Lois Lerner to 1996 U.S. Senate Candidate Al Salvi

Scowling face of the state

By George F. Will, Published: June 12

As soon as the Constitution permitted him to run for Congress, Al Salvi did. In 1986, just 26 and fresh from the University of Illinois law school, he sank $1,000 of his own money, which was most of his money, into his campaign to unseat an incumbent Democratic congressman. Salvi studied for the bar exam during meals at campaign dinners.

He lost his campaign. Today, however, he should be invited to Congress to testify about what happened 10 years later, when he was a prosperous lawyer and won the Republican Senate nomination to run against a Democratic congressman named Dick Durbin.

In the fall of 1996, at the campaign’s climax, Democrats filed with the Federal Election Commission charges against Salvi’s campaign alleging campaign finance violations. These charges dominated the campaign’s closing days. Salvi spoke by telephone with the head of the FEC’s Enforcement Division, who he remembers saying: “Promise me you will never run for office again, and we’ll drop this case.” He was speaking to Lois Lerner.

After losing to Durbin, Salvi spent four years and $100,000 fighting the FEC, on whose behalf FBI agents visited his elderly mother demanding to know, concerning her $2,000 contribution to her son’s campaign, where she got “that kind of money.” When the second of two federal courts held that the charges against Salvi were spurious, the lawyer arguing for the FEC was Lois Lerner.

More recently, she has been head of the IRS Exempt Organizations Division, which has used its powers of delay, harassment and extortion to suppress political participation. For example, it has told an Iowa right-to-life group that it would get tax-exempt status if it would promise not to picket Planned Parenthood clinics.

Last week, in a televised House Ways and Means Committee hearing, Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), Salvi’s former law partner, told the riveting story of the partisan enforcement of campaign laws to suppress political competition by distracting Salvi and entangling him in bureaucratic snares. The next day, the number of inches of newsprint in The Post and the New York Times devoted to Roskam’s revelation was the number of minutes that had been devoted to it on the three broadcast networks’ evening news programs the night before: Zero.

House Republicans should use their committee chairmanships to let Lerner exercise her right to confront Salvi and her many other accusers. If she were invited back to Congress to respond concerning Salvi, would she again refuse to testify by invoking her Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination? There is one way to find out.

Durbin, the second-ranking Senate Democrat, defeated Salvi by 15 points. He probably would have won without the assistance of Lerner and the campaign “reforms” that have produced the FEC’s mare’s-nest of regulations and speech police that lend themselves to abuses like those Salvi experienced. In 2010, Durbin, who will seek a fourth term next year, wrote a letter urging Lerner’s IRS division to pay special attention to a political advocacy group supporting conservatives.

Lerner, it is prudent to assume, is one among thousands like her who infest the regulatory state. She is not just a bureaucratic bully and a slithering partisan. Now she also is a national security problem because she is contributing to a comprehensive distrust of government.

The case for the National Security Agency’s gathering of metadata is: America is threatened not by a nation but by a network, dispersed and largely invisible until made visible by connecting dots. The network cannot help but leave, as we all do daily, a digital trail of cellphone, credit card and Internet uses. The dots are in such data; algorithms connect them. The technological gathering of 300 billion bits of data is less menacing than the gathering of 300 by bureaucrats. Mass gatherings by the executive branch twice receive judicial scrutiny, once concerning phone and Internet usages, another concerning the content of messages.

The case against the NSA is: Lois Lerner and others of her ilk.

Government requires trust. Government by progressives, however, demands such inordinate amounts of trust that the demand itself should provoke distrust. Progressivism can be distilled into two words: “Trust us.” The antecedent of the pronoun is: The wise, disinterested experts through whom the vast powers of the regulatory state’s executive branch will deliver progress for our own good, as the executive branch understands this, whether we understand it or not. Lois Lerner is the scowling face of this state, which has earned Americans’ distrust.

 
Read more from George F. Will’s archive or follow him on Facebook.
Read more about this issue: The Post’s View: In NSA programs, democracy works in secret Matt Miller: Edward Snowden’s grandiosity Eugene Robinson: We need this NSA debate Greg Sargent: Lois Lerner has to go Mitch McConnell: The IRS scandal and Obama’s culture of intimidation The Post’s View: Playing politics with tax records

                
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Lois Lerner to 1996 U.S. Senate Candidate Al Salvi: "We'll get you!"

FEC's Lerner tells conservative Al Salvi: "We never lose!"

CHICAGO - Former GOP U.S. Senate candidate Al Salvi's (photo right) revelation this week that IRS official Lois Lerner offered to drop the Federal Election Commission's (FEC) 1996 case against him if he promised to never run for office again was the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

"Before Lois Lerner (photo right) took us before the federal judge, her last offer was for me to promise to never run for office again. That was always part of their demands," Salvi said. "Before that last offer, another FEC representative that reported to Lerner wanted $200,000 and a promise not to run."

Knowing his $1.1 million campaign loan to himself was legal, Salvi rejected the initial settlement offer from FEC attorney Colleen Sealander. In later conversations, Sealander lowered the amount to $100,000, then $40,000, but always with the additional promise to never run for office again.

"Every time we talked, I refused the offer, and Colleen said she'd have to check with someone," Salvi said. "I finally told her I'd like to talk to whomever she reported. That's when I got a call from Lois Lerner."

During that call, Salvi said, he explained to Lerner exactly what happened -- that while the loan to himself was legal, there may be a difference of opinion on how the loan was reported to the FEC. Salvi explained it was a simple matter and said he thought Lerner
would suggest an agreeable solution and dismiss the Democratic National Committee's complaint.

But that was not Lerner's reaction. Instead, that's when she said to Salvi, "Promise me you'll never run for office again, and we'll drop the case."

Salvi said he asked Lerner if she would be willing to put the offer into writing.

"We don't do things that way," Salvi said Lerner replied.
Salvi queried how then could such an agreement be enforced.

According to Salvi, Lerner replied: "You'll find out."

Without a settlement, the Salvi case went to federal court. After months and years of briefings, delays and court appearances, federal judge George Lindbergh dismissed the case on its merits. Lindbergh said the FEC's disagreement over filing, when two ways of reporting were acceptable, was groundless. The FEC appealed Lindbergh's decision, but their appeal was thrown back to Lindbergh's decision and the Salvi campaign won. Court documents show that Salvi was never fined or penalized.

Sealander and Lerner made similar offers to Salvi and his legal counsel in the process leading up to the court proceedings. Salvi's brother Mike and his wife Kathy led Salvi's defense against a team of D.C. attorneys, who were flown into Chicago to appear before the judge, Salvi said.

Negotiations with those facing FEC complaints are part of standard procedure, an FEC spokesperson told Illinois Review, but records of those negotiation conversations are not available in court documents. 

The FEC office in D.C. confirmed to Illinois Review that a person in the Litigation Department named Colleen Sealander did work there during the years the Salvi case was active, and very well could have negotiated with Salvi. Sealander is no longer employed at the FEC.
Public FEC records show Colleen Sealander was active in FEC litigation through 2007, and resident records show Sealander continues to live in Washington DC.

Open Secrets.org also shows Sealander made seven campaign contributions to Barack Obama in 2012. 
Salvi said the FEC controversy filed in 1996 lingered through his 1998 challenge of Secretary of State Jesse White. The Democrats used the questions raised in campaign ads that implied he had been involved in criminal activity.

"I remember getting a pizza with my kids, and looking up to see the TV showing the [Democrat] ad, and I didn't want to upset my kids, so I distracted them away," he said. "I'll never forget the concern that went on for months, affecting my law firm and my business."
And Salvi said when he thinks of that, he recalls the shock on Lerner's face when the judge dismissed his case. "We never lose!" Lerner said, and then, he said she distinctly threatened, "We'll get you!"

Salvi said he told his wife right away to get ready for an IRS audit - that it would be coming. He instructed his firm's accountants to err on the conservative side when filing tax returns, just in case.

But after the May 2000 dismissal, there was no contact from the FEC or from the IRS. However, there was from the FBI. In the fall of 2000, FBI agents knocked on the door of the Salvis' home and said they wanted to ask him about his mother's $2000 donation to his 1996 U.S. Senate campaign.

"That visit from the FBI was significant," Salvi said. "That meant a criminal investigation, not a civil disagreement with the elections commission. And, if a person lies to the FBI, they can go to jail."
Salvi said he reviewed the situation with the agents, and told them they were being used for political purposes. The two agents visited with his elderly mother and soon after, notified Salvi they were terminating the investigation.

"It was a nightmare," Salvi said. "People ask me today why I've never run for office again after being a state representative for two terms, winning a GOP primary against the sitting lieutenant governor to run for U.S. Senate, and then finally losing an intense campaign against Durbin. All the time this long FEC ordeal continued while I ran for Secretary of State in 1998 and beyond. Why would anyone run for office again after all that? I'm very happy now, representing clients and raising my family. Never been happier.

Some would say Lerner and those pushing her to use the FEC to stop Salvi from running for office again got exactly what they wanted after all.

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