For months Republicans on Capitol Hill have been calling on Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to look into the IRS targeting of conservative groups. Those calls got louder in June when IRS officials claimed they "lost" thousands of emails belonging to Lois Lerner, the woman in charge of tax exempt organizations at the agency during the time tea party groups were singled out for extra scrutiny.
Now former Clinton advisor Lanny Davis is also calling for a special prosecutor, albeit for a different reason.
First, It's refreshing to finally see a Democrat call for a special prosecutor considering Democrats on the Hill have been offering a full-throated defense of the IRS for month, even after hardly credible claims of lost emails and recycled hard drives. That being said, Davis' claim there is no evidence to show the IRS targeting was politically based is just not true. In fact, the vast majority of evidence we have so far shows the opposite. Lerner herself admitted in email that she couldn't think of liberal groups that were being looked at for extra scrutiny, only conservative groups came to mind. Further, considering officials from the Department of Justice were working with the IRS on ways to criminally charge conservative groups, I have no doubt a special prosecutor would hurt Attorney General Eric Holder, not help him as Davis argues.
Second, it's unfortunate Davis only wants a special prosecutor for the sake of optics rather than getting to the truth, but we'll take what we can get I suppose.