Cleta Mitchell is an attorney in Washington DC. She represents several nonprofit clients who attempted to get 501(c)(4) status approved by the IRS starting in 2009.
PowerLine has published a series of four videos, essentially one long interview with Mitchell cut into four pieces. In the clips Mitchell tells the story of her involvement with the IRS on behalf of these groups. All of the clips are worth watching but I #2 and #4 especially so:
Part three deals with the treatment of Catherine Engelbrecht and True the Vote. In part 4, Mitchell returns to the broader situation at the IRS. As she put it this “came out of Washington from day one.”
As I listen to Mitchell, she is saying the IRS had a “culture” which was sensitive to the urgings of political officeholders outside the agency. That is consistent with what I wrote here about Lois Lerner’s awareness of the political pressure being placed on the FEC and the IRS in 2010. It would be quite a remarkable coincidence indeed if the Democrats’ public campaign against these groups and the IRS’ private one had no underlying connection.
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