Lois Lerner listens at the start of a  House Oversight Committee hearing on May 22, 2013, to investigate the extra  scrutiny the IRS gave to Tea Party... View Enlarged Image

Corruption: New emails show that both the IRS and Justice  Department were involved in a probe of Tea Party and other conservative groups.  This is no mere scandal — it's a major breach of the law.

The newly released emails were gathered for a Freedom of Information Act  request by Judicial Watch, a nonpartisan public interest law group. They show  that former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner discussed with the  Justice Department going after conservative groups that she believed lied about  their political activities.

What's shocking is that this discussion came just days before Lerner  acknowledged that the IRS had investigated tea-party and other conservative  groups but insisted that it was an isolated incident conducted by low-level  officials in the IRS' Cincinnati office.

It was a lie. In a May 8 email to Nikole Flax, then the chief of staff to the  acting IRS commissioner, Lerner discusses a phone call from Richard Pilger, who  headed the Justice Department's elections crimes unit.

According to Lerner, Pilger wondered if the IRS could help him "piece  together false-statement cases about applicants who 'lied'" on applications for  tax-free status.

In a subsequent email, Lerner responded: "I think we should do it — also need  to include CI (the criminal investigation unit), which we can help coordinate.  Also, we need to reach out to FEC (the Federal Election Commission). Does it  make sense to consider including them in this or keep it separate?"

It's been clear for some time that this goes beyond a mere rogue IRS  operation in Cincinnati. But until now, we didn't know how far it went.

As the emails show, it was a high-level conspiracy to use the offices and  powers of the federal government — including the IRS, FEC and Justice — to  falsely prosecute and harass the tea party and conservative political groups  that opposed the Obama administration.

How do we know that the groups were "conservative?" Just two days after her  email to Flax, Lerner admitted in an email to a Washington Post reporter that  she "can't confirm that there was anyone on the other side of the political  spectrum" targeted by the IRS.

In short, it was a politically motivated witch hunt.

"These new emails show that the day before she broke the news of the IRS  scandal, Lois Lerner was talking to a top Obama Justice Department official  about whether the DOJ could prosecute the very same organizations that the IRS  had already improperly targeted," said Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch's  president.

"The IRS emails show Eric Holder's Department of Justice is now implicated  and conflicted in the IRS scandal," he added.

Moreover, the IRS coordinated some of its attacks against conservatives and  the GOP with far-left Democrats in Congress, including Rep. Elijah Cummings of  Maryland and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. This wasn't isolated; it  was a campaign.

President Obama told Fox News in February that there wasn't "even a smidgen  of corruption" in what the IRS did. The corruption is there, Mr. President, and  it demands a prosecution. The only remaining question is whether the rot extends  to your office, too.