There’s a reason both Eric Holder and Lois Lerner have been held in contempt of Congress.

As reported first by Katie Pavlich, the Department of Justice and the IRS were unsurprising bedfellows in the targeting of tea party 501(c)(4)s, according to new emails obtained by Judicial Watch.

Just a day before the IRS targeting scandal flooded the media, the DOJ contacted Lerner regarding how to criminally prosecute “political” groups that the IRS thought had “lied” on their applications about political activity. Further, Lerner said she couldn’t confirm that any left-wing political groups were the subjects of investigations:

“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,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “The IRS emails show Eric Holder’s Department of Justice is now implicated and conflicted in the IRS scandal. No wonder we had to sue in federal court to get these documents.”

More plainly, as Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan pointed out, had this investigation not occurred, the DOJ could at this very moment be incarcerating leaders of conservative non-profits and censoring free speech.

Fox News reminded us that Obama once claimed there wasn’t even “a smidgen of corruption” in this whole ordeal. However, Lerner admitted in an email that even though the Department of Justice encouraged it, the intended targeting couldn’t be done lawfully.

“The law in this area is just hard,” Lerner wrote.

What’s hard is believing that the White House wasn’t aware of this targeting. Whether they like it or not, this plot-hashing via email between a high-ranking liberal official at the DOJ and a high-ranking liberal official at the IRS is terribly suspicious. Did Obama know?

“These e-mails are part of an overwhelming body of evidence that political pressure from prominent Democrats led to the targeting of Americans for their political beliefs,” House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa said.

Not even a smidgen of corruption? More like not even a smidgen of truth.

In other news, a new bill was introduced to require federal employees held in contempt of Congress to have their paychecks confiscated, because any other American would be imprisoned for it. In light of these revelations about the iniquitous cooperation between Holder’s DOJ and Lerner’s IRS, American taxpayers should get their money back.

As Congressman Blake Farenthold said, “High ranking government officials should be treated no differently than everyone else.”

Perhaps a cozy jail cell is in order.