last email and Weigel’s comments, then I will finish commenting on Email # 3.

Email #4

I have tried to figure out what the blacked out word beginning with “a” could be. It might me a number or some other coded reference to an infraction. She says “Don’t now why I thought it was a[redacted] – maybe answer would be the same.” Lerner is being dishonest here: she knows why she thought what she thought. Her disdain for Senator Grassley and all things conservative or Republican is why she thought what she thought! Her second sentence is evidence of that: “Don’t think I want to be onstage with Grassley on this issue.” I can picture her washing her hands as she writes that sentence, cleansing herself of the filth that came from having even touched the invitation with his name on it. Overly dramatic? Maybe. But then again,it’s the big picture that puts this small incident in perspective.

Finally, Weigel’s last desperate attempt to minimize Lerner’s insinuation comes as he tries to obscure her true intent — she could have been talking about an audit of the organization, not Grassley. However, the smoking gun here is in Giuliano’s response in Email #3. HE knew what she meant, and he responded to that intent. He misstates the law in saying that “the offer to pay for Grassley’s wife is income to Grassley.” Clearly, an offer is NOT income. The poor wording is excusable, however, since this was an informal email rather than a formal legal analysis. And he does seem to say that an offer to pay for something for a politician is not in and of itself prohibited since Senator Grassley was not a qualified person receiving an excess benefit. (This suggests the organization was a non-profit, tax-exempt organization, but is not definitive.) Then, and this is the clincher, Giuliano says:

We would need to wait for: (i) Grassley to accept and attend the speaking arrangement, and (ii) then determine whether [redacted] issues him a 1099. And even without the 1099, it would be Grassley who would need to report the income on his 1040. Either way [redacted].  My .02.

Clearly Giuliano knows what Lerner is asking — can they send Grassley to Exam, not the organization. Giuliano’s response deals with what would need to happen for Grassley to be guilty of wrong-doing, not the organization. Indeed, the organization’s wrong doing would not hinge on whether Grassley actually attended the event — their mere issuance of an invitation could be deemed wrong-doing if there was intent to give an improper gift. Giuliano implies that the organization SHOULD issue a Form 1099 to Grassley (reporting income), but even if it did not, Grassley would still need to report it on his tax return as income. I suspect the final redaction states something to the effect that it would be hard to prove and would require an audit of the coming years tax return, which would need some sort of probable cause to conduct. That was Giuliano’s two-cents worth.

If Giuliano had been wrong about his interpretation of Lerner’s email and which entity she was intending to “refer to Exam,” she would have corrected Giuliano and said that she was talking about the organization, not Senator Grassley. Instead, her shallow remark in Email #4 seals the verdict — she meant Grassley, as she indicates with her comment that she would not want to be onstage with him.

So the mainstream and other liberal media can continue to try and deflect and minimize the wrong-doing and full-fledged crimes that are being committed throughout the federal administration, from the top down. Here’s the news they should be noting: How many more emails like this were lost in the crash? Where there’s smoke there’s fire. But when the emails that are still available finally come to light, I predict that our suspicions will be confirmed and, if justice prevails, more heads will roll.

At this point I think I will go find an organization that is having a soiree, and ask them to send an invitation to John Koskinen and offer to pay for his wife to come. Then let’s see how soon Mr. K “refers it to Exam.”