As the Senate Finance Committee continues to investigate Lois Lerner, the key figure in the controversy over the IRS' targeting of conservative groups, a new Senate report reveals that Lerner considered opening up an audit into Bristol Palin’s compensation from a teen pregnancy foundation,
USA Today reports.
Bristol Palin, the daughter of 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, sparked controversy when she became pregnant at age 17 and was paid $332,500 to be a spokesperson for the Candies Foundation, a nonprofit whose mission is to prevent teen pregnancy through educational campaigns.
"Thoughts on the Bristol Palin issue?" Lerner wrote in an email to her staff in 2011. "I’m asking because I don’t know whether to send to Exam as a referral."
Despite Lerner's concern that the salary in which Palin received could violate IRS rules against charitable groups being for the private benefit of individuals, the Senate report does not confirm whether an audit was actually ever opened.
USA Today notes that the Senate report examined 1.5 million pages of IRS emails and many from Lerner revealed her unconventional political views.
One email said, "Look my view is that Lincoln was our worst president not our best," she told a friend in 2014, after she left the IRS. "He should [have] let the south go. We really do seem to have 2 totally different mindsets."
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