AL.com - Lois Lerner, the embattled former Internal Revenue Service official who has come under fire for targeting conservative groups, once said President Abraham Lincoln made a mistake when he fought the Civil War to keep the southern states in the Union.
"Look my view is that Lincoln was our worst president not our best," she told a friend in March 2014, after she left the IRS, USA Today reports. "He should (have) let the South go. We really do seem to have 2 totally different mindsets."
The statements were part of a series of emails included in the Senate Finance Committee's investigation into the Lerner's tenure as IRS Director of Exempted Organizations. Republicans have accused Lerner and the IRS of targeting tax-exempt applications from conservative political groups.
The IRS has maintained that many of Lerner's emails have been lost, claims that have angered many in Congress. In all, the committee reviewed more than 1.5 million pages of Lerner's emails.
Committee report
The bipartisan Senate report highlights several instances where Lerner, who has since retired from the IRS, refers to conservative groups as "crazies" and "a__holes." Other emails show her questioning if the IRS should investigate a group that paid Bristol Palin, daughter of former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, a speaking fee.
The report shows Lerner mismanaged the applications from Tea Party organizations and fostered a hostile atmosphere within the office. Committee members disagreed as to whether the targeting was motivated by Lerner's Democratic beliefs.
"This bipartisan investigation shows gross mismanagement at the highest levels of the IRS and confirms an unacceptable truth: that the IRS is prone to abuse," said Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "The Committee found evidence that the administration's political agenda guided the IRS's actions with respect to their treatment of conservative groups."
