Since its creation, the Internal Revenue Service has been one of the most widely distrusted and disliked facets of the federal government.
The government wastes money every day, and it is the job of the IRS to make you pay for it all,
under threat of imprisonment.
Two
Brave IRS Whistleblowers Reveal How Their Lives Changed After Exposing 2020 Election Interference.
Catherine Herridge is one of the only fair former mainstream media journalists that exist
today. The recently fired host from CBS News sat down with two IRS whistleblowers to discuss
how the government agency used its power to influence the outcome of the 2020 election and how the
whistleblowers are being punished for standing up to what many would call a government crime
syndicate. The interview with Herridge, which first appeared on "X" and was re-tweeted by "X"
owner Elon Musk, reveals documents proving how the IRS targets conservatives and helps to hide
evidence for Democrats. In the first clip, Herridge shows a letter from the IRS thanking
agents for their "commitment to the mission which culminated in a great conviction" after Hunter
Biden's guilty plea. "What you're saying is that within the IRS, there's disparate treatment of
American taxpayers?" Herridge asked two brave IRS whistleblowers seated in front of her during a
recorded interview.
What
to Do When the IRS Audits You. The IRS has been dropping a new press release with an
explicit threat to the bank accounts of successful Americans every other month or so. Their
messaging sounds increasingly political, and high-income taxpayers would be foolish to ignore what
they're saying: the IRS plans more audits of successful Americans to force them to pay more
taxes. When a hurricane is coming, you board up the windows and stock up on bottled
water. When the IRS is planning a storm of audits of people who look just like you, you need
an audit response plan. The IRS and the Biden administration keep repeating they're targeting
"the wealthiest Americans," with incomes of $400,000 or more, but actual audit data say that right
now, 63% of all new audits are focused on taxpayers with less than $200,000 of income.
IRS
Employees Owe $50 Million In Back Taxes, Audit Finds. Internal Revenue Service
employees and contractors owe a collective $50 million in back taxes, a new audit by the
Treasury Department's inspector general found. Of the more than 3,800 IRS employees who owe
back taxes, 2,000 have not even established a payment plan. More than 50 of these delinquent
employees have remained employed by the IRS for five years or more. All told, nearly 150,000
federal employees failed to pay their taxes, owing a combined $1.5 billion.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), who requested the audit, says IRS employees' failure to pay taxes is
particularly galling, considering the $80 billion the Inflation Reduction Act allotted to
expand the agency's audit capacity.
Elizabeth
Warren Celebrates IRS Audits Of Middle-Class Taxpayers. The Internal Revenue Service
(IRS) is using a new army of tax collectors to conduct mass audits of middle-income earners after
Democrats promised additional resources would only be used to target the rich. On Thursday,
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., celebrated the federal government's collection of more than
$1 billion in taxes from "high-wealth taxpayers" as a triumph for the agency's radical
expansion under President Joe Biden. "Democrats boosted IRS funding, and it's already gotten
back $1 BILLION from millionaire tax cheats," the Massachusetts senator wrote in response to a
story in The Boston Globe. "Republicans want to cut IRS funding again to protect their rich
tax-dodging buddies — no way." A columnist for the paper trumpeted by Warren,
however, pointed out that "Buried deep in the same story: Two-thirds of IRS audits initiated
last year were on taxpayers making less than $200,000." [Tweet]
Is
Biden's IRS Meddling In The IG Investigation Of Hunter Biden Whistleblowers? "The IRS
needs to get into gear immediately and provide answers about the scope and status of the alleged
investigatory process" into the Hunter Biden whistleblowers, Sen. Chuck Grassley told The
Federalist. Grassley's comment comes after he received a letter from the Internal Revenue
Service commissioner stating that the IRS is not investigating the whistleblowers and that any
investigation would be handled by the inspector general's office to ensure independence. The
IRS commissioner's claim is far from comforting, however, given that a recent court filing
indicates the chief counsel office of the IRS is kept apprised of the IG's apparent probe of the
whistleblowers. Last month, Special Counsel David Weiss responded to a motion Hunter Biden
filed seeking dismissal of the criminal tax charges pending against the president's son in
California. In his motion, Hunter argued the IRS's supposed "outrageous conduct" violated his
due process rights and justified dismissal of the indictment. That "outrageous conduct,"
according to Hunter's motion, consisted of the government "not taking action to curtail the
misconduct or prevent the unauthorized disclosure of confidential grand jury and taxpayer return
information," by IRS agents Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler.
Vote
Out the IRS. Recent polls reveal that 64% of Americans believe their taxes are too
high. Perhaps an even greater percentage despise the IRS and support Republican efforts to
abolish it. In January 2023, Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) introduced the Fair Tax Act,
which included language to abolish the personal income tax and rein in the IRS. But nothing
has come of the Fair Tax Act, and even that bill would simply shift taxes from the personal income
tax to a national consumption tax similar to European VAT taxes. America does not need
another form of taxation, especially one where the level of tax can easily be raised, as with state
sales taxes. What America needs is lower spending levels and the elimination of all
taxes on individuals. This country belongs to its citizenry, and they have the right to
decide how they are taxed and how their taxes are spent. But for a very long time, they have
not exercised that right.
The Editor says...
The Congress can't even get rid of the semi-annual flip-flop between Standard Time and Daylight
Saving Time, which most people oppose. There's no way they will ever get rid of the IRS, disband
the FBI, eliminate ethanol subsidies, or send Joe Biden to prison. This country is broken and
irrevocably split, and it will never be repaired by the equally split Congress, even if
nobody in Congress has been compromised, bribed, or blackmailed.
No Crime
and Punishment. About 10 years ago, the IRS sent me an endless series of
paperwork saying I owed about $200 million. I have never seen money anywhere near
that. It was addressed to a man who apparently lived about one block north of me and my
wife. It took over a month to get it straightened out. Incredibly, I still get letters
from the IRS insisting I owe sums like those that appear in nightmares. Merrill Lynch is
endlessly helpful.
The
Numbers Are in, and That Big IRS Funding Increase Is a Disaster. Remember when
Sen. Joe Manchin turned his back on those who had supported him against the far-left onslaught
by voting to pass the so-called Inflation Reduction Act? And remember when that boondoggle
bill contained over $80 billion in new funding for the IRS? At the time, we were all
assured that the funding would go to good use, expanding the enforcement ability of the IRS, raking
in billions upon billions of dollars in unpaid taxes from (in my best Bernie Sanders voice) the
"millionaires and billionaires." If you're wondering how that turned out, we've got some
hard numbers that give a pretty good idea. Ironically, the Associated Press thought it was
worthy of bragging about, but a critical look tells a far different story.
IRS
Rakes in Record $4.9 Trillion in Taxes from Americans Amid Enforcement Crackdown.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) raked in a record $4.9 trillion in taxes from Americans in the
last fiscal year, due in large part to automated collections processes and aggressive audits that saw
taxpayers hit with billions in additional taxes after examination. The Treasury Inspector General
for Tax Administration (TIGTA), the watchdog that oversees the IRS, revealed in a Dec. 20 report
on tax compliance activities that the agency collected a record-breaking amount of money in fiscal year
2022 from American taxpayers. The $4.9 trillion the tax agency raked in last year was around
$790 billion more than the prior year, thanks in large measure to a significant increase in enforcement
revenue. The IRS collected $72 billion in revenue from its enforcement activities in FY 2022,
not far below the record-setting $75 billion in FY 2021 but well above the historical average
of around $59 billion (from 2013-2020).
Biden
IRS Launches Audit Into Conservative Org That Helped Tank Nominees For Key Administration Posts.
The IRS is investigating the tax-exempt status of the American Accountability Foundation (AAF)
following its reporting on President Joe Biden's nominees, according to a letter obtained by the
Daily Caller News Foundation. The IRS is requesting AAF submit internal financial data as
well as communications, including meeting notes, publications and newsletters, according to the
letter from the IRS to AAF obtained by the DCNF. The conservative nonprofit organization, which the
IRS approved for tax-exempt status in August 2021, alleges the investigation is in retaliation for
the AAF reporting on several recent Biden nominees who later withdrew their nominations.
IRS
Can Enter 'Anyone's House at Any Time': Abuse Detailed in New Weaponization Report.
An IRS agent showed up at the door of a Marion County, Ohio, woman and lied about his reason for
being there. Once inside, the Internal Revnue Service agent, purporting to be named Bill
Haus, began to harass and intimidate the taxpayer, according to a congressional report released
Friday. The woman called a lawyer, who told the IRS agent to leave the home since the
taxpayer had gotten no prior notice of unpaid taxes. "I am an IRS agent. I can be at
and go into anyone's house at any time I want to be," responded the agent, who was using a phony
name, according to the report from the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of
the Federal Government. Under pressure from Congress, the IRS discontinued its policy of
unannounced home visits in July.
Thanks,
to a Politician Who Did His Job. A new report about IRS home visits has just been
released by the House Weaponization of Government Committee, chaired by Ohio congressman Jim
Jordan. It outlines disturbing issues, including confirmation that IRS agents making home
visits may come without warning, using aliases, and without informing local enforcement agencies of
their presence. One of the cases outlined is my own. My home was visited by the IRS
while I was testifying before Jordan's Committee about the Twitter Files on March 9th.
Sincere thanks are due to Chairman Jordan, whose staff not only demanded and got answers in my
case, but achieved a concrete policy change, as IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel announced in July
new procedures that would "end most" home visits. Anticipating criticism for expressing
public thanks to a Republican congressman, I'd like to ask Democratic Party partisans: to which
elected Democrat should I have appealed for help in this matter? The one who called me a
"so-called journalist" on the House floor? The one who told me to take off my "tinfoil hat"
and put greater trust in intelligence services?
"Why
should I ever vote for a Democrat again?". Matt Taibbi is one of a group of honest
liberals who are not blind to the contemporary Left's faults. At Racket News, he writes about
his testimony before Jim Jordan's House Weaponization of Government Committee, which apparently
prompted a visit to his home by the IRS. Jordan's House committee investigated, with the result
that the IRS has announced a new policy on home visits. [...] Taibbi is a journalist who cares
about freedom of speech. So, QED. The Democrats are on the other side.
CNN
praises the IRS for 'cracking down' on tax cheats; fails to realize they just described Hunter
Biden. CNN operatives can't really be so naïve that they actually believe the
IRS wouldn't have been able to collect these taxes without passing the falsely named "Inflation
Reduction Act" can they? [...] Hunter Biden failed to pay taxes some years, and allegedly raided
his own daughter's college savings account to pay for prostitutes (and who knows what else).
This behavior certainly constitutes fraud, but the IRS and the (In)Justice Department have been
extremely soft on him. He is the son of a Democrat president, therefore, he is
special. The media and other Democrats have known how Joe enabled his family to collect
kickbacks around the world because of his powerful political position and really don't [care].
[...] Incidentally, there is no statute of limitations for people like Hunter who intentionally
commit criminal tax evasion. So why are the prosecutors acting like there is? Why is
the public intentionally being misinformed?
Leaker
of Trump Taxes Worked for Biden Beltway Donor That Just Won a Big New IRS Contract.
The Internal Revenue Service recently awarded a lucrative contract to help modernize its computer
databases to the same Washington firm, Booz Allen Hamilton, that employed the man who pleaded
guilty last week to stealing and leaking thousands of private tax returns of wealthy Americans,
including former President Trump, according to records reviewed by RealClearInvestigations.
The massive IRS theft is the third major breach of confidential and classified government
information by Booz Allen contractors over the last decade — including Edward Snowden's
2013 leak exposing the National Security Agency's worldwide anti-terror surveillance program.
Cyber-thief Charles "Chaz" Littlejohn was working on an IRS contract for Booz Allen in 2018 when he
stole more than two decades of Trump's personal tax records from IRS computers. He later
leaked them to the New York Times, which published negative stories on Trump's long-sought returns
several weeks before the 2020 election, which Trump narrowly lost in a handful of battleground states.
IRS
consultant pleads guilty for leaking tax returns of Trump and nation's 'wealthiest individuals' to
media. A former consultant with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) pleaded guilty on
Thursday for leaking tax information about former President Trump and others to news outlets
between 2018 and 2020. According to the Justice Department, Charles Littlejohn, 38, disclosed
the tax returns of "thousands of the nation's wealthiest individuals" to news organizations and tax
information associated with a "high-ranking government official" to a second news outlet.
Trump is not named in the complaint. He pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of unauthorized
disclosure of tax return and return information.
Turns
Out The IRS Is After You, After All. When it was first revealed that the so-called
"Inflation Reduction Act" provided funding for 87,000 new IRS agents, Biden administration
officials told Americans not to worry. They promised at every turn that these agents would
only be set upon those earning over $400,000 a year. But the Act has done nothing to reduce
inflation, so it's hardly surprisingly to learn now that an army of IRS agents has the middle class
in its crosshairs. In a new report, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration
admitted that the Treasury would not be able to accurately distinguish whether many taxpayers are
above or below President Joe Biden's $400,000 threshold. When the Inspector General
recommended addressing this shortcoming, the IRS declined to do so, claiming it needs to have the
"agility" to target anyone. In fact, the IRS went so far as to reject any threshold for
defining "high-income taxpayers," calling such figures "static and overly prescriptive."
Mike
Lindell says MyPillow's now facing multiple IRS audits. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell
says his pillow company is now facing five audits from the IRS. Lindell told Steve Bannon on
the latter's "War Room" podcast on Saturday that IRS auditors were looking into earnings made by
his call center contract workers. The audits concerned commissions earned by some employees
who worked remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lindell said. "It started in California.
Now there's three other states that are coming at MyPillow. And Steve, it's disgusting,"
Lindell told Bannon.
IRS
Hits MyPillow With Five Audits: Mike Lindell. Last week we noted that MyPillow
has been "crippled" by American Express, according to CEO Mike Lindell. On Saturday, Lindell
said that his company is now facing five IRS audits related to employees who worked remotely
during the Covid-19 pandemic. "It started in California. Now there's three other states
that are coming at MyPillow. And Steve, it's disgusting," Lindell told Bannon on the "War
Room" podcast. "They just keep attacking. Now they're going after our employees.
They made it very personal," he added.
Remember
that promise of no new audits below $400,000... the IRS doesn't. As with so many
political promises, it was never going to be kept. Political rhetoric is rarely meant to be
taken literally, shouldn't be taken seriously, and often isn't even meant to have any connection to
the real world. At best political promises are aspirational — "I will try to do
something like this." Usually they are filled with puffery — "I will aim
kinda/sorta in this direction and you will like it." But often they are simply con
jobs — "I don't mean this at all, but you like to hear it." Joe Biden's promises
regarding the IRS expansion he pushed through were of the last type. Joe wanted $80 billion
more for the IRS in the "Inflation Reduction Act," which was a tall order. The IRS is very
unpopular, but he wanted a ton more money to expand it.
Why
is the IRS Buying .40-Caliber Submachine Guns? When the corporate media asked the IRS
why it needed automatic weapons, millions of rounds of ammunition and heavily armed staffers
trained in the "use of force," they said it was for "administrative reasons." But we now know
that the globalists are not just arming the IRS, along with just about every other federal
agency. They are militarizing these agencies to the hilt with military-grade weapons not
available to American citizens. Why, for instance, would the IRS need armored vehicles,
flash-bang grenades loaded with tear gas, and .40-caliber submachine guns? The IRS has been
arming up for at least ten years.
Much like Barney Fife, but better at math. Accidental
fatal shooting of IRS agent by another agent raises more concerns. An IRS special
agent was shot and killed during a training exercise on a Phoenix gun range by another agent
Thursday, sparking an investigation by the FBI. ABC 15 News broke the story that the shooting
and death had occurred outside of Anthem on a range used by multiple law enforcement
agencies. FBI officials released a statement on Thursday evening confirming the death of the
agent but did not share further details about what exactly happened on the range. The Federal
Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) also issued a statement that it was investigating a "shooting incident" at
the Federal Correctional Institutional (FCI) Phoenix firing range Thursday afternoon but could not
confirm additional details.
Pencil-pushing bookkeepers should not have guns. Just How Does An
IRS Agent Get Killed At A Federal Shooting Range? You'd like to think that federal
firearms facilities take at least as much care on observing range safety procedures as the average
mom-and-pop shooting range in Texas does, but given how the rest of the federal government
is run these days, that's no sure thing. It also brings up the question of just why the IRS
needs its own armed agents in the first place. Are there not enough armed agents in other
branches of the federal government to provide muscle for the IRS on the (theoretically rare)
occasions it's required?
Republican
sounds alarm on 'militarization' of IRS after it spent $10M on weapons [and other] gear since
2020. A House Republican is demanding a full accounting of weapons and tactical gear
owned by the Internal Revenue Service, citing her "growing concern" over reports that the tax
agency has spent nearly $10 million over the last three years on these items. "I write to
you today to express my concerns regarding the increased rate of weapon purchases by the Internal
Revenue Service," Rep. Stephanie Bice, R-Okla., wrote in a Tuesday letter to IRS Commissioner
Daniel Werfel. "While I recognize the Criminal Investigation division has a law enforcement
role, recent reports have indicated that the IRS has made substantial purchases of weaponry and
tactical gear. As a civilian agency whose stated mission is to 'Provide America's taxpayers
top-quality service by helping them understand and meet their tax responsibilities and enforce the
law with integrity and fairness to all,' the increasing militarization of the IRS is of growing concern."
IRS
to End 'Most' Unannounced Home Visits, Reversing 'Decades-Long Practice' after Alleged
Abuses. The IRS announced Monday that it will "end most" unannounced home visits in a
move that "reverses a decades-long practice." "We are taking a fresh look at how the I.R.S.
operates to better serve taxpayers and the nation, and making this change is a common-sense step,"
IRS commissioner Daniel Werfel, said in an official statement. "Changing this longstanding
procedure will increase confidence in our tax administration work and improve overall safety for
taxpayers and I.R.S. employees." The agency noted that such visits would continue in only
"unique" cases and that agents are generally dispatched in situations usually involving over
$100,000 in outstanding tax bills.
Where's
the DOJ Probe Into the Theft of IRS Taxpayer Records? Okay, but if we're
investigating sensitive tax data being shared with outsiders, let's start with ProPublica.
ProPublica, the slimy leftist activist group set up by one of the scammers who helped cause the
recession in the previous decade, has gotten a lot of attention for its campaign against
conservative Supreme Court justices (by some farfetched coincidence, ProPublica gets funding from
groups that want to pack the court) had previously made headlines for obtaining "users' sensitive
tax data" and then publishing it as part of a lefty campaign about taxes. It's traditional in
media circles to describe stolen information as a "leak" when it's published by their side, but
federal tax data being published should have occasioned a DOJ probe. Attorney General Merrick
Garland promised that it would be a top priority.
The
Bidens' Existential Threats to the American Rule of Law. President Joe Biden, the
Biden grifting conglomerate, the Department of Justice, and the FBI under its fourth consecutive
weaponized director, are in danger of subverting the American system of law. They are in
various ways undermining the tradition of self-reported income tax computation and voluntary
compliance. Our tax institutions, of course, are based on the real deterrence of a
disinterested, uncompromised Internal Revenue Service. Without it, the income revenues of the
United States are existentially threatened. So far, any negative reputation of the IRS has
rested with natural complaints that it is too zealous in hounding out American taxpayers in all
walks of life. Or citizens often object that the IRS must enforce a tax code that is innately
unfair. But not until now, has the IRS itself ever been under a shadow of such
corruption? Has it been in the past ever found to have applied so blatantly and deliberately
one standard of tax enforcement to elites and quite another to everyday Americans?
U.S.
Senator introduces bill to disarm, demilitarize the IRS. Senator Joni Ernst,
Republican of Iowa, introduced a bill last week which she has labeled in the form of a question:
Her bill is called the "Why does the IRS Have Guns Act?" "Why do paper-pushing tax collectors
at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) need guns?" she asks on her website. "That's the $35
million-dollar question." She says Americans should be "gravely concerned" that the IRS is
armed, loaded, and coming after them. Especially given the agency's history of conducting
armed raids on innocent Americans. Her bill would prohibit the IRS from buying or warehousing
guns and ammunition. It would also require the IRS to transfer all firearms to the General
Services Administration, where they could be auctioned off to licensed gun dealers with the
proceeds used to reduce the national debt. Further, the bill would move the IRS's Criminal
Investigation Division under the control of the Justice Department.
Biden
[is] weaponizing IRS into a well-armed paramilitary force. Iowa Senator Joni Ernst
introduced a bill last week titled "Why does the IRS Have Guns Act," which would prohibit the IRS
from buying or storing guns and ammunition, transfer all IRS firearms to the General Services
Administration so they could be auctioned off to licensed gun dealers to reduce the national debt,
and move the agency's Criminal Investigation Division to the control of the Justice Department.
"The taxman is fully loaded at the expense of the taxpayer," Ernst said in a statement. "As the
Biden administration has worked to expand the size of the IRS, any further weaponization of this
federal agency against hardworking Americans and small businesses is a grave concern. I'm
working to disarm the IRS and return these dollars to address reckless spending in Washington."
While the outcome of Ernst's legislation is not promising — Joe Biden will likely veto
her bill, should it ever reach his desk — the Senator's efforts have drawn much needed
attention to the massive arsenal that the IRS has amassed — is amassing.
IRS
Agent Claimed He Can 'Go Into Anyone's House At Any Time,' Jim Jordan Says. House
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan sent a letter to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Friday
demanding to know why an agent had told a woman that he could "go into anyone's house at any time I
want." Jordan revealed in the letter that a he'd recently learned of allegations about an IRS
agent who had allegedly used a fake name to enter a taxpayer's home and then threatened her.
The letter explained that an agent going by "Bill Haus" showed up at an Ohio woman's home in April,
telling her that he can "go into anyone's house at any time."
Jordan
presses IRS chief on allegations agent entered Ohioan's home using fake name. House
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan on Friday wrote to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel asking
that he account for a "bizarre" field visit in which an IRS agent alleged secured entry to an Ohio
resident's home using a fake name and under false pretenses. "We have recently received
allegations that an Internal Revenue Service agent provided a false name to an Ohio taxpayer as
part of a deception to gain entry into the taxpayer's home to confront her about delinquent tax
filings," Jordan wrote. "When the taxpayer rightfully objected to the agent's tactics, the IRS
agent insisted that he 'can... go into anyone's house at any time' as an IRS agent. These
allegations raise serious concerns about the IRS's commitment to fundamental civil liberties."
It's
Not Just the FBI: The IRS goes into 'Beast Mode'. We have seen for some time how
off-the-rails the FBI has become, a danger to a free society. More and more evidence now
shows it's not just the FBI. Every federal employee with a badge and gun seems to think he's a law
unto himself. This week the spotlight is on the IRS, and the Congress has to step up and rein
the agency in. While Matt Taibbi was testifying before Congress on the administration's
extensive censoring of social media content, the IRS appeared at his door, ostensibly to question
him about his taxes, but obviously to intimidate him for showing up government censorship.
The
IRS Allows Eco-Terrorists to Crowdsource Harassment of Senators. The ecoterrorist
group ['Climate Defiance'] which boasts of having "fully shut down Joe Manchin's keynote" and "made
pipeline lover Amy Klobuchar flee the stage at her own book launch party" is also pretty clear
about what donors can buy by funding the environmentalist group. For $100, you get
"photography for one direct action" while $1,000 buys you a "whole keynote speech shutdown,
soup-to-nuts". Funding for this illegal activity is being processed by Stripe and PayPal.
Both companies have a history of suspending conservatives, but have no objection to allowing
leftists to directly subsidize harassment of elected officials. When contacted for a comment,
they did not reply.
'Why
Does the IRS Have Guns': Joni Ernst Leads the Charge to Disarm the IRS. U.S. Senator
Joni Ernst (R-IA) is again taking action against (literally) weaponized bureaucracy by leading the
charge in the upper chamber to ensure the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is not using tax dollars
from hardworking Americans to arm its employees — and going beyond just that to disarm
the taxman and move the IRS' investigation division over to the Justice Department. According
to an Open the Books report released last month, the IRS has spent more than $35 million since 2006
on firearms, ammunition, and tactical gear for its glorified and federally empowered accountant force,
with some $10 million of that taxpayer-funded armament coming since just 2020. [Tweet]
SCOTUS
OKs IRS Slithering Into Accounts & Taking $$$. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously
okays the IRS plodding through taxpayers' bank records in secret, warrantless fishing
expeditions. The IRS can also collect unpaid taxes from family members and associates without
legal ties to those accounts. And now we will have 80,000 more IRS agents to do it.
Forget about getting your money back. When the government does its asset forfeitures, even
the innocent often can't get their money and other assets back. The Court noted that "the
authority vested in tax collectors may be abused, as all power is subject to abuse" and that
"Congress has given the IRS considerable power," the Supreme Court's 9-0 ruling in Polselli
v. IRS declined to restrict the IRS's authority.
IRS's
Surprising Armament: A Troubling Shift towards Aggressive Tactics and Increased
Firepower. Lately, I've noticed some disturbing reports suggesting that the
Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) might not always
prioritize balanced justice. Whistleblower accounts have emerged, alleging preferential
treatment for certain individuals, such as President Biden's son, Hunter. Additionally, there
are stories circulating about innocent Americans being investigated based on their religious
beliefs or online statements. Interestingly, a recent report has shed light on an unexpected
agency that appears to be increasing its arsenal — the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
According to OpentheBooks.com (initially reported by Fox Business), the IRS has spent over
$10 million on "weaponry and gear" since the outbreak of the coronavirus in 2020. Moreover,
they have started recruiting agents who will be armed and authorized to make arrests, with job openings
available in all 50 states.
IRS
commissioner says IRS follows direction of Justice Department. According to Fox News,
IRS commissioner Daniel Werfel, responding to allegations of internal retaliation against IRS
whistleblowers, sent the House Ways and Means Committee a letter denying those accusations.
At least two IRS whistleblowers, one being a criminal supervisory special agent, claim that the
Justice Department has interfered in a high-profile criminal investigation. The attorneys
representing the supervisory agent have been careful not to name the subject of that investigation,
but it is generally believed they were referring to the probe of Hunter Biden.
Defund The
IRS. The debt ceiling deal reached by the Republican leadership and the
administration is far from perfect in the eyes of anyone who cares about runaway government
spending (which is the only government spending we know of). But it appears House Speaker Kevin
McCarthy was able to block, at least for a year, the hiring of a field army of IRS soldiers.
Like a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean, it's a good start, though there's still a long
way to go. Among the hundreds of sections in the 99-page bill, No. 251 is "Rescission of
certain balances made available to the Internal Revenue Service." More specifically, the
legislation, if passed and signed as is, cuts almost $1.4 billion "of the unobligated balances
of amounts appropriated or otherwise made available for activities of the Internal Revenue Service"
through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Through the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden
administration had obtained an additional $80 billion for the IRS, more than six times its
current annual budget. Funding for enforcement was to increase by 69% through fiscal 2031.
DeSantis
Stands Firm on Taxation, Welcomes Bill to Abolish the IRS. On Thursday, Florida
Governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis said he would welcome a bill to defund
the IRS. DeSantis made the comments to Dana Loesch, a Second Amendment advocate and host of
The Dana Show. [Numerous tweets]
The Editor says...
The Republican Party has been bloviating about abolishing the IRS for decades -- mostly at its state
conventions. Everybody cheers. Nobody believes it will ever happen.
IRS
Whistleblower Accuses Agency of 'Slow-Walking' Hunter Biden Probe. Gary Shapley, an
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) whistleblower, said that the federal agency "slow-walked" its investigation
into the finances of President Joe Biden's son, Hunter. "There were multiple steps that were
slow-walked — were just completely not done — at the direction of the Department of Justice,"
the IRS agent told CBS News in his first public interview on Wednesday night. "When I
took control of this particular investigation, I immediately saw deviations from the normal process.
It was way outside the norm of what I've experienced in the past." [Tweet with video clip]
IRS
Commissioner: DOJ Responsible for Whistleblower Purge from Hunter Biden Tax Probe.
IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel told Congress the Justice Department (DOJ) made the decision to
purge an IRS whistleblower from the DOJ's probe into Hunter Biden, according to a letter sent to
House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-MO). Werfel's letter on May 17 responded
to Smith's May 16 inquiry about concerns that a high-ranking IRS agent faced retaliation for
raising red flags about alleged political interference in the tax probe of Hunter Biden.
Werfel said the decision to remove a whistleblower from the tax investigation was at the DOJ's
direction, confirming what a second IRS whistleblower alleged Monday.
Second
IRS Hunter Biden Whistleblower Comes Forward, Gets Threatened With Criminal Prosecution.
Another IRS whistleblower involving the Hunter Biden investigation has been revealed, and according to
a new report, threats of retaliation via criminal prosecution followed. That revelation comes after
the IRS removed the entire investigative team overseeing the Hunter Biden case, which involves allegations
of tax fraud and failure to file taxes. That left many with the impression that a full-scale
cover-up was in effect. The request to remove the team reportedly came directly from the DOJ, which
has continued to inexplicably stall any kind of final decision on whether to prosecute the president's
degenerate son.
Another
IRS Investigator Claims Hunter Biden Inquiry Misconduct. The criminal probe into
Hunter Biden took another wild turn as an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) investigator who was
dismissed from the case says agency officials have been ignoring claims that the Justice Department
has been mishandling the inquiry led by U.S. Attorney David Weiss. A special agent, who works
under the IRS supervisor seeking to make whistleblower disclosures to Congress regarding
allegations that the investigation has been corrupted by lies and politics, said efforts to bring
forward these "issues" were shunned by their direct IRS superiors in the Criminal Investigation
Division for years, according to an email to agency leadership. "The ultimate decision to remove
the investigatory team ... without actually talking to that investigatory team, in my opinion was a
decision made not to side with the investigators but to side with the US Attorney's Office and
Department of Justice who we have been saying for some time has been acting inappropriately," the
special agent added.
Supreme
Court Rules IRS Can Secretly Grab Bank Records of Outside Parties. The Supreme Court
has ruled unanimously in a delinquent taxpayer case that it is lawful for the IRS to secretly
summons the bank records of third parties. In other words, the nation's highest court
recognized that the Internal Revenue Service is not required to notify third parties who are not
under investigation when seeking a summons for banking records thought to be relevant to the tax
delinquency of another person. One lawyer who briefed the Supreme Court said the new ruling
gives the IRS "startlingly broad authority to pry into the financial records of people who may be
only remotely connected to a delinquent taxpayer." The ruling, a victory for the Biden
administration, came after the administration's attempts to strengthen IRS enforcement efforts
became an issue in the midterm congressional elections.
IRS
Axes 'Entire Investigative Team' Probing Hunter Biden Taxes: Report. As the U.S.
Department of Justice and FBI were left reeling in the wake of John Durham's report on the
"sobering" finding that there was no basis for the investigation into Trump's "Russian collusion,"
the DOJ reportedly wasted no time apparently trying to use the fury of media scrutiny to make
another confounding decision. According to an exclusive report late Monday night from The New
York Post, the IRS "removed the 'entire investigative team' from its long-running tax fraud probe
of first son Hunter Biden in alleged retaliation against the whistleblower who alleged a
coverup." [Tweet] In April, an anonymous IRS employee retained counsel after making
protected disclosures at the federal agency and made contact with Republican House committee
chairmen seeking to make additional protected disclosures to lawmakers about what the whistleblower
called "preferential treatment" for Hunter Biden and knowledge of details that "contradict sworn
testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee."
The
swamp is deep and the IRS crocodiles are hungry. Maybe the IRS should spend their
time administering the tax code instead of targeting people they don't like and protecting
criminals whose policies they like. These days, it is no different than when the IRS targeted
Tea Party members for the sole reason that they did not like President Obama's big government and
high-tax policies. Biden compared Tea Party members to domestic terrorists back then, just
like he compares MAGA Republicans to domestic terrorists today. It is Democrats who
continually gin up racial hate and division while they pretend they want unity and most of the
media cheers. Why should we hire 87,000 more IRS agents when the ones we have are more
interested in protecting themselves instead of doing their job?
IRS
removes investigative team from Hunter Biden probe in move whistleblower claims is 'clearly
retaliatory'. The IRS on Monday [5/15/2023] removed the "entire investigative team"
from its long-running tax fraud probe of first son Hunter Biden in alleged retaliation against the
whistleblower who recently contacted Congress to allege a cover-up in the case, The [New York] Post
has learned. The purge allegedly was done on the orders of the Justice Department, the
whistleblower's attorneys informed congressional leaders in a letter. "Today the Internal
Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal Supervisory Special Agent we represent was informed that he and his
entire investigative team are being removed from the ongoing and sensitive investigation of the
high-profile, controversial subject about which our client sought to make whistleblower disclosures
to Congress. He was informed the change was at the request of the Department of Justice,"
Mark Lytle and Tristan Leavitt wrote. The whistleblower, who supervised the Hunter Biden
probe since early 2020, hasn't publicly identified the first son as the subject of the case that he
says is being brushed under the rug, but congressional sources confirmed it.
IRS
Looking to Buy Internet-traffic Monitoring Technology. The IRS is in the market for
technology that would give them the ability to monitor Americans' online activity. The
monitoring system sought by the IRS has already been sold by the manufacturer to the FBI and the
Department of Defense. [...] Vice says the product description page claims that Recon can "trace
malicious activity through a dozen or more proxies and VPNs to identify the origin of a cyber
threat." Now, the IRS would likely claim that they want to monitor internet traffic in order to
prevent hackers from gaining access to the the agency's servers, and thus to protect the private
data of millions of Americans from being stolen. Anyone who has kept up with just how
committed the tax collectors are to identifying and targeting groups and individuals of a
conservative bent would realize that there's little to no chance that the IRS intends to use the
Recon technology to defend data. The more likely purpose for the purchase is to keep track of
the online traffic of those they want to audit for being patriotic.
IRS
Wants to Buy Internet Mass Monitoring Tool. The IRS wants to purchase an internet
monitoring tool from a company that has sold products to sections of the U.S. military and the FBI,
according to public procurement records. The company, called Team Cymru, provides access to
"netflow" data, which can show activity on the wider internet, such as which server communicated
with another. This is information that may ordinarily only be available to the company
hosting the server or the internet service provider carrying the traffic. The news shows
federal agencies' continued interest in Team Cymru's data and products. The procurement
records show the IRS also wants to buy subscriptions from a variety of cybersecurity companies,
suggesting the intended use case may be defensive in nature. In essence, Team Cymru's
products let cybersecurity professionals monitor activity outside of their own networks and observe
what is happening on the wider internet. This may benefit defenders in identifying hackers'
infrastructure, but multiple cybersecurity professionals have previously expressed concern to
Motherboard about the sale of netflow data.
While
Matt Taibbi Was Testifying Before Weaponization of Government Committee, the IRS Knocked on His
Door. While Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi was in Washington, D.C. on March 9
testifying before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, his home
in New Jersey had a curious visitor — an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agent.
Now, the House Judiciary Committee chair, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), is demanding that the IRS
explain why. According to the Wall Street Journal, whose editors have seen the document,
Jordan sent a letter Monday to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen
asking why Taibbi was the target of the unannounced and unusual home visit. During that
hearing, Taibbi was grilled by Democrats who attempted to get him to reveal his sources, in total
ignorance of the First Amendment. The same week, FTC Chair Lina Khan demanded that Twitter
produce a list of all journalists who'd been given access to the Twitter Files as part of their
investigation into Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter, a move Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Jordan
pushed back on. [Tweet]
IRS
pays a visit to Matt Taibbi on same day he testifies before Congress on government abuses.
[Scroll down] This is how police states work. Oh, sure, they will say it's just a
coincidence that they sent an agent to Taibbi's home, but they'll have to explain themselves better
than that. They've already gotten away with Lois Lerner and her shady tactics against Tea Party
groups, they must have more agents just like her in that agency, willing to act on ideological motives
to silence government critics. Who are they taking orders from? In the Lerner case, it was
likely the White House. And why do they think they can get away with this, against an opposition-led
Congress, no less? Is this what Joe Biden's $80 billion monster funding of the IRS has brought
us? Is this what it was about? If I recall correctly, John Hinderaker at Power Line speculated
that newly beefed up IRS, far from targeting billionaires as Biden promoted to win the bill's
congressional passage, would use the new cash infusion to target conservatives and other inconvenient
people. Looks like they did, and Hinderaker was right on the money.
Supreme
Court Slashes IRS Penalty Against Taxpayer for Not Reporting Foreign Bank Accounts.
The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in a fractured opinion on Feb. 28 that the IRS imposed an excessive
fine on a businessman for failing to report foreign bank accounts, reducing the financial penalty
to $50,000 from $2.72 million. The decision came after the House of Representatives, now
controlled by Republicans, voted in January to repeal a congressional provision allotting almost
$80 billion to the IRS over the coming 10 years for increased enforcement. Democrats say the
IRS has long been underfunded, but Republicans say the extra money would have been used to harass
taxpayers. Only 4 percent of the additional funding would have been devoted to improving
taxpayer service, while 58 percent would have gone to escalating enforcement efforts, the New York
Post reported in August 2022.
Why
Did The IRS Let Biden Off The Hook For His Sketchy Tax Filings? Republicans Should
Investigate. Apparently, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) doesn't listen to my
advice. Last summer, as Congress prepared to ram through a spending spree that included
funding for nearly 87,000 IRS employees, I noted that if Democrats were interested in tracking down
wealthy tax cheats, they should instead demand that the tax agency audit the current occupant of
the White House to study his own dodgy tax history. Now come claims from the White House that
the IRS examined President Biden's taxes yet raised no red flags. That apparent development
was enough to prompt an analyst at a liberal think tank to say Congress should investigate what he
views as the IRS's abdication of its duties regarding Biden's returns. But the question
remains whether Republicans will get off their proverbial tails and actually do something about it.
Tax
Expert: IRS Announcement Is 'Nearly Unprecedented'. A tax expert said that a recent Internal Revenue
Service (IRS) alert to millions of taxpayers that they should hold off on filing their tax returns is
unprecedented. On Feb. 10, the IRS issued new guidance on special payments that were made by 21 states last
year. The came about a week after the agency told taxpayers to hold off so as to provide additional guidance on
those payments and whether they are subject to federal taxes. "The IRS has determined that in the interest of
sound tax administration and other factors, taxpayers in many states will not need to report these payments on their
2022 tax returns," the IRS said in its latest update. "The IRS appreciates the patience of taxpayers, tax
professionals, software companies and state tax administrators as the IRS and Treasury worked to resolve this unique and
complex situation," it said.
IRS
looks to crack down on tips. Remember when we were told that the army of new IRS agents Biden wants to
hire was only going to go after billionaires? Good times. If that's the case, somebody should check to
see if Bill Gates and Elon Musk have taken some side gigs slinging hash at a diner somewhere. ([...]) As it
turns out, the Tax Man is launching a new program to crack down on tips received by wait staff in the food and beverage
industry. That's right. The IRS thinks that waiters and waitresses are pocketing too much money in
gratuities, and Uncle Sam plans on getting his piece of the action.
The Editor says...
I'm not a CPA, but the way I see it, a tip is a non-taxable gift. A waitress can't help it if dozens of people
give her small gifts, or if the customers abandon money on the table when they leave. If the customer adds it
to the credit card tab, that's another story.
Good
luck qualifying for that tax break Joe Biden is touting on that EV he wants you to buy. Just yesterday,
Joe Biden's official Twitter account posted that the great American road trip is going to be fully electrified and that
citizens can receive a tax credit of up to $7,500 for a new electric vehicle (EV). Along with the message was a
photo of Biden driving a GMC Hummer EV. [...] We dig deeper. Does Biden's Hummer EV qualify for the scheme?
The $7,500 credit scheme is applicable to new vans, sport utility vehicles, and pickup trucks that cost $80,000 or
less. The GMC Hummer EV costs between $87,000 and $110,000, hence doesn't qualify for the credits. [...] The
average cost of an EV is roughly $66,000, which means few vehicles qualify for the scheme. Some vehicles listed on
the IRS website as potentially eligible for credit actually fail to qualify because they are expensive. Another
problem is that there isn't an explicit definition regarding which vehicle is subject to that $55,000 cap and which
vehicle is subject to a $80,000 cap. The IRS states the categories are based on the criteria for fuel economy for
gas-powered vehicles standards, but these classifications seem arbitrary and confusing. There were other problems
with the information on the IRS website. The plug-in hybrid Ford Escape was listed as having an $80,000 price cap
for more than a week before the cap was changed to $55,000. The Treasury Department claims the original price cap was
a typo. You would have hoped the content on the website was reviewed before publishing.
Democrats
[are] lying about IRS audits. Unfortunately we have the worst of all worlds when it comes to the tax
agency. It is actually true that given the current tax code the IRS is woefully understaffed, although not in the
audit department per se. Rather, the agency is utterly incapable of providing reliable assistance to
taxpayers trying to navigate our ridiculously complex tax code. There aren't enough people to answer questions,
and the code itself is so ridiculous that the answers you get from any particular IRS agent on the phone will likely be
unreliable. And even if that advice is defensible, a different IRS employee might disagree and you are left
holding the bag. The IRS is broken, but hardly as broken as our tax code itself. No amount of money could
possibly fix an agency tasked with managing a complex and contradictory tax code that changes seemingly by the
minute. Wealthy people and corporations simply hire expensive lawyers — often former IRS agents
themselves — to get them out of jams.
House
Republicans to Vote on Bill to Abolish IRS. House Republicans are set to vote on a bill that would abolish
the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and introduce a national-consumption tax to replace the existing federal income-tax
scheme. House speaker Kevin McCarthy agreed to put the Fair Tax Act on the floor as one of a number of concessions
he made to House Freedom Caucus members last week in a bid to secure the speakership. The bill was introduced by
Representative Buddy Carter (R., Ga.) on Wednesday and has also received the support of Republican representatives Scott
Perry of Pennsylvania, Bob Good of Virginia, and Ralph Norman of South Carolina.
IRS
on the chopping block on first day of legislative work under Speaker McCarthy. The House of
Representatives is slated to vote on a bill Monday night that would cut more than $70 billion in Internal Revenue
Service funding in an effort to prevent the agency from conducting new audits on Americans — fulfilling newly
elected House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's promise ahead of taking the gavel. The Family and Small Business Taxpayer
Protection Act from Reps. Adrian Smith, R-Neb., and Michelle Steel, R-Calif., would roll back the billions of
dollars of funding for the IRS that was approved in the Inflation Reduction Act last year. Smith's bill leaves in
place funding for customer service and improvements to IT services at the IRS but rescinds several categories of
unobligated funding, including money that could be used to conduct any new audits on Americans. In total, it would
claw back $72 billion of the funding Congress approved for the IRS last year.
Poor
People [are] Five Times More Likely Than [the] Average Earner To Be Audited by [the] Biden IRS. Poor
people faced a significantly higher chance in 2022 of being audited by President Joe Biden's IRS than both rich and
middle-class earners, according to a Syracuse University study. In fact, no group faced as much scrutiny from
the IRS as those who made below $25,000, the university's data-gathering center found. Among families that
benefited from the earned income tax credit, a rebate on income and payroll taxes made available to the nation's poorest
families, 1.27 percent were audited. The IRS in 2022 audited just 0.19 percent of the vast majority of
taxpayers, meaning the poorest families were at least 550 percent more likely to have the IRS knock on their
door than the average filer.
18
Absurdities of the McConnell-Schumer Omnibus Spending Bill. [#13] Increasing Funding for IRS:
The so-called Inflation Reduction Act included $80 billion in new supplemental and mandatory funding for the
Internal Revenue Service. Despite that, the omnibus spending bill leaves unchanged the prior year's level of
spending in the IRS budget for enforcement and other main categories. This would lock in the looming threat of a
doubled IRS army coming for every American family and small business.
Dems
Vote to Release Six Years of Trump Tax Returns in Stunning Invasion of Privacy. Add yet another government
overreach to the "Things You Didn't Think Could Happen in America" file: Democrats on the lame-duck House and Ways
and Means Committee voted Tuesday to release six years of former President Donald Trump's tax returns. [...] But wait,
you say to yourself, that's not possible; your tax returns are private by federal law, and therefore protected from
release. The Dems of course found a sleazy way around that. The tax code allows the committee to look at
people's tax returns to provide "oversight" of the Internal Revenue Service, and by writing an official report on their
findings, then those returns can legally become public as part of the report.
Team
Biden is using the IRS to attack the gig economy. The Biden administration is recruiting 87,000 IRS agents,
allegedly to keep an eye on billionaires. But all appearances are that it's aiming at the little fish of the gig
economy instead. Taking payments for a side hustle via PayPal or Venmo? Not only is the IRS reminding you
those payments are taxable income, it's deputizing those payment companies to snitch on you. The federal
government can lose trillions, as a recent Pentagon audit noted, and nobody goes to jail. Sam Bankman-Fried can
lose billions and (so far at least) be treated as a darling by members of Congress to whom he donated.
But you're expected to keep perfect records, and the corporate/government machine that characterizes early-21st-century
American governance will be sure to keep close tabs on you.
Biden
Nominates New IRS Chief As The Agency Prepares To Double In Size. President Joe Biden nominated consulting
executive Daniel Werfel to lead the Internal Revenue Service months after Congress greenlit funding to double the
agency's size. The term of IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, is set
to expire at the end of the week. Werfel previously served as IRS acting commissioner under President Barack
Obama. "In the wake of an Inspector General report alleging various forms of mismanagement and bias in the
determination of tax-exempt status for non-profit organizations, President Obama appointed Werfel to serve as Acting
Commissioner of IRS in 2013," according to a statement from the White House. "Werfel provided immediate stability to
the IRS, effectively responding to numerous Congressional investigations, successfully launching the Affordable Care Act
technology that IRS was responsible for, and navigated the IRS through a multi-week government shutdown."
IRS adds
4,000 new workers funded by the Inflation Reduction Act. The Internal Revenue Service announced Friday it
has hired 4,000 new "customer service representatives" to help answer phones and provide other services to U.S.
taxpayers. The IRS said the hirings are part of a much wider improvement effort tied to funding from the Biden
administration Inflation Reduction Act.
GOP
fires warning shot at IRS: Destruction of taxpayer filings is 'ripe for congressional oversight'.
Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee asked the IRS this week to keep all documents related to its 2021
decision to destroy millions of taxpayer filings, and indicated a deeper congressional inquiry is coming if Republicans
take control of the House. During the first few months of the Biden administration, the IRS destroyed 30 million
paper-filed "information returns," which must be filed by small business and others to inform the IRS of various
transactions. The IRS claimed that "software limitations" prevented it from processing those returns, and a
decision was made to destroy them. The IRS insisted that no taxpayers would be penalized as a result of its
decision, but tax professionals were outraged at the decision to wipe out documents that took time and expense to file,
and Republicans demanded more information about what happened.
How
Biden and IRS Unlawfully Expanded Obamacare. President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that his administration
had expanded Obamacare. Congress didn't legislate the expansion. The Internal Revenue Service did. The
IRS scrapped an Obama administration regulation that faithfully implemented the Obamacare statute, officially called the
Affordable Care Act, which became law in 2010 on a party-line vote. At issue is whether dependents of a worker
with an offer of employer-sponsored coverage can shun that coverage and claim premium tax subsidies for Obamacare
policies instead. The statute and the Obama administration regulation were clear on this point. Such
dependents qualify for tax-subsidized policies only if the cost of self-only employer-sponsored coverage exceeds 9.5% of
the worker's household income. If not, neither the worker nor her dependents could receive Obamacare premium subsidies.
Democrats
cover for IRS destruction of 30 million taxpayer filings. For those who missed the original story, some
background is in order, especially to understand how astonishingly brazen the Democrats are in refusing to hold the IRS
accountable. On May 22, the treasury inspector general for tax administration reported that the IRS deliberately
destroyed 30 million returns in 2021 so as to relieve a backlog of paper documents in anticipation of a flood of new
filings. The agency cited software limitations as an excuse. The decision was met with widespread
incredulity. "How can the agency ask taxpayers to meet their filing obligations for information returns when it
cavalierly destroys duly filed documents?" asked Nina Olson, former national taxpayer advocate. Brian Streig, a
certified public accountant for Calhoun, Thomson + Matza, LLP, added that "small businesses stress out every year in
January trying to accurately prepare these informational returns and get them filed on time. To see the IRS just
destroy these is almost like the IRS admitting they don't really care."
Democrats
Obstruct Inquiry Into IRS's Sudden Destruction of 30 Million Tax Returns. Democrats are blocking Congress
from critical information regarding the IRS's sudden and mysterious destruction of 30 million tax returns. Despite
repeated demands, the IRS has refused to provide the decision memorandum it used to justify the move, instead replying
with a blanket denial that broadly prevents Congress from performing its appropriate oversight role. Ways and
Means Republicans, led by Oversight Subcommittee Leader Rep. Tom Rice (R-SC), proposed a Request for Information
that would allow the Committee to obtain the memorandum to understand the agency's decision-making process around the
destruction of tax return information. Democrats voted against this important request to hold Washington accountable.
Defund
The IRS: GOP Has A Duty To Curb The Runaway Agency. Among the many shameful and damnable provisions of the
Inflation Reduction Act passed in August by the Democrats is an extra $80 billion for the IRS. That's more than six
times its current annual budget, and will boost the agency's enforcement funding by 69% through fiscal 2031. As many as
87,000 new employees will be added to its workforce. We stand behind our statement from a month ago that this is a
weaponization of the IRS. There is not a shred of doubt in us that the additional funding and manpower will be used to
increase the harassment, silencing, and prosecutions of taxpayers that the Democratic Party and the administrative state
in Washington consider threats to their power. Gross violations of the civil liberties of taxpayers in general
will become more the rule than the exception. The agency's targeting of conservative groups looking for nonprofit
tax status during the Obama era was a mere warmup for what will come under an IRS that will employ more bureaucrats than
the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol combined.
Rep.
Banks Introduces Bill to Rescind Funding for 87,000 IRS Agents in Inflation Reduction Act. In response to
President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, House Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) introduced a bill that would rescind
the bill's funding of 87,000 new IRS Agents and provide Americans with a tax break. On Sept. 26, Banks introduced
the Defunding the IRS Army Act to "rescind" the funding of 87,000 additional IRS Agents included in the Democrats'
reconciliation bill, and "make permanent" the standard deduction in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Banks' bill comes as a
response to the Inflation Reduction Act, which was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden on Aug. 16.
IRS
Sent Out Over $1 Billion In Child Tax Credit Payments To The Wrong People. The Internal Revenue Service
(IRS) sent over $1.1 billion in child tax credit payments to incorrect recipients during the COVID-19 pandemic,
according to an audit by the Department of the Treasury's Inspector General (IG) for Tax Administration on
Tuesday. The IRS sent the payments to 1.5 million people between July and November of 2021 during the pandemic,
according to the audit's report. Additionally, the IG noted that 4.1 million taxpayers did not receive payments
they should have, amounting to $3.7 billion withheld. The incorrect payments were made to recipients whose
dependent children, required to claim the credit, did not meet the age requirements (i.e., under 18 years old), were
deceased, or had been claimed on another filer's return. These were a small proportion of the 178.9 million child
tax credit payments made during the period, totaling $76.7 billion.
Connecting
the 87,000 Dots between Trump and You. Take a look at the legislation the Democrats have
written — completely partisan for the most part. Look at what Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary,
proposed: taxing unrealized capital gains. Succinctly stated, what she proposes is equivalent to what has become a
buzzword — Enron accounting. You can't violate laws without having consequences — not even
laws of accounting. Add to this proposal the latest insanity, the Inflation Reduction Act. The breadth of
this bill is too much to describe here, but a key provision in it is alarming. The bill "invests" $80 billion in
the nation's tax agency over the next ten years. That is how it is described in the Forbes Advisor. The
Orwellian Newspeak is the word invests. No accountant or financial adviser would call this expenditure an
investment — unless of course, he expected a return on that "investment." Indeed, the Democrat party does
expect a return on that investment. The IRS will employ up to 87,000 more agents, armed and ready to do battle
with the public.
Who
Will Save Americans From A Weaponized IRS? The IRS is more than a mere revenue collector for the federal
government. It has often been used an instrument of intimidation, even terror, against political foes, and those
who might not be so enthusiastic about paying income taxes, or simply have a financial hardship that limits their
ability to pay. Administrations all the way back to Franklin Roosevelt's have used the IRS to target their
opponents. Elliott Roosevelt, one of FDR's sons, said his father "may have been the originator of the concept of
employing the IRS as a weapon of political retribution." And of course most of us recall the IRS sitting on and
rejecting applications for tax-exempt status for groups that were trying to organize against the policies of Barack
Obama, essentially barring their existence.
The 'Inflation Reduction
Act' [will] Increase Inflation and Impoverish Middle Class Americans. Whoever imagined that doubling the
size of the IRS is just what the American people have been pining for — spending $80 billion of the American
taxpayers' hard-earned money to target not Russia, China or Iran — but Americans? And political
opponents? Moreover, these 87,000 new IRS agents will likely have zero interest in taking on either well-lawyered
corporations or "ultra-wealthy" individuals.... The easiest target, of course, would be small business owners and
middle-class individuals, for whom hiring a lawyer or accountant to refute a claim would cost more than just paying the
IRS to go away. The best news of all, however, is that they are armed! The IRS recently took down a recruiting
ad — at the same time as many Americans are advocating for gun control — saying that agents must
be "willing to carry a firearm" and "use deadly force, if necessary." Now, that is what you might call persuasive.
It also uncomfortably resembles the start of an armed federal militia to federalize the police, replace those precincts
that were defunded, and begin targeting Americans — call it the Papa Doc or Venezuela model —
hardly what the founding fathers had in mind. That is where they came in — and the reason for the
Second Amendment.
Florida
Prepares to Hold the IRS Accountable. It's no secret that the Biden administration has done everything it
can to weaponize the federal administrative state against conservatives, including the IRS, just as Biden's predecessor
Barack Obama did. If you could have guessed which state would become the first battleground against a weaponized
IRS, Florida would probably be at the top of your list. Florida's Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, who also
doubles as the state fire marshal, released the text of a bill that serves as part of his IRS Protection Plan for the state.
IRS Leaks 120,000 Taxpayers'
Info, Blames 'Human Coding Error'. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) posted the
confidential information of approximately 120,000 taxpayers before an error on its website was
taken down Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing officials within the IRS. In a
Friday letter to Congress, the IRS and Treasury Department blamed a human coding error from 2021,
the first year that the Form 990-T was able to be filed electronically, the WSJ reported. The
error resulted in nonpublic data being made available for download to users of the IRS website, and
was not discovered until "recent weeks," according to the WSJ.
Who are
the Good Guys? There are actions and events contemplated by the ruling Democrats that
threaten us at our most basic level. For example, the doubling of the size of the IRS is a
profound political statement. On one hand, it's a statement that the government needs more of
your money, that even with record-high tax receipts, it's not enough. On the other hand, it's
a statement of control. You may remember last year the Biden proposal to give the IRS routine
access to your bank accounts. Public opinion was so universally against this draconian idea
that it was quietly dropped. Having been stymied there, Biden and the Democrats created an
omnibus spending bill that is much more about control of the populace and staying in power than
anything having to do with bringing down inflation.
There
Are Now More Armed Bureaucrats Than There Are U.S. Marines. The IRS has stockpiled
4,500 guns and five million rounds of ammunition in recent years, including 621 shotguns, 539
long-barrel rifles and 15 submachine guns. The Veterans Administration (VA) purchased 11 million
rounds of ammunition (equivalent to 2,800 rounds for each of their officers), along with
camouflage uniforms, riot helmets and shields, specialized image enhancement devices and tactical
lighting. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) acquired 4 million rounds of
ammunition, in addition to 1,300 guns, including five submachine guns and 189 automatic firearms
for its Office of Inspector General. According to an in-depth report on "The Militarization
of the U.S. Executive Agencies," the Social Security Administration secured 800,000 rounds of
ammunition for their special agents, as well as armor and guns. The Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) owns 600 guns. And the Smithsonian now employs 620-armed "special agents."
IRS
to Set Up 'Centralized Office' for 87,000 New Agents. The Internal Revenue Service
will establish a centralized office to implement elements of the tax and spending bill that
President Joe Biden signed last week, including almost 87,000 new IRS agents, the agency's chief
says. Democrats' bill, which passed the Senate and House without a single Republican vote,
provides $80 billion to the Internal Revenue Service, largely to pay for the 87,000 new agents
through 2031. In an email message Friday to all IRS employees, a copy of which was obtained by
The Daily Signal, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig wrote: "This is a historic time for the IRS, and
we are working to move quickly to begin work on the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law earlier
this week."
It's
The Culture Of The IRS To Target The Most Vulnerable Taxpayers. The Congressional
Budget Office estimates this new investment in the IRS will generate an additional $203.7 billion
over the next 10 years. A sum that large certainly casts doubt on the notion that this will
only impact the super-wealthy. It is especially concerning given the agency's rates of audits
across socio-economic classes in recent years. According to IRS audit data, the most
frequently audited county in the United States is Humphreys County, Mississippi. This rural
county near the Mississippi Delta is known for catfish farming and has an average income of $18,000
per resident, making it among the poorest in the nation. Yet, Humphreys' residents get
audited far more often than those in cities such as New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles.
This
is Why Democrats Are Not Worried about 2020: The Fix Is In. Democrats just passed a $700 billion spending
bill — during a recession — with record 8.6% inflation. The new spending bill will force middle
class Americans to pay $20 billion more in taxes. The bill will create 87,000 new IRS agents to harass Americans and
target their political enemies.
Biden
Puts IRS Funding Ahead of Military and Border Security. Is this about the most warped set of national priorities
you've ever heard? If this $80 billion were rerouted to the Army and the Border Patrol, we could easily stop
much of the tide of illegal immigration and staff up our military so we have the soldiers we need to defend our
country. According to official budget numbers, the overall cost of border security at the Department of Homeland
Security is roughly $55 billion a year. That is less than just the increase in IRS funding to harass the
public. Or consider this: The epidemic of opioid and other drug overdoses is killing close to 100,000 a
year. We spend about $11 billion a year to prevent these tragic deaths. But the ironically named Inflation
Reduction Act calls for 30 times more than this, or more than $300 billion, to try to combat climate change, while
the number of those who die from CO2 emissions each year is close to zero.
Four
Facts About the IRS Gun Arsenal. Some of the 87,000 new agents whom Democrats propose to hire at the Internal
Revenue Service could come with some extra firepower. On Friday, House Democrats gave final passage to the tax and
spending bill they dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act, which, among other things, would double the size of the IRS with
87,000 new agents to beef up enforcement. As of two years ago, the IRS had an arsenal of 4,600 guns, reported
OpenTheBooks, a government watchdog group. Two federal investigations in the past decade found that IRS agents had not
been sufficiently trained and were accident-prone with the weapons they have. Armed IRS raids on nonviolent taxpayers
surfaced as a concern almost 25 years ago during a Senate hearing.
IRS
Hiring Spree Is the Biggest Expansion of the Police State in American History. The Democrats' new
reconciliation bill isn't just going to be the largest-ever expansion of a government agency. It's going to be the
largest expansion of the domestic police state in American history. Only a statist could believe that a federal
government, which already collects $4.1 trillion every year — or $12,300 for every citizen — supposedly
needs 80 battalions of new IRS cops. The average American has less reason to be concerned about cops with
guns — though the IRS is looking for special agents who can "carry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force,
if necessary" — than they do bureaucrats armed with pens who are authorized to sift through their lives. If
you pay your taxes you have nothing to worry about, Democrats claim. But most law-abiding citizens know they have
something to fear from a state agency that doesn't concern itself with your due process, has no regard for your privacy and
is empowered to target anyone it wants without any genuine oversight.
IRS
seeks armed accountants ready for 'deadly force'. Even before Congress and President Joe Biden give the final
OK for the IRS to hire 87,000 more agents in an $80 billion package, the tax agency is revealing a priority job category that
could get first dibs on the huge budget expansion. On its jobs page is a listing of vacancies for special agents to be
placed around the country to root out financial fraud. But these are opening for more than just financial
experts: They will also be armed. Among the job requirements listed: "Carry a firearm and be willing to use
deadly force, if necessary." Special agents, who can be placed around the nation and world, have an interesting job,
according to the IRS description. They are financial analysts and armed officers ready for a shootout.
IRS
Job Listing: Special Agents Must 'Carry a Firearm and Be Willing to Use Deadly Force'. A job listing for
the position of IRS Criminal Investigation Special Agent stresses that applicants must "carry a firearm and be willing to use
deadly force" in order to carry out their duties. [...] Breitbart News reported on June 19 Rep. Matt Gaetz's (R-FL)
concerns over the IRS's purchase of approximately $700,000 of ammunition "between March and June 1" of this year. Gaetz
said, "There is concern that this is part of a broader effort to have any entity in the federal government buy up ammo to
reduce the amount of ammunition that is in supply, while at the same time making it harder to produce ammo."
IRS
Job Page Removed After Alarming Description of the Special Agent Position Got Exposed. Again, there's that
long-running joke that we don't have a secret police force or an American version of the Schutzstaffel because the Internal
Revenue Service exists. Of all agencies in the government, this one probably has the most accurate and up-to-date files
on every taxpayer, which is no surprise. It was seen as the most hated agency in America for legitimate purposes,
though the FBI and DOJ might have supplanted them given the recent raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago. Still, the IRS becoming
secret police might no longer be a joke. The page was taken down for problematic copy regarding the special agent
positions, but screenshots were taken. It read fine regarding the hours, being open to working on weekends, and other
rudimentary line items of federal employment. Where most people's eyes fell out of their sockets should have occurred
when it also said that one must be comfortable carrying a firearm and, if necessary, use deadly force.
Middle-class
Americans to bear brunt of IRS audits under Dem inflation bill, analysis shows. Americans who earn less than
$75,000 per year are slated to receive 60% of the additional tax audits expected under Democrats' spending package, according
to an analysis released by House Republicans. The analysis, which is a conservative estimate based upon recent audit
rates and tax filing data, shows that individuals with an annual income of $75,000 or less would be subject to 710,863
additional Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audits while those making more than $1 million would receive 52,295 more audits
under the bill. The legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, would roughly double the IRS' budget to increase
enforcement and, therefore, federal tax revenue.
Here Come The
IRS Shock Troops. The Democrats' "Inflation Reduction Act," approved Sunday by the Senate, is primarily known
as a climate and health care bill. It also includes $80 billion for the IRS, more than six times its current annual
budget, increasing the agency's enforcement funding by 69% through fiscal 2031, and adding as many as 87,000 new employees to
its overall workforce. This is not what the country needs[.] Our friends at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity
pointed out last week that the Democrats are prioritizing IRS enforcement and bureaucracy over securing the leaky border and
addressing the shortage of military recruits. So while the Democrats will spend "$80 billion to double the number of
IRS agents and auditors, the Army is falling far short of its recruitment goals for our national security.
The
complete Sovietization of the Democrat party. The Democrats are so determined to destroy Trump, they are
willing to reveal their true colors: They are all Stalinist communists now. They've just rammed through a nearly
$800 billion bill that will obviously exacerbate inflation, as well as transform the IRS into a Gestapo-like agency, armed
and dangerous to all Americans but for the very wealthy. Small businesses that survived the lockdowns will now be
stamped out by the higher taxes, audits, and regulations within this destructive bill. The billions of green agenda
requirements in the bill will force us all into energy deficits that will further devastate our already ruined economy and
our quality of life. That is their goal, their endgame.
Dems
Poised To Make IRS Larger Than Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol Combined. If Democrats have
their way, one of the most detested federal agencies — the Internal Revenue Service — will employ more
bureaucrats than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol combined. Under the Inflation Reduction Act
negotiated by Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.), the agency would receive $80 billion in funding to hire as many as 87,000
additional employees. The increase would more than double the size of the IRS workforce, which currently has 78,661
full-time staffers, according to federal data. The additional IRS funding is integral to the Democrats' reconciliation
package. A Congressional Budget Office analysis found the hiring of new IRS agents would result in more than $200
billion in additional revenue for the federal government over the next decade.
Increasing
The IRS Annual Budget By Seven Times Doesn't Add Up. The talk in the media is about a "beefed-up" IRS. The
IRS budget for FY 2022 totals nearly $14 billion ($11.9 billion in appropriated funds) with a full-time equivalent (FTE)
staff ceiling of 79,808 (75,533 from appropriated funding.) Now, the Democrat-controlled Congress, at the behest of the
Biden Administration, wants to take that up an additional almost $80 billion, with 1% going to Department of the Treasury
offices other than the IRS. That adds up to nearly $93 billion, seven times this year's budget.
The
IRS has 5 million rounds of ammo for some reason. It turns out that the IRS has enough guns and ammo to launch
a war. The numbers are rather staggering. They now have more than two thousand of their own law enforcement
agents with thousands of weapons and more than five million rounds of ammunition. Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida has
introduced a bill that would place a moratorium on these IRS purchases until we can see what's going on.
The
IRS about to go 'beast mode'? Just how bad is the Biden administration's and Democrat Congress's grossly
misnamed "Inflation Reduction Act" of 2022? The Wall Street Journal has a shocking lead editorial titled "The IRS Is
About to Go Beast Mode" about the particulars of its $80-billion expansion of the IRS: [...] So the target will be the middle
class, particularly small business start-ups, whom Joe Biden would like to see a lot less of.
'Build
Back Better' Bill Would Fund 86,000 Additional IRS Agents To Sic On American Taxpayers. If you think that
Democrats' tax-and-spending bill wouldn't expand government, have I got news for you. Believe it or not, the Build Back
Better legislation would more than double the size of the IRS. That's one of the hidden details in the agreement that
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., cut with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., behind closed doors. And of course,
Democrats want to ram it through Congress within a matter of days. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., once said
about another big-government scheme, "we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it." The draft bill
contains an $80 billion "investment" in the Internal Revenue Service. Of that amount, more than half, or over $45.6
billion, will go towards enforcement activities. Even as it doles out such vast sums for the IRS, the bill contains
only a few short pages of text explaining the provisions. In other words, the IRS will have a relatively wide berth to
spend the new funding as it likes.
NY
Times: Both Comey and McCabe were 'randomly' audited by the IRS. What are the odds that two of the people
Trump fought with at the FBI were both chosen for an extensive audits by the IRS. According to the NY Times James
Comey and Andrew McCabe weren't aware the other had been selected for the same audit until a Times reporter told them.
If these numbers provided by the Times are accurate then the chances of either of them being selected was miniscule in the
first place.
Ex-FBI leaders Comey
and McCabe faced IRS audits. Two former top FBI officials were selected to undergo rare and intensive IRS
audits. Former FBI Director James Comey and Andrew McCabe, who served as acting director for several months after Comey
was fired, were picked to have their 2017 and 2019 tax returns examined, respectively, the New York Times revealed on
Wednesday. The IRS says the audits are random, but the fact that two high-level FBI officials reviled by former
President Donald Trump were selected led to questions about the program. Comey and his wife, Patrice, were found to
have overpaid their 2017 federal income taxes and received a $347 refund, per the report. McCabe told the publication
that he and his wife, Jill, ended up paying the federal government a small amount of money they owed and said he believes the
audit has been concluded. The Comeys paid roughly $5,000 in accountant fees and gave the IRS financial documents as
well as a Christmas card to show they had children claimed as dependents, the report noted.
IRS
has backlog of 21.3 million paper tax returns, watchdog says. More than 21 million paper tax returns are still
waiting for processing by the Internal Revenue Service, as the tax agency struggles to swiftly disburse refunds to American
households, according to a watchdog report released Wednesday. Most taxpayers file their returns electronically, but
millions of others — disproportionately the elderly — still fill out their returns manually.
National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins said in her report that the IRS backlog this year is 21.3 million paper returns,
7 percent more than the 20 million that were awaiting processing at the same time last year. The report may add
to the political headaches for the IRS, with Commissioner Charles Rettig's term set to expire at the end of this fall. The
agency has faced budget cuts, outdated technological systems and a depleted workforce that have made it less responsive to
taxpayer needs.
Rep.
Matt Gaetz: Biden's IRS Spent Approximately $700,000 on Ammo 'Between March and June 1'. Rep. Matt
Gaetz (R-FL) told Breitbart News Saturday the IRS spent approximately $700,000 "between March and June 1" purchasing
ammunition. Gaetz described the ammunition acquisition as "bizarre." He noted he and his Republican colleagues are
trying to ascertain why the ammunition was purchased, noting, "There is concern that this is part of a broader effort to have
any entity in the federal government buy up ammo to reduce the amount of ammunition that is in supply, while at the same
time, making it harder to produce ammo." Gaetz noted a scenario where federal entities are buying up ammo puts citizens
in a place where the exercise of the Second Amendment is limited due to the inability to get ammunition.
How
Black Lives Matter Criminals Were Enabled by the I.R.S. and the Democrat Party. The recently revealed purchase
of multi-million-dollar properties by Black Lives Matter leaders, using unaccounted-for tax-exempt funds, tells us what we
already should have known: Black Lives Matter is a gang of street criminals who think nothing of stealing money donated
to help "marginalized and under-served" communities, and pocketing it for themselves. Because Black Lives Matter is a
criminal organization responsible for violent mob actions in over 200 American cities in 2020, including the burning federal
buildings and police stations, causing several billion dollars in property damage and sparking a national crime wave that
resulted in 4,901 more homicides in 2020 than in the previous year, it is not surprising that they are no respecters of the
causes they advocate, let alone the laws and regulations governing tax-exempt organizations. Yet throughout the mayhem
and criminal violence orchestrated by Black Lives Matter, the I.R.S and its commissioner Charles Rettig watched from afar and
did nothing to prevent taxpayer monies from being used to bail out those Black Lives Matter thugs who had been arrested for
breaking the law, and returning them to the streets to commit still more crimes.
The
Internal Revenue (Election Rigging) Service. [Scroll down] I'm focusing now on the IRS, which first hit
my radar screen when with no consequences whatsoever[,] Loretta Lynch's Department of Justice declined to press criminal
charges against Lois Lerner, whose outfit delayed and denied the Tea Party reform groups the tax-exempt status to which they
were entitled, hamstringing them against the very well-financed (probably including illegal funds from abroad) Obama
crowd. This time, pay attention to Black Lives Matter, an utterly corrupt outfit whose riots and lootings destroyed so
many cities and wreaked havoc on the black communities and their businesses. The damage continues to this day as the
riots fueled the defund police movement, a ridiculous effort that leaves the poor and the black communities particularly
vulnerable to violent crime, and as another consequence caused an exodus of needed businesses from those places.
Biden
likely to avoid IRS audit that could've revealed if he made money from Hunter's deals. President Biden is
likely to avoid an audit that could reveal whether he made money from his son Hunter Biden's overseas business
dealings — because the Internal Revenue Service has rejected a whistleblower complaint that alleged he owes at
least $127,000 in taxes, The [New York] Post has learned. The IRS allows people to inform on fellow taxpayers and win a
slice of the proceeds — prompting Chris Jacobs, a former Republican staffer on Capitol Hill, to submit complaints
against Biden and his accountant, though he said he didn't want any financial reward. Jacobs shared with The Post a
reply from the IRS titled "denial" that explained that the government didn't use his information.
Jim
Jordan Says IRS Can't Be Trusted After 'Partisan' Leak Investigation Stonewalls. Republican Ohio Rep. Jim
Jordan told the Daily Caller News Foundation that Americans can't trust the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) after its
investigation of tax document leaks has so far failed to turn up any answers ten months after it began. Jordan and
Republican California Rep. Darrell Issa sent letters to the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration
(TIGTA) in July 2021 demanding information on the agency's investigation into how citizens' records were leaked after
ProPublica published private tax documents of some of the wealthiest Americans in June 2021. Jordan told the DCNF that
after an initial reply, his office has received no further updates on the investigation. "I don't know if the IRS is on
top of it. It sure doesn't seem like it from the response we got back from them," Jordan told the DCNF. "Americans
need to know that your tax returns remain confidential. This is one of the hallmarks of our system and if that's not the
case, if they're going to be targeted by the IRS like Lois Lerner did a few years ago and have their returns go public, that
just can't happen."
Does
the IRS really need more money? The Washington Post reports with the dutifulness of a stenographer that the IRS
is "underfunded." Its unquestioned claims usually come around every time Joe Biden wants to hire more IRS agents and
expand the tax agency's budget. ["]President Biden and top Democrats proposed boosting the IRS budget, arguing
that the agency had been severely underfunded and understaffed for decades before the added responsibilities.["]
Underfunded? Backlogged? Maybe IRS employees should have gone to the office the last two years, as most of us
did, instead of working remotely. Then they could have opened the mail. Last year, I sent in a check for $5,000
to the IRS in April to pay my balance. The IRS opened the envelope, pulled out the check, and deposited the check, but
in January, I got an automated letter that said they couldn't find that I had filed a return. I was going to send a
copy until I saw that two other returns I had mailed got the same letter after they cashed the check.
D.C.
holiday pushes IRS tax deadline to Monday. If you haven't filed your taxes yet and panicked Friday at the sight
of April 15 on the calendar, you can breathe easy — the tax deadline this year isn't until next week. The
Internal Revenue Service moved Tax Day, which is almost always April 15 each year, again for 2022 for the third straight
year. The deadline in 2020 and 2021 were both extended due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The
IRS is going after the little guy. If you thought the IRS audited complicated, high-dollar tax returns, think
again. It turns out that the poorest among America's taxpayers are the most likely to be audited. According to
the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), an organization dedicated to giving Americans information about what
their federal government does and how much it costs, America's lowest income earners are five times more likely to be audited
than wealthier people. TRAC reported that the IRS audited 0.4% of the 160 million individual income tax returns it
processed each year. Most of these audits were accomplished by "correspondence audits." This means that the IRS sends
a letter to the taxpayer asking for documentation proving a specific line item in the return. Of the 659,003 audits the
IRS conducted last year, 85% of them were correspondence audits.
Nearly
half of IRS audits [are] aimed at [the] poorest taxpayers: Study. Nearly half of all audits the IRS
conducted in 2021 were aimed at the country's poorest taxpayers, according to a new study that called the ratio unfair.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) said the IRS conducted nearly 660,000 audits in the last fiscal year,
and about 307,000 of them targeted taxpayers who claim the Earned Income Tax Credit, aimed at the working poor. Or, put
another way, those claiming the tax credit were audited at a rate of 13 per 1,000 returns, while the rest of the country was
audited at a rate of 2.6 per 1,000 returns.
Decades
of neglect leave IRS in tax season 'chaos'. At the Internal Revenue Service's sprawling Kansas City, Missouri,
processing center, teams of clerks earning $15 per hour work through the night, trying to help the agency clear a backlog of
more than 20 million tax returns that are a year overdue. The conditions are subpar: Scanners sputter, forcing
workers to enter data by hand, staplers are scarce, and piles of tax documents overflow from carts. [...] What's happening in
Kansas City provides a window into the problems plaguing the IRS, which is mired in a political and logistical mess that has
frustrated taxpayers, angered lawmakers and put a key source of funding for President Joe Biden's economic agenda in jeopardy.
The Editor says...
Bias alert: The Star Tribune seems really worried that the IRS will impede Joe Biden's reckless spending. Here's a news
bulletin: Joe Biden is spending borrowed money. With or without the IRS, Biden will print money and spend it, in order to
advance his left-wing agenda. The IRS isn't just "a key source of funding" for all the pork barrel spending. What other
source comes close?
Please
hold: Pricey way to jump IRS phone line at tax time. If there's one thing that pains everyone trying to
reach the IRS at tax time, it's being stuck on endless hold. Well, not everyone. E. Martin Davidoff's accounting
firm spends upwards of $5,000 a year to a company that can zip him and others to the front of the line to get through to an
IRS customer service representative. He says paying for enQ's line-jumping service cuts out hours every day that he
would otherwise spend waiting to talk to an agent.
Audit:
IRS lost more than $400 million because of broken mail machines. The IRS cost the government more than $400 million
over the last three years because it didn't bother to fix broken mail machines, the agency's inspector general said in a new report
Thursday [2/10/2022]. The machines are supposed to automatically identify which envelopes contain payments to Uncle Sam, so they
can be quickly processed and deposited. But the 20-year-old machines are in such disrepair that they kept missing envelopes with
remitted payments. Employees shut them off and resorted to looking for payments by hand — a much slower process.
IRS Train Wreck. Americans don't
expect to get great service from government agencies, but the current performance of the Internal Revenue Service is a train
wreck. [...] The IRS Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS) recently documented the operational mess at the IRS:
• IRS telephone service is "the worst it has ever been," with the IRS answering just 11 percent of incoming calls in FY 2021.
• The IRS mails tens of millions of notices each year, often requiring responses. It used to
take the IRS about 45 days to turn around correspondence, but now the "processing time for some categories of correspondence
has been running six months or longer."
• The number of disputes the TAS handles between taxpayers and the IRS soared from 167,000 in 2017 to 264,000 in 2021.
• Mountains of unopened mail have piled up at IRS facilities leaving millions of taxpayers in financial limbo.
The IRS ended the 2021 season with a backlog of more than 35 million returns, and today "millions of returns and amended returns still
remain unprocessed."
• Last year, "tens of millions of taxpayers were forced to wait extraordinarily long periods of time for the IRS to
process their tax returns, issue their refunds, and address their correspondence," and this year IRS service "could be as bad, and potentially worse."
IRS
Wants Bio Data from Phones & Computers for ID Which Can Then Be Used As Evidence. The new IRS face-scanning
system will require taxpayers to use their phones or computers to submit biometric data. And according to the IRS,
"Mobile phones are used as a piece of identity evidence themselves" noting that "Geolocation can be gleaned from the Mobile
Network Operators (MNOs) in the event of an investigation into a user."
Lawmakers
decry IRS plans to force Americans to submit to face-scanning technology to be able to access their own taxes.
The US Treasury said on Friday it is considering alternatives to facial-recognition technology to verify identities for
online taxpayer accounts after some lawmakers raised privacy concerns. The $86 million partnership between the Internal
Revenue Service and private contractor ID.me, which was announced in November, would be one of the biggest expansions of
facial recognition software made by the US government. The measure has been met with criticism from lawmakers, who
argue that the software is intrusive and inaccurate.
Update: IRS
has second thoughts about selfie requirement. The Internal Revenue Service is backing away from a proposed
requirement that people submit selfies to access their information on the agency's website. First of all, to be
clear: The IRS was not requiring that every taxpayer filing a return submit a selfie. It was only to verify the
identities of people seeking to set up an account with the IRS to see their past returns or get information about child tax
credit payments. Still, it's an overreach, says Emily Tucker, director of the Center on Privacy and Technology at
Georgetown Law. "The consequences of not agreeing to give up a photo of yourself, which is then stored in a corporate
database, which is protected only by that corporation's own easily changeable privacy policies, is that you may not be able
to comply with federal tax law under some circumstances," she told NPR.
Report:
IRS to Stop Using Face-Recognition Tech Following Backlash. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said it will no
longer use face-recognition technology for taxpayers who are interacting with the agency online, CBS News reported on Tuesday
[2/8/2022]. The agency's decision to scrap face-recognition comes after lawmakers, privacy advocates, and taxpayers
vocalized concerns that the image-based system from verification company ID.me could lead to data security issues.
How
Did ID.me Get Between You and Your Identity? If you were writing a techno-thriller, you'd give your hero a
backstory like Blake Hall's. He's a Harvard MBA, an alumnus of McKinsey & Co.'s ultracompetitive summer associate
program, and comes from a family with a proud military tradition. He's a decorated Army Ranger who saw action in Iraq;
his dad was an Army brigade commander; his grandfather fought off a Nazi assault in World War II. [...] So this past June,
when he very publicly claimed that his company, ID.me, a player in the booming online identity-verification business, had
uncovered one of the biggest heists in U.S. history — a $400 billion theft of pandemic unemployment payments
perpetuated by cybercriminal gangs — it came with a certain veneer of credibility. Within minutes of Axios
publishing the interview with Hall, the $400 billion figure went viral. It generated news stories of a nefarious
dark web inhabited by Nigerian criminal syndicates out to massively defraud the U.S. government. It was seized on by
think tanks on both the left and right that are trying to reimagine the delivery of government benefits.
What
Could Possibly Go Wrong? The IRS Will Soon Require a Face Scan to Access Your Tax Records. No
problem. I can't think of a single reason why the Internal Revenue Service scanning my face before allowing me
to access my tax records is a bad idea. Not at all. It's not like we can't trust the IRS, right? [...] If
you created an online account to manage your tax records with the IRS, your login credential will no longer work later this
year. Instead, as first reported by Krebs on Security, the IRS will force users to sign in to the IRS website through
an account with third-party firm ID.me, and provide a government identification document with their photo alongside a
"selfie" to verify their identity, according to the IRS website.
IRS
To Require Facial Recognition To View Tax Returns. The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has partnered with a
Virginia-based private identification firm which requires a facial recognition selfie among other things, in order to create
or access online accounts with the agency. According to KrebsonSecurity, the IRS announced that by the summer of 2022,
the only way to log into irs.gov will be through ID.me. Founded by former Army Rangers in 2010, the McLean-based
company has evolved to providing online ID verification services which several states are using to help reduce unemployment
and pandemic-assistance fraud. The company claims to have 64 million users.
Please,
Confess Your Crimes: IRS Asks That You Report Income From Stolen Goods. This year, the folks at the IRS
would like to remind you to report any and all money you acquired from illegal activities. That's right —
it's considered income, so don't forget to write down how much you made from your hitman-for-hire business and your drug
dealing side hustle. Sounds crazy, but they really, really want you to do it. In IRS Publication 17, the IRS
says, "income from illegal activities, such as money from dealing illegal drugs" must be included on a taxpayer's 2021
filings. It is to be included in Schedule 1 (Form 1040), line 8z, or on Schedule C (Form 1040) if
from a self-employment activity. [...] "All income, from whatever source, is taxable income, unless excluded by an act of
Congress," Gary Schroeder, a Maryland-based tax preparer, told NBC News. "If you receive $500 to kill your neighbor's
annoying rooster, or find $1 on the street, or embezzle from your employer, that's all taxable income, as well as your
paycheck from flipping burgers at McDonald's."
IRS
wants its cut from looters and other thieves. The Internal Revenue Service realizes the rampant crime wave in
Democrat-run cities is an opportunity for the tax man. And Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination
apparently doesn't apply to filing income tax returns, the IRS seems to believe.
The
IRS says criminals must report their ill-gotten gains as income. While Uncle Sam demands a portion of
law-abiding Americans' hard-earned money in taxes each year, even criminals are supposed to report their earnings to the U.S.
government, according to the Internal Revenue Service. The government agency literally spells it out, saying that drug
dealers must report their ill-gotten gains and thieves must report the value of purloined items, unless those items are
returned during the same year they were taken. "If you steal property, you must report its fair market value in your
income in the year you steal it unless you return it to its rightful owner in the same year," according to the government agency.
IRS
reminds thieves, drug dealers to report their illegal income. Steal any property or deal any drugs this
year? Well, the IRS wants it reported as taxable income. The Internal Revenue Service is reminding Americans that
they must report all of their hard-earned income to be taxed, even if it is the result of criminal activity, according to the
bureau's updated Publication 17 for the 2021 tax season, which offers general guidelines for filing taxes. "If you
steal property, you must report its fair market value in your income in the year you steal it unless you return it to its
rightful owner in the same year," the IRS told sticky-fingered Americans. The agency also reminded those who've
pocketed any by cash selling narcotics — or through any number of unspecified "illegal activities" —
to report their earnings.
The Editor says...
When reporting stolen property, please include a notarized statement detailing the place and
date of the theft, and the methods you used to obtain someone else's property.
Why
Did The IRS Audit Donald Trump, But Not Joe Biden? Is Lois Lerner in charge of determining which politicians to
audit at the IRS? That's a relevant question from a recent Washington Post article looking into Joe Biden's
taxes. The Post received confirmation that the Internal Revenue Service declined to audit Biden's returns from the
years before he became president. But separate reporting confirmed that the IRS did audit Donald Trump's returns from
the years before he became president. This raises an obvious question: Why the disparity? This important
question comes as Democrats want to give the IRS $80 billion in new funding over a decade, along with new enforcement
authority — including to obtain additional information about ordinary Americans' bank accounts. It also
applies to a government agency that, thanks to Lerner, harassed conservative non-profits, and faces unanswered questions
about the mysterious leak of tax records to the leftist website ProPublica.
'Build
Back Better' Bill Would Build a Bigger, but Not Better, IRS Bureaucracy. According to Gallup, only 37% of
Americans view the Internal Revenue Service favorably, making it one of the least popular federal agencies. Even among
self-identified liberals, the IRS only has a 38% approval rating. A paltry 8% of Americans rate the IRS' performance as
excellent. Little wonder the IRS is unpopular, with its history of mishandling sensitive taxpayer information and with
presidential administrations from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama using the powers of the agency to target political
opponents. Over the past month, Democrats and the IRS have faced public rebuke for a proposal that would require banks
and other financial institutions to report to the IRS their customers' transaction information, possibly even for accounts as
small as $600.
IRS
Oversteps Its Boundaries With Lazy and Destructive Proposal. No, the IRS should not be given any tools to snoop
around a law-abiding taxpayer's sensitive, non-tax financial information. Every American should be wary of giving the
IRS more power or allowing it more tentacles into private financial transactions. This proposal would be a massive
invasion of privacy, and one of the biggest expansions of the agency's authority we've ever seen — an agency that
has failed miserably at safeguarding the information it already has. Americans are rightly outraged. Democrats
have proposed drastically expanding the powers of the IRS by making banks, credit unions, Venmo, PayPal, credit card
companies, and everyone who handles financial transactions report account inflows or outflows above certain thresholds to the
IRS. The Biden administration's original proposal would require every single financial account with more than $600 worth of
inflow or outflow in a given year to be reported to the IRS. Since the original proposal was released, there has been
discussion of raising the reporting threshold to $10,000. This is still terrible.
Why Authoritarianism
Must Prevail. Consider, for example, recent calls to allow the IRS to monitor essentially all bank accounts in
the country. Maybe Americans will accept it, if, as claimed, the power is only used to enforce current tax laws.
But if tax rates rise appreciably, as it seems they will, given the current administration's policy goals, or if the
transaction information is used for partisan political purposes, or to shame or coerce people into buying this, or not buying
that, Americans will begin to search for workarounds. To the extent that the workarounds prove successful, government
will be forced to outlaw the workarounds too. For instance, if workers ask their employers to pay them in Federal
Reserve Notes or Bitcoin because they believe that the transaction costs of making payments in those media will be less
burdensome than giving some party hack access to the most intimate details of their lives, the government may well force
employers to pay workers only in USD and only via bank transfer. It might even ban cryptocurrencies entirely, or at
least try to.
The gaslighting
of America. When Biden proposes a $3.5-billion "infrastructure bill" that is heavily weighted toward social
engineering and radical "Green New Deal" initiatives, we're told that everything is infrastructure. We're also
told that the massive spending bill will cost "zero dollars" because the new taxes will be assessed only on the
wealthy. Then, to add more consternation to a public getting groggy trying to keep up with twelve-digit numbers, Biden
and his accomplices want another $80 billion for the IRS so its agents can check into every bank account that has transfers
of $600 or more. As if the IRS weren't already a liberty-crushing organization, Biden wants to provide it with more
ammo to use against those who oppose him. Nevertheless, we're told it's going after only tax cheats. Why would
these people need $80 billion more to do what they've always done? Don't ask, lest you get audited for questions they
don't want asked.
Democrats
to scale back Treasury's IRS bank reporting plan, raise threshold from $600 to $10,000. Senate Democrats are
set Tuesday [10/19/2021] to announce a scaled-down version of the Biden administration's proposal to crack down on Americans
it suspects are dodging taxes. The administration's original proposal was greeted with overwhelming opposition from
fiscal conservative groups, the banking industry and other over concerns about financial privacy. The initial plan,
conceived by the Treasury Department and Senate Democrats, would have allowed the Internal Revenue Service access to
information on bank accounts that had at least $600 worth of annual deposits or withdrawals. The new proposal will
still allow the IRS to access information on accounts that transfer or receive more than $10,000 annually. However, it
will exclude all wage income from counting toward the $10,000 threshold.
Decoding
the Proposed New Invasive IRS $600 Bank Reporting Rule. The right to privacy is a fundamental human right in
any democratic country. It is also recognized by the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights, and many other international and regional treaties. Beyond the laws and proclamations, the
right to privacy is rooted in a citizen's inherent right to dignity. In a democracy, the state is subordinate to the
citizen hence the government must respect the rights and dignity of the citizen. The citizen has the right to withhold
any information that he or she deems unsuitable for public consumption, provided that the information is not related to any
criminal activity. It doesn't have to always be highly sensitive salary or health records; a citizen may not the public
to know of his or her the history of frivolous videos watched on YouTube. This is a right that cannot be violated.
Confidentiality is closely related to privacy. While privacy pertains to the person, confidentiality pertains to information.
Democrats
face growing storm over IRS reporting provision. Democrats are facing a firestorm of criticism over a proposal
to increase the amount of bank account information reported to the IRS, posing a challenge as they craft their wide-ranging
social spending bill. The proposal is a top priority of the Biden administration, which argues it will help the IRS go
after wealthy tax cheats. But it has come under a barrage of attacks from banks and Republicans, who say it raises
significant privacy concerns. Financial institutions have been mobilizing their customers to speak out against the
proposal to lawmakers.
Backlash
could force Democrats to rethink IRS 'snooping' provision. Congressional Democrats, concerned over lukewarm
public enthusiasm for their massive social welfare spending package, may be forced to modify a tax-raising provision that has
prompted a significant backlash. A plan to provide the IRS with access to individual bank accounts with balances as low
as $600 may end up significantly modified or even dropped altogether amid opposition from lawmakers and trade groups who say
it would infringe on privacy and create significant liability for financial institutions as well as add new costs for consumers.
Pelosi
Plans to Keep the 'Spy on All Bank Accounts' Clause in the $3.5T bill. Democrats, now the party of the hardcore
Left, have a clause in the $3.5 trillion bill that will allow the government to look at any account making
transactions — like paying rent — of $600 or more. That takes in almost every American.
Politicians will be able to spy on everyone's account. They will know everything about you. At the same time,
they plan to hire up to 95,000 new IRS employees to look for people not paying their fair share. We have already seen
what these people do with power and how they use it against people who don't agree with them. What do you think they
will do with this kind of power? Will they cancel gun manufacturers? Abuse conservatives and when they run out of
them, abuse their own? I watched a recent Bill O'Reilly podcast in which he said it will never remain in the
bill. He's naive if he believes that. It's an important power grab for them. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has
been acting like a dicatator, was asked about it and she sounded pretty definite about it remaining in the bill. She
said the number is open to negotiations but not the clause.
The
Democrats are determined to get into your bank accounts. Nancy Pelosi finally admitted that, faced with
Sen. Joe Manchin's and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's laudable refusal to back down, the Democrats are not going to get
their $3.5 trillion spending bill. However, Pelosi insists that the bill will still allow the feds to track every
banking transaction over $600, something that manifestly violates the Fourth Amendment. After Pelosi admitted that
Democrats would have to trim their spending bill, she was asked whether the bill would continue to require banks to forward
to the IRS all $600 transactions in bank accounts. Her answer, emphatically, was "yes": [...] Put simply: The
plan will vastly expand the IRS's reach; impose huge reporting burdens on banks, driving up costs (which will increase fees
and further lower interest rates on consumer savings accounts); and allow the IRS to wander freely through people's bank
accounts looking for cash and crimes.
Janet
Yellen defends plan for IRS to snoop on accounts with more than $600 and claims it will help make billionaires pay more tax. The
Treasury Secretary has defended plans to monitor bank accounts with more than $600, insisting that the scheme was designed to end 'tax fraud' by
billionaires, and would not mean Americans are being spied on. The new proposal requires financial institutions to annually report the total
amount that went in and out of the bank as well as loan and investment accounts if within that year the accounts hold a value of at least $600 or
if the total transactions are $600 or more in a year. More simply, this means that if total funds flowing in and out of a credit or debit
account equal at least $600, banks have to report those figures to the IRS. This includes paychecks or money transferred from apps like PayPal.
The Editor says...
Somebody needs to state the obvious; but since the news media won't, let me inform you that billionaires don't have bank accounts with
meager little five-digit balances. The less obvious angle is that any time a politician says they're going after the billionaires,
to make them pay their "fair share," etc., that's the opposite of what they intend to do. That's because politicians lie, and the
thing they lie about most is taxes.
Biden's Proposal
to Empower IRS Rattles Banks and Their Customers. When the Biden administration looked for ways to pay for the
president's expansive social policy bill, it proposed raising revenue by cracking down on $7 trillion in unpaid taxes, mostly
from wealthy Americans and businesses. To help find those funds, the administration wants banks to give the Internal
Revenue Service new details on their customers and provide data for accounts with total annual deposits or withdrawals worth
more than $600. That has sparked an uproar among banks and Republican lawmakers, who say giving the IRS such power would be
an enormous breach of privacy and government overreach. Banks and their trade groups are running advertising and
letter-writing campaigns to raise awareness — and concern — about the proposal. As a result,
banks from Denver to Philadelphia say they are being deluged with calls, emails and in-person complaints from both savers and
small-business owners worried about the proposal. JPMorgan Chase & Co. has issued talking points to bank tellers on
what to tell angry customers who call or come into a branch to complain.
Democratic
plan to tax the rich could have the IRS cutting checks to billionaires. A Democratic proposal to tax the
unrealized gains of billionaires could have an unwanted side effect: the government cutting checks to the wealthiest in
down times. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democrat, has suggested offsetting some of his
party's multitrillion-dollar infrastructure and social spending by imposing an annual tax on the unrealized capital gains of
individuals whose wealth exceeds $1 billion. Today, billionaires whose investments grow in value are taxed on those
increases, called capital gains, but only when those assets sell. The new plan would tax billionaires' investments even
if they are not sold. But one of the major questions about the plan, which Wyden has discussed for years and gained
support from President Joe Biden but has not been put forward, is how to handle losses. If one of the world's
wealthiest people has an off-year, conceivably, the government would have to pay them a tax refund.
Treasury
Secretary Yellen backs the IRS reporting $600 transactions. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen defended Tuesday
the new IRS proposal requiring all transactions above $600 to be reported as she backed Joe Biden's controversial
anti-private banking, Soviet-born pick to lead her department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).
'Collection of information is routine,' Yellen assured when asked by CNBC's Squawk Box co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin about the
new information collection that some Americans claim is an invasion of privacy. Yellen insisted that the collection
will help fill the tax gap.
Nebraska
becomes the first state to say they will not comply with Biden's snooping plan to have banks report every transaction over
$600 to the IRS. Nebraska is already promising to defy a Biden proposal that would require banks to hand over
data on transactions over $600 on individual bank accounts to the IRS. 'My message is really simple. The people of
Nebraska entrusted me to protect the privacy of these accounts and I am not going to comply with this. If the Biden
administration sues me, we will take it all the way to the Supreme Court. We are going to fight every step of the way,'
state treasurer John Murante told FOX Business. The proposal, backed by $79 billion in additional funding, would allow
the IRS to peer into the aggregate inflows and outflows of a bank account over $600.
Democrat
scheme would hire 87,000 new IRS agents to investigate everyone with more than $600. Claiming a supposed "tax
gap" between what Americans owe and what they pay, a new proposal by President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats would
spend $80 billion to create as many as 87,000 new federal "enforcement and compliance" agents to investigate any financial
transaction involving more than $600 and create a federal database to record and monitor Americans' financial activities.
"Democrats want to give the IRS $80 billion and hire 87,000 new agents so they can harass and audit taxpayers and create a
new reporting regime that targets any bank account, Venmo account, or financial account exceeding $600 in gross inflows and
outflows," said Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform. "This should be alarming given the IRS has a long
history of failing to do its job and targeting taxpayers based on their political beliefs."
IRS
would track all bank transactions over $600 under Biden plan; businesses revolt. A major component of President
Joe Biden's plan to raise revenue to pay for his trillions of dollars in new federal spending is now under fire from trade
associations across the country. The Biden administration has made clear its plan to beef up IRS auditing by expanding
the agency's funding and power. Biden's latest proposal would require banks to turn over to the Internal Revenue
Service bank account information for all accounts holding more than $600. In a sharp pushback against the proposal, more
[than] 40 trade associations, some of which represent entire industries or economic sectors, signed a letter to U.S. House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) raising the alarm about the plan. The
letter, which includes the support of several banking coalitions, calls on Congress to reject that requirement, saying it
violates customer privacy and would create an incredibly expensive and elaborate reporting requirement for the banks.
Banks
Oppose Biden's New Proposal on IRS Reporting. Opposition is growing to a new proposal aimed at curbing tax
evasion that would be part of the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package under consideration by Congress. The proposal,
which is being pushed by the Biden administration, would require banks and other financial institutions to report to the
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) any deposits or withdrawals totaling more than $600 annually to or from all business and
personal accounts. The American Bankers Association (ABA), along with over 40 business and financial groups, sent a letter
on Sept. 17 to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) objecting to the
"ill-advised" reporting proposal. "While the stated goal of this vast data collection is to uncover tax dodging by the
wealthy, this proposal is not remotely targeted to that purpose or that population," the letter stated.
Biden
wants to get into your bank account. We've long been used to the fact that banks and credit unions must report
to the federal government any transactions greater than $10,000. This requirement goes back to 1970 when $10,000 was
equivalent to around $70,000 today. The law is a way to track criminal activity such as bank fraud. But how would
you feel if the government requires banks to report to the government — i.e., the IRS — every
transaction of $600 or more? Well, if Democrats pass their $3.5 trillion American Families Plan, that's exactly
what will happen.
Biden,
Dems Want To Monitor Americans' Bank Accounts, Blasted As Violating 4th Amendment. President Biden and the
Democrats' $3.5 trillion budget plan means to monitor gross inflows and outflows from Americans' bank accounts, prompting
concern that the federal government would be willfully violating the 14thAmendment. "The proposal would require banks
to report to gross inflows and outflows to the IRS, including transactions from Venmo, PayPal, crypto exchanges and the like
in an effort to fight tax evasion," the Daily Mail noted, adding, "The IRS would know how much money is in an individual's
bank account in a given year, whether the individual earned income on that account and exactly how much was going in an and
out." Patrick Hedger, vice president of policy at the Taxpayers' Protection Alliance, blasted the idea, saying, "The
IRS is first and foremost, a law enforcement agency and the Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and
seizures in pursuit of, of looking for wrongdoing and criminal actions, so I think this is going to run into severe Fourth
Amendment headwinds."
Biden's
plan to let the IRS snoop on bank accounts, Venmo, PayPal and crypto deals as part of his $80 billion investment to crack
down on tax evaders. One key prong of President Biden's plan to bankroll Democrats' $3.5 trillion budget
plan is to monitor every inflow and outflow of an individual's bank account. The Biden administration says such
surveillance would target audits and prevent tax evasion, but some are concerned that it might run up against the Fourth
Amendment and those who can't afford to fight tax audits or move their money into offshore accounts. The proposal would
require banks to report to the IRS every deposit and withdrawal from an account, including transactions from Venmo, PayPal,
crypto exchanges and the like in an effort to fight tax evasion. The IRS would know how much money is in an
individual's bank account in a given year, whether the individual earned income on that account and exactly how much was
going in and out.
IRS:
Truckers required to pay heavy highway vehicle use tax by Aug. 31. Long-haul truckers and bus drivers need to
file the heavy highway vehicle use tax return form — and pay the annual fee for operating a vehicle that weighs
55,000 pounds or more — by Aug. 31, the IRS said. The agency urged all taxpayers who file Form 2290 to
do so electronically as it copes with a backlog of unprocessed tax returns. Individuals that own 25 or more heavy
trucks or buses are required to file electronically. Taxpayers can make the payment several different ways, including:
credit card or debt card, electronic funds withdrawal, electronic federal tax payment system, check or money order.
The
IRS' persecution of a Christian nonprofit should terrify all of us. A decade after the Internal Revenue Service
targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status, the agency recently pulled a similar stunt with a faith-based
organization named Christians Engaged. The IRS called it quits after a public backlash, but people and groups that are
out of favor with the left should be wary of renewed government discrimination. The Christians Engaged saga is nearly
two years running. In fall 2019, the outfit applied to the IRS for tax-exempt status as a nonprofit. This status
would allow it to receive tax-deductible donations and more effectively fulfill its mission to "awaken, motivate, educate and
empower ordinary believers in Jesus Christ." It's a nonpartisan organization that hopes to get people engaged in America's
civic process, like countless other groups of the kind.
Biden tax hike
agenda hits a snag as Republicans balk at IRS funds. President Joe Biden promised to tax the rich, but
congressional Republicans are stymieing his plans. Republicans pulling their support for increased IRS spending because
of overreach concerns jeopardizes Biden's bipartisan "hard" infrastructure deal. It is also a setback for Biden's
broader tax-the-rich agenda tucked into the Democrat-only, "soft," "human" infrastructure reconciliation bill. The IRS
debacle exacerbates a mathematical problem for both the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure framework and the sweeping
$3.5 trillion reconciliation package, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center's vice president and chief economist, Jason
Fichtner. And the mathematical issues complicate the political ones, he said.
IRS
reverses course and grants tax-exempt status to Christian group. The Internal Revenue Service reversed course
and granted tax-exempt status to a Christian group. Christians Engaged, a Texas-based nonprofit group that encourages
religious citizens to vote and get involved in politics, had its 501(c)(3) application denied by the IRS late last month
after the federal organization determined the Bible's "teachings are typically affiliated with" the GOP and its
candidates. The decision was reversed following an appeal, conservative legal group First Liberty announced on
Wednesday [7/7/2021]. "This is truly great news for our client, as well as religious organizations and churches across
America," said Lea Patterson, an attorney for First Liberty Institute, in a statement. "We are grateful the IRS changed
course to bring its decision into line with the Constitution and its own regulations."
IRS
in chaos: Nearly 35 million tax returns are STILL unprocessed and just 3% of phone calls are being answered. The
Internal Revenue Service is facing a backlog of 35 million unprocessed tax returns, according to a government watchdog, as the
pandemic and economic relief efforts combined to overwhelm the agency and force some people to spend hours chasing their overdue
refunds. The National Taxpayer Advocate (NTA) submits two reports to Congress each year: an Annual Report, delivered
in January, and an Objectives Report, delivered in June. In its most recent report, the NTA states: 'It was perhaps
the most challenging filing season taxpayers, tax professionals, and the IRS have ever experienced.'
IRS
Violated First Amendment in Tax Exemption Denial That Linked Bible Teachings to GOP: Legal Group. A Texas-based
legal group said the IRS violated the First Amendment when it denied tax-exempt status to a religious group by tying
Christianity to politics, claiming that biblical "teachings are typically affiliated with" the Republican Party.
Texas-based First Liberty Institute, a conservative legal organization that litigates First Amendment cases on religion, said
in an appeal to the IRS that the agency had mischaracterized Christians Engaged, the organization it represents, and violated
the Constitution's religious freedom protections when it denied the group the ability to operate as a nonprofit with
501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of First Liberty, told EpochTV's "Crossroads" program
that he believes that, with its determination, the IRS broke the First Amendment.
Kelly
Shackelford: IRS Claims Christianity Is Political, Targets Nonprofits. The IRS recently denied the
nonprofit status of a Christian organization by claiming that Christianity is tied to politics because the Bible's "teachings
are typically affiliated with" the Republican Party. Legal organization First Liberty Institute is pushing back, and by
doing so is defending religious organizations against the threat of similar moves by the IRS. [Video clip]
Washington
Elites Are Weaponizing the Tax Code Against Christians. A decade ago, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) under
President Barack Obama targeted tea party organizations for extra scrutiny and even denial of tax-exempt status.
Democrats and the IRS seem determined to be even more brazen under Joe Biden. As PJ Media's Mark Tapscott reported last
week, the IRS denied a 501(c)(3) tax exemption to the Texas-based group Christians Engaged because its Bible-based Christian
teachings "are typically affiliated with the [Republican] party and candidates." This denial is absurd on many
levels. First Liberty Institute appealed the rejection, highlighting three key errors: there is no requirement that
tax-exempt organizations be neutral on public policy issues; Christians Engaged does not serve private, nonexempt purposes
just because of its Christian worldview; and the rejection violated the First Amendment's Free Speech, Free Exercise, and
Establishment clauses through viewpoint discrimination and religious discrimination.
It's
Outright War on Conservatives. In May, the IRS denied 501(c)(3) status to Christians Engaged, a Texas-based
prayer group that encourages members to pray for the country and its elected officials, motivates citizens to vote for
cultural impact, and campaigns for preserving our constitutional republic. The group endeavors to integrate civic
involvement as part of religious practice but does not promote any party or candidate. However, in his official letter
denying tax-exemption, Stephen A. Martin, the IRS's director of exempt organizations, clearly implies that biblical values
are exclusively Republican. He wrote: "While you educate voters on what the Bible says about issues, your
educational activities are not neutral. The topics typically are affiliated with distinct candidates and specific
political party [Republican] platforms." The First Liberty Institute, a Christian legal organization, is appealing the
IRS decision as discriminatory. It argues that there is no requirement that organizations must be neutral on public
policy issues, and that just because there is some overlap between the views of Christians Engaged and the Republican party,
the IRS cannot conclude that the organization serves private interests. The IRS decision amounts to a violation of the
free speech, free exercise, and free establishment clauses of the First Amendment. Declaring biblical teachings as
exclusively Republican is the slippery slope that could lead to future discrimination against Christian organizations and
even churches.
IRS
Denies Christian Non-Profit Tax-Exempt Status: '[The] Bible's Teachings [are] Affiliated with [the] Republican
Party'. A Christian non-profit is challenging the Internal Revenue Service after the agency denied them
tax-exempt status saying "the Bible's teachings are typically affiliated with the Republican Party and candidates."
Christians Engaged describes itself as educational, Christian, and non-partisan, and operates out of Garland, Texas. [...]
The non-profit works to show Christians how to "civically engage as part of their religious practice" but does not promote
specific parties or candidates or earn money for political causes, according to the organization's appeal letter to the
IRS. The non-profit first applied to become a 501(c)(3) in late 2019. They received a rejection letter on
May 18, 2021, from Exempt Organizations Director Stephen A. Martin saying the group "engage[s] in prohibited
political campaign intervention" and "operate[s] for a substantial non-exempt private purpose and for the private interests
of the [Republican] party." Martin alleged in his letter that the group does not meet requirements for tax exemption
because biblical causes tend to favor the Republican Party.
Biden
IRS Declares Christian Activism Too Political For Non-Profit Status. Six months in, President Joe Biden has
made good on his pledge to be a more aggressive third-term continuum of President Barack Obama, and that includes the
weaponization of the administrative state to crack down on political dissidents. On Thursday, Biden's Internal Revenue
Service (IRS) denied a Texas Christian group's application for non-profit certification this week claiming its educating on
Christian values is political. "You do not qualify as an organization described in IRS Section 501(c)(3)," wrote IRS
Office of Exempt Organizations Rulings and Agreements Director Stephen Martin in a letter dated May 18 to the group
Christians Engaged, accusing the Garland-based group of "political campaign intervention." That illegal intervention,
Martin explained, is the group working to "instruct individuals on issues that are prominent in political campaigns and
instruct them in what the Bible says about the issue and how they should vote."
IRS
Denies Tax Exemption to Christian Group, Associates Bible With GOP. A top Internal Revenue Service official
told a Christian group that "Bible teachings are typically affiliated" with the Republican Party as a rationale for denying
its application for tax-exempt status. The Texas-based Christians Engaged filed an appeal on Wednesday [6/16/2021] to
the IRS' denial, objecting to the tax agency's assertion that it is partisan. In a May 18 denial letter, IRS Exempt
Organizations Director Stephen A. Martin said Christians Engaged is involved in "prohibited political campaign intervention"
and "operate[s] for a substantial non-exempt private purpose and for the private interests of the [Republican Party]." A
"legend" at the top of the letter shows nine letters of the alphabet being used as shorthand to represent something. In
this letter's example, oddly, "D" represented "Republican."
Could
Biden IRS Expansion Plan Signal Return to Politicization? Given the Internal Revenue Service's history of
politicization, conservatives are expressing concern about the potential for abuse from President Joe Biden's proposed
doubling of the number of IRS agents. A massive information leak of private tax data has only exacerbated those
concerns. Ahead of IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig's testimony before a Senate committee Tuesday, ProPublica, an
investigative journalism nonprofit, published private tax data of wealthy individuals, saying it "obtained the information
from an anonymous source." Biden's $6 trillion fiscal year 2022 budget proposal includes $80 billion for
the IRS over the next decade to cover the cost of an additional 87,000 new IRS agents. The stated reason is to help an
under-resourced agency pursue tax cheats. That would empower an agency just a few years after it was embroiled in a
scandal for alleged politicized targeting.
'Secret' tax
records of wealthiest Americans leaked to media. The IRS is investigating a leak of troves of private tax
records from the country's wealthiest residents to ProPublica, which published an analysis of the data on Tuesday
morning [6/8/2021]. The nonprofit investigative news organization used the leaked Internal Revenue Service records to
show that some of the ultra-rich, such as Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and George Soros, paid no federal income taxes in certain
years. It also compared their wealth growth relative to their taxes paid in an effort to highlight the ways in which
they avoided paying higher levels of taxation. ProPublica claims that it doesn't know who the source of the leak was.
Up
to 10 million taxpayers could get an additional tax refund for unemployment. The Internal Revenue Service is
reviewing the tax returns of 10 million people and will begin issuing additional refunds this week to those who paid too much
in taxes for their 2020 unemployment benefits. "The IRS identified over 10 million taxpayers who filed their tax
returns prior to the American Rescue Plan of 2021 becoming law in March and is reviewing those tax returns to determine the
correct taxable amount of unemployment compensation and tax," the agency said in a statement on Friday [5/14/2021].
"This could result in a refund, a reduced balance due or no change to tax (no refund due nor amount owed)."
Judge
orders IRS to reveal if it criminally investigated Clinton Foundation, citing records 'gap'. A U.S. Tax Court
judge has ordered the Internal Revenue Service to reveal if it criminally investigated the Clinton Foundation, directing the
agency to cure a mysterious "gap" in its records in the case. Most of the proceedings in the case involving the Clinton
Foundation and the whistleblowers Lawrence W. Doyle and John F. Moynihan have been sealed, but U.S. Tax Court Judge David
Gustafson authorized the release of an April 22 ruling to Just the News this week. In it, Gustafson remanded the case
back to the IRS Whistleblower Office (WO), saying the agency's claim there was no criminal investigation against the Clinton
Foundation "was not supported by the administrative record and thus constituted an abuse of discretion."
The Infernal Revenue
Service. Thanks to the beneficence of the Internal Revenue Service — and the fallout from
COVID-19 — we half of Americans who pay federal income taxes have been given until May 17 to file. Since
I began earning enough to file Form 1040 and associated forms, I have only known one person who prepared his own taxes.
That was Bill Archer, a Texas Republican who formerly headed the House Ways and Means Committee. I once asked Archer
why he prepared his. His reply was that not only did he think it was fun, but because he helped write the tax code, he
felt a responsibility to demonstrate competence in filling out the forms. These days, the forms are so complicated,
hardly anyone I know understands them. The instructions need instructions.
Biden
wants to give the IRS $80 Billion to squeeze the rich harder. President Joe Biden is going to beef up the
budget of the Internal Revenue Service to help the agency crack down on wealthy individuals and powerful corporations who try
to evade his proposed tax hikes. Biden will give the IRS an extra $80 billion and more authority over the next 10 years,
The New York Times reported, to help enforce the higher income tax on the rich and capital gains tax he's proposed to pay for his
$1.8 trillion American Families Plan. The president plans to pay for his 'human infrastructure' bill by raising the top
marginal income tax rate on wealthy Americans to 39.6 percent — up from 37 percent — and raising capital gains
tax rates for those who earn more than $1 million a year.
H.R. 1:
It's Worse Than You Think. [Scroll down] Section 10001, calls for Presidential and Vice Presidential
tax transparency. What it really does is suppress candidate turnout by requiring that the last ten years of income tax
returns be submitted to the Federal Election Commission within 15 days of becoming a party's nominee. Those records,
with certain limited redactions, then become public just like any report filed with the FEC. Opposition research is complete
and available to China, Russia, new or former relatives, all of Congress, the media, the whole world, in fact. For the
candidates who are not elected, those records stay public forever. This will discourage private citizens like Trump —
as opposed to lifelong political hacks — from running for high office. This requirement seems to be a clear violation
of the 4th Amendment which protects an individual's papers against unreasonable seizure. This is a taking if there ever was
one. Surprise! The IRS already has possession. If these documents are required by Congress for any purpose, a
simple warrant based upon probable cause is all that's necessary to obtain them.
IRS
Says Its Own Error Sent $1,200 Stimulus Checks To Non-Americans Overseas. The IRS now acknowledges that its own
error caused some citizens of other countries to mistakenly receive $1,200 coronavirus relief payments — and that
the mistake is likely to happen again if more stimulus money goes out. When reports of the mistake first surfaced, the
U.S government placed the blame on those non-Americans, saying that many noncitizens erroneously received stimulus checks
because they had filed incorrect tax returns that made them appear to be American. But many non-Americans who received
stimulus money do not file U.S. tax returns. One of them is Susanne Wigforss, a 78-year-old Swedish citizen who lives
in Stockholm.
The
Legacy of Obama and Biden: Weaponizing Federal Agencies. Cleta Mitchell is a prominent Washington, D.C.
attorney representing many clients who had been victimized by IRS criminal conduct. She previously served as a Democrat
in the Oklahoma House of Representatives from 1976 to 1984. In her testimony before Congress, she asserted that the
Obama/Biden administration was responsible for 'lies upon lies' covering up the multifarious, politically inspired wrongdoing
of the IRS. Mitchell regarded the politicization of the IRS as the most dangerous change in her lifetime and perhaps in
the history of the U.S. because Obama/Biden did liberals' bidding and the press was willing to endure a wide variety of their
non-democratic, dangerous practices. Thus, we experienced government intrusion in unprecedented ways, picking sides in
the long-term debate between conservatives and liberals and ensuring that liberals win, as happened in the 2012 election.
The
virus is all they've got and they're clinging to it. [Scroll down] Now with just a few weeks until the
election, the Biden family's corruption is coming into full view, despite social media's rapacious attempts to squelch the
news of Hunter's career as an influence peddler. How has all this ill-gotten wealth escaped the notice of the IRS? The
same way the many millions of the Clintons' ill-gotten wealth was overlooked by the IRS. Outside of D.C., little people go
to prison for a fraction of the crimes committed by the Bidens and the Clintons. That is how the world works these
days. Powerful crooks like the Clintons, the Bidens, the Feinsteins, Pelosis, et al, operate on a plane reserved for
the likes of their ilk.
IRS Sent $1.6
Billion To Dead People: GAO Report. The Government Accountability Office issued a report in which they
reviewed the federal government response to COVID-19, and found that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had sent more than
$1.6 billion to dead people. In particular, GAO reviewed the distribution of funds, also knows as Paycheck
Protection Program (PPP), a program that provides guaranteed loans through lenders to small businesses, and unemployment
insurance. Overall, federal obligations and expenditures government-wide of these COVID-19 relief funds totaled
$1.5 trillion and $1.3 trillion, respectively, as of June 30, 2020.
What are the Stakes?
This is an election like no other. To treat it otherwise would be a grievous and perhaps irreparable misstep. [...]
Currently, the ruling classes mostly disenfranchise undesirables through social opprobrium, labeling them "deplorable" and
letting their attack dogs in the media do the rest. But in the Obama era, they began to belligerently "weaponize" the
federal government, using the IRS and intelligence agencies to thwart their political opponents. If granted control of
the White House again, the lesson they will draw from defeating Trump is not only that they will not be held accountable for
such tactics, but that such tactics work. They will use government agencies to kneecap their enemies in every
conceivable fashion. Those are the stakes.
IRS
to suspend tax balance due notices amid mail backlog. The IRS announced it will temporarily stop sending
past-due balance notices to taxpayers until it makes some headway opening a massive backlog of mail. The agency issued
a notice that it will suspend three specific follow-up mailings that are usually automatically sent to people with a balance
due on their taxes.
IRS Whistleblower Explains
Why No One in the FBI or the DOJ Spoke Up for General Flynn. [Scroll down] William Henck knows, because
he lived it. Mr. Henck's story is the polar opposite of alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella's, whose bogus
complaint to then-Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson last August triggered President Trump's
impeachment. Not only did my reader not receive the kid-glove treatment Ciaramella did, he was terminated from his
position as an IRS attorney after 30 years of service. In November 2017, Mr. Henck was forced out for being a
whistleblower. During his career at the IRS, he reported the bullying of World War II veterans, evidence of a cover up
in the Lois Lerner (or Tea Party) case, and the improper giveaway of literally billions of dollars to taxpayers represented
by sketchy Washington lobbyists. Mr. Henck said he reported his concerns both internally and externally, to his
supervisor, to upper management, to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), to the Office of Special
Counsel (OSC), to Congress, to Trump political appointees in the Treasury Department, and to the media. And none of his
detailed complaints of misconduct were ever investigated. Not a single one.
Calls
Mount to Cancel Federal Income Tax, Signed Into Law by Racist Democratic President. On Saturday, the president
of Princeton University, Christopher Eisgruber, said the institution would be removing the name of former President Woodrow
Wilson from its school of public policy and residential college. "Wilson's racism was significant and consequential
even by the standards of his own time. He segregated the federal civil service after it had been racially integrated
for decades, thereby taking America backward in its pursuit of justice," Eisgruber said Saturday [6/27/2020]. But
critics on the right say the mere removal of the racist Democrat's name doesn't go far enough to redress the historic racism
of the Wilsonian era. They are now calling for the cancelation of the federal income tax that Wilson signed into law in
1913, two years before he screened the pro-Klan film "Birth of a Nation" at the White House.
Millions of paper
tax returns go unopened at short-staffed IRS. The IRS estimates that nearly 5 million unopened paper tax
returns had piled up at the agency by mid-May amid the closure of its offices nationwide due to the coronavirus pandemic,
according to a report that Politico has obtained. Overall, the IRS estimated it had a backlog of 10 million
pieces of mail to open and process as thousands of workers begin returning to the offices on Monday [6/1/2020].
When
Wuhan Virus Departs, World Will Be Changed. [Scroll down] The IRS and the income tax is an institution
whose time has gone. A product of the so-called progressive era, the income tax was forced upon the U.S. public with
the adoption of the 16th Amendment in 1913, which overturned the constitutional mandate that direct taxes had to be
apportioned among the states. The result was a diminution of Americans' personal freedom, a massive expansion of the
federal government, and a soaring national debt, now completely out of control. To fight the economic effects of the
Wuhan virus, however, the administration is bruiting an immediate cash benefit of up to $1,000 to every American, an amnesty
without penalties in the late filing of federal income taxes, as well as a "payroll tax" (FICA) holiday, proving that while
death may be inevitable, taxes are not.
IRS
to delay the April 15 tax payment deadline by 90 days. Most Americans can get a three-month reprieve to pay their
income taxes for 2019, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Tuesday [3/17/2020] in a press conference. The IRS will
postpone the April 15 tax deadline by 90 days for millions of individuals who owe $1 million or less and corporations
that owe $10 million or less, he said. To be sure, Americans still have to meet the April 15 deadline if they are
expecting a refund or are requesting a six-month extension, but they can defer payment for up to 90 days beyond that.
Here's
a Legal Case that Actually Matters. The case in question is Lawrence W. Doyle and John F. Moynihan
(Petitioners) v Internal Revenue Service (Respondents), a case where allegedly corrupt actions of the Internal Revenue
Service itself may fall under the microscope. It likely involves as yet unprosecuted crimes by "charities" that are
still corruptly directed by household names. [...] The names of Petitioners in the U.S. tax court case are familiar to
many — Doyle and Moynihan are self-described "financial bounty hunters" who are determined to police the waste,
fraud and abuse that has grown exponentially of late, especially because the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of
Justice and Internal Revenue Service seem loath to go after the biggest of fish — dynastic political families,
billionaire donors, and all who enrich themselves at taxpayer expense. In December 2018, Doyle and Moynihan threw down
ample evidence of malfeasance by the network of loosely-affiliated Clinton Foundation "charities" before a Congressional
oversight hearing chaired by Congressman Mark Meadows: [...]
Tax
season kicks off with IRS short on staff. Tax season kicked off Monday, and the biggest question on most
taxpayers' minds is how quickly they will get their refunds. Receiving a refund can normally take up to six weeks, but
staffing issues at the agency might make that turnaround time much longer. Customer service is a big part of making tax
seasons successful, and the Internal Revenue Service is one of the lowest-scoring agencies in that area, according to the
Taxpayer Advocate Service annual report to Congress for 2019. Budget cuts are a contributing factor to the IRS's poor
customer service — it's harder to garner more hires with less money. Agency head count has fallen by 20%
over the past 10 years, according to the National Treasury Employees Union, while the number of tax returns to process
has increased by 9%.
House
Dems Plot to Use IRS to Suppress Conservatives. "It is important for us to consider how our policies can help
reduce hate and violence through any vehicle," Rep. Danny K. Davis insisted. "Any mechanism, any apparatus,
any way that we possibly can." The mechanism and apparatus being considered was unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.
The Oversight Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee was holding a hearing on How the Tax Code Subsidizes Hate.
Its theme was removing tax-exempt status from groups it didn't like.
Deep
State IRS Employee John Fry Pleads Guilty to Leaking Michael Cohen's Bank Records to Avenatti. Deep State IRS
analyst John Fry pleaded guilty Wednesday [8/14/2019] to leaking Michael Cohen's bank records to creepy porn lawyer Michael
Avenatti and The New Yorker. Mr. Fry was charged in February of this year by the US Attorney's Office for the
Northern District of California with unauthorized disclosure of a suspicious activity report, or SAR. Banks file SARs
on any transactions that could be illegal.
IRS analyst pleads guilty to leaking Michael Cohen's financial
records. An Internal Revenue Service analyst pleaded guilty Wednesday [8/14/2019] to illegally disclosing
sensitive financial records about President Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, in a leak case stemming from the
Justice Department's investigations of those close to the president. John Fry, who had worked as an investigative
analyst with the IRS in San Francisco, entered his plea in federal court there. Fry was charged in February with the
unauthorized disclosure of suspicious activity reports, or SARs. Such reports are meant to flag potentially unlawful
financial conduct to government investigators but do not necessarily indicate wrongdoing.
Where in The U.S. Are You Most Likely
to Be Audited by the IRS? Humphreys County, Mississippi, seems like an odd place for the IRS to go hunting for
tax cheats. It's a rural county in the Mississippi Delta known for its catfish farms, and more than a third of its
mostly African American residents are below the poverty line. But according to a new study, it is the most heavily
audited county in America.
IRS
analyst charged with leaking Michael Cohen bank records. A U.S. Internal Revenue Service analyst in San
Francisco has been charged in federal court with leaking information about the bank records of Michael Cohen, a former
personal lawyer to President Donald Trump. IRS investigative analyst John Fry, 54, was charged in federal court in San
Francisco on Feb. 4 in a criminal complaint filed under seal. The complaint was unsealed Thursday after Fry's
initial appearance before a federal magistrate.
Florida
man's $980G refund check from IRS was first clue something was wrong: report. It took a little time, but the
IRS eventually realized it had a problem after it issued a refund check for $980,000 to a Florida man who'd claimed only
about $18,000 in income for the 2016 tax year. [...] One form showed that he earned $17,098 in wages and the other showed he
earned $1,399 in wages, the Times reported. However, one of the forms showed $1 million in federal income tax was
withheld from his pay. Somehow, the U.S. Treasury sent Blanchett a refund check for $980,000, based on the $1 million
withholding figure, the Times reported.
IRS
Becoming Big Brother With $99-Million Supercomputer. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is building a
$99-million supercomputer that will give the agency the "unprecedented ability to track the lives and transactions of tens of
millions of American citizens," tax expert Daniel Pilla reports. The IRS is already dangerous enough, notes
Pilla. "The IRS lays claim to your data without court authority more so than any other government agency. And to
make matters worse, they share the data with any other federal, state or local government agency claiming an interest,
including foreign governments." The IRS already receives billions of tax documents annually, and the amount of
information the agency receives continues to grow.
We're supposed to feel sorry for them? The Washington Post apparently does. IRS
will need at least a year to recover from government shutdown, watchdog tells Congress. The Internal Revenue
Service has told lawmakers it would return from the government shutdown buried in millions of unanswered taxpayer letters,
weeks behind schedule on training for workers and in need of hiring thousands of new employees for this tax filing season,
according to two House aides. The National Taxpayer Advocate, a government watchdog group that oversees the tax
collector, has also told House staffers that it is likely to take at least a year for the IRS to return to normal operations,
according to the two House aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly
about the numbers. The watchdog group told House staffers that the recovery would take between 12 and
18 months, one House aide said. These numbers assume the government does not shut down again in three weeks.
At least 14,000 unpaid IRS workers did not show up for work
as broad shutdown disruption hits tax agency, according to House aides. At least 14,000 unpaid workers in the
Internal Revenue Service division that includes tax processing and call centers did not show up for work this week despite
orders to do so, according to two House aides, posing a challenge to the Trump administration's ability to minimize the
damage from the government shutdown. The Trump administration ordered more than 30,000 employees back to work unpaid to
prepare for tax filing season, which is set to begin next week. But of the 26,000 workers called back to the IRS
division that includes the tax processing centers and call centers, about 9,000 workers could not be reached and about 5,000
more claimed a hardship exemption, IRS officials have told members of Congress, according to aides, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the numbers.
New IRS Spy
Software. The IRS lays claim to your data without court authority more so than any other government
agency. And to make matters worse, they share the data with any other federal, state or local government agency
claiming an interest, including foreign governments. In 2019, there will be about 152 million individual tax returns
filed with the IRS. There will be roughly another 100 million business tax returns filed. There will be millions
more miscellaneous tax returns, including trust, estate and gift tax returns. On top of that, over 3.6 BILLION information
returns (Forms W-2, 1099, etc.) will be filed. There is quite literally a river of data flowing into the agency.
The flow cannot be stopped, and as far as the IRS is concerned, they need even more.
Yes
To Refunds, No To Audits: What To Expect From IRS During The Shutdown. As the shutdown rolls on,
taxpayers have been left wondering: What does it mean for tax season? Earlier this month, the Internal Revenue
Service (IRS) announced that tax season would open on time (January 28, 2019) and, in a departure from previous years, that
tax refunds would be issued during the shutdown. Over the weekend, the IRS announced that Free File, a free online
software program available through IRS.gov, was open for business even as IRS doors remain closed. Today, taxpayers
finally received more information about what to expect from the IRS during the government shutdown. The details about
IRS plans to operate during the government shutdown can be found in the updated Lapsed Appropriations Contingency Plan posted
on the Treasury website.
The
"Secret Research Project" — Why Did The IRS Give The DOJ Twenty-One CD ROM's? In October 2015 the
DOJ announced it was dropping the investigation into the IRS, Lois Lerner, and the unlawful sharing of taxpayer data in the
IRS targeting investigation surrounding True The Vote et al. As a direct consequence of the DOJ decision, congressional
inquiry into the IRS targeting matter seemingly dropped from the radar. However, if you draw a line from the original
intent of the entire enterprise, the post-2010 mid-term "shellacking"/"secret research project", forward to the 2016 election
cycle an interested observer might still be left asking: "why did the IRS, through Lois Lerner, deliver the 1+ million
pages of tax filings, to include the entire donor list of Tea Party and patriot groups, through 21 CD-ROMs and not by
electronic data transfer. Information that was specifically sent to Eric Holder and the U.S. Department of Justice?"
This is an obvious question which, despite the numerous congressional hearings on the matter, was never asked — nor answered.
An
Epidemic of Erasures, Redactions, Omissions, and Perjuries. Imagine the following: The IRS sends you,
John Q. Citizen, a letter alleging you have not complied with U.S. tax law. In the next paragraph, the tax agency then
informs you that it needs a series of personal and business documents. Indeed, it will be sending agents out to discuss
your dilemma and collect the necessary records. But when the IRS agents arrive, you explain to them that you cannot
find about 50 percent of the documents requested, and have no idea whether they even exist. You sigh that both
hard copies of pertinent information have unfortunately disappeared and hard drives were mysteriously lost. You nonchalantly
add that you smashed your phone, tablet, and computer with a hammer. [...] What would happen to you, a typical American citizen,
should you follow this current Washington model of erasing, redacting, omitting, forgetting, and lying?
IRS
to take taxpayer's money in a shutdown but not issue refunds, plan says. As a partial government shutdown
approaches its two-week point, concerns are growing that a heavily impacted Internal Revenue Service will delay issuing
taxpayers' refunds. The agency has categorized issuing tax refunds as a "non-excepted" activity — meaning
those tasked with processing refunds would be furloughed during a shutdown. Meanwhile, several types of tax return
processing were deemed "Necessary for the Safety of Human Life or Protection of Government Property." That's according
to a December shutdown plan that lays out the first five business days of the agency's response during a shutdown occurring
outside of tax season.
GAO:
IRS Had 4,487 Guns; 5,062,006 Rounds of Ammunition. The Internal Revenue Service had in its weapons inventory
4,487 guns and 5,062,006 rounds of ammunition as of late 2017, according to a report published this month by the Government
Accountability Office. Included in this arsenal, according to the GAO, were 15 "fully automatic firearms" and 56,000
rounds of ammunition for those fully automatic firearms. The same report — "Federal Law Enforcement: Purchases and
Inventory Controls of Firearms, Ammuntion, and Tactical Equipment" — says that the Office of the Inspector General of the
Department of Health and Human Services had 194 fully automatic firearms and 386,952 rounds of ammunition for those fully
automatic firearms.
The IRS
wants help scouring social media for clues on tax cheats. Entrepreneurs who are cheating taxes with online
stores, beware: The IRS is looking for new ways to catch suspected tax cheats over social media. Specifically,
the IRS wants a new tool to help it check public social media feeds and websites for details on people already suspected of
not complying with the tax code, the tax-collecting agency said in a Dec. 18 request for information from vendors.
Social media could provide investigators with a treasure trove of data, showing where taxpayers live, what they drive and
what they're selling online.
IRS
worker headcount dwindling: What it means for you. The IRS' understaffing challenges may only intensify
throughout the coming years. The tax agency says 27 percent of its workforce will be eligible to retire at the end of
the year, while it has had a difficult time recruiting younger employees to take their places. Less than 0.5 percent
of its staff consists of workers under the age of 26.
Family
pleads guilty to stealing more than $2M in tax refunds from IRS. Three members of a Las Vegas family who
conspired to steal more than $2 million in income tax refunds from the IRS using made-up businesses and the identity of a
dead brother have pleaded guilty, the U.S. Department of Justice said Tuesday [12/11/2018]. Chanh V. Trinh, Cannedy
Trinh and Elizabeth Trinh reported false withholdings and payments when they filed federal corporate and individual income
tax returns, KSNV-TV reported. The three family members filed the returns under the names of fictional businesses,
their own names and the names of others, including Chanh's deceased brother.
Another IRS
Free-Speech Scandal. The Internal Revenue Service infamously targeted dissenters during President Obama's
re-election campaign. Now the IRS is at it again. Earlier this year it issued a rule suppressing huge swaths of
First Amendment protected speech. The regulation appears designed to hamper the marijuana industry, which is still
illegal under federal law although many states have enacted decriminalization measures. But it goes far beyond that.
O'Keefe's
Project Veritas exposes the DSA Pajama Boys of the IRS. Fear is a word associated with the powerful Internal
Revenue Service. These are people who are imagined to be humorous green eyeshade guys who can throw you in jail if you
don't follow tax laws properly. This is the agency of the hard-faced bureaucrat, Lois Lerner. Now James O'Keefe's
Project Veritas undercover reporting outfit actually exposed one of the IRS's tax auditors, revealing reasons to fear it, all
right, but not the reasons you'd expect.
Does
equal justice under the law exist in America today? Having two sets of laws — one for the political class and
one for everyone else — accelerated under the administration of President Obama, beginning with Obama's pick for Treasury
secretary. Timothy Geithner was delinquent on his taxes to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, but became Treasury secretary
in charge of the IRS. He paid no price for that behavior. The Daily Caller discovered from an inspector general's report in
2015 that 1,580 employees of the IRS were found to have not paid taxes over a 10-year period and 61 percent were not fired, but were
given suspensions, reprimands or counseling. Would you or I be treated in the same way?
Here's
what Congress is stuffing into its $1.3 trillion spending bill. [Scroll down] Internal Revenue Service: Despite the
administration's attempts to slash its budget, lawmakers grant $11.431 billion to the nation's tax collectors, a $196 million
year-to-year increase and $456 million more than Trump requested. The figure includes $320 million to implement changes
enacted as part of the GOP tax overhaul plan.
IRS
Documented 1.3M Identity Thefts by Illegal Aliens; Can't Say It Referred Any for Prosecution. The Internal
Revenue Service in 2011 through 2016 documented more than 1.3 million cases of identity theft perpetrated by illegal aliens
whom the IRS had given Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITIN), which are only given to people who are ineligible
to work in the United States or receive Social Security Numbers, according to information published by the Treasury Inspector
General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). However, in response to inquiries from CNSNews.com, the IRS could not say if it
had referred even one of these cases for criminal prosecution. TIGTA, which is the inspector general responsible for
overseeing the IRS, discovered another approximately 1.2 million cases in 2017 in which an illegal alien working in the
United States had filed a tax return reporting wages that had been earned using a Social Security Number that belonged to
someone else or was fabricated.
IRS
Found 1.2 Million Cases of Identity Theft by Illegal Immigrants. The Internal Revenue Services documented over
1.2 million cases of illegal immigrants filing tax returns with illegitimate social security numbers in 2017, CNSNews.com
reports. "We identified 1,227,579 electronically filed tax returns, processed in FY 2017 through April 18, 2017,
in which the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number on the return does not match the Social Security Number on the Form W-2,"
the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration told CNSNews.com[.] "Note that a Social Security Number may have
been used on Form W-2 for more than one of these returns."
IRS
still paying bonuses to tax cheat employees. The IRS is still paying bonuses to nearly 2,000 bad employees,
including more than two dozen who were actual tax-cheats themselves, the agency's inspector general said in a new report this
week. The audit suggests the tax agency's efforts to crack down on bonuses have not fully succeeded, according to the
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. IRS screening did stop more than 1,000 employees with tax problems
from getting bonuses, but 1,962 employees with discipline problems — and 26 who had been found to have intentionally
cheated on their tax returns — were still paid bonuses in 2016 and 2017, topping $1.7 million.
The
IRS Is Coming for Your Passports. Beginning this month, the Internal Revenue Service will begin denying
passports to some American citizens with unpaid taxes and, in some cases, revoking the passports of Americans with tax
delinquencies. The government will in effect place those with unpaid taxes under arrest, effectively denying them their
right to travel. To be clear: We are not talking about Americans who have been convicted of tax evasion or tax
fraud, or who are awaiting a criminal trial on charges related to tax matters. These Americans have not been charged
with a crime, must less convicted of one. They simply have unpaid taxes amounting to $50,000 or more. More
precisely: They have an unpaid IRS liability amounting to $50,000 or more. The IRS's aggressive schedule of
interest and penalties for unpaid taxes ensures that a relatively small amount of unpaid taxes can turn into a $50,000-plus
liability with remarkable speed.
The FBI and the IRS Scandal.
The government watchdog group, Judicial Watch, obtained documents revealing that the FBI was involved with the illegal IRS
effort to investigate — and thus silence — around 500 conservative and Tea Party groups during Obama's
2012 reelection. Perhaps the worst use of the IRS in American history, this was about manipulating the 2012
presidential election and the FBI was complicit in this abuse of governmental power. As JWs Tom Fitton writes, "Both
the FBI and Justice Department collaborated with Lois Lerner and the IRS to try to persecute and jail Barack Obama's
political opponents."
Donor
Privacy and Ending IRS Abuse: A No-Brainer for Congressional Republicans. On both ends of Pennsylvania
Avenue, Congressional Republicans and the Trump Administration are increasingly desperate to score a legislative victory and
placate restive conservatives. Fortunately for them, there's a quick and simple way to accomplish both. The
proposal at issue is legislation to protect the privacy of donors to nonprofit organizations and prohibit future abuse by the
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and other governmental authorities with access to sensitive donor information. It won't
cost taxpayers a dime, it won't threaten anyone's benefits, it claims unanimous support among the conservative movement, it
strengthens First Amendment freedoms and it even already passed the House during the last Congress. And as icing on the
cake, it corrects one of the most notorious abuses of the Obama Administration and targets the perennially unpopular and
occasionally rogue IRS.
Koskinen
should be Imprisoned, not just Removed. A little bit more of the swamp was drained last Thursday when President
Trump announced that IRS Commissioner John Koskinen will be replaced when his term expires on November 12. Actually, Koskinen
deserves another term, not as IRS Commissioner, but as an inmate at Leavenworth. Merely replacing him is too little too late. [...]
Koskinen was an unindicted co-conspirator with Lois Lerner in the weaponizing of the IRS to target the Tea Party and other conservative
groups during the 2012 election cycle, something which helped get President Barack Hussein Obama reelected.
President
Trump Names Replacement for IRS Commissioner. The ongoing IRS leadership issue(s) will be interesting to watch
unfold in the future; especially for those who have followed the Treasury Dept. case against Robert Mercer, now a supporter
of President Trump, and how the self-interest unfolded in the 2016 election.
Why wasn't this done about eight months ago? Sessions
Makes Major Announcement on IRS Tea Party Scandal. It's common knowledge that President Obama's IRS unfairly
targeted tea party groups. The scandal began in 2010, but did not surface until 2013. Since that time, we've learned
how the agency delayed the tax-exempt statuses of dozens of conservative organizations. For about two years, the agency
worked off of a "Be On the Look Out" list for conservative labels, subjecting those groups to extra scrutiny. It's a
new era and now the Justice Department, under the purview of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, is beginning to make amends.
President Trump Names IRS Commissioner
to Replace John Koskinen. It's no secret that the IRS targeted conservatives during the Obama Administration —
and they got away with it too, for the most part. [...] It was just a coincidence that Lerner granted only ONE conservative group
non-profit status in three years? Sure. The IRS also fired people in connection with the scandal for unethical and even
criminal actions, but didn't have much trouble quickly rehiring 213 of them. When it comes to the IRS, there's plenty of swamp
to drain, and conservatives have been pressuring for the removal of current IRS commissioner John Koskinen to fully wipe out the
influence Obama imposed on the office. Back in March we reported that an off-the-record White House meeting with roughly
two dozen conservative leaders included explicit calls for President Trump to fire IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, according
to a source in the room, and their desires will be granted.
Sad
day for Speaker Paul Ryan? Trump sacks IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. The White House announced Thursday
[10/26/2017] President Donald J. Trump will not reappoint IRS Commissioner John Koskinen for a new five-year term.
Koskinen was three times the target of impeachment efforts by House conservatives, first by Chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz
(R.-Utah) and his House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and then twice by members of the House Freedom Caucus.
Each time, Speaker Paul D. Ryan Jr. (R.-Wis.) intervened both directly and through intermediaries, such as the current
chairman of House Oversight, Rep. Harold W. "Trey" Gowdy (R.-S.C.) to persuade conservatives to back down.
IRS
gives illegals welfare, forces Obamacare tax on Americans. [President] Trump has not fired John Koskinen as
Commissioner of the IRS. House conservatives wanted to impeach him when Obama was president for lying to Congress, but
everyone thought either way he would surely be fired on Trump's first day in office. He's still in power in his full
glory. Now he has announced that the IRS plans to enforce the individual mandate even against those who leave the
question blank on their tax forms, something the Obama administration didn't begin enforcing before the election.
Senators
bewildered by Equifax contract with IRS after hack. Members of Congress expressed bewilderment Wednesday that
credit reporting company Equifax, under siege after a data breach affecting more than 145 million people, has received a
$7.25 million contract with the IRS to validate the identity of taxpayers communicating with the agency on the telephone
or through its website.
IRS
involved in $5 million push to press Americans to buy ObamaCare. The Internal Revenue Service was involved in a
$5 million push to pressure Americans to buy Obamacare coverage, according to documents obtained from the watchdog group
Judicial Watch. Under former president Obama, the Department of Health and Human Services and the White House's
Behavioral Sciences Team created a $5 million program to target and pressure those who refused Obamacare and either
decided to pay a penalty instead or were exempt from being forced to purchase coverage.
Jeff
Sessions Gives Disgraced Obama-Era IRS Official Lois Lerner Get-Out-Of-Jail Free Card. Somebody wake up Jeff
Sessions and inform him he is supposed to be the Attorney General of the United States. The Sessions-led Justice
Department, which has acted much like its Democratic predecessors, has denied a Congressional request to prosecute Obama-era
IRS official Lois Lerner for any of her alleged illegal transgressions committed while targeting conservatives while at
Treasury. Lerner is now officially the newest member of The Swamp with a get-out-of-jail free card.
Trump
DOJ: No plans to charge Lois Lerner in IRS scandal. The Trump administration has no plans to charge former IRS
official Lois Lerner over her role in the Tea Party targeting scandal, the Justice Department said Friday [9/8/2017] in response to
calls by Republican lawmakers to revisit the case. In a letter to the lawmakers, the Justice Department said that "reopening
the criminal investigation would not be appropriate based on the available evidence." This past April, House Ways and Means
Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, and Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., had asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to take a
"fresh look" at the case.
Lois Lerner: Free
As A Bird — For Now. There's a name we haven't seen in the news for a while. What has former
IRS honcho Lois Lerner been up to since her somewhat abrupt "retirement" in the wake of the IRS scandal? Well, having
failed to secure a pardon from Barack Obama before he moved out of the Oval Office, there have been investigations going on
into her department's handling of conservative non-profit groups. This may have had Ms. Lerner a bit on the
nervous side for a while but now it appears that she can rest easy.
Trump's
DOJ won't pursue charges against Lois Lerner, former IRS senior executive. The Trump Justice Department has
once again cleared former IRS senior executive Lois G. Lerner of criminal liability stemming from the tea party
targeting. In a letter to top Republicans, Assistant Attorney General Stephen E. Boyd said they re-reviewed the
case and concluded there isn't enough evidence to charge Ms. Lerner, who was at the center of the targeting.
Mr. Boyd said the new review included lawyers who only recently joined the department and weren't part of the Obama
administration's earlier decision.
The Editor says...
Donald Trump was elected because he said he was going to go to Washington and "drain the swamp."
What part of the swamp affects voters most directly? The IRS. Letting Lois Lerner skate,
and leaving Rudy Koskinen in place is a betrayal of the voters.
Exclusive:
Mueller Enlists the IRS for His Trump-Russia Investigation. Special counsel Bob Mueller has teamed up with the
IRS. According to sources familiar with his investigation into alleged Russian election interference, his probe has enlisted
the help of agents from the IRS' Criminal Investigations unit. This unit — known as CI — is one
of the federal government's most tight-knit, specialized, and secretive investigative entities. Its 2,500 agents focus
exclusively on financial crime, including tax evasion and money laundering. A former colleague of Mueller's said he
always liked working with IRS' special agents, especially when he was a U.S. Attorney. And it goes without saying that
the IRS has access to Trump's tax returns — documents that the president has long resisted releasing to the public.
IRS
has rehired disgraced employees. Would you hire someone who had falsified documents or been convicted of
theft? Probably not. But then again, you're not the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Yes, according to an
inspector general's report, the agency in charge of collecting your tax dollars and safeguarding your private information has
rehired 213 employees guilty not only of the offenses mentioned above, but also of dodging taxes and of making unauthorized
use of taxpayer information. Not one or two, which would be bad enough. More than 200. Small wonder that
lawmakers determined to clean up the agency have faced such an uphill battle.
'Lay
it on the line': Judge in tea party case orders IRS to disclose employee names, reasons. A federal judge on
Thursday [8/17/2017] ordered the IRS to name the specific employees the agency blames for targeting tea party groups for intrusive
scrutiny and said the government must prove it has ceased the targeting. Judge Reggie B. Walton also said the IRS must
explain the reasons for the delays for 38 groups that are part of a lawsuit in the District of Columbia, where they are still
looking for a full accounting of their treatment. Judge Walton approved another round of limited discovery in the case and
laid out six questions that the IRS must answer, including the employees' names, why the groups were targeted and how the IRS has
tried to prevent a repeat.
Judge
Walton to IRS: "Lay it on the line". Among the imponderables staring us in the face in year 1 of the Trump
administration is John Koskinen. Why does this man remain Commissioner of the IRS? Speaking of Obama holdovers,
Koskinen is a beaut. I should have thought he was a prime candidate for sacking on day 1, though I don't recall
President Trump ever mentioning the scandals that have disgraced the IRS on the campaign trail. Koskinen has capably
served as a bureaucratic foot dragger, dissembler and apologist for the scandals involving the IRS targeting of Tea Party
groups. The IRS has persistently downplayed and misrepresented the facts underlying the scandals since former IRS
acting director of exempt organizations Lois Lerner mounted a carefully stage managed production to acknowledge them in May
2013. Litigation ensued. Engaging in a war of attrition, the IRS has dragged out the litigation and withheld basic
information. It has destroyed information responsive to congressional subpoenas.
Judge
Orders IRS To Disclose Employees Who Targeted Tea Party. In 2010, IRS employees improperly targeted
conservative groups. They targeted groups with "Tea Party" in their names. They gave conservative groups
increased scrutiny, while letting liberal groups skate through. Since it became public, the IRS has defended this
practice. They claimed they did nothing improper. They fought allegations in court. Tea Party groups fought
back, taking the IRS to court.
IRS
Rehires 213 Employees Ousted for Falsifying Documents, Avoiding Taxes, Other Offenses. The Internal Revenue
Service rehired 213 employees who ducked taxes, falsified documents, were convicted of theft, or made unauthorized use of
taxpayer data, an inspector general's report says. The Office of Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration,
which also first discovered the IRS' targeting of conservative groups in 2013, examined the agency's hiring from January 2015
through March 2016. For these 15 months, the IRS official in charge was Commissioner John Koskinen, an appointee of
President Barack Obama.
The
IRS is STILL toying with conservative nonprofits. Donald Trump promised to drain the swamp, and here's a seven-month progress report: The
Washington bog is still as wide and fetid as ever. Consider that Mr. Trump's Justice Department has inexplicably continued to defend the IRS's
misdeeds under President Obama. Voters put a Republican in the White House in part to impose some belated accountability on the scandal-laden Obama
administration. And the supreme scandal was the IRS's assault on tea-party groups — a campaign inspired by congressional Democrats, perpetrated
by partisan bureaucrats like Lois Lerner, and covered up by Mr. Obama's political appointees. This abuse stripped the right to political
speech from thousands of Americans over two election cycles. To this day, no one has answered for it.
IRS
Destroyed Laptops Containing Critical Records, says Inspector General. The IRS failed to adequately store,
backup, and search official records for use in Freedom of Information requests and other litigation, according to a new
report released by the Treasury Inspector General of Tax Administration. Performing an independent audit, TIGTA found:
["]The IRS's current e-mail system and record retention policies do not ensure that e-mail records are saved and can be
searched and retrieved for as long as needed. Additionally, repeated changes in electronic media storage policies, combined
with a reliance on employees to maintain records on computer hard drives, has resulted in cases in which Federal records were
lost or unintentionally destroyed.["]
Obama's
IRS doled out more than $24 billion in potentially bogus refunds. The IRS doled out more than $24 billion in
potentially bogus refunds claimed under several controversial tax credits in 2016, according to a new audit that said $118 million
was even paid to people who weren't authorized to work in the U.S. in the first place. Some $16.8 billion in payments were
made on improper claims under the Earned Income Tax Credit, signifying a 24 percent error rate. Investigators also
estimated $7.2 billion in improper payments for the Additional Child Tax Credit, representing 25 percent of the total,
and $1.1 billion in improper payments, or 24 percent, for a higher education tax credit.
IRS
finally agrees to clear last tea party case. The IRS has finally agreed to a process for deciding on the last
remaining nonprofit application that was snared in the Obama administration's tea party targeting, more than four years after
the illegal singling-out of conservative groups for special scrutiny was first revealed. In court filings this week,
the IRS acceded to rules governing how the tax agency will decide whether to grant nonprofit status to the Texas Patriots Tea
Party, which has been awaiting a decision for years. The agreement doesn't mean the group will be approved, but it sets
up a process for making a decision.
IRS
Destroyed Laptops Containing Critical Records, says Inspector General. The IRS failed to adequately store,
backup, and search official records for use in Freedom of Information requests and other litigation, according to a new
report released by the Treasury Inspector General of Tax Administration.
IRS
shuts down mom and pop dressmaker, sells dresses within hours. The unmarked vehicles arrived in the
morning. More than 20 armed agents poured out. Hours later, Mii's Bridal & Tuxedo was out of business after
serving customers for decades. Its entire inventory of wedding gowns and dresses as well as sewing machines and other
equipment were sold at auction. The hastily-called sale held inside the store netted the IRS about $17,000 —
not enough to cover the roughly $31,400 in tax debt alleged, court records show. The balance is now likely unrecoverable.
The
IRS Can Seize Your Money Based on a Hunch. This Bill Would Bring That to an End. The federal government
currently wields a tremendous amount of power over the citizens of the United States, far more than the Founders
intended. One manifestation of federal overreach is civil asset forfeiture. This practice allows the federal
government to confiscate the wealth of its citizens upon the mere suspicion of wrongdoing. The IRS, not content with
expropriating the wealth of its citizens on April 15 every year, has now taken up the practice of seizing funds that
have been involved in perfectly legal transactions on the basis of a hunch.
Trump
Gave The FBI New Life After Removing Comey, Now It's Time To Do The Same At The IRS. Congressman Ron DeSantis
from Florida says in an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation that the FBI has a "fresh start" following
James Comey's firing, and now it's time President Donald Trump clean out the IRS, starting with Commissioner John Koskinen.
IRS
official tells Congress it needs more money to improve customer service. Angry at the IRS for its poor
treatment of Americans? Then give the agency more money, Nina Olson, the National Taxpayer Advocate told Congress on
Tuesday [5/23/2017]. Just 40 percent of taxpayers who called to make payment arrangements were able to get through in the
most recent tax filing season — and those that did manage to connect had to wait on average more than 45 minutes,
said Ms. Olson, whose Office of the Taxpayer Advocate essentially functions as the public's "voice" at the federal
tax-collection agency. She said continual budget cuts from 2010 through 2016 ate into the IRS's ability to answer their
phone lines.
The Editor says...
The improvements wished for — but never really expected — by the American taxpayers don't require money.
They require common sense and fairness.
IG:
'IRS Overpaid More Than 600 Employees Approximately $4.2 Million'. The Internal Revenue Service, which is
responsible for collecting federal taxes and enforcing federal tax law, was unable to accurately deal with its own complex
rules governing the payment of its own employees and ended up overpaying more than 600 IRS workers about $4,200,000,
according to an audit report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. The IRS also underpaid more than
900 employees about $2,700,000, according to TIGTA's estimate. The inspector general found that the IRS's rules for how
it determines the correct pay for one of its own employees when he or she is promoted to a management position are "confusing."
Government
Burglars. [Scroll down] So, exactly what "enforcement" is the inspector general talking about?
Civil asset forfeiture. You know, that fancy, legalistic three-word phrase for stealing. Without investigating
the source of the money or even harboring minimal suspicion, and obviously without any charge being leveled, much less a
conviction, the IRS swoops in and seizes the money in a business's bank account. "IRS procedures dictate that the
overall purpose of its civil forfeiture program is to disrupt and dismantle criminal enterprises," notes the TIGTA.
Nonetheless, the report adds, "Most people impacted by the program did not appear to be criminal enterprises engaged in other
alleged illegal activity; rather, they were legal businesses such as jewelry stores, restaurant owners, gas station owners,
scrap metal dealers, and others." Why is the IRS going after hardworking business owners rather than criminals?
Simple. It's easier to rob unsuspecting innocents than devious crooks.
Fire the IRS chief
already, Mr. President. Why is IRS Commissioner John Koskinen still in office? A growing number of
Capitol Hill Republicans want to know — and they have good reason to be troubled. When he took over in 2013,
Koskinen was supposed to "fix" the IRS — and in particular get to the bottom of the scandal in which the agency deliberately
held up approvals for 75 conservative and Tea Party groups that had applied for legitimate tax exemptions. Instead, what
Congress and the public got from him was obstruction, open defiance and a refusal to discipline anyone at the agency. Indeed,
he seemed most concerned with running interference to shield the Obama administration from any embarrassment.
Republicans
want to know why Trump hasn't fired the IRS head. Nearly two months into the Trump administration, the IRS
commissioner House Republicans once threatened with impeachment remains on the job. John Koskinen's continued tenure
may be surprising, considering how aggressively Republicans went after him under the Obama administration. But despite
a sustained push by congressional Republicans to oust the IRS chief before his five-year term expires this November,
President Trump so far has made no move to do so. Just last week, Koskinen was seen in the Capitol and told
Fox News he was there to meet with "old friends." Asked if he intended to stay on as commissioner during the Trump
administration, Koskinen simply said, "They haven't talked to me."
Led
by Republican Study Committee, 50 House GOPers tell Trump to fire IRS chief. A faction of conservatives is
circumventing leadership brass and calling directly on President Trump to tell IRS Chief John Koskinen, "You're fired."
Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., will make the ask. The chairman of the Republican Study Committee has quietly but urgently
been circulating a letter inside the GOP conference to build support. He's now got 50 congressmen signed onto the
letter. While Trump has fleshed out his cabinet, so far, he's stayed hush about the fate of the IRS chief. And
conservatives really want Koskinen's head. "You have the authority to remove Commissioner Koskinen," Walker writes
to Trump, adding that "we encourage you to dismiss him in the most expedient manner practicable."
Trump Should
Kill The IRS Gag Rule On Pastors. [President Trump] has taken an oath to defend the Constitution. He can
prove he means it by barring IRS enforcement of an unconstitutional gag rule on pastors — more commonly referred
to as the Johnson Amendment. This rule, enacted in 1954 by then-Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson and his cohorts,
prohibits 501(c)(3) organizations from supporting (or opposing) political candidates, no matter how pro-life (or pro-abortion)
they may be. More to the point, it prohibits members of the clergy from doing so — at least those not named
Jackson, Wright, or Farrakhan.
IRS
Sent $46,378,040 in Refunds to 23,994 'Unauthorized' Aliens at One Atlanta Address. The Internal Revenue
Service sent 23,994 tax refunds worth a combined $46,378,040 to "unauthorized" alien workers who all used the same address in
Atlanta, Ga., in 2011, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). That was not the only
Atlanta address theoretically used by thousands of "unauthorized" alien workers receiving millions in federal tax refunds in
2011. In fact, according to a TIGTA audit report published last year, four of the top ten addresses to which the IRS sent
thousands of tax refunds to "unauthorized" aliens were in Atlanta. The IRS sent 11,284 refunds worth a combined
$2,164,976 to unauthorized alien workers at a second Atlanta address; 3,608 worth $2,691,448 to a third; and 2,386 worth
$1,232,943 to a fourth.
IRS
prioritized Obamacare over taxpayer customer service, inspector general. The IRS made the 2015 tax season more
painful for taxpayers than it should have been, the agency's inspector general said in a report Thursday that accused the
agency of cutting money for customer service and ignoring phone calls while moving the money over to keep Obamacare and other
administration priorities on track. IRS employees ignored more than 30 million phone calls from desperate taxpayers
seeking help in the run-up to the 2015 filing deadline — and those who did get through often waited a half-hour
before getting help. The IRS apologized publicly for the poor service and blamed Congress, saying lawmakers needed to
pony up more money if they wanted better results.
'Luxury'
living: Senate report finds IRS workers racked up huge travel tab. The IRS spent more than $1.4 million
on long-term travel for just 27 employees in fiscal 2015, including on high-end car services and luxury apartment and hotel
stays, a Senate report has found — with one lawmaker blasting "woefully insufficient efforts" to reduce expenses at
the agency. The Senate Finance Committee report, obtained by FoxNews.com, found that while federal guidelines say employees
must exercise the same care in incurring expenses as a "prudent person" traveling on personal business, IRS employees who
traveled 125 business days or more racked up an average cost of over $52,000 a year.
GOP
Establishment Blocks Effort To Impeach Koskinen. Despite the best efforts of outgoing Freedom Caucus Chairman
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), House Speaker Paul Ryan and the rest of the GOP establishment successfully blocked the effort to
impeach the corrupt IRS Commissioner, John Koskinen. [...] The pathetic excuse given by Ryan and other gutless invertebrates
was that a vote of impeachment just before their Christmas vacation would disrupt the legislative calendar for 2017. So,
what was their excuse back in September when Rep. Jordan originally suggested impeaching Koskinen? Oh yeah.
It was election season.
House
Votes To Refer Koskinen Impeachment Back To Committee. In a 342-72 vote, the House referred a motion to impeach
embattled IRS commissioner John Koskinen to the House Committee on the Judiciary. One hundred and sixty-six Republicans
joined 167 Democrats to squash House Freedom Caucus chairman Jim Jordan's attempt to oust the government official.
House
gently kills IRS impeachment resolution. House Republicans on Tuesday mercy-killed a resolution calling for the
impeachment of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, but did it their way, not the way most Democrats wanted to kill it off.
The resolution was put forward by House Freedom Caucus Chairman Jim Jordan, who argued Koskinen had not been forthcoming to
Congress about an investigation into the IRS targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. Jordan
announced the impeachment for "high crimes and misdemeanors," and outlined four articles of impeachment against Koskinen,
all revolving around the investigation into the IRS targeting.
House
Republicans derail impeachment effort against IRS commissioner. Republican leaders managed to derail
impeachment of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen on Tuesday, forcing the debate back to a committee for more study, where it
will die when Congress adjourns at the end of this year. It was a quiet end to a saga that had bedeviled GOP leaders
for more than a year, dating back to revelations that Mr. Koskinen misled a congressional investigation looking into the
tea party-targeting scandal and former IRS senior executive Lois G. Lerner's lost emails. Conservatives had been
agitating for impeachment, saying Mr. Koskinen should be punished for defying a subpoena and providing inaccurate
information.
GOP
leaders actively working to stop IRS impeachment. House Republican leaders remain opposed to a vote on
impeaching IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, and were actively working Tuesday to scuttle the vote before Congress leaves town
for the year this week. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the outgoing Freedom Caucus chairman, announced Tuesday that an
impeachment resolution would be introduced today [12/6/2016], setting up a vote later this week. But GOP leaders don't like
the move to force a vote, and have been working for months to prevent it from coming to the floor, including by trying to appease
proponents of the move by holding hearings on the embattled IRS leader.
A Banana Republic, If We Choose to Keep It. ##
In court documents made public in 2002, an IRS official admitted that legal opponents of former President Bill Clinton were singled out for tax audits,
including 10 more than 20 conservative organizations such as the Heritage Foundation and American Spectator magazine, as well as a number of individual
Clinton accusers, like Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers. If Hillary wins, she brings Bill with her to the White House.
Did
Weaponized IRS Leak Trump's Tax Returns? This idea will be immediately dismissed in some quarters as just
another conspiracy theory concocted by the vast right wing but it is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Several items
lend credence to the idea that the IRS has once become an arm of the political left targeting conservatives. Could it
really be just coincidence that Hillary Clinton focused on Trump's failure to release his tax returns, surmising that the
reason might be he hasn't been paying any taxes, just days before the New York Times printed pages from his 1995 return
showing a loss that "may have" allowed him to not pay taxes for the next 18 years? Was this Hillary's "October
surprise" for Trump?
IRS
set to use private debt collectors. The IRS announced Monday that it plans to start a new private
debt-collection program in the spring. The program was authorized by a transportation funding law enacted last
December. Contractors will work on the government's behalf to collect debts from taxpayers who owe money but whose
accounts are no longer being worked on directly by the IRS.
Trey
Gowdy Got The IRS To Admit That They Have NO IDEA What They're Doing. A while back, the IRS, on order from the
Obama Administration, was unfairly targeting and auditing conservative groups that didn't mesh with Obama's liberal
narrative. When pressed on the issue, the IRS commissioner, in a Congressional hearing, said that he denied any
wrongdoing, because of course he did. I'm willing to bet that he expected to walk out of that hearing with his head
held high and everyone else with their tail between their legs. And then he spoke to Trey Gowdy and got burned so badly
that he's gonna need medicated ointment for the next month. Gowdy get the IRS commissioner to admit, in front of the
American people, that he had no idea what "wrongdoing" even meant, since he had no working knowledge of the law. He
also admitted that the claims made by the Obama Administration were untrue, and likely made up to save face politically.
IRS
doesn't tell 1 million taxpayers that illegals stole their Social Security numbers. The IRS has discovered more
than 1 million Americans whose Social Security numbers were stolen by illegal immigrants, but officials never bothered to
tell the taxpayers themselves, the agency's inspector general said in a withering new report released Tuesday [8/30/2016].
Investigators first alerted the IRS to the problem five years ago, but it's still not fixed, the inspector general said, and
a pilot program meant to test a solution was canceled — and fell woefully short anyway.
Her
job was to help victims of identity theft. Instead, she used them to steal from the IRS. For Nakeisha
Hall, the IRS might as well have been the family business. The daughter of a longtime employee of the federal tax
collection agency, Hall started working for the IRS in 2000. A large chunk of her career was spent in Taxpayer Advocate
Service offices in four states, where she assisted people who had been victims of identity theft. But as Hall was helping
taxpayers, she was also using them to steal from the government, federal authorities said. Now, she is going to federal
prison: The 40-year-old former federal worker was sentenced Wednesday [8/10/2016] to more than nine years after pleading
guilty in an identity theft and tax fraud scheme that affected hundreds of taxpayers and netted hundreds of thousands of dollars
in fraudulent tax refunds, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Northern District of Alabama, in Birmingham.
In all, Hall attempted to steal more than $1 million, the government said. She successfully claimed more than $400,000.
IRS
hacked again — say goodbye to that PIN system!. In the wake of automated attacks speeding up, the US
tax overlords — the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) — has likewise sped up plans to deep-six its
repeatedly hacked PIN system. The IRS on Thursday [6/23/2016] announced that it's removed its electronic filing PIN tool
(e-File PIN), formerly available on IRS.gov or by toll-free phone call, following "additional questionable activity."
$3.1
billion — at least — lost in bogus tax refunds to ID thieves in 2014. The IRS has a
Taxpayer Protection Program (TPP) that sounds like it should provide security. It does, but not enough to prevent IRS
from paying $30 million to identity theft fraudsters in 2014, based on the 1.6 million screened by the program.
That's just one of the ways Uncle Sam fights identity theft fraud. About 7,200 of them were bogus. In total, IRS
processed more than 150 million individual tax returns in 2015. Overall, the GAO report indicates the IRS does a decent
job of detecting and stopping ID fraud, which is a big business. Crooks attempted to get $25.6 billion from bogus refunds
in 2014. The IRS beat them most of the time, stopping or recovering the theft of $22.5 billion, 88 percent of the
attempted pillage. But in the remaining cases, crooks got the $3.1 billion.
House
Conservatives Explain Latest IRS Chief Impeachment Push: 'Leadership Has Been Too Timid to Go After Corruption'. The House Freedom Caucus has launched a
pressure play against Republican leadership in an effort to force a vote on impeaching John Koskinen, commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service. Before Congress
skipped town Thursday for a seven-week recess, Reps. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., and John Fleming, R-La., filed a parliamentary measure known as a privileged resolution
on behalf of the Freedom Caucus. The effort hinges on maximizing public pressure on lawmakers during their summer recess, Huelskamp told The Daily Signal.
Conservatives hope that populist opposition to the IRS in congressional districts will translate into support for impeachment on Capitol Hill.
Conservatives
move to impeach IRS chief. Conservative House Republicans on Wednesday [7/13/2016] introduced a resolution to impeach Internal
Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen, something they hope can get a vote this week before Congress leaves for an extended summer
break. The resolution was introduced by Reps. John Fleming, R-La., and Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., a move that was welcomed by
Freedom Caucus Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. "I thank my colleagues John Fleming and Tim Huelskamp for their resolution to impeach IRS
Commissioner John Koskinen," he said. "Mr. Koskinen has failed the American people through gross negligence, dereliction of
duty, and violating the public trust."
Conservatives
move to impeach IRS chief. Conservative House Republicans on Wednesday [7/13/2016] introduced a resolution to impeach Internal
Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen, something they hope can get a vote this week before Congress leaves for an extended summer
break. The resolution was introduced by Reps. John Fleming, R-La., and Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., a move that was welcomed by
Freedom Caucus Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. "I thank my colleagues John Fleming and Tim Huelskamp for their resolution to impeach IRS
Commissioner John Koskinen," he said. "Mr. Koskinen has failed the American people through gross negligence, dereliction of duty,
and violating the public trust."
House
Freedom Caucus Members Introduce Resolution To Impeach IRS Commissioner. House Freedom Caucus (HFC) members
Reps. John Fleming of Louisiana and Tim Huelskamp of Kansas introduced a resolution to impeach IRS Commissioner John
Koskinen Wednesday [7/13/2016]. Republicans have been pushing for Koskinen's impeachment, alleging he misled Congress
and violated a subpoena related to the IRS targeting conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. "He deliberately
kept Congress and the American people in the dark, making materially false statements under oath," Fleming said in a statement.
"Koskinen needs to be held accountable and in this case that means impeachment. We can no longer wait."
Defying
Ryan, conservatives move to force vote on IRS impeachment. In defiance of Speaker Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) wishes,
Reps. John Fleming (R-La.) and Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) filed a privileged resolution after unveiling plans the day
before to introduce a measure to impeach IRS head John Koskinen. House rules state that "privileged" measures must be
acted on within two legislative days — meaning action is likely after Labor Day. The House is expected to
adjourn for a seven-week recess later Thursday afternoon [7/14/2016]. Any pro forma sessions, during which no legislative
business is conducted, that are held over the recess will constitute legislative days that count toward the resolution's
expiration. Consequently, the motion could expire as soon as next week while the House is out of session.
IRS
"Security" Program Unable to Stop $3.1 Billion Fraud. While it's absorbed persecuting law-abiding conservative
groups the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) can't seem to stop crooks from scamming it to the tune of several billion dollars
in one year alone via bogus tax refunds. It's the latest of many transgressions at the agency that's doubled as an
Obama administration tool to crack down on political adversaries. A special IRS security feature called Taxpayer
Protection Program (TPP) couldn't prevent criminals from scamming the agency out of an eye-popping $3.1 billion in one
year, according to a federal audit. TPP was implemented to curb an epidemic of identity theft that allows criminals to
fraudulently get tax refunds. Supposedly, identity theft fraud is reduced through a verification process but the federal
probe, conducted by the investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), found serious loopholes.
Impeachment
and the IRS Scandal: Should John Koskinen Face the Music? [Scroll down] As I understand it, the
instant matter involving Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen, pertains to an investigation into not a mere
"endeavor" (largely unsuccessful in the Nixon case) to abuse IRS powers but actual, concrete abuse, of those powers, including
"income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner." I further
understand that the instant matter involves the provision of false statements and withholding of evidence from Congress.
Why Does the IRS Need
Guns? Special agents at the IRS equipped with AR-15 military-style rifles? Health and Human Services
"Special Office of Inspector General Agents" being trained by the Army's Special Forces contractors? The Department
of Veterans Affairs arming 3,700 employees? The number of non-Defense Department federal officers authorized to make
arrests and carry firearms (200,000) now exceeds the number of U.S. Marines (182,000). In its escalating arms and
ammo stockpiling, this federal arms race is unlike anything in history.
Report:
IRS Spent $11 Million On Guns, Ammo In The Past 10 Years. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) seems to be
building an army. The IRS spent nearly $11 million on guns, ammunition and "military-style equipment" between 2006 and
2014, according to a new report. IRS investment in heavy firearms and tactical gear is a new trend for the agency, but
it follows a pattern of militarization repeated throughout the executive branch of the government.
Something tells me he won't miss a minute of sleep over this. House
committee votes to censure IRS commissioner. A House committee passed a resolution Wednesday [6/15/2016] to
condemn and censure IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. On a partisan 23-15 vote, the GOP-led House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee moved to deny Koskinen his government pension and get him out of office. Spearheaded by
chair Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), Republicans say Koskinen lied to Congress about ex-employee Lois Lerner and allowed key email
evidence to be destroyed in an investigation of how the IRS targeted conservative groups. "Mr. Koskinen's
misconduct deserves condemnation and censure from the Congress," Chaffetz said.
Impeach
John Koskinen. Jason Chaffetz wants to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. Orrin Hatch doesn't want
him to. Chaffetz is in the right this time. Koskinen is not the central figure in the IRS scandal, which found
the federal tax agency being used to harass and bully conservative organizations in the run-up to the 2012 election.
But he is a culpable figure. Specifically, it was under his watch that hundreds of backup tapes containing tens of
thousands of e-mails — e-mails that were under congressional subpoena — were illegally destroyed,
inhibiting investigation into the agency's wrongdoing. The intentional destruction of evidence under subpoena is a
crime, and a serious one. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has voted 23-15 for a bill that would
officially censure Koskinen, who was IRS commissioner when that evidence was illegally destroyed, and demand his resignation
or removal, as well as the forfeiture of his pension. Representative Chaffetz has made it clear that if removing
Koskinen requires impeaching him, then that is what Republicans will pursue. Indeed, the House Judiciary Committee
already is considering impeachment.
The Editor says...
Orrin Hatch is the worst kind of RINO if he is protecting John Koskinen from impeachment.
New
Report Shows IRS Failed to Notify 100,000 Taxpayers on Data Breach. The report revealed more than 350,000
people had information breached. Originally, the IRS counted about 220,000. On Thursday [6/9/2016], Tea Party
Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler commented on the hack. "Here's the thing — these guys [the IRS], I don't
know what century they're operating in, but they're not using what's called multi-factor authentication security," Meckler
told the FOX Business Network's Charles Payne. "Every financial institution uses this. The IRS wasn't using
it. That's why the hack happened." Meckler blasted IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, saying the Republicans
should move to impeach the agency's leader.
IRS
computer hack was worse than agency admitted. The IRS's computer hack was worse than previously admitted, and
the tax agency failed to alert thousands of people that their information was stolen, and didn't give credit monitoring
assistance to nearly 80,000 others who were targeted, an inspector general said Wednesday [6/8/2016]. The Treasury
Inspector General for Tax Administration says nearly 1 million accounts were potentially targeted, and nearly 360,000 people
actually had their accounts broken into. That's far more than the 220,000 hacks the tax agency initially acknowledged.
The
case for impeaching the IRS Commissioner. Last week the House Judiciary Committee held its first hearing on whether to impeach
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner John Koskinen for obstructing justice, providing false testimony to Congress, disregarding Congressional
subpoenas, and stonewalling a congressional investigation. Civil servants like Mr. Koskinen have historically been held to a higher
standard than private citizens because they have fiduciary obligations to the public. Under Mr. Koskinen's leadership, the IRS has
breached these basic fiduciary responsibilities. Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 65 that the power to impeach a civil
servant would protect the public against "the abuse or violation of some public trust." At nearly every turn, Koskinen both abused his
power and violated the public's trust in the IRS.
The Editor says...
It's not that difficult to violate the public's trust in the IRS. Who among us trusts the IRS at all?
You
Don't Have to Be a Criminal for the IRS to Seize Your Bank Account. Like many other police agencies, the IRS
has extensive and easily abused civil-forfeiture powers. The idea behind civil forfeiture is that criminals should not
be allowed to profit from their crimes, and that their ill-gotten loot — cash, cars, real estate —
should find its way to the public fisc. In practice, that does happen, but forfeiture also provides a sweet stream of
lightly overseen revenue for police agencies, hence the temptation to abuse. As those who followed the horrifying case
of former House speaker Dennis Hastert know, there exists a class of financial crime called "structuring," a variation on
money-laundering. Federal law requires banks to report transactions of $10,000 or more. As a result, criminals
involved in cold-cash enterprises such as prescription-opiate trafficking or political corruption often limit their bank
withdrawals to amounts just under the reporting threshold in order to avoid detection.
IRS took $43M
from Americans under 'structuring' law without evidence. The IRS has seized $43 million from more than 600
individuals by accusing them of violating "structuring" laws even when there has been no evidence of criminal wrongdoing,
according to testimony heard at the House Ways and Means Committee today [5/26/2016]. In 2012, two armed IRS agents went
to the farm of Randy Sowers, a dairy farmer for over three decades, to notify him that the IRS had seized the business' bank
account, which held more than $60,000. The agents told Sowers the IRS had done so because of structuring laws.
IRS Took $43
Million From Innocent Americans Under 'Structuring' Law. The IRS has seized $43 million from more than 600
individuals by accusing them of violating "structuring" laws even when there has been no evidence of criminal wrongdoing,
according to testimony heard at the House Ways and Means Committee today [5/26/2016]. In 2012, two armed IRS agents
went to the farm of Randy Sowers, a dairy farmer for over three decades, to notify him that the IRS had seized the business'
bank account, which held more than $60,000. The agents told Sowers the IRS had done so because of structuring
laws. When an individual conducts a cash transaction in excess of $10,000, according to federal law, the bank must
file a currency transaction report with the Treasury Department. It is unlawful for an individual to break up or
"structure" cash deposits into amounts below $10,000 to avoid federal currency reporting.
Has
the IRS Been Illegally Deleting Records? The Cause of Action Institute (CoA) filed a legal complaint against the Internal
Revenue Service for illegally destroying records Tuesday [5/24/2016], at the same time that IRS commissioner John Koskinen approaches an
impeachment trial before Congress. In the complaint, CoA alleges that the IRS and Koskinen refused to "capture and preserve"
employees' electronic communication dealing with official business, as the law requires.
First,
the IRS Took $68K From Connecticut Bakers. Now, It's Investigating Them. [Scroll down] David
Vocatura had made cash deposits of under $10,000 into the bakery's account, but only after a bank employee called the bakery
in 2007 to tell them that deposits of more than that amount required them to submit additional paperwork. "The
terminology that they used was never really explained to us in detail," David Vocatura told The Daily Signal. "We just
thought it was an inconvenience or a nuisance for [the bank]." Regardless of the bank employee's instructions, the IRS
agents told David Vocatura that he had broken the law, which gave the tax agency the authority to empty the bakery's bank
account, containing $68,382.22. And the IRS did.
IRS
improperly paid $15.6 billion through Earned Income Tax Credit program. The IRS erroneously paid out an
estimated $15.6 billion in Earned Income Tax Credit payments in fiscal year 2015, according to a Treasury Inspector General
for Tax Administration report. A low-income worker can receive refundable tax credits from the Earned Income Tax Credit
program when they meet certain requirements for income and age. The $15.6 billion in improper payments identified
by the inspector general represented 23.8 percent of total earned income credits paid out in that fiscal year.
According to the Office of Management and Budget, an improper payment is a transfer that should not have been made, was made
in the incorrect amount, or was made to an ineligible recipient.
Suit:
IRS Colluded With Union To Delete Records, Broke Federal Law. A government accountability group is suing the
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Commissioner John Koskinen for allegedly violating federal law by regularly deleting
official records as part of an agreement with its government employee union. The IRS has an agreement with the National
Treasury Employees Union that prohibits the agency from saving any instant message records of its employees, documents
obtained by Cause of Action Institute — the group suing the IRS — show.
'Koskinen
has misled us': House weighs impeaching IRS chief. Members of the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday weighed
evidence against Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen, who faces an impeachment resolution in the House.
"On his watch, volumes of information crucial to the investigation into the IRS targeting scandal were destroyed," said
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the Judiciary Committee. "Before the tapes were destroyed, congressional
demands, including subpoenas, for information about the IRS targeting scandal went unanswered."
The IRS boss
is just begging to be impeached. Four years after the IRS hobbled conservative groups by targeting them for
extra scrutiny, the agency's still playing politics. No wonder Congress is looking to impeach its boss, John
Koskinen. At a House Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, Republican lawmakers gave specific reasons for their move:
his lies under oath, his flouting of a congressional subpoena — and his repeated defiance. Koskinen's
response? Ha! He didn't even bother to show up.
IRS
to Face Lawmakers After Thousands Seized From Small Business Owners. For more than four years, Maryland dairy
farmer Randy Sowers has been fighting the federal government, asking it to right what many say was a wrong. In Feb.
2012, two federal agents told Sowers, who owns South Mountain Creamery in Frederick, Md. that the Internal Revenue Service
was seizing more than $60,000 from his farm's bank account under a subset of civil forfeiture laws governing cash
transactions. According to the IRS, Sowers had committed structuring violations. Structuring is the act of making
consistent cash deposits or withdrawals of under $10,000 to avoid government reporting requirements. But the dairy
farmer didn't know he was doing anything wrong, and because Sowers and his wife sold milk at local farmer's markets —
where customers paid primarily in cash — they frequently made cash deposits into the business's bank account.
IRS Chief Skips Own Impeachment
Hearing. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen will not appear at a Tuesday [5/24/2016] impeachment hearing examining
allegations of his misconduct despite an invitation to testify from the House Judiciary Committee. As reported by
Politico, the IRS says the Commissioner Koskinen does not have time to "fully prepare" because he just returned from
China. The agency claims that he was not given enough notice of the hearing, which was scheduled more than a week
ago. The hearing is the first step in examining findings from the House Oversight Committee, which last year called for
Koskinen's impeachment.
Congress
Takes New Steps to Impeach IRS Chief John Koskinen. House Republicans will soon take the next steps necessary
in their bid to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. On Tuesday [5/24/2016], the House Judiciary Committee plans to
hear testimony and examine charges that Koskinen obstructed a congressional investigation into the agency's treatment of
conservative groups. While Koskinen is willing to appear at a second hearing in June, the Internal Revenue Service told
Politico that the 76-year old commissioner was not able to prepare adequately for the Tuesday hearing. So the nation's
top taxman won't show.
Koskinen
will not appear at IRS impeachment hearing. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen will not appear Tuesday [5/24/2016]
at a "misconduct" hearing at which Republicans will lay out a case to impeach him for allegedly failing to comply with a
congressional subpoena, the IRS told POLITICO. Lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee summoned the tax chief to
answer accusations from the House Oversight panel that he failed to preserve documents Congress requested for its probe of
the IRS tea party scandal. They also say Koskinen didn't tell the full truth about erased backup tapes containing
copies of emails belonging to former IRS official Lois Lerner.
IRS
chief: I've never spoken to Lois Lerner. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has declined to testify in his
own defense at a congressional hearing Tuesday, but insisted in a statement that his bungling of a subpoena doesn't rise to
the level of "treason, or high crimes and misdemeanors" needed for him to be impeached. The Judiciary Committee hearing
is being viewed by some House Republicans as the precursor to impeachment, with the House's top investigator saying
Mr. Koskinen defied a congressional subpoena that demanded all of former IRS senior executive Lois G. Lerner's
emails be preserved as part of the investigation into tea party targeting.
Chairman
Wants IRS Commissioner Censured for False Statements, Impeding Investigation. The chairman of the House
Oversight and Government Reform Committee introduced a resolution today [5/18/2016] to censure IRS Commission John Koskinen
for a lack of cooperation with the panel's investigation of the agency's targeting of conservative groups. It demands
that Koskinen be fired and have his pension stripped away.
Closing in? Obama crony
faces impeachment. A powerful House committee has moved to impeach the head of the Internal Revenue Service,
saying he violated the public trust and illegally targeted conservative groups. After two years of investigation into
the IRS, Republicans have finally had enough. On Friday [5/13/2016], the Judiciary Committee announced two hearings on
impeachment of IRS commissioner John Koskinen, an appointee of President Barack Obama.
House
to hold IRS 'impeachment' hearing for Koskinen over Lerner emails. House Republicans on Friday [5/13/2016] announced
hearings to investigate whether IRS Commissioner John Koskinen misled Congress and violated a subpoena, taking the first steps that
could ultimately lead to his impeachment over the tax agency's tea party targeting. Impeachment is still very unlikely,
particularly given the short amount of work days left in this Congress and in the Obama administration's tenure overall. But
conservatives are intent on exploring Mr. Koskinen's actions after the IRS was ordered to preserve and turn over documents
related to targeting of tea party groups — and particularly emails from former senior executive Lois G. Lerner.
Claiming
a Scalp from the IRS. Nearly two years have passed since IRS Commissioner John Koskinen's famous testimony
before the House Oversight Committee. His testimony in relation to the scandalous claim that its tax exemption division
tied up the applications of conservative groups and, thus, limited their ability to participate in political activities in
2012 was judged by many to be unsatisfactory, at best. For those less inclined to be so charitable, Koskinen's
testimony was deemed insulting, flippant, and actively misleading. On Friday, House Republicans invited the IRS
commissioner back to Capitol Hill, but the offer was hardly cordial. Koskinen will be testifying in hearings that will
determine whether or not the House of Representatives will vote to impeach him over the allegation that he misled Congress
and violated the terms of a subpoena.
House
sets hearings on impeaching IRS chief. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen faces misconduct hearings before the
House Judiciary Committee, due to what lawmakers say is stonewalling of the congressional probe into the agency's targeting
of Tea Party groups. "The fact that officials at the IRS wielded their power to target certain Americans for their
political views is both outrageous and contrary to our nation's values," committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said Friday
afternoon. "Despite repeated congressional efforts to get to the bottom of this matter, Obama administration officials,
including the IRS commissioner, have consistently undermined the investigation."
Lawmakers
demand IRS explain how it found the money for hundreds of new agents. The supposedly cash-strapped IRS is
facing tough questions from Congress after claiming it just found the money to hire hundreds more enforcement
employees. Commissioner John Koskinen — who previously has cited budget woes to explain the agency's shaky
customer service and other issues — recently announced they found the "resources" to hire between 600 and 700 new
tax enforcement employees. The agency says those extra "resources" resulted from high attrition rates and worker
efficiency, but skeptical lawmakers are demanding answers. "It was only weeks ago that they were saying they did not
have the money [to hire more employees] and today they do have the money?" House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz said.
Top
Republican to IRS: You say you're broke. How can you afford 700 new employees? The chairman of a
powerful House committee is demanding to know how IRS chief John Koskinen has found the money to hire up to 700 enforcement
staff when he told Congress a short time ago his agency was more or less broke. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah),
chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform panel, reminded the IRS commissioner in a letter that he told lawmakers
in February that he "urgently needed" a billion-dollar budget increase next year to boost the agency's enforcement staff.
IRS
Can Track Your Cell Phone, but Leaves Billions in Taxes Uncollected. While the Internal Revenue Service
continues to leave uncollected tax money on the table, the agency beefed up its surveillance capabilities in a move that
alarms both conservative and liberal privacy advocates. Now some complain the IRS is acting too much like Big Brother
and not enough like a traditional taxman. Since 2006, the IRS has overseen an annual tax gap — the shortfall
between taxes owed and collected — of about $385 billion, government analysts say. And according to an April
report, the agency has not implemented 70 of 112 actions identified by the Government Accountability Office to close that
loop. In 2009, though, the IRS purchased a "cell-site simulator," more commonly known as Stingray technology. And
since November, the agency has been trying to buy another of the devices.
Watchdog:
IRS workers steal taxpayer data to plunder the Treasury. The Treasury Department's Inspector General for Tax
Administration said this week that three current and former IRS employees have been caught trying to steal money as taxpayers
try to pay off their tax debts. In one case, former Missouri IRS employee Demetria Brown was sentenced in February
after pleading guilty to wire fraud and identity theft. Her scheme was to obtain people's personal information, like
Social Security Numbers and dates of birth, to file fraudulent federal and state tax returns.
House
would ban IRS from rehiring people fired for misconduct. The Internal Revenue Service would have a harder time
rehiring former employees with past misconduct under legislation passed by the House on Thursday [4/21/2016]. The
legislation, introduced by Rep. Kristi Noem, R-S.D., would prevent the IRS from rehiring employees who have already
been fired for certain forms of misconduct, such as accessing taxpayer information without permission, filing false documents
or not doing their own taxes. The measure easily passed by a 345-78 vote. It advanced following a February 2015
report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration that chided the IRS for rehiring hundreds of former
employees with conduct issues. The review found nearly 20% of the rehired staff had performance issues when they
returned to the IRS.
Rep.
Kristi Noem: IRS Is Rehiring Employees Fired for Misconduct. House Republicans are aiming at the Internal
Revenue Service this week, taking up four bills to ensure integrity in hiring and better customer service. "We have
recently learned...that IRS employees that have been fired for misconduct have been rehired" in the last several years,
Rep. Kristi Noem (R-S.D.) told a news conference on Tuesday [4/19/2016]. "Now some of this may involve falsifying
documents — they failed to pay their own taxes. They may have been fired for accessing sensitive taxpayer
information without permission. In fact, one employee had missed up to eight weeks of work without permission, had
actually stamped on their personnel file, 'Do not rehire' — and the IRS chose to rehire them."
Jason
Chaffetz Wants to Use 'Atrophied' Muscle of Impeachment Against IRS Commissioner. The chairman of the House
Oversight and Government Reform Committee wants Congress to impeach wayward government agents more often, and he'd like GOP
leadership to start with Commissioner of Internal Revenue John Koskinen. In an interview with The Daily Signal,
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, likened impeachment "to a muscle that has atrophied over time," and said he wants to "Get
that muscle working again — this should be a common occurrence, this shouldn't be once in a century."
White
House rejects demand to boost IRS integrity. Just as some 5 million Americans are rushing to meet Monday's [4/18/2016] tax
return deadline, the White House took the unusual step of dumping on three House bills that demand that the IRS improve its integrity.
The Office of Management and Budget, in its "statement of administration policy," said the bills would hurt the IRS, though they are just
in the first stage of consideration. One bill would block the IRS from hiring any employees until Treasury certifies that no IRS
employee has a seriously delinquent debt. A second would ban bonuses to employees the IRS develops and implements a comprehensive
customer service strategy.
Fiery
GOP rhetoric about impeaching IRS chief rings hollow after decades of inaction on tax code reform. Anger at the
IRS has rarely been higher. Politicians gripe about a calcified tax code that Congress hasn't overhauled since 1986.
Yet 30 years later, lawmakers get on the stump and campaign about the necessity of renovating the nation's tax system. [...]
Yet little changes. Antagonists are crucial in politics. Politicians need to cast themselves as caped superheroes,
warring against the evils of the state. Lawmakers appear to have perfect adversaries in the IRS and an outdated tax code.
Eliminate the IRS and pass tax reform and suddenly lawmakers are deprived of foes. As a political issue, it might not be better
to change anything.
IRS
Giving Tax Credits to Illegals Who've Engaged in Identity Theft. In a typical year, April 15 is Tax Day when
hard-working Americans cede over an enormous amount of their income to the federal government so they can redistribute it to
all sorts of special interests and protected classes, including illegal aliens. You heard that right. The IRS has
admitted to knowingly granting refundable tax credits, which work as back door welfare payments, to illegal aliens who break
the law and steal Social Security numbers to obtain employment and file their taxes. During a meeting of the Senate
Finance Committee, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen admitted to Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN) that illegal aliens were stealing
Social Security numbers and using them to receive refundable tax credits through their annual returns. Worse, he felt
it was a good thing they were filing and didn't seem committed to stopping it.
Federal
judge calls IRS untrustworthy in tea party case. A federal judge said the IRS isn't to be trusted as he and his
colleagues tried Thursday [4/14/2016] to figure out whether the tax agency is still targeting tea party groups for intrusive and illegal
scrutiny. Judge David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said there is strong evidence that
the IRS violated the constitutional rights of the groups when it delayed their nonprofit status applications and asked inappropriate
questions about their political beliefs. The agency's insistence that it has retrained employees and instructed managers to behave
better did not mollify the judges, who said past IRS behavior doesn't lend itself to the benefit of the doubt.
Conservatives
Renew Campaign to Impeach IRS Commissioner. In time for tax season, members of the Freedom Caucus are calling
on House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., to deliver the head of IRS
Commissioner John Koskinen on a political platter. As most of Congress heads out of town for the weekend, a handful of
members filed onto the House floor Thursday evening [4/14/2016] and renewed an effort to impeach the nation's top
taxman. They argued that the IRS infringed on free speech when they unfairly targeted conservative groups and they
blamed Koskinen for obstructing a congressional investigation into the agency's conduct.
The
IRS Is Still Trying to Be Your Friend. It's hard to imagine now, but until about the middle of the 20th
century, relatively few people filled out Form 1040. The IRS — then known as the Bureau of Internal Revenue —
did little outreach, and when it did, the rare taxpayers who sought assistance actually spoke with deputy collectors of internal
revenue, relatively high-ranking government officials who probably knew the tax code inside and out. Things began to change
during World War II, when Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1942, which forced many more Americans to pay taxes. That's when
the trouble began.
Ted
Cruz: The IRS 'Is Facilitating Illegal Immigration'. Cruz said he admits it's not an easy endeavor to
abolish the IRS, but that a "mandate from the people" in 2016 would propel the effort. [...] Cruz went on to emphasize his
plan to abolish the federal Department of Education, sending the money back to the states and allowing more local control of
schools. He also expressed, in relation to constitutional conservatism and the Tenth Amendment, that he would not
interfere with states' rights to determine for themselves on issues like marijuana legalization.
The
IRS again fails to protect taxpayer information. On 12 April 2016, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA)
released its 28 March 2016 Letter Report describing the IRS's failure to effectively sanitize personal information such as Social Security
numbers from OICs availed for public inspection. This includes inadequate ballpoint pen cross-outs of the information where the Social
Security number is still discernible. [...] The IRS has been on notice since at least as far back as 1979 that identity theft is a problem
warranting its serious attention. This author and others have expounded at length in these pages, quite profusely, on the IRS's
continuing failure to adequately protect the identities of taxpayers who necessarily entrust personal information to it.
IRS
says it's OK for illegal aliens to use fraudulent Social Security numbers. There is no longer the rule of law
in America, and government is the worst offender. The Obama administration has become a lawless administration.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) under the Obama administration targeted conservatives and Christians for special scrutiny
and even plotted to imprison conservatives. Even when it was discovered, IRS officials like Lois Lerner were not held
accountable, which means the IRS can violate the rights of conservatives and Christians with impunity. The latest case
in point: Earlier today, the Gollum-like IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told a Congressional hearing that the IRS
doesn't have a problem with illegal immigrants using fraudulent Social Security numbers to file their taxes, because they're
doing that for "a legitimate reason". By "legitimate reason," Koskinen means tax revenue.
IRS
Chief's Resume: Lying to Congress, encouraging illegal aliens to steal SSNs to use to file taxes.
Remember how the bumbling, idiotic, corrupt, feckless, toad-like losers in Republican leadership followed through with their
threats to impeach IRS chief John Koskinen for lying to Congress? Me neither. [...] Yes, the disgusting, pathetic,
nefarious, amoral miscreants who pretend to be our "leaders" in Congress have done absolutely nothing to deal with
Koskinen's high crimes and misdemeanors, even though legal experts have stated that it would be "utterly irresponsible" not
to impeach him.
IRS
chief: Agency encourages illegal immigrant theft of SSNs to file tax returns. The IRS is struggling to ensure
that illegal immigrants are able to illegally use Social Security numbers for legitimate purposes, the agency's head told
senators on Tuesday [4/12/2016], without allowing the numbers to be used for "bad" reasons. IRS Commissioner John
Koskinen made the statement in response to a question from Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., during a session of the Senate
Finance Committee about why the IRS appears to be collaborating with taxpayers who file tax returns using fraudulent
information. Coats said that his staff had discovered the practice after looking into agency procedures.
IRS
Denied Tax-Exempt Status to 57 Religious Groups in 2015. The IRS denied tax-exempt status to 57 religious or
charitable groups in 2015, according to recent data from agency. The IRS rejected a total of 67 applications for
tax-exempt status in 2015, and religious groups comprised the majority of denials. There were 92,653 total applications
by religious and charitable groups in 2015. Of those applications, 86,915 were approved, 57 were denied, and 5,681 were left
in limbo. Attorney Jordan Sekulow, executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice, represents a number of
conservative and pro-life non-profit organizations that have faced long battles to have their tax-exempt status approved by the
IRS. Among his clients, two are still awaiting determination by the IRS — one group has been waiting for
more than six years, and another for nearly six years.
Lawmakers
Urge IRS, Justice Department to Return $29K Seized from Dairy Farmers. A bipartisan group of lawmakers on the
House Ways and Means Committee is urging the Justice Department, Treasury Department, and Internal Revenue Service to return
money "inappropriately" seized by the IRS under civil asset forfeiture. Led by Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Peter
Roskam, R-Ill., and Ranking Member John Lewis, D-Ga., the group of 14 lawmakers also called on the agencies to give property
owners the opportunity to petition the government for funds seized for structuring violations, which involve making
consistent cash transactions of just under $10,000 to avoid bank reporting requirements.
California
AG Kamala Harris wants your private information from the IRS. Charity donor information on Schedule B is protected under federal
law as confidential. Charities and their donors worry that imperious, uber-liberal Ms. Harris will leak this confidential information to
their ideological opponents and her allies. Among its various acts of lawlessness and lawbreaking, Lois Lerner's IRS was caught leaking
this type of confidential donor information of the National Organization for Marriage to its opponents.
IRS
Has Answered Only 15.6 Percent of Calls This Tax Filing Season. The IRS has answered only 15.6 percent of
customer service calls during the 2016 tax-filing season so far, according to testimony from the Treasury Inspector General
for Tax Administration. As of Feb. 27, 2016, there were 40.5 million attempted calls on toll-free assistance
lines to contact the IRS. Agents answered only 6.3 million calls, or 15.6 percent of the total. After
the call was routed to the call center, customers waited on the phone for 9.6 minutes before they were able to speak with
an agent.
IG:
More Than 1,000 IRS Employees Misused Government Charge Cards; Wrote 325 Bad Checks. The Treasury Inspector
General for Tax Administration revealed in a recently released audit report that in fiscal years 2010 and 2011 more than
1,000 Internal Revenue Service employees misused government charge cards issued by Citibank. The report said that during
the two years in question agency employees sent Citibank a total of 325 bad checks written on personal accounts that had
insufficient funds to cover them, that agency officials with top-secret security clearances had their charge accounts
suspended for failure to pay the balances, and that the IRS had a tendency of being "overly lenient" in disciplining
those who misued the cards.
Treasury
Secretary: Don't Blame IRS for Its 'Bad Performance Record'. "I find it unacceptable to preside over an agency
that has no choice but to have such a bad performance record, because it doesn't have people answering the phones," Treasury
Secretary Jack Lew told Congress on Tuesday [3/8/2016]. "You go to the call centers, and there are empty seats.
That's why the phones don't get answered." He called it "terrible."
IRS:
Er, those 100,000 tax records illegally accessed? Make that over 700,000. The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
has admitted that its problem with "Get transcript" scammers is much worse than first thought — over seven times
as bad to be precise. In May of 2015, the IRS reported that around 100,000 people had had their tax returns and income
forms sent out to criminals who gamed its "Get transcript" feature by providing stolen personal information between February and
mid-May that year. In August, that number rose by 220,000 following a further review. On Friday, America's most-disliked
public agency said that number had risen to over 700,000, with another 295,000 attempts to steal taxpayer transcripts.
Rewarding
a Corrupt IRS with a Bigger Budget: Another "Own Goal" by the GOP. The good thing about being nonpartisan is
that I can freely criticize (or even praise) policy makers without giving any thought to whether they have an R or D
after their name. That doesn't mean Republicans and Democrats are the same, at least with regards to rhetoric. The two
big political parties in the United States ostensibly have some core beliefs. And because of that, it is sometimes very
revealing to identify deviations.
IRS:
Cyber hackers got info on roughly 700K taxpayers, double earlier estimate. The IRS acknowledged Friday [2/26/2016] that cyber hackers
have stolen Social Security numbers and other information from more than 700,000 taxpayers — roughly double the number the agency previous
estimated. The cyber thieves hacked into the agency's "Get Transcripts" system in which taxpayers get returns and other previous-year
filings. The breach, believed to have been carried out in Russia by a criminal operation, was discovered in May 2015, and the increase was
reported first by The Wall Street Journal. The IRS originally said information was taken from about 113,000 taxpayers.
Top
5 Reasons to Impeach IRS Chief John "One Step Shy of Perjury" Koskinen. Taxpayers deserve a transparent, accountable
government, starting with Commissioner John Koskinen's complacency in uncovering the truth in the Lois Lerner conservative
targeting scandal. The agency has continually displayed extraordinary lack of responsibility. Koskinen has also proven
to be incapable of correctly handling taxpayer dollars, protecting them from identity theft, fraud, and even lied to the American
people and Congress. Clearly, the agency is in desperate need of reform and new leadership.
IRS chief: We don't hire tax
cheaters anymore. The Internal Revenue Service has adopted policies that prohibit staffers who cheat on their taxes from working there, the agency's
head told senators on Wednesday [2/10/2016]. "I have no indication that anyone working for the IRS has not followed the updated procedures," IRS
Commissioner John Koskinen told the Senate Finance Committee. He added that those who hired tax cheats in the past "were operating under a different
set of rules and regulations." A 2015 report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that 1,580 employees at the agency had willfully
failed to pay their taxes, while 18,300 did so unintentionally. Of those who willfully failed, the IG found 61 percent retained their positions.
ObamaCare Has Made The IRS A
Shambles. The IRS admitted to Congress what many suspect: That its abysmal customer service and failure to protect taxpayer data
are because it's diverted its resources to ObamaCare. Now it wants another billion. House Republicans were flabbergasted when Internal
Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen asked the House Appropriations Committee for another $1 billion for the IRS budget for fiscal 2017,
following the $290 million increase he got in fiscal 2016. An extra billion is a 12% beef-up for the agency's budget. Seems the
customer service is a shambles, with 8 million, or half, of calls from taxpayers seeking to comply with the law going unanswered. And
for those who do get through, it takes an average of 23 minutes on hold.
The IRS Says Identity Thieves Hacked
Its Systems Again. Identity thieves attempted to breach computer systems at the Internal Revenue Service to
file fraudulent tax refunds. The criminals were especially after E-file PINs, which are used by some individuals to
electronically file a return, the agency said in a statement released Tuesday [2/9/2016]. Around 464,000 unique social
security numbers were involved, and of that total, 101,000 SSNs were used to successfully access an E-file PIN. The
thieves used personal taxpayer data that was stolen elsewhere to help generate the PINs, the agency said. No personal
data was compromised or disclosed by IRS systems, and affected taxpayers will be notified by mail of the attack.
IRS
Kept $4.75 Billion in Overpayments That Taxpayers Can No Longer Claim Back. When a taxpayer sends a payment to
the IRS, and the IRS is unable to determine which taxpayer's account the payment is for, the money is applied to the
unidentified remittance file. This usually happens when a taxpayer submits a payment to the IRS but does not file a tax
return. A rule within the IRS, known as the refund statute, puts a deadline on how long taxpayers can claim a refund on
their overpayment of taxes. If the taxpayer doesn't turn in a tax return to the IRS within that deadline, the payment is
moved to the excess collection file. Currently, the excess collection file holds $5.81 billion, a figure that has
increased by 23 percent since January 2010. Eighty-two percent of that money, or $4.75 billion, consists of
overpayments that can no longer be claimed by the taxpayer, because of deadline restrictions. The rest could be returned
to taxpayers.
IRS's
new ethics chief once ordered that records be illegally destroyed. The new head of the Internal Revenue
Service's (IRS) ethics office once oversaw the illegal shredding of documents sought by the federal tax agency's inspector
general (IG) and allegedly retaliated by snitching on that colleague[.] Stephen Whitlock was named director of the IRS
Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) in August 2015. The OPR supports "effective tax administration by ensuring all
tax practitioners, tax-preparers, and other third parties in the tax system adhere to professional standards and follow the
law," according to the agency's web site. Whitlock's chief of operations was, until recently, a former tax enforcement
agent who attempted to avoid government payments by declaring bankruptcy and who even lost his official sidearm in a bar fight.
IRS Wipes Another Hard Drive: Sackless GOP Leaders Issue
Sternly Worded Memo in Response. Leading members of Congress are ripping IRS officials for erasing a computer hard drive after a federal judge ordered it to be
preserved. "The destruction of evidence subject to preservation orders and subpoenas has been an ongoing problem under your leadership at the IRS," Committee on House
Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz and Rep. Jim Jordan, wrote in a letter to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen late Thursday [1/21/2016]. "It is
stunning to see that the IRS does not take reasonable care to preserve documents that it is legally required to protect," Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, and Jordan, an Ohio
Republican, said in the letter to Koskinen.
Federal Bureaucracies: Incompetent, Corrupt, or
Both? The saga of Barack Obama's Internal Revenue Service is almost unbelievable. After "joking" years ago that he would audit his enemies, it
turned out that Obama's minions were in fact delaying or blocking routine applications for 501(c) status by conservative organizations, in order to help the Democratic
Party. When Congress tried to investigate, the Obama administration stonewalled at every turn. Evidence mysteriously disappeared and the key player in the
scheme, Lois Lerner, pled the Fifth rather than answer Congress's questions. Obama's stonewall strategy has generally worked well. Scandals fade from the
front pages when there are no new developments, and if information finally emerges, Democratic Party reporters treat it as old news. So the IRS scandal has pretty
much disappeared from public awareness. Nevertheless, via InstaPundit, we learn that yet another IRS computer hard drive has been destroyed.
IRS
under fire for erasing records sought in court order. Lawmakers blasted the Internal Revenue Service this week for
deleting records that a federal judge had ordered the agency to produce. First, Sens. Orrin Hatch and Ron Wyden demanded
to know why a hard drive had been "sanitized" after a court ordered the IRS to hand over records from that computer. In a
letter to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen Wednesday [1/20/2016], the pair of Republicans questioned the tax agency's record-keeping
policies, which have come under fire for years thanks to a series of lengthy congressional investigations that were stymied by the
IRS' failure to turn over key documents.
IRS Erases Hard Drive Despite Court
Order. The IRS erased a hard drive belonging to a former top employee involved in the agency's controversial,
taxpayer-funded hiring of elite trial law firm Quinn Emanuel. Although there was a court preservation order on all documents
related to the IRS hiring of the outside firm, the hard drive was erased anyway. The order was borne of a Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) request submitted by Microsoft. Even though the white shoe law firm has zero experience handling sensitive tax data,
taxpayers have been footing bills of over $1,000 per hour for its services.
Beware:
IRS Now Has Six Years To Audit Your Taxes, Up From Three. No one wants to be audited, so knowing how long
your tax return can be attacked is important. The statute of limitations on taxes is a fundamental rule allowing taxpayers to
eventually cut off their exposure. It can be pretty satisfying to say to the IRS, "sorry, you're too late." But this year,
that will be a little harder due to an expansion of the IRS's power to audit for extra years. Traditionally, the primary IRS
statute of limitations was three years. But there are many exceptions that give the IRS six years or longer.
The
IRS backs down: How your voice made a difference. A new regulation proposed by the IRS would have some nonprofit charities
report the Social Security numbers of donors giving at least $250 in one year. The regulation would permit, but not require, charitable
organizations to file a new, separate information return (in addition to the Form 990) to substantiate covered contributions.
The new informational return would require the charity to collect an individual donor's name, address, and Social Security number, and
provide a copy to the donor. [...] The IRS backed down and decided not to implement this measure. The IRS explained that tens of
thousands of Americans speaking out against the proposal made the difference.
IRS
nixes controversial plan to collect Social Security numbers of charity donors. A wave of complaints forced the
IRS on Thursday to withdraw its controversial plan to have nonprofit charities report the Social Security numbers of donors
who give just $250 in any given year. Under the proposed rule, the IRS would have created a voluntary system for nonprofits
to collect and send the IRS personal donor information in their yearly report. The idea was to simplify the process for
nonprofits — ranging from traditional charities to churches — and donors alike.
The
IRS has a bold, brand new power. It can take away your passport. Here's a fact from the last month of the year that I bet you
didn't even know. Our government has made a major change to the way it aims to collect taxes. Buried, no submerged deep in the
transportation bill passed by Congress in December was a bold, brand new power given to the IRS. If you have a federal tax debt amounting
to $50,000 or more, starting this month, the IRS can get your passport cancelled by sending a message to the State Department to do so.
And guess what? That $50,000 includes penalties and interest.
IRS
nixes controversial plan to collect Social Security numbers of charity donors. A wave of complaints forced the
IRS on Thursday to withdraw its controversial plan to have nonprofit charities report the Social Security numbers of donors
who give just $250 in any given year. Under the proposed rule, the IRS would have created a voluntary system for nonprofits
to collect and send the IRS personal donor information in their yearly report. The idea was to simplify the process for
nonprofits — ranging from traditional charities to churches — and donors alike.
How
Lawmakers Stopped Part of Obama's Assault on First Amendment. At the end of 2013, the IRS proposed a new, restrictive
regulation to change its definition of "campaign-related political activity" by nonprofit 501(c)(4) advocacy organizations like the NRA
(National Rifle Association) and various Tea Party groups. The overbroad rule would have seriously undermined the First Amendment
rights of these organizations and their members and interfered with the regulation of candidate activity by the Federal Election
Commission — the agency tasked by Congress with that responsibility. The proposed rule was, in essence, an effort to
legalize what Lois Lerner had done — targeting conservative advocacy organizations for their beliefs, opinions, and views by
systematically harassing them and their donors with voluminous information requests and delays in granting their tax-exempt status.
This proposed regulation got more public comments than any IRS proposal in recent memory — the vast majority of which were
opposed to the new regulation.
After
Tearing Up First Amendment, IRS Can Tear Up Passports. Some thought the IRS would be punished after interfering
in a presidential election by harassing conservative organizations. Instead, the tax man gets the new power of revoking your
passport. The massive transportation bill that a Republican Congress passed this month gives the Internal Revenue Service
new powers to authorize the State Department to revoke U.S. passports. It's hard not to draw a connection between this
and Americans living abroad who are renouncing their precious U.S. citizenship in record numbers in recent years for one
reason: to prevent the IRS from shaking them down.
Despite
New Limits, The IRS is Not Yet Under Control. [A]n ongoing dispute between the tax collection agency and Microsoft
demonstrates that the IRS continues to operate outside the bounds of the law. The IRS is in the midst of an almost nine-year
audit of Microsoft. That's unusual given the three-year statutory limit for audits. Sometimes they can be extended when
necessary, but the IRS has asked and been granted permission by Microsoft to do so eight times already. Most notable, however,
is the fact that Microsoft just wants to pay its bill and move on, but the IRS has refused to submit one. That might be due
to the fact that the never-ending audit is proving quite profitable for a powerful, politically-connected law firm.
IRS Still Working on the Hack of the
Year. Ten months after a major hack into taxpayer information at the IRS, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration says the IRS
is still working on bolstering its Internet sign-in procedures. Initially the IRS had said last May that more than 100,000 taxpayer records had been
stolen. But then in August it tripled that estimate to 334,000. The IRS says hackers had made an estimated 615,000 attempts to break in,
for a success rate of more than 50%.
IRS
sent out $46 million in tax refunds flagged as potentially fraudulent, watchdog says. The Internal Revenue
Service erroneously released more than $46 million in tax refunds in 2013 that had been flagged as potentially fraudulent,
the result of poor monitoring and a computer programming error, the agency's watchdog found. The returns had been identified
as questionable by two internal teams and should have been set aside for further review. But the IRS software system did the
opposite, accidentally setting things in motion so that refunds were released to taxpayers, an audit by the Treasury Inspector
General for Tax Administration disclosed this week.
IRS
loses $27 million to computer glitch. A pattern of "ineffective monitoring," identified by the IRS' watchdog,
caused the IRS to hand out an additional $19 million before the agency verified that the recipients had provided accurate
income information. "We forecast that over five years the IRS could issue $135 million in potentially erroneous refunds
due to this programming error," wrote the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which oversees the IRS, in a report
made public Monday [12/21/2015].
IRS Issued $46 Million in
Erroneous Tax Refunds. The Internal Revenue Service issued more than $46 million in erroneous tax refunds due to a
computer glitch and ineffective monitoring, issues that left uncorrected could cost taxpayers up to $230 million over the next
five years. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) released an audit Monday [12/21/2015] faulting the
IRS for approving thousands of potentially fraudulent tax refunds in 2013. "TIGTA identified that because of a programming error,
over $27 million of refunds were erroneously issued for 13,043 Tax Year 2013 tax returns," the audit said. "The programming
error is overriding the IRS's two-week processing delay on some refund tax returns that are identified by the IRS as potentially fraudulent."
Auto
dealer who scammed customers works for IRS. The owner of a used-car dealership who admitted defrauding dozens of desperate customers
is a longtime employee of the Internal Revenue Service. At the same time Gina Colombo told authorities that she took advantage of poor and
non-English-speaking customers at Uncle Joe's Auto Sales, she also worked at the IRS Taxpayer Assistance Center in Phoenix.
IRS
proposes churches, other nonprofits get Social Security numbers from donors. An Obama administration proposal to have some nonprofit
charities report the Social Security numbers of donors giving at least $250 in one year is raising concerns about security, government overreach and
another episode of IRS targeting. "There's a big caution here. There's a big yellow light that should be flashing for a couple of
reasons," Illinois Republican Rep. Peter Roskam tells Fox News. "Number one, the IRS has not demonstrated its capacity to hold this type
of information from confidentiality and a security point of view."
Charities
chafe at IRS proposal to collect donors' Social Security numbers. The IRS once again has stirred the ire of nonprofit groups, this time
with a proposal organizations say could someday require them to collect and hand over the Social Security numbers of their donors. Under the
proposed rule, the IRS would create an optional filing for 501(c)(3) nonprofits. Those participating would, as part of their yearly report,
turn over the Social Security numbers of any donors who give $250 or more to a charity in a given year.
IRS: You Can't Sue Us Unless We Say You
Can. Department of Justice lawyers claimed Wednesday the IRS cannot be sued for damages by the estimated 330,000
taxpayers victimized by hackers who earlier this year breached the federal tax agency's computer files. Plaintiffs Becky
Welborn and Wendy Windrich's claim of damage under the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedures Act cannot be pursued
because the doctrine of Sovereign Immunity, which holds the federal government immune to damage claims unless it agrees to
such litigation.
IRS
Policy Labels Illegal-Alien ID Thieves as "Borrowers". Bob Segall, investigative reporter for WTHR Indianapolis,
has released a new two-part report on illegal immigration and the Internal Revenue Service. [...] Segall won the Center's Katz
Award in 2013 for his 11-part series exposing fraud and mismanagement within the IRS that allowed illegal aliens to receive
billions of dollars in improper tax credits and refunds. In his new series, Segall focuses on the IRS policy labeling
illegal aliens who use the Social Security numbers of Americans and legal residents merely as "borrowers" against whom no
action may be taken by IRS employees. The report interviews the victims, IRS whistleblowers, and even the illegal-alien
fraudsters. [Video clip]
Secret IRS policy hides identity theft from victims.
Findings of the [WTHR] 13 Investigates report include:
• The IRS accepts millions of tax returns — and issues tax refunds — even when taxpayer documents show clear warning signs of identity theft
• Confidential IRS policies instruct IRS employees not to tell taxpayers when someone else uses their social security number to earn income
• The IRS allows illegal immigrants to "borrow" social security numbers that do not legally belong to them
• The IRS is discontinuing a program to notify taxpayers when their social security number is used by someone else to gain employment
Senators
demand answers about IRS use of secret cellphone tracking systems. Two top senators are probing use by the Internal Revenue
Service of secret cellphone tracking systems that are more often utilized by federal or local law enforcement agencies. IRS
Commissioner John Koskinen admitted this week that the agency does use the technology, known as cell-site simulators, or StingRays.
The admission came after a report by The Guardian that indicated the IRS has spent more than $71,000 to upgrade a version of the device
and to receive training from a company that manufactures the devices.
IRS
possessed Stingray cellphone surveillance gear, documents reveal. The Internal Revenue Service is the latest in
a growing list of US federal agencies known to have possessed the sophisticated cellphone dragnet equipment known as
Stingray, according to documents obtained by the Guardian. Invoices obtained following a request under the Freedom of
Information Act show purchases made in 2009 and 2012 by the federal tax agency with Harris Corporation, one of a number of
companies that manufacture the devices. Privacy advocates said the revelation "shows the wide proliferation of this
very invasive surveillance technology".
IRS purchased fake cell
towers to spy on Americans' mobile devices. What business could the Internal Revenue Service possibly have spying on
Americans with fake cell phone towers? It seems like a ridiculous scenario, but a Freedom of Information Act document dump
revealed that the IRS now possesses the technology to conduct dragnet spying operations on mobile devices.
IRS:
We're Too Corrupt And Incompetent To Handle $100 Million Checks. The problem, one most people would love to
have, is how to deal with checks for $100 million or more. It seems the IRS can't handle them any longer out of
fear of people stealing some of the money. Starting in 2016, the IRS will no longer accept checks for $100 million or more
because the equipment at the Federal Reserve Bank that processes checks can't handle checks for more than 8 digits. Checks
larger than that have to be processed manually by hand, which, according to internal memos obtained by the Associated Press, could
increase "the risk of theft, fraud and errors."
IRS
sued over treatment of Americans who bank abroad. The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) requires, in
essence, that U.S. citizens who reside outside the U.S. disclose to the IRS all of their foreign banking assets including
retirement plans, savings accounts, etc. It also requires foreign banks to assist the IRS in applying the disclosure
rules or else face enormous penalties. As its not-so-subtle acronym suggests, the Act purports to be an anti-fat-cat
measure through which to crack down on super-rich Americans who want to hide funds in offshore tax havens. In practice,
it inflicts adverse consequences — possibly unintended, but highly foreseeable — on millions of
non-wealthy Americans living overseas and on American companies who business there.
IRS
must say if White House sought taxpayers' information: Judge. A federal judge Friday [8/28/2015] ordered
the IRS to turn over the records of any requests from the White House seeking taxpayers' private information from the tax
agency, delivering a victory to a group that for two years has been trying to pry the data loose. It's not clear
that there were any such requests — but Judge Amy Berman Jackson said the IRS cannot just refuse to say so by
citing taxpayer confidentiality laws, known as section 6103 of the tax code.
Dairy
farm fined $30,000 by IRS for depositing legally earned money in less than $10,000 increments. A farmer in Maryland has been
targeted by the IRS for depositing amounts under $10,000, in order to avoid excessive paperwork. Randy Sowers wasn't doing it to launder
money, but merely to avoid the hassles of paperwork meant to catch illegal activity. Yet the IRS is now treating him like a common criminal,
seizing his money.
Dairy
farmer fighting feds after IRS milks him for $30,000. Randy Sowers built his dairy farm over three decades into
a thriving business. After kick-starting with a $100,000 loan, today the South Mountain Creamery has 1,000 cows and
70 employees delivering milk, ice cream and other products to homes in the Washington, D.C., area. But the Maryland
farmer's operation suffered a big setback when the IRS swooped in to seize tens of thousands of hard-earned dollars from his
account, claiming he violated an obscure banking law.
IRS
officials abused their powers like Third World bureaucrats. A June 2013 letter from
the IRS inspector general to congressional Democrats found that six out of 20 "progressive"
organizations had their applications scrutinized as potential political cases between May 2010 and
May 2012. "In comparison," the letter said, "our audit found that 100 percent of the [292]
tax-exempt applications with Tea Party, Patriots, or 9/12 in their names were processed as potential
political cases during the time frame of our audit."
IRS
report finds 'gross mismanagement,' 'personal politics'. The Senate tax-writing panel
accused the Internal Revenue Service of "gross mismanagement of the highest levels" in a long-awaited
report concerning the agency's targeting of conservative-leaning organizations. The Senate Finance
Committee issued the report Wednesday [8/5/2015] and it included bipartisan criticism and a conclusion by
panel Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, that "personal politics ... influenced how the IRS conducted its business.
Here
is the Ironclad Case for Impeaching IRS Head John Koskinen. Key members of the House
Freedom Caucus are demanding that IRS Commissioner John Koskinen be removed from office. In an op-ed
written for the Wall Street Journal, Reps. Jim Jordan and Ron DeSantis told President Obama that if the
Commissioner is not removed, they will begin the proceedings to impeach him. Modern Americans view
impeachment with a sort of awe and reverence. To most, it seems like an inconceivably drastic thing
to do. But it was not always this way, nor was it the intention of the founders. Impeachment
has always been a practical tool for getting rid of bad actors in government and, given the amount of
government corruption we see today, a tool that should be used with much greater frequency.
House
Oversight Committee Details Case for Removal of IRS Commissioner. House Oversight
Republicans, led by Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) today called for President Obama to remove IRS
Commissioner John Koskinen. Under Koskinen's leadership, the agency has continually stonewalled the
investigation into the Lois Lerner targeting scandal. Years after the scandal first broke, the
agency has done its utmost to bury the truth. Taxpayers deserve a transparent and responsive
government, but under Commissioner Koskinen the IRS has displayed unprecedented unaccountability.
Chairman Chaffetz vowed to explore all options to remove Commissioner Koskinen including impeachment
and holding him in contempt of Congress. As Chaffetz notes, the agency under Koskinen's leadership
has failed time and time again to comply with Congressional investigators.
Marriage
decision distorts the balance of powers. The Constitution was not amended last week.
But Congress, state legislatures, and the voters who elect them lost a great deal of power anyway.
Thursday's [6/25/2015] Obamacare decision allowed the IRS, an unelected agency of government, to rewrite
a federal law to mean the exact opposite of what it says. As we noted Friday, that ruling effectively
canceled the input of Massachusetts voters who had derailed the law's drafting process in a 2010 special election.
IRS
breaking federal law in paying contracts to tax cheats: audit. The IRS has been paying
millions to tax-cheat contractors who owe millions of dollars in debt to the federal government, the
agency's inspector general said in a report Wednesday [6/24/2015] that said the payments even break
federal law. Officials awarded $18.8 million in contracts to 17 companies with tax
debts in 2012 and 2013 — despite a 2012 law that said contractors had to be caught up
on their payments in order to do business with the agency. The embattled agency doesn't even
bother to check whether contractors are up to date in their taxes, the audit found.
IRS Protects and Rewards
Illegal Aliens. Whether intentional or otherwise, the Internal Revenue Service all too
often sides with illegal aliens who routinely commit multiple employment-related felonies that do
terrible harm to American citizens.
How
the IRS Rewards Illegal Aliens for Their Crimes. Whether intentional or otherwise, the
Internal Revenue Service all too often sides with illegal aliens who routinely commit multiple
employment-related felonies that do terrible harm to American citizens. [...] Congressional efforts
to force the IRS to put Americans ahead of illegal aliens have consistently failed, but that does
not prevent the IRS from voluntarily changing its ways and standing up for Americans if it really wants to.
More
IRS outrage: Agency used 'hundreds of lawyers' to hide information from Congress. It's
been a very bad week for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) — which translates into a
very bad week for the American people. First, it was revealed the IRS failed to implement
critical upgrades to its computer systems which made it much easier for Russian hackers to steal
information from more than 100,000 taxpayers. Then, if Russian hackers weren't enough, an IRS
employee in Missouri pleaded guilty to stealing more than $325,000 by filing fraudulent tax
returns — stealing the identities of American taxpayers. Now, we learn that as
Congress began its investigation into the unlawful scheme targeting conservative and Tea Party
groups the IRS used "hundreds of attorneys" to hide critical information from Congress.
IRS
gives its blessing to newly-formed 'First Church of Cannabis' in Indianapolis. The Internal Revenue
Service has given its blessing to Indiana's newly-formed First Church of Cannabis. The church formed in response
to the state's Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Now the IRS has awarded Levin a nonprofit tax-exempt status.
IRS
sends Congress unsigned form letter to brush off demands for Clinton Foundation investigation. The IRS responded
to a Republican request for an investigation into the Clinton Foundation's tax-exempt status with a one-page form letter that
starts with "Dear Sir or Madam." In May, more than 50 House Republicans asked the IRS to review the Clinton Foundation's
tax-exempt status, after it became clear that the foundation had failed to report millions of dollars in grants from foreign
governments. That letter, led by Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, said a review was "appropriate" given that this
money was accepted and not reported while Hillary Clinton was serving as secretary of state.
IRS
Admits Refunding Billions On Fake Tax Returns. Just hours after being force to admit
that they were hacked (by Russians apparently), an inspector general's report shows that The IRS has
rather remarkably continued to pay refunds on hundreds of thousands of fraudulent tax returns in
recent years, and sent dozens of checks to the same addresses, including in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
While some progress has been made, $2.3 billion of real US taxpayer's money was wrongfully refunded to
fake US taxpayers... but with this new cyber-attack, we suspect that number will soar.
Senator:
IRS paying private lawyers $1,000 an hour, despite 'underfunding' complaints. Despite
repeated cries of agency poverty from IRS leaders, a top Republican senator says the nation's chief
revenue collector is paying private attorneys more than $1,000 an hour to help conduct a high-profile
audit. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, fired off a letter to IRS Commissioner
John Koskinen airing his concerns earlier this month. Hatch questioned not only the cost of the
contract, but the decision to use an outside contractor for an investigation involving potentially
sensitive tax information.
IRS
Hires $1,000-An-Hour Lawyers And It Might Have Violated Federal Law. The Internal
Revenue Service (IRS) is paying a Washington law firm $1,000 an hour in taxpayer money to perform a
corporate audit, despite its claim of being severely underfunded. The IRS' $2.2 million contract
with big-money firm Quinn Emanuel has sparked a Senate Finance Committee investigation, with the committee's
chairman saying that the IRS "appears to violate federal law." Senate Finance Committee chairman Sen.
Orrin Hatch wrote a letter this month to IRS commissioner John Koskinen stating his concerns relating to the
contact, which pays Quinn Emanuel $1,000 an hour to perform an audit of Microsoft.
IRS
hit by cyberattack, thousands of taxpayers' information stolen. Thieves managed to
steal information on more than 100,000 taxpayers from the IRS, Commissioner John Koskinen said
Tuesday — though he insisted the breach didn't affect most average taxpayers and the
information they file in their annual returns. Thousands of fraudulent returns were filed under
the attack, and final details about the amount the criminals stole is not available, though Mr.
Koskinen predicted it will be less than $50 million.
Watchdog:
IRS issued $5.6B in potentially bogus education credits. The IRS issued $5.6 billion
in potentially bogus education tax credits in a single year — more than a quarter of all
education credits claimed by taxpayers, a government watchdog said Tuesday [5/12/2015].
Public
Pressure Forces IRS To Give Back Money To Civil Forfeiture Victim. After publicly humiliating the Internal
Revenue Service, a North Carolina man received more than $100,000 from the agency. Lyndon McLellan had the bank account
for his convenience store seized by the IRS, and at first he wasn't even sure why. The agency used civil asset forfeiture
laws to take McLellan's money without convicting or charging him of a crime. The IRS said it suspected McLellan was
violating federal structuring laws, which prohibit making multiple cash deposits of less than but near $10,000.
Feds
to return $107G they seized from NC business owner, attorneys say. Lyndon McLellan
fought the law — and apparently, he won. The North Carolina business owner for months
has been battling the federal government after IRS agents last fall seized $107,000 from him, under
a controversial practice known as civil forfeiture. But his attorneys at the Institute for Justice
announced Thursday [5/14/2015] that the IRS and Department of Justice have moved to dismiss the case and
give him back his money. "What's wrong is wrong, and what the government did here was wrong," McLellan
said in a statement Thursday. "I just hope that by standing up for what's right, it means it won't
happen to other people."
"All
persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are
citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce
any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall
any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to
any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Where
the tax cheats are. Perhaps it comes as no surprise that Internal Revenue Service
officials have not been held to account for their role in targeting conservative non-profit
applicants. Perhaps the multiple deceptions involved in that scandal — including the
concealment of retrievable emails — just offers another example of what Americans have
come to expect from the federal bureaucracy. That IRS malingering deliberately made this year's
tax filing season harder for taxpayers should surely add to this same impression. So should the
fact that many IRS employees are behind in paying their own taxes — there were 18,300 cases
of this in the last ten years, in an agency with roughly 85,000 employees.
IRS
arguments draw derision from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The IRS was almost laughed out of
court yesterday [5/6/2015] when the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in the case Z Street
v. Koskinen. Z Street, founded by AT contributor Lori Lowenthal Marcus, is a pro-Israel educational
group that applied for tax-exempt status, only to encounter delay. When it inquired as to the progress of its
application, an agent told it that auditors had been instructed to give pro-Israel groups special attention, and
that its application had been forwarded to a special IRS unit for additional review. Z Street sued for
viewpoint discrimination, a constitutional no-no, and the IRS went to U.S. District Court in D.C., seeking dismissal
of the case.
IRS
gave promotions to tax cheaters: Audit. The IRS refused to fire most of its own employees
found to be cheating on their taxes — and in some cases even quickly turned around and promoted
them within the year, according to an audit released Wednesday [5/6/2015]. In about 60 percent
of cases of "willful violations," IRS managers found mitigating circumstances and refused to fire the
employees, even though the law calls for that penalty. In some of those cases, the managers didn't
even document why they had overridden the penalty, said Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration
J. Russell George.
IRS
Doled Out $5.6 Billion in Erroneous Stimulus Education Credits. A report released
Tuesday from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) reveals that the IRS
doled out more than $5.6 billion in education credits in 2012 for more than 3.8 million
students. The tax credits in question, the American Opportunity Tax Credit (AOTC), were
instituted with the 2009 Stimulus, known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
They are intended to help offset the cost of higher education.
IRS
wasted $5.6B on bogus Obama stimulus tax credits: Audit. The IRS doled out more than
$5 billion in potentially bogus college aid payments under an Obama stimulus tax credit in 2012,
according to a new report Tuesday [5/5/2015] from the agency's inspector general that said the
administration still doesn't have a good handle on how to root out erroneous claims. More
than 3.8 million students received more than $5.6 billion in questionable tax credits,
the audit found — more than half of those never filed their tuition statement, while
others were paid tax credits even though the schools they attended weren't acceptable institutions.
Still other students claimed the credit for more than four years.
IRS
Seizes Over $100,000 From Innocent Small Business Owner, Despite Promise To End Raids.
Wielding a banking law intended to thwart drug trafficking and money laundering, the IRS has a new
target in its sights: a rural convenience store that sells catfish sandwiches. Lyndon McLellan
lost over $107,000 in an IRS raid after the agency seized the bank account belonging to his small
business, L&M Convenience Mart in Fairmont, North Carolina. "It took me 13 years to save that
much money and it took fewer than 13 seconds for the government to take it away," he said.
Like thousands of other victims of civil forfeiture, the government never charged Lyndon with a crime.
Now, with help from the Institute for Justice, he's fighting back to regain his hard-earned cash.
United States v. $107,702.66: North Carolina
Civil Forfeiture. Lyndon McLellan has spent more than a decade running L&M Convenience
Mart, a gas station, restaurant, and convenience store in rural Fairmont, North Carolina. Then, one
year ago, without any warning, agents from the IRS seized his entire bank account, totalling more than
$107,000. With that, Lyndon entered the upside down world of civil forfeiture, where the government
can seize and keep ordinary Americans' property without ever charging them with a crime. The IRS
and Department of Justice are pursuing forfeiture of Lyndon's money despite a recent policy change
designed to prevent precisely these kinds of cases.
Ted
Cruz gets specific on 'abolishing the IRS'. Sen. Ted Cruz has been gunning to abolish the Internal
Revenue Service since coming to Washington two years ago. To critics of the Texas Republican in Democratic
and GOP circles, it sounds like bluster. The fiery rhetoric garners hearty applause from conservative
audiences, particularly since revelations in 2013 that the IRS targeted Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny.
But some federal agency is going to have to collect taxes, so Cruz's vow to shutter the IRS smacks of a politically
motivated campaign promise rather than serious policy — at least to some.
House
report: Cash-strapped IRS prioritized bonuses, union activity over helping taxpayers.
While facing budget cuts, the IRS nevertheless prioritized worker bonuses, union activity and the
implementation of President Obama's health care law over assisting taxpayers during tax season,
according to a new report released Wednesday by the House Ways and Means Committee. The
findings, in a Republican-led report, were released ahead of a subcommittee hearing Wednesday
morning [4/22/2015] with IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. At the hearing, Koskinen stressed
that the agency is significantly under-funded, and those cuts have consequences.
Report:
IRS Deliberately Cut Its Own Customer Service Budget. If you tried to contact the IRS
with a question about your taxes this year, chances are you didn't get a response. The IRS estimated
that it would only answer 17 million of the 49 million calls received this filing season. Taxpayers
lucky enough to have the IRS answer their calls waited an average of 34.4 minutes for assistance —
nearly double the wait time last year (18.7 minutes).
Tax Day is not the reason the tax code
stinks. The tax system is a distortionary mess, but before you complain about filing your return, know that audits are
down, refunds are up, and the income tax isn't the biggest tax burden most taxpayers face.
Governing by fear: DOJ
Singles Out Tax Cheats in a Pay-or-Else Warning to Taxpayers. The U.S. Justice Department issued a
stern reminder on Monday [4/13/2015] that when it comes to income taxes, "no one is above the law or below the
radar." "With the annual tax filing deadline approaching on Wednesday, April 15, the Justice Department's
Tax Division reminds U.S. taxpayers across the country and around the world of their obligation to file timely and
accurate income tax returns," the news release said. And to reinforce that message, the DOJ news release
listed 23 cases where the government successfully prosecuted tax cheats.
Civil
Asset Forfeiture Case Has a Happy Ending. In 2013, IRS agents showed up at Carole's
door and told her they had seized all the money in the bank account for her business, Mrs. Lady's
Mexican Food. But they didn't charge her with a crime. The only reason her money was seized
was the fact that Carole made frequent cash deposits under $10,000. Even that is not
illegal — it just looks suspiciously like a "structuring" method used by real
criminals to hide illegally gotten gains. The problem is, the IRS didn't stop to
investigate why Carole made deposits the way she did. She became "guilty
until proven innocent."
Everyone Hates
the IRS — But We Hate It In Different Ways. According to the latest data out of the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Americans as a people pay one of the lowest
tax burdens in the developed world. Out of 34 countries with democratic governments and market
economies, the U.S. ranked third lowest for overall tax burden as a percentage of GDP in 2012, and
probably fourth lowest in 2013 (for which data is not yet complete).
Ex-IRS
ethics office lawyer disbarred for ... ethics violations. A lawyer who worked in the
IRS ethics office was disbarred Thursday by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, which
concluded she misappropriated a client's funds from a case she handled in private practice, broke a
number of ethics rules and showed "reckless disregard for the truth" in misleading a disbarment
panel looking into the matter. The lawyer, Takisha Brown, reportedly had bragged that she would
never be punished because her boss would protect her, but an IRS spokesman said Wednesday [4/1/2015]
that she was no longer an employee at the agency.
Koskinen
Says IRS Has Eliminated Backlog of Tax-Exempt Applications. The IRS has eliminated the
backlog of applications from groups seeking nonprofit status, Commissioner John Koskinen told a
gathering in Washington on Tuesday [3/31/2015]. But a conservative civil liberties group says
"the facts show otherwise." The American Center for Law and Justice said two of its clients are
still awaiting a determination on their applications for tax-exempt status — and one of
those groups (the Albuquerque Tea Party) has been waiting for more than five years.
IRS
ignoring 60 percent of taxpayers' calls. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said Tuesday [3/31/2015]
that service at his agency has gotten so bad that they are ignoring more than 60 percent of taxpayers'
phone calls during this tax season. Speaking at the National Press Club, Mr. Koskinen pleaded with more
money, saying a budget boost would help them staff their overwhelmed customer service lines. He also
said it would help reverse staffing cuts in their compliance division, where he said the government will lose
$2 billion this year in money it would otherwise have been able to collect if it had better staffing.
Koskinen:
'I Have Certainly Never Discussed IRS Business on My Own Personal (Email) Account'.
When asked Tuesday whether he had ever used a personal email account to conduct government business,
Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen said he had "never discussed IRS business on my
own personal account" and has a government-issued computer set up at home to avoid mingling business
and personal emails. However, when asked whether other IRS employees only used government email
accounts for agency business, Koskinen said that is the standing IRS policy, but added he "can't
guarantee" it is always followed.
Good
news: IRS has less identity theft security than your average Etsy shop. They rehire
people fired for snooping, they allow pretty much anyone into facilities and restricted areas where
all our sensitive information is kept, and there's no telling how many unauthorized current and
former employees are able to steal identities as a result. And, you thought they just ruined
people's lives with audits. That's novice stuff. This is the IRS. I have personal
experience with this. I had a fraudulent tax return filed under my Social Security number in
2012. As a result, both my refunds from 2012 and 2013 were put under administrative hold or some
such nonsense with no notification to me or indication of how to remove them from hold.
Report
Says Former IRS Employees — Think Lois Lerner — Can Still Peruse Your Tax
Returns. Could Lois Lerner still take a look at your tax returns on IRS computers? It
sounds preposterous, but a new watchdog report says former IRS employees still have access to IRS
computer systems long after they have no official business with the information. The report is
by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for
Congress. The GAO investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars. In the
case of IRS security, the report says not well.
Ted
Cruz Calls for Abolishing the IRS. Sen. Ted. Cruz said in a speech at Liberty
University today that he believes it is time to reclaim the U.S. Constitution and asked his
listeners to "imagine abolishing the IRS." "It is a time for truth. It is a time for
liberty. It is a time to reclaim the Constitution of the United States," Cruz said. "We
stand together for liberty. This is our fight. The answer will not come from Washington.
It will come only from the men and women across this country — from men and women, from
people of faith, from lovers of liberty, from people who respect the Constitution," said Cruz.
Shades
of HealthCare.gov? IRS shifting customer service online to IRS.gov. They may not be
getting help on the phones, but taxpayers this year are increasingly making use of IRS.gov, the tax
agency's website, to answer their questions. Visits are up by 11 percent over last year,
including 15 million in the past week alone, the agency said Friday. Most of the inquiries
are going to the IRS's "Where's my refund?" tool, which tracks where in the process a taxpayer's refund
is. The IRS also said taxpayers can now get return information online, rather than having to order
it by phone and wait up to 10 days for it to arrive. The push to send customers online is
not an accident.
IRS
botches computer security, risks taxpayer info: audit. The IRS sometimes uses old
software without key security patches that leave its computer systems vulnerable and could endanger
taxpayers' private information, the Government Accountability Office said Thursday [3/19/2015].
GAO investigators raised the issue last year, identifying 69 weaknesses. The IRS said it had
corrected two dozen of them, but the new audit found just 14 of them were actually fixed, leaving
dozens of weaknesses still to be resolved. Part of the problem is that the IRS hasn't even always
followed its own guidelines for assessing risks and creating information security plans, the GAO said.
IRS
may broaden rule to police political nonprofits. The IRS may broaden a looming
controversial rule to police political nonprofits to include political parties and political action
committees, the agency's chief said Wednesday [3/18/2015]. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said
the agency may expand a yet-to-be-released rule governing 501(c)(4), "social welfare" groups, to
include political groups known as 527s, which focus on elections. It could require them
both — as well as other types of tax-exempt groups — to operate under
the same definition of "political activity."
Rein
in the IRS. In 2013, [Rep. Peter] Roskam, in a televised committee hearing, told the
story of Al Salvi, who in 1996 was the Republican Senate candidate against the then-congressman, now
senator, Dick Durbin. Democrats filed charges with the Federal Election Commission against Salvi's
campaign, charges that threatened to dominate the campaign's final weeks. Salvi telephoned the head
of the FEC's Enforcement Division, who he says told him: "Promise me you will never run for office again,
and we'll drop this case." That official was Lois Lerner. After Salvi lost, 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 a federal court held that the charges against Salvi were spurious, the
FEC's losing lawyer was Lois Lerner.
The
Solution to Tax ID Theft Is an Unpopular One: Slower Refunds. The Government Accountability Office
estimates that $5.8 billion was lost to identity thieves filing fraudulent tax returns in 2013 and that there
may have been as much as $24.2 billion in thwarted attempts. Tax refund fraud losses are estimated to
reach $21 billion by 2016, according to the Treasury Inspector General Tax Administration. While the
massive loss chronicled in the GAO report was big news (for a nanosecond anyway) the GAO's recommendations for
stemming the rising tide of tax-related fraud did not get a lot of attention.
IRS
defends paying refunds to illegals who never filed taxes. The IRS is defending its
decision to let illegal immigrants claim up to three years' refunds on income even if they never
paid income taxes, telling Congress in a new letter last week that agency lawyers have concluded
getting a Social Security number triggers the ability to go back and ask for previous refunds.
President Obama's new deportation amnesty could grant Social Security numbers to as many as 4 million
illegal immigrants, making many of them eligible for tax refunds under the Earned Income Tax Credit even
for years when they cheated on their taxes, working off the books and refusing to file tax returns.
New
Revelations Show IRS Is Judge, Jury, Executioner — And Grave Robber. The
most important piece of information about the IRS's targeting of conservative and pro-Israel groups
is this: it is still going on. Politico reported yesterday [2/26/2015] that there are two
categories of groups still being delayed and silenced by the IRS's tax-exempt apparatchiks. The
first category is Karl Rove (and his Crossroads organization). The second category is financially
strapped mom-and-pop shops who have been driven into debt by the IRS's corrupt practices in which
critics of the Obama administration are deprived of some of their constitutional rights.
IRS
Employee Indicted for Filing False Tax Returns. A former IRS tax examiner was indicted
Friday along with three conspirators for filing false tax returns and making false claims for lost
income related to the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The IRS worker, Jimmie McCorvey of
Pensacola, FL, helped the other three obtain $95,200 from the Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF)
based on false claims of lost income from the spill. McCorvey was also charged with identity theft
for filing 25 false tax returns that netted him more than $60,000 in tax refunds.
IRS
Offers Retroactive Welfare To Illegal Aliens Granted Amnesty By Obama. With all the
discussion about amnesty simply being about delaying deportations (we already don't deport people),
Obama's amnesty has been about naturalization. That was obvious when we learned amnestied illegals
would be given social security numbers. They already have ITIN numbers in order to file taxes, so
why is the SSN important? Because you need that to get the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is
automatic welfare through a "refund" check from the IRS. In other words, a massive redistribution
of our wealth, a reward, to millions of foreigners on our soil. And it will be retroactive
for 3 years.
IRS
Seizes First, Asks Questions Later. When Carole Hinders answered a knock at the front
door of her home in August 2013, she was confronted by two IRS agents. They told her they had just
cleaned out the entire bank account of the restaurant, Mrs. Lady's Mexican Food, that Hinders had owned
and operated in tiny Spirit Lake, Iowa, for the past 30 years. The IRS seized more than
$32,000. While Hinders stood in shock, the IRS agents told her that her cash deposits looked
suspicious. Based on that suspicion alone, the IRS had authority to seize her entire bank account
using a federal legal procedure known as civil forfeiture. Hinders protested that she'd get a
lawyer and fight the seizure. She still remembers the disdainful response of one of the
agents: "Well, you can try."
Report:
IRS Seized Thousands of Bank Accounts Without Filing Criminal Charges. The Internal
Revenue Service seized hundreds of millions of dollars from thousands of bank accounts over the past
decade, often without proof of any criminal wrongdoing, according to a report released by the
Institute for Justice this week. The Institute for Justice, a public-interest law firm, said the
IRS practiced a "seize first, ask questions later" strategy when it seized $242 million in
more than 2,500 cases from 2005 to 2012.
IRS rehires
reprimanded ex-staffers. The IRS rehired hundreds of former staffers with conduct
issues, even bringing ex-employees with tax issues back into the fold, a new federal audit has
found. Treasury's inspector general for tax administration said that the IRS generally followed
the federal guidelines, which take into account whether a potential employee has a criminal record
or failed a drug test, when bringing back former staffers. But other staffers rehired had
documented conduct issues from previous tenures at the IRS, including purposefully not filing their
taxes, wrongly authorizing taxpayer information and lying on official forms. Of those rehired,
roughly one in five then went on to have further performance problems.
IRS
knowingly rehired tax cheats, other employees with 'performance' issues: Audit. The
IRS rehired hundreds of employees who had prior records of bad performance at the agency, including
141 former workers who had botched their own tax returns and others who had used their positions to peek at
private tax information, the agency's inspector general said in a report released Thursday [2/5/2015].
94-year-old
vet can't file tax return because IRS says he's dead. There is a 94-year-old World War II vet in Ohio who just
wants to pay his taxes but can't because the IRS says he's dead. Siegfried Meinstein has been unable to convince the
IRS he is alive, living in an assisted living facility near Columbus, Ohio. The IRS has told the nonagenarian it can't
process his tax return because their records indicate he is deceased.
The Editor says...
How much taxable income does a person in an "assisted-living facility" have? If the IRS says you're tax exempt, why
quibble over details? This issue probably has less to do with taxes than with Social Security payments to the place
where he lives; that is, they can't get their payments if the government says he's dead.
Problems
at IRS: Will you get your tax refund on time? The IRS chief is warning of a poor tax
season, with delayed refunds and long waits for customer service help likely after budget cuts.
But could the income tax system and the IRS be overhauled to work for everyone?
IRS
Ignores Phone Calls, Does Not Let Elderly People Leave Messages. Elderly and disabled
people cannot leave messages for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) after the IRS fails to pick up
the phone to serve them. The National Taxpayer Advocate, an independent oversight organ within
the IRS, detailed the agency's phone practices in its 2014 Annual Report to Congress Wednesday.
"The IRS does not answer the phone at local offices and has even removed the option it once provided
for taxpayers, including the elderly and disabled, to leave a message," according to the report.
IRS
Warns Of Delayed Refunds, Long Waits For Taxpayers & Possible Shutdown. With a week to
go before tax season opens, taxpayers were already bracing for a potentially "miserable" filing
season. It turns out that it could live up to the hype. Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
Commissioner Koskinen has advised employees that the budget cuts will result in reduced services to
taxpayers.
The Editor says...
It's a classic shakedown: Something bad will happen to you unless you give us more money.
That's what the IRS is saying. Senator Cruz has the right idea: Abolish the IRS.
Cruz: Abolish The IRS.
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said Monday that Republicans should take advantage of their control of Congress to
abolish the Internal Revenue Service. "We need to pass fundamental tax reform making our tax code simpler,
flatter, fairer," he said Monday at Heritage Action's 2015 conservative policy summit. "And I'll tell you,
the single most important tax reform, we should abolish the IRS."
5 Federal
Agencies in the GOP's Crosshairs. [#1] Internal Revenue Service: The GOP spent a good
chunk of 2014 grilling IRS officials about targeting conservative groups. Though the scandal
has not proven to reach all the way to the White House, the GOP is not done scrutinizing the IRS.
Report:
IRS 'totally politicized' by Obamacare, targeting of Tea Party applicants. Targeting
conservative and Tea Party nonprofit applicants for harassment during the 2010 and 2012 campaigns
was the most obvious, but far from the only illustration of how deeply President Obama politicized
the daily operations of the IRS, according to a new report from a congressional oversight panel.
"Most American taxpayers find themselves at the mercy of the IRS — they must turn over
sensitive information and even successful efforts to fight off erroneous agency actions can create
life-altering turmoil," said the report that will be made public Tuesday [12/23/2014] by the House
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Report:
IRS Targeted 'Icky' Conservative Groups. Top IRS officials specifically targeted tea
party groups and misled the public about its secret political targeting program led by ex-official
Lois Lerner, according to a bombshell new congressional report. The Daily Caller has obtained an
advance copy of a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee report set to be released Tuesday
morning that definitively proves malicious intent by the IRS to improperly block conservative groups
that an IRS adviser deemed "icky."
The
IRS: Just One of Dozens of Uncooperative Agencies. [Scroll down] Which brings us
back to the IRS scandal, in which agents of that fearsome organization committed the cardinal sin of
democratic governance: They used the power of the state to persecute citizens because of their
political beliefs. Using government power as a means to greater political power is ipso facto
corruption. From the shenanigans involving "lost" e-mails to former commissioner Doug Schulman's
simply lying to Congress, the IRS has done everything in its power to obstruct investigation into its
crimes — not errors, not mistakes: crimes. Issa's last report identifies
by name eight IRS officials who were involved in the political targeting or who had knowledge of
the practice and failed to disclose it.
IRS
warns of possible shutdown. The IRS is considering its own temporary shutdown due to
recent budget cuts enacted by Congress, its chief said Thursday [12/18/2014]. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen
said furloughs — forced unpaid days off for employees as part of an IRS closure —
is one idea reluctantly being tossed about to save money, though they are hoping they will not have to
go there.
The
bipartisan plan to end IRS stealing. The IRS has the power to seize small cash deposits under
$10,000. These deposits seem suspicious because cash deposits over $10,000 trigger a bank report to
authorities. Terrorists, drug dealers, and money launderers all make cash deposits under $10,000 to
avoid triggering the bank report. The illicit practice is called "structuring." The problem is
that many small businesses accept cash payments and make large deposits that happen to fall under $10,000.
Sadly, this attempt to crack down on terrorist funding is used by the IRS to abuse small businesses.
Fox
News Poll: 70 percent want Congress to keep probing IRS. Most American voters want
Congress to keep investigating the IRS targeting of conservative political groups, according to the
latest Fox News poll. Seventy percent say the IRS investigation should last until "someone is
held accountable." That's down from a high of 78 percent in June 2013. About one in
five thinks it is time to move on (22 percent).
Watchdog
Report: IRS Paid Out More Than $20 Billion in Erroneous Low-Income Tax Credits. The
Internal Revenue Service paid out $14.5 billion in erroneous Earned Income Tax Credit payments and
between $5.9 billion and $7.1 billion in improper Additional Child Tax Credit payments in Fiscal
Year 2013, according to a new government watchdog report. The EITC and ACTC are refundable tax
credits intended for lower-income Americans. In Tax Year 2012, the IRS paid out $63 billion
in EITCs and $26.6 billion in ACTC payments.
Obama Says His Job
Is Assuring Equal Protection Under the Law — Really? When it comes to the
great constitutional principle of equal protection under the law in the age of Obama, it is not that
there is a black America and a white America. It is that there are political supporters of the
president who get one quality of justice, and political opponents and convenient political scapegoats
for whom "justice" is a weapon their government has turned against them.
Feds
balk at releasing docs showing IRS sharing tax returns with White House. Dan Epstein,
executive director of Cause of Action, said Treasury was using "sophisticated" lawyering to weasel
out of providing the documents. And he noted that their letter said that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew
is now looking into "potential liability" that his tax aides broke laws in sharing taxpayer information
with the White House. Epstein said that either Treasury was "stonewalling" his group, or that Lew "is
incompetent" for just now looking at potential lawbreaking by his team on the case that is two years old.
Department
Of Justice To Release 30,000 Emails From IRS Exchange With White House. The
investigation began in 2013 when The Daily Caller reported that ex-IRS official Lois Lerner and
White House adviser Jeanne Lambrew allegedly exchanged confidential information about a group
attempting to overturn an Obamacare contraception mandate with a lawsuit. Thousands of emails
between the two were turned over to Congress, providing more information and context about the
relationship between the White House and IRS. The allegations came amid a larger story of claims
that the IRS was targeting conservative groups applying for tax exemptions.
IRS
accused of sharing 2,500 private taxpayer documents with White House. The Internal
Revenue Service may have given thousands of confidential filings from private taxpayers to the White
House to review, a lawsuit against the Treasury Department just revealed. The suit, filed against
Treasury's inspector general by Cause of Action, a legal advocacy outfit, reveals a steady stream of
communication went on between the White House and the IRS — a potentially "improper"
stream, the group alleged, The Daily Caller reported.
IRS
staffers with tax debts eligible for bonuses. In a statement, the agency said it would
keep employees who willfully skipped out on their taxes from getting performance awards, but would
be more forgiving of those who made honest mistakes. John Koskinen, the IRS commissioner, announced
a new round of bonuses this week for 2014, to be paid out early next year.
Top
Republican: IRS planning bonuses for employees who owe taxes. A top Senate Republican
is fuming over an announcement by Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen that he plans
to hand out bonuses to union and non-union members who work for the agency, potentially including
those who owe back taxes. "It's no wonder the American people find it hard to believe the IRS
needs more money when the agency fails to collect back taxes from their own employees and instead
rewards them with bonuses," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who is likely to become chairman of the Senate
Finance Committee in January. "American families have been doing more with less for far too
long now, and it is time the IRS do the same."
The
IRS Scandal Rears Its Head. The Obama Administration's IRS scandal is multi-faceted.
In addition to the persecution of conservative non-profits by Lois Lerner et al., the
question has been percolating for some years whether Obama's IRS has transferred confidential
taxpayer information to Obama's White House in violation of federal criminal laws. The issue first
arose when Austin Goolsbee of the president's Council of Economic Advisers told reporters that he
had information about Koch Industries that could only have come, illegally, from confidential IRS
files. When questions were asked, the administration immediately clammed up.
Records
on Taxpayer Leaks to White House to Be Released. The Obama administration will soon
turn over thousands of documents related to improper disclosures of confidential taxpayer
information by the IRS to the White House, a watchdog group announced Tuesday [11/25/2014]. On
Monday the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) informed the watchdog group
Cause of Action that it will turn over nearly 2,500 documents in response to a Freedom of Information
Act lawsuit filed by the group. In a statement, Cause of Action said the number of documents "signals
that the White House may have made significant efforts to obtain taxpayers' personal information."
IRS
is monitoring comment threads on conservative blogs. The Internal Revenue Service,
which claims to be so understaffed that it can't bother to collect unpaid taxes, or search backup
tapes for Lois Lerner's "missing" emails, apparently has plenty of time to read the comment threads
on conservative blogs that have been critical of the agency (Hi there, IRS agents!).
National
effort to scare churches into silence ahead of elections; ominous IRS warning.
Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, an organization that seeks to do exactly
what its name says, has sent letters to thousands of pastors ahead of the midterm elections
reminding them that they can be punished by the IRS if they speak out, according to Fox News.
Law
Lets I.R.S. Seize Accounts on Suspicion, No Crime Required. For almost 40 years,
Carole Hinders has dished out Mexican specialties at her modest cash-only restaurant. For just as
long, she deposited the earnings at a small bank branch a block away — until last year,
when two tax agents knocked on her door and informed her that they had seized her funds, almost
$33,000. The Internal Revenue Service agents did not accuse Ms. Hinders of money laundering or
cheating on her taxes — in fact, she has not been charged with any crime.
It's
Time to Talk About Serious IRS Reform. We have covered here exhaustively the massive
abuse-of-power scandal surrounding the IRS's targeting of conservatives ahead of the 2012
presidential election, and doing so at the encouragement of prominent Democrats. That surely should
be enough to prompt a full investigation — especially since it was revealed that Eric Holder's Justice
Department is apparently coordinating with congressional Democrats to undermine the investigation
and protect the IRS. But there's another IRS scandal brewing, and it suggests the agency is long
overdue for a reckoning.
IRS
Is 'Political Weapon in the Hands of the Democratic Party,' Conservative Attorney Says. Cleta
Mitchell, an attorney who has represented conservative groups in lawsuits against the IRS, says we should
"repeal the 16th amendment and get rid of the IRS," which has become "a political weapon in the hands of the
Democratic party." "What I think we should do is repeal the 16th amendment and get rid of the IRS.
I do not believe this agency can be saved; I think it is corrupt to the core," Mitchell told a recent gathering at
the Heritage Foundation.
Outrageous
IRS Commissioner False Claim: 'Whenever we can, we follow the law'. Internal Revenue
Service Commissioner John Koskinen made a disturbing statement before Congress that the IRS follows
the law "whenever we can." As Thomas Lifson wrote, "The law, to Koskinen, evidently is a
suggestion, not an ironclad requirement." Actually, the situation is even worse than that. [...]
This past year, and without due process, the IRS seized tax refunds of the adult children of
taxpayers who had been overpaid federal benefits decades ago. The IRS was recently caught
opening emails without warrants.
Try telling the IRS, "I report my income whenever I can." IRS
Commissioner: We Follow the Law 'Wherever We Can'. In responding to a question from the chair of the
House Ways and Means Committee Wednesday [9/10/2014], IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said he and his department
follow the law "wherever we can." House Ways and Means Committee Chair Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) asked Koskinen
"Will you be following the law," in collecting money for a certain type of healthcare subsidy. After Koskinen
ducked the question, Brady asked again. Koskinen then admitted: "Yes, wherever we can, we follow the
law." A discouraged Brady chuckled while admonishing the commissioner saying, "I encourage you to follow the
law in all instances."
IRS
chief: 'Whenever we can, we follow the law'. During another grueling hearing on the
ObamaCare rollout, the head of the IRS tried to offer lawmakers an assurance about the soon-to-open
enrollment period. "Whenever we can, we follow the law," IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told the
House Ways and Means subcommittee on health on Wednesday [9/10/2014]. Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas),
who leads the subcommittee, immediately expressed his concern with the remarks. "I encourage you
to follow the law in all instances," Brady said.
Emails:
IRS worker got $138,000 to do 'nothing' — and union saved her job.
Underperforming IRS workers are being protected from firing by the National Treasury Employees Union
in the tax agency that let workers devote 500,000 hours — worth over $20 million in
salary — on labor activities last year, according to internal emails revealed Wednesday
[9/10/2014]. The House Ways and Means Committee said that emails from former IRS executive Lois
Lerner, being probed for her involvement in the agency's targeting of conservatives, show she vented
at being blocked from firing one worker who did "nothing," yet still received up to $138,136 a year.
Dems Rally Around Fave
Corrupt Agency: IRS. Democrats are beyond frustrated that they can't just wish this away. A lot of
that has to do with all of this happening in the social media era (see, it does have some value), which means they
don't have the the Soviet-like control over the narrative anymore. The rest of it has to do with the fact that,
despite the Democrats' protestations to the contrary, there is, and was, definitely something fishy going on.
IRS
Delaying Release of Data on People Leaving High-Tax States. IRS data on internal migration showing how many
people have moved to and from which states generally shows people leaving high-taxed states and states with high unemployment
to states doing better in those categories. Now Obama's IRS is seeking to delay release of these statistics for another
12 months. For decades economists and lawmakers both have used this IRS data as a marker for which states are
succeeding in America, but the Obama administration has show its disdain for this important metric.
IRS
ethics lawyer facing possible disbarment, accused of lying. A lawyer in the IRS ethics
office is facing the possibility of being disbarred, according to records that accuse her of lying
to a court-appointed board and hiding what she'd done with money from a settlement that was supposed
to go to two medical providers who had treated her client. The disciplinary arm of the D.C. Court
of Appeals has recommended that Takisha McGee, a section manager in the IRS Office of Professional
Responsibility, lose her law license over the charge, which stems from a personal injury case she
worked about a year before she joined the tax agency.
Top
IRS ethics lawyer facing possible disbarment, accused of lying. The disciplinary arm
of the D.C. Court of Appeals has recommended that Takisha McGee, a section manager in the IRS Office
of Professional Responsibility, lose her law license over the charge, which stems from a personal
injury case she worked about a year before she joined the tax agency.
IRS Leaves Millions
Vulnerable to Identity Theft. The IRS has put millions of taxpayers at risk of identity theft by failing
to perform background checks on contractors, according to a new inspector general report. An IG audit performed
by the Treasury Department, which oversees the IRS, found that several contractors who are responsible for handling
sensitive taxpayer information do not perform any criminal or credit background checks on their employees. The
agency provided millions of Social Security numbers to one contractor without any screening process in place, according
to the report.
No,
the IRS cannot be fixed — it must be abolished and replaced with the Fair Tax. A
Washington Examiner article asks "Can the IRS be fixed, or should it just be abolished?" The
answer is clear to anybody who has followed the IRS scandal or filed a federal tax return. Washington's
individual income tax and its enforcement agency, the IRS, cannot be fixed, repaired, reformed or
rehabilitated. They are a cancer eating away at this nation, her taxpayers and our economic engine.
Congress created the income tax in 1913, and for 100 years the IRS has operated exactly as intended,
as an agent of control with total impunity, even down to the political targeting of individuals and groups.
The IRS's
God Complex. Is the Internal Revenue Service a threat to religious liberty? As the
IRS continues to come under well-aimed fire for harassing conservative groups, on Friday [8/1/2014]
it secured a final court order formalizing what amounts to a secret agreement to monitor the pulpits of
ill-favored churches. The serious danger, as former Justice Department attorney J. Christian
Adams told Fox News, is that the IRS will start treating "theology as politics," and regulate it
accordingly. Lovers of liberty should be very concerned.
Obama's
Rogue IRS Strikes Deal With Atheists To Monitor Churches — But Not Mosques.
Government's assault on religious liberty has hit a new low as the IRS settles with atheists by
promising to monitor sermons for mentions of the right to life and traditional marriage. A
lawsuit filed by the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) asserted that the
Internal Revenue Service ignored complaints about churches' violating their tax-exempt status by
routinely promoting political issues, legislation and candidates from the pulpit. The FFRF has
temporarily withdrawn its suit in return for the IRS's agreement to monitor sermons and homilies for
proscribed speech that the foundation believes includes things like condemnation of gay marriage and
criticism of ObamaCare for its contraceptive mandate.
IRS
Strikes Deal With Atheists To Monitor Churches. Government's assault on religious
liberty has hit a new low as the IRS settles with atheists by promising to monitor sermons for
mentions of the right to life and traditional marriage.
Furious
Over Scandals, House Guts IRS Budget, Blocks Performance Bonuses. The House voted to
block performance bonuses for senior Internal Revenue Service executives Wednesday [7/16/2014], The Hill
reported. "Giving out bonuses is ludicrous and amounts to a slap in the face to the American
public," said Rep. Paul Gosar, who introduced the amendment. "They should not be given performance
awards in the wake of one of the largest scandals in recent history." The amendment passed by a
vote of 282-138-1, with only Democrats voting against it.
House
GOP slashes IRS tax enforcement budget. The GOP-controlled House has slashed the
budget for the Internal Revenue Service's tax enforcement division by $1.2 billion, a
25 percent cut that would mean fewer audits of taxpayers and make it more likely that people
who cheat on their taxes will get away with it.
The Editor says...
That's one way to look at it. But this move will get the attention of the partisan hacks at the
IRS who use the agency as a political weapon on behalf of tyrants.
Rep.
Campbell: Government, IRS, EPA Are 'The Police State'. Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.)
called the government, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) "the police state" at a Financial Services Committee hearing at the Capitol on Thursday [7/10/2014].
At the July 10 hearing, Legislation to Reform the Federal Reserve on Its 100-year Anniversary, the
Federal Reserve Accountability and Transparency Act (HR 5018) was discussed, legislation which would
require "the Federal Reserve to provide the Congress with a clear rule to describe the course of
monetary policy." The act would also require the Fed to conduct cost-benefit analysis, require
transparency on bank stress tests and international financial regulatory negotiations, and would
order the Fed to disclose the salaries of highly paid employees.
IRS
worker suspended for pro-Obama activities. The employee, whose name wasn't mentioned
in the announcement from the Office of Special Counsel, admitted to using his job for political
purposes and agreed to the settlement that involved a 100-day suspension. "OSC's complaint alleged
that, when fielding taxpayers' questions on an IRS customer service help line, the employee
repeatedly urged taxpayers to re-elect President Obama in 2012 by delivering a chant based on the
spelling of the employee's last name," the investigative office said. The OSC also announced a
U.S. Postal Service employee was fired after he ran for seats in Congress and solicited donations to
his campaign, violating the Hatch Act that limits government employees' ability to get involved in politics.
Emails: IRS official
sought audit of GOP senator. Congressional investigators say they uncovered emails
Wednesday showing that a former Internal Revenue Service official at the heart of the tea party
investigation sought an audit involving a Republican senator in 2012.
There is no shortage of excuses. Technology
problems at IRS goes far beyond loss of Lois Lerner's email. Lois G. Lerner's hard
drive isn't the only technological problem at the Internal Revenue Service. The tax agency's
inspector general has been warning for years of lost computer equipment, lax security that could
place private taxpayers' information at risk, and mishandled information technology contracts that
wasted tens of millions of dollars. The reports are being disclosed as the IRS says its technology
budget is strapped for cash, one reason the agency didn't have a backup system to store all of Ms.
Lerner's emails that are the subject of a congressional investigation.
Declarations Of
War. The politicization of the Internal Revenue Service, which has extraordinary powers over
American citizens, is a far graver matter than corruption of specific individuals. It sets the most
feared and fearsome agency of the federal government at war with the citizenry. Indeed, given its
routine guilty-until-proven-innocent practices, under which it may seize a citizen's assets on arbitrary
charges, thus denying him the resources required to defend himself against them, even members of Congress
must feel a tremor or two at the thought of openly going up against the IRS. That's why the charge
in the bill of particulars against Richard Nixon that data from the IRS was provided to the White House
to be used against Nixon's enemies was so serious. Despite the implications for the further use of
the IRS as a weapon against anyone it chooses to target, the Administration is just fine with it.
Supreme
Court Gives Taxpayers More Power To Fight The IRS. The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday [6/19/2014]
ruled unanimously that taxpayers have a right to challenge an Internal Revenue Service summons enforcement action
in court when they can show the tax agency might have issued the summons in bad faith.
House
budget punishes IRS with 15% cut, halts Obamacare enforcement. The Internal Revenue
Service is about to get slapped with a harsh payback for messing around with conservative groups,
blowing wads of tax dollars on employee conferences and helping implement Obamacare. The House
Appropriations Committee is set to OK an IRS budget of $10.9 billion, $1.5 billion under President
Obama's request for fiscal year 2015, reducing the agency's budget to 2008 levels.
77,000
foreign banks to share tax info with IRS. The Treasury Department says 77,000 foreign banks have agreed to
share information about U.S. account holders as part of a crackdown on offshore tax evasion.
IRS
backs off proposal critics warned would 'silence' conservative groups. The IRS has agreed to overhaul a controversial proposal
that Republican lawmakers warned would revive the agency's "harassment and intimidation" of conservative groups, after receiving a record
number of comments on the proposed regulation. The new rules have been in the works ever since the IRS came under fire for its
targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups. In the wake of that scandal, the agency said it wanted to clarify for
everybody how tax-exempt groups can engage in political activity — by reining in the political work those groups do.
IRS
workers spent 521,725 hours on union activities; cost taxpayers $23.5m. The Treasury Department has revealed to
the House Ways and Means Committee that Internal Revenue Service employees spent over 500,000 hours on union activities last year.
They estimated the cost to taxpayers at $23.5 million in salary and benefits. Officials told [the Washington Examiner] that
the exact hours IRS members of the National Treasury Employees Union dedicated to labor activities was 521,725 in fiscal 2013, which
ran from October 2012 to September 2013. That was slightly less than the 573,319 hours in fiscal 2012, according to the IRS,
but the spending was significantly above that year's total of $16 million.
Obama's
IRS spends nearly $100 million on office furniture. The IRS has spent $96.5 million on office furniture
under the Obama administration and is now claiming it has insufficient funding to adequately serve taxpayers. Treasury
Secretary Jack Lew testified before the House two weeks ago about the IRS' need for additional funding for the upcoming fiscal
year. The IRS is currently seeking an increase of $1.2 billion — a 7 percent raise over its
FY 2014 $11.29 billion budget. It would bring the agency's FY 2015 budget to $12.48 billion.
The
IRS Will Raid Your Tax Data Through Obamacare. The Internal Revenue Service this week
will publish a final rule requiring Obamacare health insurance exchanges to hand over key personal
data to the IRS, which will use the information to implement the tax aspects of the controversial
health care law. The IRS rule covers health exchanges that sell insurance to individuals, and it
takes effect this year. That means people enrolled in an Obamacare exchange this year will have
their information given to the IRS as soon as it's needed for tax purposes.
The heavy hand of the IRS seizes innocent Americans'
assets. Terry [Dehko], who came to Michigan from Iraq in 1970, soon did what immigrants
often do: He went into business, buying Schott's Supermarket in Fraser, Mich., where he still
works six days a week. The Internal Revenue Service, a tentacle of a government that spent
$3.5 trillion in 2013, tried to steal more than $35,000 from Terry and Sandy that year.
Sandy, a mother of four, has a master's degree in urban planning but has worked in the store off
and on since she was 12. She remembers, "They just walked into the store" and announced that
they had emptied the store's bank account. The IRS agents believed, or pretended to believe,
that Terry and Sandy were or conceivably could be — which is sufficient for the
IRS — conducting a criminal enterprise when not selling groceries.
The
heavy hand of the IRS seizes innocent Americans' assets. The civil forfeiture law — if something
so devoid of due process can be dignified as law — is an incentive for perverse behavior: Predatory
government agencies get to pocket the proceeds from property they seize from Americans without even charging them with,
let alone convicting them of, crimes. Criminals are treated better than this because they lose the fruits of their
criminality only after being convicted.
Disciplined
IRS workers got bonuses, time off. More than 2,800 Internal Revenue Service workers who had been disciplined
recently received millions of dollars in bonuses and time off as part of an employee recognition program, a new government
audit shows. The IRS has a program that rewards its employees for a job well done, but a report released Tuesday by
the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that, between October 1, 2010, and December 31,
2012, more than 2,800 recently disciplined IRS workers got more than $2.8 million in monetary awards and more
than 27,000 hours in time-off awards.
Bonuses
given to IRS employes who owed back taxes. While some taxpayers are worried about getting steep fines for
fudging on their tax returns, a new government watchdog's report found that the Internal Revenue Service paid $1 million
in bonuses to employees who owed back taxes. In addition, the IRS's inspector general found that the tax agency
had been granting cash and time-off rewards to employees who had faced disciplinary action in the past.
IRS
employees with tax and conduct issues still got awards, watchdog report finds. IRS employees
who had been disciplined for tax and conduct issues were nonetheless rewarded with monetary awards or time
off, according to a watchdog report released Tuesday [4/22/2014]. The report by the Treasury Inspector
General for Tax Administration found that while for the most part the reward program for IRS workers complied
with federal regulations, employees who had themselves failed to pay their federal taxes and had discipline
problems were also rewarded.
IRS
fining business on taxes that were never due. Innovative Title Services, Inc., a real
estate title services company established in 2003, faces a tax penalty that could virtually shut
down the small business. According to the company's President, Michael Day, the nearly $20,000 late
fee is being assessed on taxes that were never due in the first place.
IRS,
other federal agencies reportedly used license plate-tracking technology. The Internal Revenue Service
and other federal agencies reportedly awarded contracts to a license plate-tracking company to provide access to
license-plate recognition databases or technology used to collect plate information. Bloomberg News reported
that the IRS and other government agencies awarded about $415,000 in contracts to Livermore, Calif.-based Vigilant
Solutions before the Department of Homeland Security dropped a plan for similar work after privacy concerns were raised.
On
Tax Day, RNC Sues The IRS. On Tax Day, the Republican National Committee announced it
is suing the IRS for stonewalling Freedom of Information Act request for documents about the tax
agency's politicized scrutiny of conservative and Tea Party groups. The RNC filed the request on
May 21, 2013, in an attempt to expose the documents and emails surrounding agency's process in
handling applications of non-profit organizations such as conservative and Tea Party groups.
IRS
Workers Still on Track to Get Bonuses. In February IRS officials announced employees
will be receiving bonuses in order to boost morale after the scandal broke about the agency
inappropriately targeting conservative tea party groups. [...] Despite declarations from the IRS and
its Democratic defenders, IRS targeting has not ended and dozens of conservative groups are still
waiting for their tax exempt status after years of answering prying and detailed questions from the agency.
IRS
employees accused of donning pro-Obama gear, urging callers to vote for him. IRS workers in several offices
have been openly supporting President Obama, including by donning pro-Obama paraphernalia and urging callers to reelect the
president in 2012, according to allegations contained in a new government watchdog report. A report by the U.S. Office
of Special Counsel, released Wednesday, cited accusations that workers at a Dallas IRS office may have violated federal law
by wearing pro-Obama items like shirts, stickers and buttons. The Hatch Act forbids Executive Branch workers from
engaging in partisan political activity. The report comes as two House committees move to take action against former
IRS official Lois Lerner regarding the agency's targeting of conservative groups.
IRS
under fire: Vote for Obama stickers, campaign cheerleading commonplace. Even as the IRS faces growing heat
over Lois G. Lerner and the tea party targeting scandal, a government watchdog said Wednesday it's pursuing cases
against three other tax agency employees and offices suspected of illegal political activity in support of President
Obama and fellow Democrats. In one case the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates federal employees who
conduct politics on government time, said it was "commonplace" in a Dallas IRS office for employees to have pro-Obama
screensavers on their computers, and to have campaign-style buttons and stickers at their office.
Ethics watchdog:
IRS customer representative urged vote for Obama. A government ethics watchdog agency has filed a complaint
seeking disciplinary action against an IRS customer service worker in Kentucky accused of engaging in political activity
at work by urging callers to vote for President Barack Obama. The Office of Special Counsel filed the complaint on
Tuesday with the Merit Systems Protection Board, according to the OSC, after a probe found the tax advisory specialist
violated a law — the Hatch Act — against such political activity by federal workers.
IRS
employee took home personal info on 20,000 workers, agency says. An Internal Revenue Service employee took home personal
information on about 20,000 IRS workers, former workers and contractors, putting the data at risk for public release, the agency said
Tuesday [3/18/2014]. The employee took home a computer thumb drive containing names, Social Security numbers and addresses of
the workers, and plugged the drive into an unsecure home network, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said in an email to employees.
IRS Currently Employing
Convicted Terrorist Associate. While IRS officials were targeting Tea Party groups for special scrutiny of their
501(c)3 tax exempt applications, the IRS also hired a policeman who had been prosecuted by the Justice Department — and
convicted in federal court — of using his access to the FBI's NCIC system to tip off a terror suspect about the
bureau's surveillance. The leak wrecked a major terror investigation. He is still at the IRS.
IRS: 89K Fewer
Audits in 2013 Because of 'Sequestration and Furloughs'. Because of "sequestration and furloughs" the number of individuals
audited by the Internal Revenue Service fell by 80,000 in fiscal 2013 and the number of businesses audited fell by 9,000, according to the
IRS's Budget in Brief released this week. "As a result of the impacts of sequestration and furloughs, the IRS delivered key
enforcement programs below 2012 levels," said the budget document.
Appeals court quashes IRS tax-return
preparer crackdown. An Obama administration campaign against tax-return fraud suffered a blow on Tuesday [2/11/2014] when an
appeals court invalidated the first federal rules for unregulated tax-return preparers. A three-judge appellate panel upheld a lower
court's January 2013 ruling that said the U.S. Internal Revenue Service does not have the power to impose test-taking and continuing education
requirements on hundreds of thousands of tax-return preparers.
Court Rules IRS May Not Regulate Tax
Preparers. In a unanimous opinion, a 3-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals has handed the IRS another defeat
in that agency's apparently never-ending quest to regulate, control, and dominate as many aspects of American political and financial
life as possible. The court ruled that the IRS's rules regarding the regulation of independent tax preparers were, for at least
six reasons, outside of the IRS's authority — which is to say illegal.
Bill Henck: Inside the IRS. I have
been an attorney in the IRS Office of Chief Counsel for over 26 years. Over a number of years, I have attempted, largely
unsuccessfully, to alert the public to abuse within the IRS. [...] I do not personally know whether the IRS has targeted conservative groups
or individuals, but I do know that the environment within the agency is ripe for such activity and there is nothing to prevent it from occurring.
You're wrong, Mr. Obama, the IRS is
corrupt. In the aftermath of an IRS targeting scandal that may have influenced the 2012 election, in the midst of criminal
and congressional investigations, while civil litigation is pending in federal court, before a single deposition is taken and while the
IRS clings to tens of thousands of documents, the president of the United States has spoken. His meaning is clear. Move along,
nothing to see here.
IRS employees to receive
bonuses. I generally don't think much of bonuses for government workers anyway. Why give someone extra
for just doing his job? If we're going to hand out bonuses, then we should also cut the salaries of people who screw up.
Like IRS employees.
IRS customer service leaves millions
of calls unanswered. Have a question on your tax returns? Don't ask the IRS. As tax day looms, an annual watchdog report to
Congress finds that the agency is falling short when it comes to answering Americans' questions about the convoluted tax code. The National
Taxpayer Advocate found only 61 percent of people seeking to speak with a customer service representative last year got through to
anybody — leaving nearly 20 million calls unanswered.
IRS seizes 60M
medical records for massive tax fraud investigation. The healthcare entity that slapped the Internal Revenue Service
with a class action lawsuit back in March over allegedly seizing the private medical records of 10 million Americans has now
been identified. The company's founder, the subject of extensive investigation by the IRS, was indicted last summer on
13 counts of tax evasion, conspiracy and filing fraudulent tax returns.
IRS
Union Boss Warns IRS Underfunding Jeopardizes IRS' Mission. The head of the union representing the workers at one of
America's most loathed government agencies is predicting dire consequences if Congress doesn't cough up more money to fund
the Internal Revenue Service. Colleen M. Kelley, President of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), must believe
that the majority of American taxpayers care about funding the Internal Revenue Service — much less want it funded.
Nevertheless, Ms. Kelley is on a mission to scare people into thinking that more taxpayer dollars should be spent on funding the
agency that targets Americans based on their political beliefs.
Report: IRS vendor owed $525 million in back taxes. The Internal Revenue Service has been doing business
with nearly 1,200 vendors that owe back taxes, including one unnamed contractor that owed a whopping $525 million, a new inspector general's report says.
The Latest IRS Power Grab. Six
months after the Internal Revenue Service's inspector general revealed that the tax-collection agency had been targeting conservative organizations
for added scrutiny and delaying their applications for tax-exempt status, the IRS has proposed new rules for handling political activity by
nonprofits. The proposed rules would plunge the agency deeper into political regulation.
IRS lost $4 billion to
identity thieves in 2012 as it targeted the tea party. The Internal Revenue Service sent $4 billion to identity thieves filing
fraudulent tax returns in 2012, at the same time it was devoting resources to invasive politically targeted audits of not-for-profit groups,
according to a recent report released by Treasury Inspector General J. Russell George. The IRS, which is now overseeing Obamacare's
complicated implementation and collecting its tax penalties, sent 343 tax refunds to a single address in Shanghai, and another 655 tax refunds
to one in Lithuania, according to CBS News.
IRS Sent Hundreds of Checks to One
Address in China. The IRS, which is adept at targeting conservatives and which is the enforcement arm for Obamacare, sent 655 tax refunds
to one address in Lithuania! They sent 343 tax refunds to one address in China! It apparently never occurred to them that this could be
identity fraud. There is no one minding the store.
Arrival of Obamacare puts
focus on IRS tax-credit scandal. The program is the Earned Income Tax Credit, through which the federal government gives out between $60 billion
and $70 billion to low-income working Americans each year. It's known as a "refundable" tax credit, but it is basically a transfer payment, in which
the IRS sends a check — perhaps even $5,000 every year — to workers who have little or no tax liability. The problem is, the IRS
does little to determine whether recipients actually qualify for the money.
IRS staffers owe $5.4M in back taxes. Nearly 700 employees
of Internal Revenue Service contractors owe $5.4 million in back taxes, said a report Wednesday [10/23/2013] by the agency's inspector general.
Another IRS Triumph. The earned-income tax credit,
or EITC, is a major welfare program intended to supplement the incomes of the working poor. It is "refundable," which means you get the credit even if you
pay no income tax. In 2011, more than 27 million families received EITC payments of nearly $62 billion. But here's the catch: The
IG report says that in 2011 at least 21% of those payments and as much as 26% were "improper." The percentages in 2012 were 21% and 25%. In other
words, at least one of every five dollars, and maybe one in four, of EITC payouts were in some way undeserved.
IRS pays illegal immigrants $4.2 billion while
stalling Tea Parties. While harrying and stalling Tea Party groups seeking nonprofit status, the Internal Revenue Service mailed $4.2 billion in
child-credit checks to undocumented immigrants. Critics say midlevel IRS bureaucrats continue to abuse the Additional Child Tax Credit program by dispensing
$1,000 checks to families in this country illegally.
Report: IRS sent $4.2 billion in
checks to illegal immigrants in one year. The scandal-plagued Internal Revenue Service (IRS) sent $4.2 billion in child tax-credit checks
to illegal immigrants the year the agency began targeting conservative groups, according to a new report from Watchdog.Org. The IRS sent illegal
immigrant families $1,000 checks totaling $4.2 billion through the federal government's Additional Child Tax Credit program in the year 2010, when
the agency's improper targeting of conservative and tea party groups began.
Investigator: IRS paid more than $110 billion in improper tax credits over past decade. The Internal Revenue Service
paid out more than $110 billion in tax credits over the past decade to people who didn't qualify for them, according to a Treasury report released Tuesday [10/22/2013].
The Earned Income Tax Credits were intended for poor working families. In his report, IRS inspector general J. Russell George said more than one-fifth of all
credits paid under the program went to people who didn't qualify.
IRS wins fight to cancel bonuses — for now.
The Internal Revenue Service won a ruling from a third-party mediator that decided the agency isn't obligated to pay $70 million in scheduled
bonus payouts that outraged many in Congress. But the fight isn't over. The mediator's ruling is being appealed to a federal panel by
the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents IRS workers.
Is there a con man in the Oval Office?
Fraud was committed to re-elect Barack Obama. Our country was hijacked due to the efforts of government employees trying to protect their
own cushy lifetime jobs, bloated salaries, obscene pensions, and their biggest defender and protector Barack Obama. Think I'm wrong?
Evidently the IRS officials don't. Several of them have been busy hiring the most famous and expensive law firms in Washington, D.C. to
defend themselves. The kind of lawyers hired by multi-millionaire businessmen and high-profile politicians and lobbyists accused of serious
crimes. Where are they getting the money?
Anger at IRS Powers Tea-Party Comeback.
The uproar has revived media attention and renewed the intensity of many tea-party supporters. Just last week, Mrs. [Jenny Beth] Martin
says, the Patriots received a new letter from the IRS asking for additional information about the group's activities, including copies of all
direct-mail solicitations and telemarketing scripts before the 2012 election and any advertising materials in 2013. "This is beyond anger
and frustration," she says.
Defunding:
Framers' Remedy For Presidential Lawlessness. Two weeks ago, the House Appropriations Committee stripped the scandal ridden
Internal Revenue Service of nearly one quarter of its 2014 budget as punishment for its targeting of political groups and its costly
boondoggles. Shockingly, Senate Democrats voted to increase the IRS' budget.
The Editor says...
That's not shocking at all. The IRS is the gas tank from which the liberals draw the fuel for their tax-and-spend utopia. The
IRS is the best friend the liberals ever had. Nobody but a left-wing liberal politician has any affection for the IRS.
IRS: $9 Million
Travel Costs Not Excessive. IRS executives spent $4.7 million on travel in the 2012 fiscal year and $4.8 million
in the 2011 fiscal year, according to a report released by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) Tuesday. [...] The
report revealed a select few of IRS executives, about 15 people, were responsible for the high travel expenses.
Questions raised about IRS executive
travel. A new report by the inspector general of the IRS found that a small group of top executives at the IRS ran up "extremely high
travel expenses" in recent years, with some basically commuting each week to work in Washington, D.C. by plane from around the nation. [...] An IRS
source told me the most frequent travelers were four different officials inside the tax agency who "work" in Washington, at IRS headquarters, but
actually live in Dallas, Minneapolis and Atlanta.
IRS
Overpaid Earned Income Credit By Nearly $111 Billion, Treasury Report Says. The Internal Revenue Service has overpaid the Earned
Income Tax Credit by at least $110.8 billion since 2000, according to a recent Treasury Department inspector general report. That is
more than double the $53 billion of sequester cuts expected in 2013, totaling less than 2 percent of outlays, and puts the lie to
those who suggest there is nothing to cut in the federal budget.
Another IRS Scandal Waiting to Happen.
The Obama administration claims it wants to ensure that the rank political abuse perpetrated by the Internal Revenue Service is never repeated.
Ask Donald McGahn how that's going. Mr. McGahn is a Republican appointee to the Federal Election Commission, an agency with every bit as much
potential for partisan meddling as the IRS.
Feds Unwilling or Unable To Stop Illegal Checks.
A Long Island, N.Y., woman has spent nearly two years trying to convince the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Postal Service that persons with
Hispanic-sounding surnames using her address to obtain tax refunds from the IRS are part of a fraud scheme. She has not found a government agency
that will stop the phony tax refunds from arriving in her mailbox. Instead, federal and state authorities pass the buck. The checks,
including some offering payment for Hurricane Sandy "relief" to people who may not exist, keep coming.
The IRS
Mistakenly Exposed Thousands of Social Security Numbers. Another day, another slipup by the Internal Revenue Service.
The incident involves the unwitting exposure of "tens of thousands" of Social Security numbers, according to a recent audit by the
independent transparency and public-domain group Public.Resource.org. The identifying numbers were on the Internet for less than
24 hours after being discovered, but the damage was done. And unfortunately, the data-breach concerns some of the most
sensitive types of transactions: Those made by nonprofit political groups known as 527s.
Group:
IRS mistakenly posted thousands of Social Security numbers on website. The IRS mistakenly posted the Social Security
numbers of tens of thousands of Americans on a government website, the agency confirmed Monday night. One estimate put the
figure as high as 100,000 names. The numbers were posted to an IRS database for tax-exempt political groups known as
527s [...]
Coburn, Gingrey demand answers on 201 full-time
IRS union reps. Republican congressional leaders are demanding to know why the Internal Revenue Service pays hundreds of full-time employees to do
union work. As reported last month by The Daily Caller, 201 IRS employees receive full-time pay while doing no actual work, instead devoting their
entire work days to union business. The revelation came as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request from Americans for Limited Government.
FOIA: 201 IRS employees work full-time on union
business. In a response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from Americans for Limited Government, the Internal Revenue Service
revealed this month that 201 of its employees work full-time on union activities. "A lot of people are not aware that under federal law, a federal
agency is allowed to enter into a collective bargaining agreement with a union that has provisions where employees of the agency, in this case the IRS,
are allowed to do union work on the taxpayer's time and get paid for it," ALG president and Nathan Mehrens explained in an interview with The Daily Caller.
Coburn:
Hundreds of IRS employees work full-time on labor union business. The Internal Revenue Service spends
millions of dollars a year for 200 employees who actually work full-time on labor-union business even as it furloughs
employees and cuts taxpayer advice services under the budget sequester, Congress' chief waste watcher said in a new
letter to the tax agency. Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, joined Rep. Phil Gingrey, Georgia Republican,
in a letter asking the IRS to stop paying those employees for work that doesn't benefit the taxpayer.
Cruz Has It Right: Abolish The IRS. Speaking at the Free
Enterprise Institute, Senator Cruz introduced Tea Party groups from the Houston area, Dallas, San Antonio, and Waco, Texas. Representatives of each group
shared their experience of being targeted for extra scrutiny by the IRS when they applied for tax-exempt status. In response Cruz said, "And that's why I believe
the most important outcome that can come from this is substantive and policy-based and going forward, and it is quite simply: We should abolish the IRS."
The
'Very Serious' Tradition of the Internal Revenue Service. [Scroll down] Still, some might have wondered
about the effectiveness of the earlier very serious declaration of a very serious "zero tolerance policy," instituted after
"a probe in 1993 and 1994 turned up more than 1,300 employees suspected of using government computers to browse tax files."
Certainly, the IRS took the 1997 case at least as seriously as the mid-1990s revelation that "a snooper in the IRS's Boston
office turned out to have been a member of white supremacist groups, and a witness testified that the worker said he planned
to use the tax data to build dossiers on people."
IRS tracks your digital footprint.
The Internal Revenue Service is collecting a lot more than taxes this year — it's also acquiring a huge volume of personal
information on taxpayers' digital activities, from eBay auctions to Facebook posts and, for the first time ever, credit card and e-payment
transaction records, as it expands its search for tax cheats to places it's never gone before.
Top Ten Most
Ridiculous Items Purchased with IRS Credit Cards. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA)
released a review of the IRS employee credit card program this week. Many of the items that were purchased and approved
may astound you. Taken directly from the report, Americans for Tax Reform has compiled a list of the ten most ridiculous
items purchased with IRS credit cards.
IRS Agents 'Accidentally' Discharged
Guns 11 Times, Possible Injuries. Special agents at the IRS accidentally shot their firearms 11 times between 2009 and 2011, and at
least three of the cases "may have resulted in property damage or personal injury." [...] According to the audit, "there were a total of eight firearm
discharges classified as intentional use of force incidents and 11 discharges classified as accidental during FYs 2009 through 2011."
The Editor says...
It sounds as if there are about four incidents per year in which IRS agents open fire. Do you recall hearing about any of them?
Rep.
Tammy Duckworth takes apart IRS contractor for 'gaming' veterans benefits program. Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., who lost both legs and
damaged her arm while serving in Iraq with the National Guard, offered a blistering denunciation of a contractor who used his friendship with an IRS
official to win contracts reserved for the businesses of service-disabled veterans. Strong Castle's Braulio Castillo received the service-disabled
designation because he injured his ankle while attending a military prep school before going to college. "I'm so glad that you would be willing
to play football in prep school again 'to protect this great country,'" Duckworth told Castillo today [6/26/2013] during a House Oversight and Government
Reform Committee hearing. "Shame on you, Mr. Castillo. Shame on you.
Gowdy Grills IRS Official
About Employee's Homophobic Slurs. The House Oversight and Reform Committee held a hearing today to look into the $500 million
government contracts that were awarded to a computer company by the IRS. Gregory Roseman, a Deputy IRS Director plead the fifth, today, rather
than answer questions about the government contracts he awarded to Strong Castle Inc., and whether his friendship with Strong Castle's CEO, Braulio
Castillo, was a factor in the company's ability to win such large contracts with the IRS.
Porn, wine and kazoos on IRS worker charge cards. Like a lot
of big companies, the Internal Revenue Service allows some of its 90,000 employees to use company charge cards to buy work-related items, such as office
supplies. However, employees made a host of "improper" purchases — ranging from a dinner averaging $140 per person to Thomas the Tank
Engine rubber wristbands — according to the Treasury Inspector General for tax administration. The report was released as part of a
regular audit of IRS budget expenses.
Exit the IRS Stage Left. [Scroll down] I say it is time
to limit the IRS's reach. It has too much power over the lives of ordinary citizens. As can be seen by the smog of controversy surrounding the
current scandal, it is virtually unaccountable. Let us scrap the present tax code for a flat tax. Briefly stated, rid us of the nine-million-word
tax code with all its impossible complexity, loopholes, unfairness, and opportunities for IRS snooping. Replace it with a single-rate income tax and
corporate tax of 17 percent. A citizen's income would be taxed only once, encouraging citizens to save and invest, thus encouraging economic growth.
Incompetence: IRS Sent $46,378,040 in Refunds
to 23,994 'Unauthorized' Aliens at 1 Atlanta Address. The Internal Revenue Service sent 23,994 tax refunds worth a combined $46,378,040
to "unauthorized" alien workers who all used the same address in Atlanta, Ga., in 2011, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration
(TIGTA). That was not the only Atlanta address theoretically occupied by thousands of "unauthorized" alien workers receiving millions in federal
tax refunds in 2011. In fact, according to a TIGTA audit report published last year, four of the top ten addresses to which the IRS sent thousands
of tax refunds to "unauthorized" aliens were in Atlanta.
IRS Could Revoke Non-Profit
Status for Religious Institutions Refusing to Perform Same-Sex Marriages. The DOMA decision makes clear that marriage is a state-to-state
issue, meaning that religious institutions that receive non-profit status on the federal level but do not perform or accept same-sex marriages in states
where it is legal could have non-profit status revoked. Furthermore, should the IRS move to revoke federal non-profit status for churches,
synagogues and mosques that do not perform same-sex marriage more generally, the Court could easily justify that decision on the basis of
"eradicating discrimination" in religious education.
IRS Scandals
Jeopardize Funding for Obamacare Implementation. The IRS's spending scandals, in which officials spent millions of taxpayer
dollars on lavish conferences from 2010-2012 and forgot to properly record the expenses, may jeopardize funding for the implementation of
Obamacare.
IRS credit cards used for wine,
pornography, IG report says. Another government watchdog report has flagged inappropriate behavior at the IRS, this time claiming
government credit cards were used to make questionable purchases on items ranging from wine to online pornography. The report from the
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that between fiscal 2010 and 2011, the more than 5,000 IRS card accounts racked up
$103 million in purchases.
Senator: IRS to
Pay $70M in Employee Bonuses. The Internal Revenue Service is about to pay $70 million in employee bonuses despite an Obama
administration directive to cancel discretionary bonuses because of automatic spending cuts enacted this year, according to a GOP senator.
The IRS Immigration Fraud Scandal.
For those who came in late, a year before the IRS scandals burst onto the scene in early May of 2013, an alert investigative reporter for
WTHR-Indianapolis (Channel 13), Bob Segall by name, produced a stunning piece of journalism. [...] The tale begins when an Indiana
tax preparer, who requests anonymity, comes to Segall to alert the investigative reporter to a major league tax fraud.
The
IRS And DOJ Raid Small Businesses With Paramilitary, Gestapo Style Tactics. A short documentary by Jan Morgan of
JanMorganMedia, called "Rampant Injustice" exposes the federal abuse of power that has taken place since Obama was elected.
This underexposed video documents the egregious trampling of the Constitutional rights of Americans during white collar crime
investigations by the Department of Justice and the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service.
IRS Hiring 'Diversity
and Inclusion Specialist,' Starting at $123,758/Year. The IRS is looking to hire a "diversity and inclusion" specialist,
with a minimum salary of $123,758 a year. The opening for a full-time "Supervisory Diversity and Inclusion Specialist" at the
agency's national headquarters in Washington, D.C. was announced on June 11 and is open until June 24. The Diversity
Specialist will "serve as a change agent to provide strategies, solutions, training, tools, resources and thought leadership on
diversity and foster inclusion" across the workplace and "build internal awareness" for diversity and inclusion throughout the agency.
IG:
More Than 1,000 IRS Employees Misused Government Charge Cards; Wrote 325 Bad Checks. The Treasury Inspector General
for Tax Administration revealed in a recently released audit report that in fiscal years 2010 and 2011 more than 1,000 Internal
Revenue Service employees misused government charge cards issued by Citibank. The report said that during the two years in
question agency employees sent Citibank a total of 325 bad checks written on personal accounts that had insufficient funds to
cover them, that agency officials with top-secret security clearances had their charge accounts suspended for failure to pay the
balances, and that the IRS had a tendency of being "overly lenient" in disciplining those who misued the cards.
Jeff Duncan questions IRS rifle usage.
Rep. Jeff Duncan wants to know why IRS law enforcement agents are training with AR-15 rifles. As chairman of the House
Homeland Security oversight subcommittee, Duncan (R-S.C.) toured a federal law enforcement facility in late May and noticed
agents training with the semi-automatic weapons at a firing range. They identified themselves as IRS, he said.
"When I left there, it's been bugging me for weeks now, why IRS agents are training with a semi-automatic rifle AR-15, which has
stand-off capability," Duncan told POLITICO. "Are Americans that much of a target that you need that kind of capability?"
Jeff Duncan questions IRS gun usage.
Rep. Jeff Duncan wants to know why IRS law enforcement agents are training with AR-15 rifles. As chairman of the House Homeland
Security oversight subcommittee, Duncan (R-S.C.) toured a federal law enforcement facility in late May and noticed agents training with
the semi-automatic weapons at a firing range. They identified themselves as IRS, he said.
When Your W-2 Meets an AR-15.
When the IRS is accused of "targeting," don't assume they're speaking metaphorically.
House committee
looks into IRS seizure of 60 million medical records. Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee are
looking into allegations that the Internal Revenue Service seized 60 million medical records from a California health care provider.
"(T)he Committee on Energy and Commerce is investigating allegations that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), in the course of executing
a search warrant at a California health care provider's corporate headquarters in March 2011, improperly seized the personal medical
records of millions of American citizens in possible violation of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution," members of
the committee wrote in a letter Tuesday [6/11/2013] to Acting IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel.
House panel to
probe alleged seizure of medical records by IRS. A top House committee launched another probe of the Internal Revenue
Service (IRS) Tuesday [6/11/2013] after a lawsuit alleged that the agency improperly seized millions of personal medical records in
California. In a letter, Republican leaders on the Energy and Commerce panel asked the IRS to explain how it handles confidential
medical information. "While [federal] privacy rules restrict the ability of a covered entity to release protected health
information, those rules appear to impose no restrictions on the IRS's ability to use such information after it is obtained,"
the lawmakers wrote.
IRS Buying Spying Equipment.
The IRS, currently in the midst of scandals involving the targeting of conservative groups and lavish taxpayer-funded conferences, is ordering
surveillance equipment that includes hidden cameras in coffee trays, plants and clock radios. The IRS wants to secure the surveillance
equipment quickly — it posted a solicitation on June 6 and is looking to close the deal by Monday, June 10. The
agency already has a company lined up for the order but is not commenting on the details.
Update: IRS Cancels Order for Spying Equipment.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has cancelled its purchase order for surveillance equipment, which had included coffee trays with
hidden cameras and cameras that could be hidden in plants. The IRS issued the cancellation on Wednesday at 11:49 a.m.
CNSNews.com published an initial story about the IRS's purchase order on Monday afternoon — and that story was linked on
The Drudge Report.
Tea Party Patriots to
Organize Mass 'Audit the IRS Rally' in D.C.. The Tea Party Patriots will organize a mass "Audit the IRS Rally" on June 19th in Washington, D.C.
with local and national Tea Party groups to protest the IRS's targeting of conservative organizations.
IRS Employees Held Four
Conferences at Vegas Casinos; Cost: $671,990. A new Inspector General report on Internal Revenue Service (IRS) conferences
and costs shows that among 225 conferences held around the country between 2010 and 2012, at least four events took place at
luxury hotel-casinos in Las Vegas at a cost to taxpayers of $671,990. Two of the IRS events took place at the luxurious Caesar's
Palace Hotel and Casino, one at the New York-New York Hotel and Casino, and one at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino.
IRS Did Mad Men Video Too.
What do Star Trek and Mad Men have in common? They've both been ripped off by the IRS.
Rubio to PJM: 'We Don't Need an IRS as Big as It
Is'. Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio told PJ Media that the Senate should exercise more oversight of the Internal
Revenue Service, adding that Congress should reduce the size of the IRS by simplifying the tax code. PJ Media asked Rubio on
Capitol Hill what he thinks should be the next step for Congress in addressing the IRS targeting tea party and other conservative
organizations. "Full investigation — like they're doing oversight hearings in the House," Rubio said. "I wish
there were more going on in the Senate."
Tightly Closed
Administration Appears to be Coming Apart. President Obama is being hit by new scandals almost weekly in a growing
web of investigations and revelations that have further damaged his troubled administration. The U.S. Treasury's Inspector
General (IG) released a new report Tuesday [6/4/2013] that revealed the Internal Revenue Service spent $50 million on
220 conferences for IRS employees over a three-year period beginning in 2010. Despite annual federal budget deficits
of more than $1 trillion throughout Obama's first term, the IG found many of the IRS' expenditures to be downright wasteful.
The IRS wasn't required to do something taxpayers are. Bash: IRS Can't Locate Its Receipts. The IRS
spent over 4 million taxpayer dollars on a conference in 2010, CNN reported Tuesday evening [6/4/2013]. The actual amount
wasted is unknown because the IRS was not required to keep its receipts, something that they require taxpayers to do. CNN
correspondent Dana Bash discussed the excesses of the agency in a report on 360, including gifts, video spoofs and upscale hotel rooms
for agency higher-ups, but the cost of those and the conference itself was unclear because the IRS had engaged in poor record-keeping.
IRS mess is bigger than Bam. Abolish the Internal Revenue Service?
So says Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas): "We ought to abolish the IRS and instead move to a simple flat tax where the average
American can fill out taxes on postcard," the GOP's favorite iconoclast told Fox News the other day. How would it work?
"Put down how much you earn, a deduction for charitable contributions, home mortgage and how much you owe — take the
agents, the bureaucracy out of Washington and limit the power of government."
Some Democrats will say anything to keep the IRS from being scrutinized. How Many Things Can Jim McDermott Get Wrong in Five Minutes?
Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) attacked victims of IRS targeting at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing today [6/5/2013], saying
that it was their fault they were targeted because they applied for tax-exempt status.
Two
IRS officials put on administrative leave for accepting gifts at Calif. conference. The Internal Revenue Service
said Wednesday [6/5/2013] that two managers who attended a conference the agency held in Southern California in 2010 have been
placed on administrative leave for accepting free food and other gifts in violation of government ethics standards. Top IRS
officials were notified of the misconduct three months ago by the Treasury Department inspector general, whose office discovered
the gifts in the course of an audit of the conference held in Anaheim, Calif., government sources said.
Audit
finds IRS spent more than $4 million on a single employee conference. The Internal Revenue Service spent
$4.1 million on a single employee conference held in Anaheim, Calif., in 2010, one of 225 such events held over
a two-year period at a cost to taxpayers of nearly $50 million. According to a 63-page report authored by the
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration and obtained by The Washington Examiner, the conference costs were approved
by the both of the IRS' deputy commissioners and were paid for by taking money from an IRS account intended for hiring
"enforcement employees."
Ted Cruz: Abolish the IRS.
Sen. Ted Cruz says it is time to abolish the Internal Revenue Service. The freshman Texas Republican and tea party favorite
launched an online petition in which he says the only way to make sure that the agency does not target conservative groups again
or silence the president's critics is to eliminate it altogether.
How the IRS spent $4.1 million on 2010 training conference.
The Internal Revenue Service spent an eye-watering $4.1 million of government money on a 2010 training conference in
California, handing out cocktails, engraved pens and room upgrades to the managers who attended. A report released
on Tuesday [6/4/2013] by the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration reveals the staggering list
of gifts lavished on the 2,609 employees at the conference in Anaheim.
Average Guest
Speaker At IRS Conference Made More Than $9,000. The IRS spent $135,350 on 15 guest speakers at a single conference
in Anaheim, according to a report by the Treasury Inspector General's report, released by the House Government Oversight Committee
Tuesday. The report states that the IRS spent $50 million on such conferences between 2010 and 2012. The average
speaker at the Anaheim conference made $9,000, according to a list of the 15 speakers.
Extensive IRS
conference spending revealed by IG report. A new report on Internal Revenue Service expenditures finds that the
agency spent more than $48 million on 225 conferences over a three-year span, with one conference in Anaheim coming
under particular scrutiny.
IRS Spent
$50 Million in Two Years on 'Conferences'. A report to be released on Tuesday investigating expenditures by the
Internal Revenue Service will reveal that $50 million was lavished on some 220 conferences for employees between 2010 and 2012.
In one case alone, the report finds that the IRS spent $4 million on a conference for 2,600 IRS employees held in
Anaheim, California in August of 2010.
IRS Commissioner Aided Tax Cheat
Congressman. [Scroll down] After months of a barrage of stories about Rangel's problems with taxes
and a mere four-plus months after the liberal New York Times was calling for Rangel to step aside, the IRS Commissioner
was in Harlem at that food bank to personally lend the quite public support of the IRS to the embattled, left-leaning,
tax-challenged Rangel. Well aside from the issue of political judgment for the head of the supposedly nonpartisan
IRS to be publicly campaigning for a man so publicly and repeatedly charged with tax cheating — the Rangel
episode raised the obvious issue of whether, under the circumstances, Shulman was as obtuse as he appeared. Was
Douglas Shulman really that politically dumb?
Wife
of Former IRS Chief Campaigned for Obama, Questioned Romney's Taxes. Former Internal Revenue Service
Commissioner Douglas Shulman is under fire from Congress for his agency's targeting of Tea Party and other conservative
organizations. Shulman himself is under suspicion for his numerous visits to the White House compared to other
administration officials. Additionally, Shulman's wife Susan L. Anderson reportedly works for the Washington
D.C. based liberal organization Public Campaign.
The Hollow Core of Obamaism.
Personally, I think some of Obama's rhetoric is partly to blame for the climate that led to the IRS scandal. When you talk
incessantly about how the good, smart, and patriotic people support an ever-larger role for government, people who want a smaller
role for government are going to be treated with suspicion. But that's not the point I want to make here. Rather, I want
to shine a light on what is a relatively minor scandal: the ludicrous conferences the IRS has organized for itself.
Tax Reform Is the IRS Fix.
Apart from criminal prosecution, the best way to strip the power of politics and corruption from the IRS is to initiate broad-based,
pro-growth tax reform and simplification. It's the complexity of the tax code that nurtures the corruptness of the IRS.
We're doing a lousy job, so give us more money. House Dem: If IRS
budget gets cut, they will target you more. Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., called for an increase in IRS funding, on the theory
that budget cuts will "promote more scandals" at the agency that recently admitted to targeting small-government conservatives for
inappropriate reviews. "There is no clearer way to promote more scandals than by cutting funding that could be used for oversight,
training, and reform," Serrano said during a House subcommittee hearing on the IRS today. "At the level this subcommittee is funding
right now, we are just asking for more trouble at the IRS."
House
panel: Report finds $50M for IRS conferences. Already under siege, the Internal Revenue Service was cited by a government
watchdog for a $4.1 million training conference featuring luxury rooms and free drinks, even as conservative figures told Congress
Tuesday [6/4/2013] they had been abused for years while seeking tax-exempt status.
More trouble for the IRS.
The new acting IRS chief acknowledged Friday [5/31/2013] that an upcoming audit would find improper spending at an agency conference,
opening up a new trouble spot for an agency already embattled over its treatment of Tea Party groups. Danny Werfel, the acting
commissioner, said that the conference occurred in 2010, labeling it an "unfortunate vestige" from a time before the agency tightened
its belt.
Former IRS
commissioner's wife tweeted from Occupy Wall Street rally. The wife of the former IRS commissioner who ran the tax agency
when it was singling out conservative groups was apparently involved — at least briefly — in the Occupy Wall Street
movement. Susan L. Anderson sent a tweet in December 2011 asking people in the Washington area to attend an Occupy Wall Street
rally.
Another frivolous
IRS-produced video emerges. The IG will release a report next week titled "Collected and Wasted: The IRS Spending
Culture and Conference Abuses" and it will be the subject of a hearing before the House oversight committee on Thursday [5/6/2013].
IRS
training videos spoof 'Star Trek,' 'Gilligan's Island' and 'Cupid Shuffle'. The Internal Revenue Service is
acknowledging that the agency spent tens of millions of dollars in recent years on conferences for thousands of its
employees. [...] During the conference, employees watched two training videos starring division employees that cost
at least $60,000 to produce, according to the audit's estimates.
IRS Spent $1.1 Million on BlackBerries and
Aircards It Didn't Use. According to an audit report released in January 2013 by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration
(TIGTA), the Internal Revenue Service spent $1 million in taxpayer dollars to purchase BlackBerry™ smartphones and wireless internet
"aircards" — that subsequently went unused. According to the report, "The IRS paid approximately $1.1 million during Fiscal Year
2011 for 13,878 aircards and 754 BlackBerry™ smartphones that were not used for periods of three months to one year. [Moreover,] TIGTA
identified 45 aircards and 68 BlackBerry™ smartphones that were not used at all for the entire 12 months of the fiscal year."
Americans Deserve the IRS. In order to squeeze out
of us half of what we produce, a government tax collection agency must be ruthless and able to put the fear of God into its citizens. The IRS
has mastered that task. Congress has given it powers that would be deemed criminal if used by others. For example, the Constitution's Fifth
Amendment protects Americans against self-incrimination and being forced to bear witness against oneself. That's precisely what one does when
he is compelled to sign his income tax form. However, a Fifth Amendment argument can't be used as a defense in a court of law. The IRS
will counter that you voluntarily provided the information on your tax return.
IRS
knowingly sends Billions in Fraudulent Refunds to Illegal Immigrants. A WTHR-TV Indianapolis investigative report
exposes a fraudulent scheme wherein the IRS is sending $4.2 billion per year to illegal immigrants as an "additional child tax
credit" for children who don't even live in the U.S. Further, the IRS and Congress have been ignoring the scheme for years.
IRS Worker Used Federal Plastic
For Amazon Buys. Entrusted with a government credit card, an Internal Revenue Service worker allegedly used the plastic
for a years-long Amazon.com shopping spree that netted her hundreds of items, including a chocolate fondue fountain; Bollywood
movies; Pampers; Harlequin romance novels; Omaha Steaks; Apple Bottoms skinny jeans; mango body wash; and a Ginsu knife set.
Yetunde Oseni, 37, was named this month in a U.S. District Court felony complaint charging her with embezzling government funds.
Oseni has worked since 2000 as a secretary in an IRS office in Lanham, Maryland. According to a court filing, Oseni was given a
Citibank MasterCard for the "purchase of office supplies for her business unit."
Illegal Immigrant Additional Child Tax Credit Fraud.
Illegal Immigrants otherwise known as Undocumented Workers are using an IRS Tax Loophole to take advantage of the Additional Child Tax Credit to obtain tax refunds.
This tax fraud is currently costing U.S. Taxpayers about 4 Billion dollars a year.
Wastebook
2011. [T]he IRS approved roughly $1 billion in tax credits intended for energy efficiency home improvements
to individuals who did not even own a house. These recipients included prisoners and children, some probably not even
old enough to own a doll house. While Congress bickered over whether or not the salaries of federal employees should
be frozen, the federal government paid $120 million to federal employees who were deceased.
IRS
Morality: Defend Planned Parenthood, Deluge Adoptive Families with Audits. [Scroll down] This audit wave got
almost no media coverage, but what was the experience like for individual families? In a word, grueling. Huge document
requests with short turnaround times were followed by lengthy IRS delays in processing, all with no understanding for the unique
documentation challenges of international adoption.
A $4.2 Bil Subsidy For Illegals?
If the federal government had actually wanted to encourage illegal immigration, wouldn't a big tax credit be
the way to bring them in? Lucky us, that's what the IRS is doing — and with our money.
Illegal
Workers Used Tax Credit to Pocket $4.2 Billion, Audit Shows. Undocumented workers
collected $4.2 billion in a certain tax credit last year, up from less than $1 billion
five years ago, according to a new audit. The report from the Treasury Inspector General
for Tax Administration looked only at a tax benefit known as the Additional Child Tax Credit, a
refundable credit meant for working families. The audit found that as a result of vague U.S.
law — as well as an expansion of the tax credit in stimulus legislation and other measures —
the number of illegal workers collecting the money has skyrocketed.
For the good of the country, let's abolish
the IRS. Testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee by the outgoing acting IRS commissioner, Steve Miller, as
well as numerous statements by individuals claiming they have been harassed and intimidated by IRS agents, reveal a government agency
out of control, or more precisely, under the control of political hacks. It's doubtful this was a freelance operation.
J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, testified he knew as early as June 2012 that the IRS
was targeting conservatives, but did nothing to stop it during the presidential campaign. Who else knew?
Just to be sure nobody talked to the press... IRS
Scandal: Armed Police 'Escort' Reporters Through Cincinnati Office. Monday afternoon [5/20/2013], ABC News released
a chilling report that details what journalists have faced while trying to get some answers from the Cincinnati IRS office, which
is where a majority of the Tea Party targeting took place. According to ABC, an "armed uniform police officer with the Federal
Protective Service" "escorted" reporters through the public building. ABC says if the intent wasn't to "scare off" employees
who might talk, "it was the effect."
Has the IRS Already Seized Your Medical Records?
As gratifying as it was to see the "news" media actually do its job last week when the IRS scandal broke, it was also odd that the coverage focused
exclusively on abuses of power relating to various Tea Party and anti-abortion groups. A much scarier IRS story has been virtually ignored by the
establishment press. On Wednesday, it was reported that a class-action lawsuit had been filed against a group of IRS agents who, according to the
complaint filed by "John Doe Company" in the Southern District of California, "stole more than 60,000,000 medical records of more than 10,000,000
Americans, including at least 1,000,000 Californians."
Fraudulent tax returns surge
181%. The IRS identified 335,341 tax returns claiming $1.9 billion in fraudulent refunds as
of March 4, 2011, according to the findings of an audit conducted by the Treasury Inspector General
for Tax Administration. ... The Earned Income Tax Credit, aimed at helping lower-income taxpayers, has been
a large source of fraud, with people falsely lowering their income to qualify or claiming children they
don't have. The IRS estimates that 23% to 28% of EITC credits are wrongfully paid to Americans every
year, totaling $11 to $13 billion.
The Not-So-Little Engine That Wouldn't Go Away.
While the infamous $436 hammers and $600 toilet seats are distant memories, the current crop of federal spending
excesses are... well, downright excessive. Some of the best examples from 2010 include: $112 million
doled out by the IRS to prisoners filing fraudulent tax returns [...]
Tax Audits Are No Laughing Matter. Our income-tax system is
based on voluntary compliance and honest reporting by citizens. It couldn't possibly function if most people decided to cheat. Sure,
the system is backed up by the dreaded IRS audit. But the threat is, while not exactly hollow, limited: The IRS can't audit more than a
tiny fraction of taxpayers. If Americans started acting like Italians, who famously see tax evasion as a national pastime, the system would
collapse. One reason why Americans don't act like Italians is that they see the income-tax system as basically fair in execution.
Report: IRS Covered Up
Scandal Until After Election. [Scroll down] The third thing, though, is by far the most troubling and was spelled
out perfectly by NBC's Lisa Meyers Friday morning [5/17/2013] on "Morning Joe." From everything she knew before the hearings and
what we are learning from them today, it looks as though, at the very least, the IRS knew of this scandal prior to the 2012 election and
deliberately covered it up until afterward.
Did The IRS Try To
Swing Election To Obama? The inspector general's report on the IRS targeting of conservatives makes it seem like a case
of bureaucratic bumbling. But the more we learn, the more it looks like a concerted effort to hobble Obama's political foes.
IRS
Overpaid Earned Income Credit By Nearly $111 Billion, Treasury Report Says. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has overpaid
the Earned Income Tax Credit by at least $110.8 billion since 2000, according to a recent Treasury Department inspector general
report. That is more than double the $53 billion of sequester cuts expected in 2013 totaling less than 2 percent of
outlays, and puts the lie to those who suggest there is nothing to cut in the federal budget.
IRS
Data Web Snares Mostly Low-and Middle-Income Taxpayers. The Internal Revenue Service relies on technology more than ever to sniff out tax cheats
using robo-audits and data mining — but so far it has caught lot of minnows, and big fish are still eluding detection. Even as millions of people's
accounts are screened online and matched against their digital files elsewhere, the IRS's data-detection tools come nowhere close to collecting the $400 billion
in tax dodges estimated to take place each year. The area in which its robo-audits have had the most impact is on tax returns for low-income taxpayers
who try to claim the Earned Income Tax Credit.
Report: IRS Issued $1B in Fraudulent Refunds
in 2007. The government sent out more than $1 billion in fraudulent refunds last year and
offered this explanation Thursday [10/30/2008] for the bad checks in the mail: The Internal Revenue
Service has too few resources to pursue every tax fraud case.
Stolen Identity Tax Refund Fraud [is] Widespread.
A stolen-identity tax refund scheme uncovered by a Durham retiree in March apparently is so widespread that one federal official has described it as the "No. 1
tax scam for 2013." It's called SIRF, stolen identity refund fraud, and it affects an untold number of innocent taxpayers, costing the federal government
billions. It relies on two weaknesses in the operations of the Internal Revenue Service: its desire to get returns to taxpayers quickly, and a timing
gap in how it deals with employees and employers.
Another IRS
Scandal; Employees Lie to Get Welfare, Food Stamps. On the heels of "Tax Day," 24 Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
employees have been charged with stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in government benefits, including food stamps, welfare
and housing vouchers. The story comes out of Tennessee, where federal prosecutors announced this month that the scheme fleeced
U.S. taxpayers out of at least a quarter of a million dollars in government benefits. The corrupt IRS employees did it by making
false statements to fraudulently obtain the benefits, which also included unemployment insurance.
Treasury Office
Faults IRS Computer Security. Two new IRS computer systems that will eventually cost taxpayers
almost $2 billion are being put into service despite known security and privacy vulnerabilities, a
Treasury watchdog said in a report coming out Thursday [10/16/2008]. The office of the Treasury Inspector General
for Tax Administration said Internal Revenue Service officials failed to ensure that identified weaknesses
had been addressed before putting the new systems into use.
Investigate Employer Who
Filed 37,375 Bad W-2s in One Year. Investigate the employer who — according to the Office of the Inspector General
of the Social Security Administration (SSA) — filed 37,375 inaccurate W-2s in tax year 2005. In fact, investigate all
employers who have similarly filed massive numbers of bad W-2s. Forget the employers who filed 100, 200 or even 500 bad W-2s per
year. Give them a pass — for now. Focus only on those that filed thousands.
The IRS is reading your email, and doesn't care a court said they can't.
For those of you who are old enough to remember Freedom, prior to 1913 the government managed quite nicely without an income tax. They built
roads, conducted diplomacy, fought wars, delivered the mail, and balanced their budget. What they did not do was transfer wealth from the
productive to the unproductive. The IRS changed all that. They've got what it takes to take what you've got.
IRS to taxpayers: We don't need a
warrant for email snooping, GPS tracking. IRS attorneys have asserted in internal documents that the Fourth Amendment does not
protect email and that a warrant is not needed to plant a GPS location tracker on a car in its owner's driveway. In documents obtained
from the IRS by the ACLU under the federal Freedom of Information Act and posted on the website Wednesday, the agency's attorneys adopt an
extremely aggressive posture toward the requirements the Fourth Amendment might place on its criminal investigators who want to read email or
text messages, or use GPS location tracking.
IRS Sits By As Inmates
Collect Fraudulent Tax Refunds. Nearly a year after Congress passed a law to stop incarcerated criminals from fraudulently
receiving millions of dollars in tax returns, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) hasn't bothered creating a system to catch the offenders.
Understanding the Progressive Mind.
[Scroll down] Libertarians loathe no federal agency as much as they do the Internal Revenue Service. They view it as an
unwarranted expansion of the State into their lives, and they see an agency full of people who have way too much power
over the daily lives of others. Progressives, on the other hand, believe that the IRS has too little power. The
mission of the IRS — to seize tax revenue — is utterly important for it is the IRS that ultimately allows us
to pay for the "Social Contract" that Progressives believe is central to life itself.
An Embarrassing Metric
Disappears. As the din of America's falling headfirst over the fiscal cliff reverberates across the nation, the Obama
administration is quietly killing a key economic metric that tells how, and how many, people are voting with their feet. Since
1991 the Internal Revenue Service has been compiling statistics on filers' addresses, which the agency's Statistics of Income division
uses to show who is moving into and out of every county and state in the nation. As you'd expect, the IRS also knows the aggregate
income levels of those who move.
The Illegal Eagle and a Baldly Grasping IRS.
[Scroll down] The presence of the stuffed eagle meant it couldn't be sold without violating the 1940 Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and
the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Since the artwork couldn't be sold, logic dictated that it be listed as having zero value, which is what the
Sonnabend family's three appraisers, one of them Christie's auction house, did. But don't look for "logic" in any government dictionary.
In the summer of 2011, the IRS sent the family an unsigned report appraising "Canyon" at $15 million. When they rejected the valuation,
the government upped the ante: The appraisal was increased to $65 million, which yielded a $29.2 million tax bill.
The IRS Has Gone Rogue. A
president who says "I haven't raised taxes" has authorized his Internal Revenue Service issue a "final rule" that will illegally tax
some 12 million individuals, plus large employers, in as many as 40 states beginning in 2014. Oklahoma's attorney
general has asked a federal court to block this rule. Members of Congress have introduced legislation in both the House and
the Senate to quash it.
The IRS: The Power to Ruin Lives.
[Most people] don't like the IRS, in part because it has so much arbitrary power to ruin lives. But it's not just that is has the power to
ruin lives. That can be said about the FBI, the DEA, the BATF, and all sorts of other enforcement agencies. What irks people about the IRS is
that it has so much power combined with the fact that the internal revenue code is a nightmare of complexity that can overwhelm even the most
well-intentioned taxpayer.
IRS discourages employees from detecting fraud.
Child tax credit payments to illegal immigrants have quadrupled in the past five years as a result of President Obama's stimulus package
and the Internal Revenue Service's refusal to pursue instances of fraud, a new study shows. The IRS is also failing to inform
citizens that illegal immigrants have stolen their Social Security Numbers. The IRS paid out $7.4 billion in tax refunds to
illegal immigrants in 2012, quadruple the $1.7 billion paid out in 2007, according to a new report by Senate Republicans.
IRS told employees to
ignore potential fraud in program used by immigrants. IRS supervisors ignored employees who tried to warn agency higher-ups
of fraud in a program designed to collect taxes from immigrants, resulting in the agency paying out potentially bogus refunds.
The Treasury inspector general for tax administration said the IRS even eliminated some methods employees had used to figure out
questionable refund requests, and that the agency doesn't have the ability to verify applicants' identity or foreign status.
Investigators "found an environment which discourages employees from detecting fraudulent applications," said J. Russell George,
the inspector general.
President Obama, the Strong
Favorite of IRS Employees. According to a search of FEC contributor data, employees of the Internal Revenue Service have a
strong preference in this year's election. Donors who list their employer as "Internal Revenue Service" or "IRS" have donated
$26,538 to President Obama's campaign, and just $2,340 to Mitt Romney's campaign.
IRS hit with audit for mismanagement
and fraud. The large, unmarked building in south Austin is where the IRS decides whether to issue an Individual Taxpayer
Identification Number to the millions of illegal immigrants who apply for them. An ITIN allows undocumented workers to file tax
returns and pay taxes, a legal requirement for those who earn income in the United States — even those who come to the country
illegally. But [WTHR-TV] discovered the ITIN system is plagued by abuse and fraud.
IRS
may be given the authority to restrict travel. Imagine someday in the not too distant future having to apply
for a government permit to sell your home and move somewhere else. Imagine that you apply for and are denied a permit
to visit your grandchildren in another state. ... Americans best sit up and take note of this new encroachment on our rights.
Like the former Soviet Union, U.S. is setting up internal passport system. In
fact, the IRS routinely leans on the little guy and small business owners. For instance, in 2010 the owner of a car wash in
Sacramento, California, was harassed by the IRS after the government said he owed four cents in back taxes (which became $200 after
three years of penalties and fees). The IRS is also used by the establishment as a political weapon, as various Tea Party
organizations around the country recently learned.
5 New Ways the IRS
Is [Harshly and Unfairly Treating] America. [#2] The United States Senate on March 14th passed a
transportation funding bill that contained a slipped-in section authorizing the "denial, revocation, or limitation of a
passport" for anyone with "a seriously delinquent tax debt in an amount in excess of $50,000." The "revocation" bit is
especially heinous: Even the outrageous and barely-known State Department provision denying passports to those who owe
$2,500 in back child support only deals with issuances and renewals. Now the feds are apparently willing to actively
hunt you down and take away your getaway card.
Among the Tax-takers.
I worked for the IRS and survived. I learned about taxpayers, but the really interesting part of
it was learning about tax-takers. We all have this vague notion of people who don't pay taxes but
receive money from Uncle Sam in what euphemistically is called a tax refund. That's what I had, a
vague notion, until I was forced to close my business in 2010. I took a seasonal job with the
Internal Revenue Service to get some household cash flow going. We "Timmy Geithner warriors" were
appalled by what we learned.
The Soft Dictatorship.
The IRS has the power to force citizens to incriminate themselves, violating the Fifth Amendment, and prosecutes
trials under the premise that taxpayers are guilty until proven innocent, violating the Sixth Amendment.
Finally the IRS can seize property and businesses and sell the property and business without a court order,
again violating the Fifth Amendment. In fact, the most terrifying organization in America is the IRS.
They are universally feared, and for good reason. However, the IRS is arbitrary in their enforcement;
several people in the Obama administration have committed outright tax evasion with no consequences.
What would you call an agency with that kind of power and completely arbitrary enforcement?
Identity Theft
Involving IRS Mushrooms. Since 2008, the IRS has identified about 470,000 incidents of identity
theft affecting more than 390,000 taxpayers, Sen. Bill Nelson (D., Fla.) said at a Senate Finance Committee
hearing on Wednesday [5/25/2011]. The problem appears to be expanding rapidly. In 2008, there were
about 52,000 incidents involving the IRS, according to the Government Accountability Office. In 2010,
there were 245,000.
IRS staff
committed tax credit fraud. More than 100 employees of the Internal Revenue Service
cheated the government by fraudulently claiming a first-time homebuyer tax credit included in the 2008
and 2009 economic stimulus packages, according to federal investigators.
About Obama's rich
people... The tax system doesn't just take our money — it subjects us to endless
torment. According to a 2010 report by the National Taxpayer Advocate, an IRS ombudsman, taxpayers
and businesses spend about 6.1 million hours a year on their taxes at a cost of $163 billion.
That doesn't include the economic cost of tax-avoidance behavior, in which taxpayers shift assets into less
productive endeavors or take into account the dread, frustration and anger of the beleaguered citizen.
IRS pays $513 Million
In Bogus Credits Under Stimulus. Weeks after a government audit revealed that the Internal
Revenue Service doled out $33 million in fraudulent electric-car tax credits, a separate probe says
the agency paid out over half a billion dollars to "homebuyers" who didn't qualify. It's simply the
latest of many blunders for the perpetually troubled government agency that's awarded prison inmates tens
of millions of dollars in bogus tax refunds in the past decade. Last year alone, more than a quarter
of a million prisoners filed tax returns with the IRS and nearly 50,000 claimed more than $130 million
in refunds without bothering to report wage information, according to the Treasury Inspector General.
It's time to
shut down the IRS. The FairTax Act seeks to reform the tax structure of the United States
by replacing the inefficient income tax with a pro-growth consumption tax and would eliminate the need
for the IRS because the FairTax would be administered in much the same manner as states administer state
sales taxes. Americans would no longer have to file a return because taxes would be collected at
the point of sale for a good or service. This turns the idea of taxation in the United States on
its head.
Tax compliance employs more workers than Wal-Mart,
UPS, McDonald's, IBM and Citigroup combined. The 30-Cent Tax Premium.
There is a lot more to taxes than simply paying the bill. Taxpayers must spend significantly more than
$1 in order to provide $1 of income-tax revenue to the federal government.
Top 10 Spending Cuts Thwarted by
Democrats: [#2] Internal Revenue Service: Republicans want to cut
nearly $600 million from Obama's budget for the IRS in order to prevent it from hiring the
new agents needed to enforce ObamaCare rules. Obama wants a 9% budget hike for the tax
collecting agency and 1,269 new positions to implement ObamaCare, with their likely focus being
monitoring compliance with the individual mandate and collecting taxes from people who don't
have health insurance.
The IRS Thinks
I'm a Bar Code. For two years the IRS has owed me more than $1,200, which it improperly
assessed me for tax year 2008. It fessed up to the error in May 2009 and assured me that I would get
paid in a reasonable time. From there on my life has been launched into a myriad maze of phone calls,
chats with IRS people all over the country, and receipt of two checks from the United States Treasury —
both of which cannot be cashed.
5,100 More IRS
Agents. President Obama's fiscal 2012 budget doesn't cut much of anything, and certainly not
the Internal Revenue Service. The White House is requesting that the most beloved of all government
agencies get an additional 5,100 agents next year, no doubt to wring further tax revenue from Americans.
IRS Guilty of Fraud. If you
ever had any doubts concerning the morally depraved and illegal activities of some IRS employees, the U.S.
Court of Appeals case Dixon v. U.S. [91 AFTR 2d 2003-569 (9th Cir. 2003)] filed January 17, 2003,
should strike fear in your heart. ... The Dixon case offers important insight into the day-to-day
operations at the IRS. Every office has a secret cadre of employees and managers that know "what
is best for the IRS" and they develop their own vigilante style of enforcement. That is, they
have no qualms about bending, breaking or distorting the law — to accomplish in their view "the real
mission of the IRS."
Grain of salt: Please note that
the IRS did not exist 140 years ago. IRS Rewarding
Those Who Snitch On Tax Cheats. If you want to blow the whistle on a small-time crook then
you would be participating in the original IRS informant program that has been around for more than
140 years. If you report someone to this program, you could receive up to 15 percent
of the amount that has been underpaid up to a maximum award of $10 million.
IRS Informant Reward Program.
In the former Soviet Union, people had to be very careful about discussing their business and personal
affairs because almost everyone was a spy for the secret police agency known as the KGB. It appears
that the Internal Revenue Service has studied the "Soviet Model" and has set up a new division known as
The Informant Reward Program.
Debate brews over expansion of Internal Revenue
Service's work force. Health reform may have finally become law, but the partisan wars over the
bill continue to rage — and the latest flash point is a debate about whether the $940 billion
overhaul means thousands of new government workers are about to bloat the federal payroll. Republicans
lawmakers are warning the law would put as many as 16,000 new Internal Revenue Service agents and workers on
the streets.
Do as
the IRS says, not as it does. Important government documents are often shielded from Freedom of
Information Act requests because of an exemption in the law that allows federal departments and agencies to
withhold materials created before the issuance of an official policy. It's known as the "internal
deliberative process" exemption and it enables officials to withhold virtually all memoranda, e-mails, studies,
or other documents created by agency employees or contractors as part of the policymaking process. ... But
don't expect the government to extend the same privilege it demands for itself to private companies.
Obamacare's Hit Man.
Last week the Congressional Budget Office reported that it expects that the Internal Revenue Service and the
Department of Health and Human Services will spend up to an additional $200 billion over the next decade
on administering Obamacare. That's in addition to the estimated $1 trillion that will be spent in
2014-2019 under the new healthcare law. Much of the money will go to hiring hundreds of thousands
of bureaucrats to administer Obamacare over the next decade.
16,500 More Reasons to
Vote Republican in November. Thanks to the Democrats, the most hated agency in America, the IRS,
just got 16,500 agents bigger. By sprinkling in an additional 16,500 IRS agents into their health care
mix, the Democrats may have just placed upon their own backs a backbreaking straw.
IRS
Agent Didn't Report $41,842 in EBay Sales. An Internal Revenue Service officer was found liable
for back taxes and penalties for not reporting income on nearly 2,000 transactions on EBay Inc., the online
auction site, according to the U.S. Tax Court. Andrea Fabiana Orellana failed to report $41,842 in
income in 2004 and 2005 from sales of designer clothing, shoes and other items, according to a Tax Court
summary opinion.
IRS fraudulent refunds total an
estimated $318M. Internal Revenue Service gave away $318 million in improper refunds this
year because a computer program that screens tax returns for fraud wasn't working, according to a report
released Friday [9/1/2006].
David vs. Goliath of Governmental
Agencies. One of the most hideous ways the Internal Revenue Service usurps power and control
over Americans is through its oppression over nonprofits, especially religious groups. Threatening to
withdraw tax-exempt status and to levy penalties are just a couple of ways it exercises its tyranny. For
example, April 3, Catholic Answers, one of the nation's largest lay-run apologetic (or defense) ministries
for the Catholic movement, filed suit in federal court against the IRS for violating its right to free speech.
Welcome
To The Ministry of Propaganda. Photo ops and access to the inner halls of government have become
more and more a matter of providing favorable publicity to that government. Asking hard questions and
informing the public, is now in the back seat. The press has found itself vulnerable to government
coercion. They can be excluded, their credentials revoked. Then the IRS attacked World Net
Daily some years ago, at the apparent instigation of the Clinton White House. So much for honesty,
transparency, and good government.
Lawyer gets 5-cent IRS bill, 4-cent refund. James Howarth
is a little confused by two letters he has received from the Internal Revenue Service. The Detroit defense lawyer
received one letter in November that said he owed the IRS money — five cents. He was warned that he should pay "to
avoid additional penalty and/or interest," the Detroit Free Press reported Saturday. Howarth said he then received a
second letter telling him the government owes him money — four cents.
The Editor asks...
Is there no "sanity check" in the IRS software?
IRS Workers Stealing Your Cash! Think
your income tax check is safe when you send it off to the IRS? Think again. An ABC News investigation has
uncovered case after case of checks being stolen, manipulated and cashed by contract employees responsible for
processing them, resulting in delayed payments and heavily disrupted lives.
IRS, Justice
Target Undisclosed Assets In Swiss Accounts. A lawyer who specializes in tax cases, [Edward M.]
Robbins thinks the government is gearing up to prosecute large numbers of Americans for failing to disclose foreign
accounts on their tax returns and evading taxes on income generated by the accounts. "If I were one of these
guys with 10 to 50 million in my account, I'd be having an aneurysm," Robbins said. "It's an extremely
dangerous situation for these guys.
Scrap the
tax code. The tax code now exceeds a staggering 60,000 pages, prompting Americans
to waste 6.2 billion hours just completing their returns every year. Deciphering it
costs the country $203.4 billion a year, according to the Tax Foundation. Its
complexities generate additional job-killing distortions throughout our economy. Indeed,
the tax code is so complicated and expansive that it now touches nearly every aspect
of our lives.
I.R.S.
Enlists Help in Collecting Delinquent Taxes. If you owe back taxes to the federal government,
the next call asking you to pay may come not from an Internal Revenue Service officer, but from a private
debt collector. Within two weeks, the I.R.S. will turn over data on 12,500 taxpayers — each of
whom owes $25,000 or less in back taxes — to three collection agencies. Larger debtors will
continue to be pursued by I.R.S. officers.
Sick-Leave
Abuse Prompts Calls to Compensate for Unused Time. At the Internal Revenue Service, one employee
over a two-year period took sick leave on 13 of the 14 Tuesdays after a Monday holiday. That's an
extreme case of sick-leave abuse, but the IRS employee had plenty of co-workers who also liked to take
Tuesdays off, a report by the Inspector General for Tax Administration found.
The Editor says...
Most private companies would fire an employee like that, but when you work for Uncle Sam, your job is
safe no matter what kind of goldbrick you are.
1040 Checkmate? On
May 12, 2006 in Peoria, Illinois, the attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) begged the court
to dismiss all charges against IRS victim Robert Lawrence in federal District Court. The motion for
dismissal came on the heels of a surprise tactic by Lawrence's defense attorney Oscar Stilley. The
tactic threatened exposure of IRS's on-going efforts to defraud the public. The move put DOJ attorneys
in a state of panic that left them with only one alternative: beg for dismissal, with prejudice.
This was written in 1995: Why You Can't Trust the
IRS:
• The IRS telephone taxpayer assistance program provides about 8.5 million Americans
the wrong answers to even the most basic inquiries about the tax laws.
• This year roughly 10 million Americans will receive correction notices from the IRS
assessing about $4 billion. About half of those notices will be erroneous.
• About 40 percent of the revenues the IRS collects through penalty assessments are
abated when citizens challenge the penalties. In 1993 taxpayers were over-charged $5 billion.
• A General Accounting Office audit of the IRS in 1993 found widespread evidence of financial
malfeasance and gross negligence. The IRS could not account for 64 percent of its congressional appropriation.
Taming the IRS Pit Bulls: As IRS agents scan the country
looking for the truck driver or restaurant worker who might have cheated the government out of a few bucks, a loophole in the tax code allows major corporations
to hide millions of dollars from their tax liability by opening sham offices in Bermuda.
IRS Policies Result in Unnecessary Taxpayer Harassment. The National Taxpayer
Advocate's report confirms that being honest is simply not good enough when it comes to dealing with the IRS. The reason is that in all but a few instances, the
burden is on taxpayers to prove they do not owe taxes. The IRS rarely has to prove a person does owe taxes. The question, moreover, seldom has
anything to do with whether the person is a cheater or not.
Top Half of U.S. Income Earners See Tax Burdens Grow. As the annual tax filing
deadline approaches, many public officials traditionally use the occasion to launch into a debate about the fairness of the nation tax laws. … IRS figures
released late last year for Tax Year 2003 (for which returns were filed in 2004) show the richest Americans shoulder a disproportionate burden of the federal
income tax, and the burden is getting heavier.
AMT Sending Tens of Thousands to Financial Ruin. Tens of thousands of Americans face
financial ruin because they voluntarily reported incentive stock options to the Internal Revenue Service.
When they audited the IRS. A funny thing
happened when the Treasury Department audited the Internal Revenue Service. It discovered that the IRS was not treating all employers equally.
IRS Laptop Lost With Data on 291 People. An Internal Revenue Service employee lost an
agency laptop early last month that contained sensitive personal information on 291 workers and job applicants, a spokesman said yesterday [6/10/2006]. The
IRS's Terry L. Lemons said the employee checked the laptop as luggage aboard a commercial flight while traveling to a job fair and never saw it
again. The computer contained unencrypted names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and fingerprints of the employees and applicants, Lemons said.
Are your tax records safe? The Treasury Department last month admitted
investigating thousands of cases of IRS employees improperly snooping through taxpayer records. And although this led to 1,600 "adverse personnel actions"
and 126 criminal prosecutions, Treasury officials concede "there has not been a noticeable decrease" over the last eight years in the number of IRS bureaucrats
who gain unauthorized access to confidential data.
IRS workers' online time not all work-related. A sampling of Internal Revenue
Service employees found that they used about half their online time at work to visit sex sites, gamble, trade stocks, participate in chat rooms and do other
non-work-related activity, the Treasury Department's inspector general said.
Privacy in a Free Country: In Search of Reasonable Principles. When more than 500 Internal
Revenue Service agents were caught illegally snooping through tax records of thousands of Americans in 1995, only five were fired. After the IRS developed
new privacy protection measures, hundreds more agents were caught doing the same thing again in 1997.
IRS Error Rate Still High. The January 2004 report of the Treasury Inspector General for
Tax Administration confirms the IRS's error rate for advice it gives at its hundreds of walk-in Taxpayer Assistance Centers remains unacceptably high. The report
reveals the IRS provided "flatly incorrect answers 20 percent of the time." In another 15 percent of the cases, the IRS provided a "correct" answer
without first obtaining the background information necessary to provide a correct answer — a serious oversight when providing tax advice.
The Press And Scientology: For years,
Scientology fought a battle with the IRS because the government would not recognize its claim to be a religion. The IRS finally granted Scientology its desired
status under President Bill Clinton, the recipient of massive donations from the Hollywood glitterati.
IRS Gives Tax Deduction For Sex Change Operations. The Massachusetts-based Gay & Lesbian
Advocates & Defenders has recently won a complaint against the IRS over tax deductions for so-called "sex change" operations. The IRS apparently bought GLAD's bogus
argument that sex changes are medically necessary for individuals suffering from Gender Dysphoria.
The Rainforest Action Network: Major corporations are in the crosshairs of the
Rainforest Action Network. This radical environmentalist group regularly resorts to illegal "direct action" tactics and even exploits school kids in order
to intimidate and shake down its business adversaries. So why does the IRS still grant RAN tax-exempt status?
Corruption at the IRS: IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti sued over criminal conflict
of interest and cover-up. "As IRS Commissioner, Rossotti has made decisions concerning a company he founded (and which he still owned stock) that is a major
contractor with the IRS."
The Structure of the IRS: Collection Division. The IRS will not leave you alone until you
pay up. They know where you live. They will bother, harass, nag and pester you until you pay. They will write, call and visit you until they
get their money. They may even pursue your family after you die!
Protect Your Church From The IRS. Proposed legislation reverses a 1954 amendment
by then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson that permanently extended the reach of the IRS into our nation's churches. This bill says that the message a church
preaches is answerable only to God and not to Caesar — the IRS.
Congress Will Hold Hearing: Is Income Tax Legitimate?: In less
than two months, Washington may officially acknowledge that you could have been paying your income taxes all these years under a measure that is not valid.
Note: These hearings were about to take place in the middle of September, 2001, but then the 9/11 attacks occurred, and the whole question
of the 16th Amendment's legitimacy was swept under the rug. That was just a coincidence, of course, but somehow the Congress has
never been interested in examining this question since then.
"Walkaround" protest planned for IRS. A group that says
the 16th Amendment — which ushered in the federal income tax — was never properly ratified is planning a "walkaround" protest at the Internal Revenue
Service building. The tax-reform group says action aimed at educating Americans.
Stealth IRS changes mean
millions of new tax forms. The massive expansion of requirements for businesses to file 1099
tax forms that was hidden in the 2,409-page health reform bill took many by surprise when it came to light
last month. But it's just one piece of a years-long legislative stealth campaign to create ways for
the federal government to track down unreported income.
The Barrett Report
As I recall, the most vocal advocate for the publication of the Barrett Report was the late Tony Snow. Apparently the report proved that the IRS
was just as mean and evil as everyone presumed. So, naturally, it went down the memory hole. Why would Washington politicians want to suppress
a report like that? Because the IRS is useful to high-level people with their own enemies, and the IRS is essential to the big-spending overgrown government.
The Barrett Report. The long-awaited final report by Independent Counsel
David Barrett, to be released today [1/19/2006], was severely censored by court order but not enough to sufficiently obscure its importance. As long forecast, it
alleges serious corruption in the Clinton administration's Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The question is what was contained in
120 pages removed by the judges.
Inquiry on Clinton Official Ends With Accusations of Cover-Up. [Scroll
down] After being indicted on 18 felony counts, [Housing Secretary Henry] Cisneros pleaded guilty in 1999 to a misdemeanor charge of lying to
investigators. He was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton. Mr. Barrett kept his office open more than six years after the law that created the
independent counsel system was allowed to die. Lawmakers in both parties had wearied of the many inquiries that had failed to achieve the goal of removing
political influence from criminal investigations of administration officials.
Free the Barrett Report. The misuse of the IRS and Justice Department
has a long record going back to Richard Nixon and Watergate and before that to Franklin Roosevelt and his harassment of former Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon
and publisher Moses Annenberg. Wealthy individuals such as Mellon and Annenberg can protect themselves — though Annenberg was cruelly sent to jail.
Ordinary citizens cannot, and the way the IRS is set up today not much provocation is necessary to instigate a costly investigation... costly to ordinary taxpayers.
What's In the Barrett Report? Why Should You
Care? You are not likely to be allowed to read something, at least in its entirety, called the Barrett Report. You may have read people
insisting that you should be able to read it — most notably columnists and commentators Tony Snow and Robert Novak — but far more
powerful people are intent on suppressing it. They would be the Clintons, former President Bill and current U.S. Senator Hillary, and their minions.
David Barrett is the Independent Counsel, the last of his kind, engaged to investigate the shenanigans of Clinton administration HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros.
The Barrett Report. We just paid $21 million dollars for an
investigation, the most damaging revelations of which are blocked from public view upon the motions of those named as obstructing that very prosecution.
Commentary on the Barrett Report. [Scroll down] When the Barrett Report was
complete in 2004, Clinton lawyers set out to suppress the radioactive document in its entirety or to excise those parts dealing with criminal activity on the part of
the White House. Team Clinton filed some 140 motions designed to delay the Barrett Report or kill it outright. For over a year, Clinton's legal team stalled
its publication.
The public needs to see the Barrett
report. [Sen. Byron Dorgan], along with several crafty Democrats, has been attempting to deny the public the contents of an Independent
Counsel's report that is believed to contain evidence of serious corruption and misuse of the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department back in
the Clinton Administration. In this cover-up the Democrats have had assistance from a few dubious Republicans. It is time to let the public
see this report.
Publish the Barrett report now. At issue
was the publication of a report by David Barrett, an independent counsel who has spent the better part of a decade looking into some of the most hair-raising
allegations of presidential malfeasance in American history.
Protecting the IRS: The political significance is
that the Barrett report's shocking allegations of high-level corruption in the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department are likely to be concealed from
the public and from Congress. A recently passed appropriations bill, intended to permit release of this report, was altered behind closed doors to ensure
that its politically combustible elements never saw the light of day.
The IRS is used as a weapon against small businesses
Why is the government so tough on businesses? It doesn't help that Barack Obama hates capitalism and he
is paying back the labor unions for their support. And it doesn't help that Mr. Obama has never
run a business in his life and has never tried to make a profit. Perhaps that's because he was
literally raised by communists. But the IRS was the enemy of small businesses
long before President Obama had any power.
Breitbart
News says IRS targeted company for audit. The company that runs the conservative Breitbart.com news site says
the IRS has selected the network for an audit, in a move company executives suggest is politically motivated. Breitbart
News Network, a California-based company which runs several conservative websites, says the IRS recently audited its 2012 financial
information. "The Obama administration's timing on this is exquisite, but try as they might through various methods to silence us,
we will only get more emboldened," Stephen K. Bannon, executive chairman of Breitbart News Network, said in a written statement.
Critics question IRS
initiative targeting small businesses. Small business owners across the country are receiving letters from the IRS questioning
if they are reporting all of their cash income, in a new push by the agency some are saying could unnecessarily create fear in the small business
community. [...] The agency says the letters are not the same as an audit, and it is simply seeking more tax information from the businesses.
However, some lawmakers and business owners who received the letters say the initiative is alarming.
War on Small Business? [Scroll
down] In 2006, the IRS announced it would shift its focus to audit more small businesses. IRS data on tax audits seems to bear this out. Between
the first and second half of the last decade, the audit coverage rate on businesses with assets between $10 and $50 million increased by 42 percent.
Rumsfeld: IRS also retaliates against
outspoken business leaders. Tea Party and conservative constitutional groups may be the new targets of the Internal Revenue Service, but former Defense
Secretary Don Rumsfeld reveals in his new book out this week that outspoken businesses critical of the federal government are also singled out by the IRS and
Securities and Exchange Commission.
Obama
Enlists IRS for New Union Shakedown of US Business. The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC)
has submitted Freedom of Information requests to the Department of Labor and the Internal Revenue Service
following an announcement that the administration is investigating homebuilders in an attempt to bolster
union membership at the expense of housing sector jobs.
Small-Business Owners Fret Over Large IRS
Fines. Five years ago, car-wash owner Orman Wilson set up a pension plan for himself and six
employees. ... Mr. Wilson, the owner of 19 coin-operated car washes in Houston, says he relied on four advisers,
including a certified public accountant, to set up a plan that received approval from the Internal Revenue
Service. Then, in late 2007, the IRS found fault with the plan and assessed it $250,000 — plus
special penalties of $1.2 million.
SBSC Outraged by Calls to Increase Audits of Small Businesses: The Small Business
Survival Committee (SBSC) declared its outrage today [2/14/2003] at the suggestion made by the Sierra Club earlier this week that the IRS should "aggressively
audit" businesses that purchase sport utility vehicles, or SUVs.
IRS: The Small Business Bully.
Under the Obama Administration, the Internal Revenue Service has placed small and medium-size businesses — the engines of job creation — in
its auditing crosshairs. According to IRS statistics, from 2009 to 2011, the coverage rate (number of audits as a percentage of total returns filed) for
corporations with assets between $10 million and $50 million has increased 32 percent.
IRS expected to target small businesses this year. Americans who get paid in cash and
own a small business are at high risk of being audited — especially if they live in wealthy suburbs: the IRS is going after those from which the agency
thinks they can get more taxes.
The IRS is Obamacare's enforcer
The
House is about to back repealing Obamacare's unpopular 'Cadillac tax' in rare bipartisan vote. The House voted
Wednesday night [7/17/2019] to pass a bill that would scrap Obamacare's so-called Cadillac tax, an inactive provision of the
health law meant to help control health-care spending. The tax, set to go into effect in 2022, is unpopular with both
Republicans and Democrats, who say it punishes the middle class.
IRS
unable to recoup nearly $1 billion in Obamacare subsidies. The IRS overpaid nearly $4 billion to Obamacare
customers through tax credits last year, and because of the way the law is written it can't even try to collect on a quarter
of that, the Treasury Department's inspector general reported this week. All told, the Treasury Department paid out
roughly $27 billion in Obamacare subsidies in the 2018 tax-filing season, with overages accounting for $3.7 billion
of that. Only $2.7 billion was recaptured.
IRS
to Start Enforcing ObamaCare's Individual Mandate. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced recently that
it would start enforcing ObamaCare's individual mandate with the 2018 tax filing season, the first time the agency has done
so since the mandate took effect — and a marked contrast to its policy for 2017. "For the upcoming 2018 filing
season, the IRS will not accept electronically filed tax returns where the taxpayer does not address the health coverage
requirements of the Affordable Care Act [ACA]," the agency stated in a notice to tax professionals. Paper returns that
fail to address those requirements "may be suspended pending the receipt of additional information and any refunds may be
delayed," it added.
Legislation Introduced
to Save Americans With No Insurers on Exchanges From Tax Penalties. Senators Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) and
Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) have introduced the Health Care Options Act of 2017, which would save Americans from penalties for not
having health insurance when no insurers operating on the exchanges in their areas. Currently, the Affordable Care
Act's individual mandate requires that individuals purchase health insurance or they will be forced to pay a penalty of $695
to the Internal Revenue Service for not having it. This mandate was designed so that younger, healthier enrollees would
sign up for coverage, balancing the risk pool and compensating for sicker enrollees that signed up.
Refusing
to Enforce the Law Is the Wrong Way to Defeat Obamacare. At Reason, Peter Suderman confirms that the IRS
will continue its Obama-era policy of accepting tax returns that lack vital information about their filers' compliance with
Obamacare. As a result, Suderman concludes, it will remain easy for "individuals to go without coverage while avoiding
the penalty." Thus will the baton be passed sideways, from one haughty emperor to another.
BUMMER:
Did President Trump Just Nuke Obamacare with a Single Executive Order? Earlier this month, the IRS made a
seemingly insignificant change to its policy, undermining the Obamacare mandate in a very significant way. For the last
several years, individual filers were required by law to fill out line 61 of form 1040, which indicates whether you have
maintained coverage or paid the penalty. This is otherwise known as a "shared responsibility statement." Taxpayers
could also claim exemption by filing a 8965 form. Tax returns that don't indicate coverage status (silent returns) were
to be automatically rejected. However, due to an executive order issued by President Trump, that line is now optional,
making it incredibly difficult to enforce the Obamacare mandate.
Major Blow
to Obamacare Mandate: IRS Won't Reject Tax Returns That Don't Answer Health Insurance Question. How much
difference does a single line on a tax form make? For Obamacare's individual mandate, the answer might be quite a
lot. Following President Donald Trump's executive order instructing agencies to provide relief from the health law, the
Internal Revenue Service appears to be taking a more lax approach to the coverage requirement. The health law's
individual mandate requires everyone to either maintain qualifying health coverage or pay a tax penalty, known as a "shared
responsibility payment."
Americans
Paid $1.7 Billion in ObamaCare Penalties in 2014. Remember when ObamaCare passed without a single Republican
voting for it and then House Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) famously said: We have to pass the bill so that you can
find out what is in it? Well, it's been six long years since the bill was signed into law and once again, we are
finding more and more surprises contained within the law's more than 20,000 pages. For instance, it turns out nearly
8.1 million Americans paid $1.7 billion in penalties in 2014, or an average of $210 per tax return in 2014 for not
having health insurance and $200 million more than the IRS initially predicted.
ObamaCare
Individual Mandate Fine Hit 8 Million People This Year. Roughly 8 million people faced ObamaCare individual
mandate penalties this year totaling more than $3 billion, an analysis of the latest IRS data reveals. Despite the
controversy and high-stakes legal battle that has surrounded the individual mandate, the scope of the penalties paid this
year has gone unreported by major news outlets as attention has focused on ObamaCare's latest and most glaring problems:
weak enrollment, surging premiums, and insurer losses that have provoked the exit of UnitedHealth, Aetna and Humana from most
state exchanges.
IRS
To Target Citizens Who Aren't Buying ObamaCare Insurance. As many as 20 million Americans soon will be getting
a letter from the Internal Revenue Service "suggesting" they sign up for ObamaCare insurance. Getting a letter from the
IRS can be a threatening and nerve-racking experience; it seldom is seen as a suggestion and more of a threat. But at
President Obama's direction, the IRS is "reaching out" to people who paid the tax penalty for not buying mandatory health
insurance or who claimed an exemption in hopes of "attracting" more people to sign up for ObamaCare insurance.
The government is particularly interested in compliance from healthy young people.
Team
Obama to use IRS data to pressure some Americans into Obamacare. The Obama administration said Tuesday [6/21/2016] it will
herd uninsured Americans into Obamacare plans this fall by targeting young adults and working with the IRS to root out people who paid
a penalty for lacking coverage last year. Officials said people who were fined under the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate
can expect to receive a paper notice that explains their coverage options on the law's web-based exchanges. The state of
Massachusetts is already working with its revenue agency to locate the uninsured, and the Obama administration said those efforts
appeared to be working.
ObamaCare Has Made The IRS A
Shambles. The IRS admitted to Congress what many suspect: That its abysmal customer service and failure to protect taxpayer data
are because it's diverted its resources to ObamaCare. Now it wants another billion. House Republicans were flabbergasted when Internal
Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen asked the House Appropriations Committee for another $1 billion for the IRS budget for fiscal 2017,
following the $290 million increase he got in fiscal 2016. An extra billion is a 12% beef-up for the agency's budget. Seems the
customer service is a shambles, with 8 million, or half, of calls from taxpayers seeking to comply with the law going unanswered. And
for those who do get through, it takes an average of 23 minutes on hold.
Government
Sends Obamacare Payments Without Verification. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) does not
have adequate procedures in place to ensure tax credit payments were properly sent to enrollees as required by federal law,
according to a new report by the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS OIG). The report marks the
eighth time in less than a year that a government watchdog has raised concerns over the federal government's ability to
properly administer and monitor Obamacare. As HHS OIG noted, CMS has "sole responsibility" for ensuring that tax credits
were properly distributed to paying enrollees. Following this confirmation, the IRS is then responsible for reconciling
tax credits with an enrollees' tax returns.
The
ObamaCare Mandate Nightmare Comes To Small Businesses. The headline in the AP story says it all: "Crunch time
at small businesses as health care demands loom." "Loom" is the right word. As the story explains, starting next year,
the dreaded ObamaCare employer mandate kicks in for businesses with between 50 and 99 employees. That means they
will all have to offer their full-time workers — which means anyone clocking in more than 30 hours a week —
government-approved health benefits, or face a steep fine. President Obama delayed this mandate twice, citing the cost and
disruptions it would cause. The delays have come to an end, and as of Jan. 1, these companies will not only have to
provide "affordable" insurance for these workers, they must also file complex new tax forms with the IRS detailing the cost of the
insurance, the names and Social Security numbers of employees and their dependents, and how long they were covered by insurance.
IRS drops an Obamacare bomb on small employers. Yet
another Obamacare bomb. The way this is going the only employer that will be left is the government. If you assist an employee with their
health care cost you're subject to a $100 per day excise tax. $36,500 per year possible total.
Taxpayer
service hits new low at IRS as 'Obamacare' kicks in. Customer service at the IRS hit new lows this year, just as
taxpayers were grappling with a wave of identity theft and new requirements under President Barack Obama's health law.
Senate
panel probes ObamaCare aid confusion, as customers learn they owe IRS. The Senate's
top investigative committee has launched an inquiry into the system that's supposed to ensure
ObamaCare tax credits go to the right customers for the right amounts — amid concerns
that many Americans are getting inflated or improper subsidies. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who is
leading the investigation, says because of the confusion with the system, millions of Americans are
learning after the fact they inadvertently got too much money and now owe the IRS hundreds.
IRS
unable to make sure people comply with Obamacare penalty: Treasury IG. The IRS cannot
be sure that Americans who lacked health insurance last year have complied with Obamacare's
"individual mandate" penalty this tax season, according to an inspector general report Friday
[5/8/2015] that pointed to a decision to delay proof-of-coverage forms from insurers and employers
until 2016. Agency managers told the Treasury's Inspector General for Tax Administration that a
"business decision was made to not develop processes and procedures" to ensure compliance after it
decided in 2013 to delay the pair of forms. The documents are sent to both filers and the IRS,
allowing the federal government to cross-check what filers say on their returns.
The
IRS's Growing Role as A "Rules Interpreter". A recent article by the National Review
brought to light how the IRS has taken on the role of "rules interpretation" in recent years, which
is beyond its scope as the nation's tax collecting agency. The most notorious example of this new
role is highlighted in the King vs Burwell case before the Supreme Court — where
the IRS interpreted the language of Obamacare other than what was expressly written down as law.
However, as the National Review discusses, the IRS has grown accustomed to interpreting law as it
sees fit, without the oversight of Congress. Therein lies the problem.
How
the IRS repeatedly rewrites Obamacare tax credit provisions. The plaintiffs in King
v. Burwell argue that an IRS regulation unlawfully extends tax credit eligibility beyond what is
expressly authorized under Section 1401 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
It appears that this sort of administrative rewrite of the PPACA may be more the rule than the exception,
as there are at least two other instances of the IRS rewriting the PPACA's tax credit eligibility requirements.
Obamacare
will make Tax Day more stressful. Obamacare is making the least popular day —
April 15 — even worse. For about one in four tax filers, it's turning out to be a
nightmare, with extra paperwork and penalties. And for high earners or anyone selling a piece of
property or business, Obamacare means higher taxes. If you enrolled in Obamacare in 2014 and got
a subsidy to pay for it, you're at risk of losing your refund. Surprise: You may even owe
Uncle Sam money. Only 4 percent of people who signed up for Obamacare got the correct
subsidy, so a whopping 96 percent will see their tax bill adjusted, some up and others down.
Who would design a system that's right only 4 percent of the time?
Obamacare's Tax Nightmare.
Obamacare is making the least popular day — April 15 — even worse. For about
one in four tax filers, it's turning out to be a nightmare, with extra paperwork and penalties. And
for high earners or anyone selling a piece of property or business, Obamacare means higher taxes.
Filing
deadline extended for ObamaCare customers given wrong tax forms. The Treasury Department said
Friday [4/3/2015] that hundreds of thousands of ObamaCare customers who received incorrect tax forms earlier
this year will not face penalties for filing after April 15. A statement from the department said
that anyone who was not sent the correct replacement tax forms and was "unable to file an accurate tax return"
would now have until Oct. 15 to file their taxes, as long as they request an extension by the traditional
filing deadline.
IRS
blames Obamacare for shoddy customer service. The IRS is unable to answer most
taxpayers' calls this year because it's had to put money into getting up and running for Obamacare,
agency Commissioner John Koskinen told Congress on Wednesday [3/18/2015]. Mr. Koskinen said his
agency has had to shift tens of millions of dollars from customer service over to build the computer
systems and get ready to handle questions this year about Obamacare and the law's tax penalty, which
kicks in for the first time this year.
Obamacare's
1095-A Nightmare. Tax season is stressful enough. But if you are like countless
miserable Americans trapped in the Obamacare 1095-A abyss, it's hell on stilts on a Segway teetering
over the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. The screw-ups, incompetence and bureaucratic blame
avoidance over the health insurance exchange tax forms make the healthcare.gov website fiasco look
like a flawless product launch. How do I know? My family inexplicably got ensnared in
the 1095-A paperwork pit. It's a government roach motel: Taxpayers check in, but they
can never check out.
Taxpayers
duck Obamacare tax, snubbing IRS. Taxpayers are already telling their accountants they
plan to stiff the IRS on the Obamacare tax, saying they figure the chances the agency comes after
them for a few hundred bucks are pretty slim, and it makes sense to take the risk. Still other
taxpayers are recoiling when they find out they owe far more than the $95 minimum penalty for not
having insurance in 2014, said Christopher Wittich, an accountant in Minnesota. "And that's
a big problem for them," he said. "They don't have 200 bucks."
Will
Only Suckers Pay The ObamaCare Tax Penalty? This year, as many as 6 million taxpayers
will learn that they now owe a "Shared Responsibility Payment" because they didn't have health insurance
last year. The SRP is a clumsy euphemism for the ObamaCare individual mandate tax penalty, which is
$95 or 1% of household income, whichever is greater, for those who didn't have insurance in 2014. That
increases to the greater of $325 or 2% of income for those who don't have insurance this year, and then
to $695 or 2.5% of income the year after that.
King v. Burwell
Is Much Bigger Than Obamacare. [Scroll down] Specifically, it is about the separation
of powers doctrine. The Constitution grants the power to tax and spend to Congress alone.
Yet the executive branch, under the Obama administration, has brazenly arrogated the power to spend with
its IRS rule authorizing the distribution of subsidies through federal exchanges. The original cert
petition filed with the Court on behalf of the plaintiffs phrases it as follows: "If the ACA means
what it says... the IRS is illegally spending billions of taxpayer dollars every month without
congressional authority."
Surprise:
Poorest Obamacare Enrollees Face $530 IRS Tax Bill. The majority (52 percent) of
Obamacare enrollees receiving an advance premium tax credit to purchase Obamacare insurance is facing
the prospect of paying back $530 of that tax credit to the IRS, according to a new study from H&R Block.
This clawback is reducing the refunds for these taxpayers by 17 percent this filing season.
Under Obamacare, taxpayers earning between 133 and 400 percent of the federal poverty level
are eligible to receive a tax credit to help purchase insurance on Obamacare exchanges. This
tax credit is calculated using old tax data of the recipients. The credit is advanced ahead of
time to the taxpayer's insurance company. The taxpayer must reconcile at tax time the advance credit
received with the actual credit [he or] she is eligible for.
ObamaCare's
Frankenstein Tax Monster Awakens. Health and Human Services admits it sent nearly a
million incorrect tax forms to ObamaCare enrollees. A government that can't even get something
simple like this right has no business running health care. The form in question is a new
one — Form 1095-A — that goes to anyone who signed up for ObamaCare
insurance through an exchange.
Democrats
are bracing for another Obamacare backlash. The Obamacare window technically just closed this weekend,
but a new round of political headaches could just be beginning for the administration. That's because it's tax
season, and many Americans could soon be getting an unwelcome surprise that they owe the government a penalty for
skipping health insurance coverage. Up to 6 million Americans are expected to pay a penalty for not
having coverage in 2014, according to recent Obama administration projections.
More Obamacare victims noticing
that they're on the hook to the IRS. [W]hen these people realize that they have to
give back money (around 53%, according to the above link and the Jackson Hewitt company), they are
not going to react positively to the Democratic message of You should have known better.
Yes, perhaps they should have known better than to vote for Democratic politicians that pushed the policies
that are now forcing taxpayers to pay out to the IRS... what, that's not what the Democrats meant?
White House Unaware
of Obamacare. Obamacare is a tax. This really isn't something that should be in
dispute. When the Supreme Court ruled on the Affordable Care Act and called it a tax, President
Obama and his followers triumphantly said, "It's the law." When you Google "Obamacare is a... " the
first response isn't "success," but rather "tax." Now, with tax filing season upon us and a
projected 4-6 million households set to be hit with the Obamacare penalty tax, the White House is
completely unaware of this tax and the millions affected by it.
Obama
rewrites Obamacare law again. What do you do when you realize that millions of low-information
voters are going to get hosed by your signature piece of legislation? Well, if you're Barack Obama, you
unilaterally decide not to enforce the inconvenient provisions of that law. So it should come as no surprise
that the IRS has "clarified" how they'll recapture excess Obamacare subsidies come April 15th. They won't.
With
taxes looming, time to repeal ObamaCare's individual mandate. The individual mandate
in ObamaCare has been able to lay low as the actual financial impact of this draconian, socialistic
aspect of President Obama's signature policy, forced on the nation with the support of only
Democrats, comes to fruition. For the uninsured and underinsured, the new tax penalty
will come as a surprise, or even a shock.
Will
Obamacare ruin your tax refund? This tax filing season will be the first year that
taxpayers deal with the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The controversial law strives
to make health care more affordable to lower-income households, but it may also unexpectedly lower tax
refunds. Most people must carry health insurance or pay a fine. Americans making less than
four times the Federal Poverty Guideline based on household size may receive subsidies that reduce their
monthly insurance premiums. Non-exempt Americans not covered by an insurance plan face a penalty
from $95 per person to 1% of household income, whichever is greater. Whether receiving a subsidy
or paying a fine, both aspects will be addressed on tax forms and have the potential to surprise filers.
H&R
Block: 'No One Can Understand' New Obamacare Tax Code. H&R Block, the nation's largest
retail tax preparation company warns that the newly released Obamacare tax code, officially called
the Affordable Care Act, is likely to confuse millions of taxpayers who try to tackle their tax
returns for 2014. "Now that the Affordable Care Act has made health care a tax issue, no one
can understand it," H&R Block flatly tells taxpayers in a video that resides on its dedicated Obamacare web
site. A former IRS Commissioner agrees, and cautions that the new tax requirements will be a "shock
to the system," especially afflicting low-income earners who have never itemized on their tax return.
Obamacare
penalty may come as shock at tax time. Those Americans who didn't get health insurance
last year could be in for a rude awakening when the IRS asks them to fork over their Obamacare
penalty — and it could be a lot more than the $95 many of them may be expecting. The
Affordable Care Act requires those who didn't have insurance last year and didn't qualify for one of
the exemptions to pay a tax penalty, which was widely cited as $95 the first year. But the $95 is
actually a minimum, and middle- and upper-income families will actually end up paying 1 percent of
their household income as their penalty.
The Editor says...
Your liberal friends (if any) may say, See? It's only one percent! How could anyone object to that?
And the easy answer is this: When has there ever been a tax rate that did not gradually increase?
IRS
to Obamacare Victims: You're On Your Own, Chumps. The Obama administration's
relentless efforts to punish the American people for defying its wishes continue, as the Internal
Revenue Service throws a massive temper tantrum about "budget cuts" and tells terrified Obamacare
victims they're on their own this tax season.
Tax
Returns Complicated by Health Care Law and I.R.S. Staff Cuts. On the plus side, unlike
last year when filing season was delayed by a government shutdown, the Internal Revenue Service says
it is on track this year, and will begin accepting electronic tax returns and processing paper forms
on Jan. 20. But a combination of reduced help from the I.R.S., and potential confusion from new
tax requirements under the Affordable Care Act, the federal health care law, may mean it could take longer
to get your questions answered and file your return.
Wondering
how Obamacare affects your tax return? Most Americans' 2014 tax returns are due in 14 weeks,
and the Internal Revenue Service is trying to cope with reams of new Obamacare regulations with a lengthy
instruction manual that's likely to send countless taxpayers sprinting toward accountants and other tax
preparers. The manual, called 'Publication 5187 — Health Care Law: What's New for
Individuals & Families,' is 21 pages long and written with all the compassion of a mediaeval
dentist. Its central instruction, though, is simple: Either prove you have medical
insurance that satisfies the Affordable Care Act, or prove you have an exemption. Otherwise,
calculate how much extra you owe in taxes.
21
pages of Obamacare tax instructions, IRS demands 'shared responsibility payment'. The
complicated process of signing up for Obamacare is now being matched by IRS instructions to help
Americans figure out how much in healthcare taxes they owe Uncle Sam. The agency has issued 21 pages
of instructions, complete with links to at least three long forms and nine tip sheets. It is geared to
those who have Obamacare or who owe a fine, dubbed "shared responsibility payment," for refusing to get health
insurance. The IRS warned that everybody must have health insurance or pay the tax.
Obamacare
is beyond repair. [T]he law's effects go far beyond the doctor's office, weighing down
our economy and discouraging hiring. The law requires employers with more than 50 full-time
employees to give them health insurance. But because the law defines "full time" as 30 hours or
more, employers are keeping employees below that threshold to avoid the mandate entirely. The
worst of the law is yet to come. This year, the individual mandate kicks in for real.
Anyone who doesn't have health insurance in 2015 will have to pay a tax of $325 or 2% of taxable
income. And this year's tax season will be even more stressful than usual: H&R Block
estimates that up to half of the 6.8 million people who got subsidies last year might have to
pay some of those subsidies back.
An
ObamaCare Tax Monster Speeds Toward Millions of Filers. ObamaCare was supposed to keep
the nation healthier by expanding access to insurance. Instead, it will keep the professional tax
preparation industry healthy by making the tax code even more hopelessly complex. As health care
analyst Bob Laszewski points out on his widely read blog, the IRS came out with a 21-page booklet
explaining what ObamaCare will mean to tax filers this year. In addition, there's a 12-page
publication with instructions on how to claim an exemption from the individual mandate (there are 19 options
listed), along with instructions on how to calculate the "shared responsibility payment" for those
irresponsible people who didn't buy government-approved insurance and aren't eligible for an exemption.
Millions of Obamacare
subsidy recipients may need to pay back-taxes. [Scroll down] No, the problem for Democrats here
is that this is going to happen every year. The system is more or less designed to assume that people
would twiddle with their coverage on a regular basis: as plans changed, improved, or degraded the consumer would
be obligated to follow suit, in order to keep the subsidy. This sounds perfectly reasonable... if you're
not the one doing it. But out in the real world? [...]
Think
Filing Taxes Was Tough Before Obamacare? Just Wait. The Affordable Care Act, aka
Obamacare, is part health law, part tax law. Some feel benefited by the law, some burdened by it.
And one's perceptions about that can change over time. Either way, you may be annoyed by the extra
forms and extra tax compliance, even if your tax bill doesn't go up. The IRS has a far more
important role in the law than you might think.
Obamacare tax
surprise looming. Obamacare enrollees who received subsidies to help pay for coverage
will soon have to reconcile how much they actually earned in 2014 with how much they estimated when
they applied many, many months ago. This will likely lead to some very unhappy Americans.
Those who underestimated their income either will receive smaller tax refunds or will owe the IRS money.
ObamaCare
fines rising in 2015, IRS prepares to collect. The ObamaCare-mandated fines for not
having insurance are rising in 2015 — and for the first time, will be collected by the
Internal Revenue Service. The individual requirement to buy health insurance went into effect
earlier this year. But this coming tax season is the first time all taxpayers will have to report to
the IRS whether they had health insurance for the prior year. The fines for the 2014 year were
relatively modest — $95 per person or 1 percent of household income (above the threshold
for filing taxes), whichever is more.
H&R
Block, Your Taxes, and ObamaCare. Inasmuch as [H&R] Block bases "customer bills on the
complexity of their returns, such as how many and which tax forms are involved," does this mean that
ObamaCare is going to make federal income taxes even more of a headache? For some taxpayers, the
answer is yes[.]
7th Circuit dumps doctors' challenge to IRS enforcement of
Obamacare. A conservative physicians group and a Wisconsin member that had challenged an IRS plan to collect the
penalty from individuals who don't get health insurance under the Affordable Care Act lost again Friday in a federal court.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago affirmed a Wisconsin federal judge's decision to dismiss a lawsuit filed last
October by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Inc., and Robert T. McQueeney, who treat patients on a cash
basis, and want to prevent everyone from being covered by health insurance.
Inside the IRS, part 6. It is interesting
to note that [Fred] Schindler was heavily involved in the implementation of Obamacare, and in fact was director of implementation for the IRS.
That would include coordinating with the office of chief counsel on a basic issue such as researching statutory language. Based on the
stories that appeared last summer, he was suspended for taking improper gifts and was slated for termination. Maybe that was all smoke
and mirrors, maybe he was later exonerated, maybe a lot of things, but the bottom line is they took care of him.
IRS Has No Strategy for Fraudulent Obamacare Tax
Credits. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has no system in place to prevent fraud when individuals apply for tax credits under
Obamacare, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). The IG said in an audit released Tuesday that the
IRS has no plan to manage, monitor, or mitigate fraud risk when processing premium tax credits available under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
New
Obamacare marketing — 'Sign up and shut up or the IRS will be calling'. As the truth about Obamacare reveals itself,
President Obama has admitted that he will have to "remarket and rebrand" his plan. How does the White House think they will "remarket"
Obamacare to voters? Telling the truth could not possibly achieve good results. The truth reveals that under Obamacare, you can't
keep your current insurance plan unless Obama's Washington likes it, you can't keep your doctor or local hospital unless you are lucky, and
that you will pay higher premiums and higher deductibles to get fewer choices. Of course, there will be no chance for appeal.
Judge Refuses to
Dismiss Case Challenging Obamacare Subsidies. The judge will not issue an injunction to stop the IRS from issuing subsidies, meaning Obamacare can move forward
as planned. However, the lawsuit will also move forward and depending on the outcome, could limit IRS power to issue Obamacare subsidies.
How You and Your Family Can Escape Obamacare. The
Affordable Care Act runs more than 2,600 pages and now hundreds of thousands of regulations. No one knows every single provision that is in the law, which
Congress did not even bother to read before passing it. Among its most controversial provisions is the mandate forcing Americans to purchase health insurance or
face fines from the IRS. Those fines can even take the form of wage garnishment. Americans who fail to comply and pay the fine can end up in jail.
There is, though, a provision buried in Obamacare that provides a way out of having to comply with the individual mandate.
Don't Sign, Don't Pay the Fine. [Scroll down] Now I know what some of you are thinking.
If I don't sign and I don't pay the fine, the IRS could come after me. Maybe, but by the time that happens, ObamaCare will be a corpse. Moreover, I'm betting a
ton of Americans would be willing to pay that fine, plus interest if necessary, to guarantee ObamaCare's demise. And that's assuming the IRS can come after you.
In order for that to happen, they'd have to prove you refused to sign up for the program.
ObamaCare Enforcer Likely Shared
Tax Data With White House. The IRS official in charge of tax-exempt organizations when the unit targeted Tea Party groups now runs the IRS
office responsible for enforcing ObamaCare and may have illegally shared confidential tax data.
Republicans say Obamacare official
leaked IRS data. House Republican investigators Wednesday [10/9/2013] accused the woman in charge of the IRS' Obamacare compliance office of having
leaked private taxpayer information to the White House, saying that calls into question the agency's trustworthiness in administering the new health
care reform law.
House votes 232-185 to block the IRS from
enforcing ObamaCare. The House voted Friday to prevent the IRS from enforcing any aspect of ObamaCare, a bill meant to exact revenge against an
agency that Republicans say is incapable of neutral enforcement of the law. Members approved the Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act in
a 232-185 vote. Four Democrats supported the bill along with every Republican. The vote capped off several days of work in the House on bills
aimed at reining in government regulation and government overreach.
Businesses must FAX their Obamacare exchange applications in.
Yes, faxes are still a thing, apparently. You can even do them from your computer. And if you're a small business owner wanting to get
Obamacare coverage, you're going to have to!
Affordable Care Act To Have [its] Own
Police. It was bad enough to know that an Internal Revenue Service that targets the political opponents of the Obama administration between
partying on the taxpayer dime would be in charge of monitoring compliance with ObamaCare's individual mandate via our tax returns. Now, the
Daily Mail, which lodged a Freedom of Information Act [request] with Health and Human Services, reports that the agency has hired a bevy of criminal
investigators as we continue to learn what is in the Orwellian-named Affordable Care Act.
IRS Chief: I Want
to Keep My Health Care Plan, Not Switch to Obamacare. IRS chief Daniel Werfel says he wants to keep his health care plan, not switch
to Obamacare: "Mr. Werfel, last week your employees who are a member of the National Treasury Employee's Union sent a form letter for union
members to send in to ask they be exempt from the exchanges," a congressman asked. "Why are your employees trying to exempt themselves from
the very law that you're tasked to enforce?"
IRS chief says he'd rather
not switch to ObamaCare plan. The head of the agency tasked with enforcing ObamaCare said Thursday that he'd rather not get his
own health insurance from the system created by the health care overhaul. "I would prefer to stay with the current policy that I'm pleased
with rather than go through a change if I don't need to go through that change," said acting IRS chief Danny Werfel, during a House Ways and Means
Committee hearing.
Cantor
on ObamaCare: The IRS in doctors' offices threatens everyone's privacy. A few weeks ago, the White House announced it would delay the
employer mandate under ObamaCare. The evidence is clear, this law is threatening job growth and turning full-time jobs into part-time jobs.
On top of the negative economic and health consequences of ObamaCare, the law requires an unholy union between the IRS and your protected health
information.
Treasury Employees Union launches a campaign to help IRS goons elude PPACA exchanges. IRS: Obamacare for Thee but Not For Me. Among the
most offensive features of the ironically titled "Affordable Care Act" is its designation of the Internal Revenue Service as the main enforcer of the
law's many mandates, taxes, penalties, and reporting requirements. It exponentially increases the power of a group of bureaucrats notorious for
repeatedly abusing their authority. Now, highlighting the growing gulf between the government and the governed that has become the hallmark of
the Obama era, these IRS enforcers are asking their congressional representatives to spare them the indignity of enrolling in Obamacare's insurance
exchanges.
IRS
employees refuse to get shoved into Barack Obama's [...] health care system. ObamaCare is all about expanding the power of
the Internal Revenue Service — that's the only promise it has actually kept, the only part of the 11,000-page program that's
actually working the way it was supposed to. The IRS became as important to health care as any doctor or hospital when ObamaCare was
passed, because they are its enforcement arm, and like all central planning schemes, there's a huge amount of enforcing to be done.
Obamacare's Branch of the NSA.
President Obama has had a poor record of job creation, but at least one small economic sector is doing well: community organizing.
The Department of Health and Human Services is about to hire an army of "patient navigators" to inform Americans about the subsidized
insurance promised by Obamacare and assist them in enrolling. These organizers will be guided by the new Federal Data Hub, which
will give them access to reams of personal information compiled by federal agencies ranging from the IRS to the Department of Defense and
the Veterans Administration.
ObamaCare Unraveling. Having fewer companies
offering affordable coverage January 1 could mean more individuals would have to pay the mandate tax, or pay for more costly coverage.
You guessed it, the governmrent defines what's affordable coverage — the IRS is the lead agency asking you, your household and your
employer about coverage versus your wages here, to determine if you owe the mandate tax.
IRS Scandal Brings Calls
for Heads to Roll, Obamacare to be Delayed. With allegations swirling that the IRS was used as a political weapon against groups that are
conservative, libertarian, or constitutionalist in nature came news it was also used as a shield for progressive, "green," and other groups. At
about the same time, news also broke of a lawsuit alleging the IRS had improperly obtained millions of personal health records. This raises more
concerns about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, because the IRS has a big role to play in its implementation
and enforcement.
House to Vote on Bill Prohibiting
IRS Enforcement of Obamacare. The House of Representatives will take up a bill that would stop the Department of the Treasury, including
the Internal Revenue Services, from implementing and enforcing the provisions of Obamacare. The bill, authored by Georgia Republican Tom Price and
co-sponsored by 114 other House members, is just two pages long and claims its purpose is to "prohibit the Secretary of the Treasury from enforcing
the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010."
IRS dumps up to 100,000 Social
Security numbers on the Internet. We're in the very best of hands, aren't we? Just wait until the people who slipped up and
posted up to 100,000 Social Security numbers onto a website are in charge of your health care information.
Is America in a Pre-Revolutionary State
this July 4th? We are two-thirds of the way into the most incompetent presidency in our history. People everywhere are
fed up. [...] And now looming is the monster of monsters, ObamaCare, the healthcare reform almost no one wanted and fewer
understood. It will be administered by the Internal Revenue Service, an organization that has been revealed to be a kind of
post-modern American Gestapo, asking not just to examine our accounting books but the books we read. What could be more totalitarian
than that?
Government gone wild. With each passing week comes more proof
that President Obama's government is out of control. The past couple of months alone have produced a long list of scandals: The Internal Revenue Service
spent taxpayer dollars to target groups Mr. Obama considered his opponents. [...] In the coming months, when the full implementation of Obamacare draws near, the
Internal Revenue Service will be in charge of enforcing the law's various mandates and rules. It has played politics with our taxes. Soon, it will have
the power to play politics with our health care. If the events of the past few weeks have proven anything, it's that there will be no one to stop them.
Confused IRS Tax Rules Threaten Obamacare
Rollout. Last month, Gallup conducted a survey to determine small business attitudes toward the Affordable Health Care Act, better known as
Obamacare. The results were not encouraging for backers of the law. The polling firm determined that as many as a quarter of small business
employers were restricting job openings to part-time workers. Nearly half said Obamacare would be bad for their business, compared to only 9 percent
who said it would be a good thing. More than half believed they would be forced to reduce the quality of the health care they provide.
Think the IRS Is Bad Now? Just Wait.
The Internal Revenue Service has never been an agency much loved by the American people. With the IRS's targeting of conservative
groups, its already bad reputation has now sunk to a new low. But the scandal raises a critical question: If the IRS can't
manage an increase of 1,700 applications for tax-exempt status that the agency said spurred its targeting of conservative groups, how
will the IRS handle its massive new role in implementing ObamaCare?
Republicans Focus Fire on IRS Involvement
in Obamacare. After the Supreme Court's decision labeling Obamacare's mandate a tax, the IRS has become the crucial centerpiece
of President Obama's health care rollout. But with the IRS' targeting of conservative non-profits, Republicans are calling into question
the agency's involvement in the application of Obamacare.
Getting The IRS Out of
Obamacare. As the IRS scandal continues to take shape and the massive overreach of one of the most powerful
agencies in Big Government becomes even more apparent, it becomes frightening to think this same agency will soon be heavily
involved in your personal healthcare situation. Remember folks, as the United States Supreme Court said nearly a year
ago, Obamacare is a tax and thus falls under the jurisdiction of the IRS.
This Won't Turn Out Well. On August 1, the
one-year "safe harbor" for religious charities objecting to provisions of Obamacare will end. Starting then, these nonprofit employers will
be forced to violate their religious beliefs or pay large fines. In charge of collecting the fines will be our recently newsworthy friends
at the Internal Revenue Service.
Obamacare's
Big Brother Database. In spite of the blatant, political corruption at the IRS, the Obama administration is moving full
steam ahead with Obamacare, a law that gives unprecedented new access and powers to bureaucrats at the IRS and at least four other federal
government agencies. Is that really going to undo the cynicism we have about government and protect Americans from further targeting?
Obamacare puts the IRS on steroids.
If ever there were an argument as to why Obamacare should be repealed and defunded, these numbers — coupled with the IRS
revelations of recent weeks — tell the tale.
Defund
ObamaCare's 16,500 New IRS Agents. Unable to police the supposedly "rogue" agents it has now, the IRS wants
thousands more to police your body under ObamaCare. Lawmakers should impose a hiring freeze instead.
The IRS attempts to save Obamacare by unilaterally declaring that it will disregard the law. An IRS Scandal Inseparable from Obamacare.
Thanks to ubiquitous if imperfectly honest press coverage, most Americans know about the IRS scandal involving tax-exempt applications from
various Tea Party groups. The public is still, however, getting the mushroom treatment on two other outrages by that rogue agency.
The media have devoted scant coverage to its theft of 60 million medical records, now the subject of a class action lawsuit, and they have
been all but silent regarding the illegal IRS scheme to fund Obamacare's federal insurance exchanges.
Giant octopus: IRS has
8 offices to enforce Obamacare. The Internal Revenue Service, charged with implementing the biggest change in tax laws in
20 years due to Obamacare, has created eight offices and special "teams" to handle the chore, way more than initially revealed.
Besides the top office headed by the woman in the middle of the IRS-Tea Party scandal, there are seven others and a special enforcement
team that make up an organization chart that mirrors the organization of the IRS itself, according to a Treasury Inspector General's
report.
The
unwelcome role of the IRS in Obamacare. Let us stipulate that now might not be the best time — with
IRS officials exposed for abusing power, caught in self-serving deceptions, invoking their constitutional right against
self-incrimination — to dramatically expand the authority and size of their agency. But this is what
Obamacare requires. Thousands of new IRS agents will implement 40-odd provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable
Care Act — the exact number is a matter of dispute since the law itself is so confusing.
Exclusive:
IRS Org Chart Puts Ingram, Lerner at Center of Power. An official Internal Revenue Service (IRS) organizational chart of the Tax
Exempt & Government Entities division from February 2011 offers a more complete picture of the authority Lois Lerner — the now-removed
IRS director of the tax-exempt unit — and Sarah Hall Ingram — presently tasked with overseeing the implementation of
Obamacare — held as the IRS scheme to politically target conservative groups was hatched.
Big Government's
Abuses of Power. We have just learned that the Internal Revenue Service before the 2012 election predicated its
tax-exemption policies on politics. It inordinately denied tax exemption to groups considered conservative or otherwise
antagonistic to the president's agenda. If the supposedly nonpartisan IRS is perceived as skewing our taxes on the basis
of our politics, then the entire system of trust in self-reporting is rendered null and void. Worse still, the bureaucratic
overseer at the center of the controversy, Sarah Hall Ingram, now runs the IRS division charged with enforcing compliance with
the new Obamacare requirements.
Propaganda:
NPR Incorrectly Claims IRS Has Nothing to do With Obamacare. During the May 22 broadcast of National Public Radio's
"Talk of the Nation," host Neil Conan repeatedly contradicted a guest by claiming that the IRS has nothing at all to do with Obamacare.
NPR's Conan is, of course, completely incorrect. The IRS is up to its Tea Party harassing neck in Obamacare. The guest Conan
contradicted was Kellyanne Conway, a Republican strategist and pollster. Conway was on to discuss the various scandals in which
Obama is mired and close to the end of her segment she questioned how the American people can trust the IRS to implement Obamacare.
Conan initially pressed her on the claim saying that she must have "misspoken."
Time to Go for the Kill. The IRS scandal
provides Republicans and conservatives with the opportunity to repeal and replace Obamacare now. The House Republican majority
should refuse to fund the expansion of the IRS necessary to manage Obamacare. Without that funding, and hiring thousands of
additional agents, the IRS cannot even begin to manage Obamacare. [...] Nobody wants the IRS playing political games with their health
care and health records, like it did with the constitutional rights to freedom of speech and Equal Protection of Tea Party and
conservative organizations.
ObamaCare,
Tea Party Targeter Run By Same IRS Exec. The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of tax-exempt organizations
when the unit targeted Tea Party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for enforcing ObamaCare.
Obama's Defenders: He's
Not Corrupt, Just Dishonest and Incompetent. [T]he IRS's reach and power is expanded as part of ObamaCare — itself an expansion
of government along demonstrably failed strategic lines. So it's no surprise that after the IRS systematically targeted conservative and pro-Israel
groups in order to eviscerate the First Amendment rights of those who disagreed with President Obama (and at the direction of high-ranking elected
Democrats), the IRS official responsible for overseeing tax-exempt groups has since been moved over to run the IRS office responsible for ObamaCare.
This Is What Tyranny Looks Like.
Here is a woman we will need to learn much more about in the coming weeks. Sarah Hall Ingram is a highly valued employee at the IRS.
In the last three years she has received $103,390 in bonuses for her excellent work. She was the Commissioner of the Tax-Exempt and
Government Entitles Division. Under her leadership, groups that expressed a fear of large, out-of-control government were systematically
crushed by her branch of our large, out-of-control government. They were specifically singled out for harassment for political reasons.
Secret information about the conservative applicants was leaked to leftist opposition groups to facilitate further harassment.
IRS official
in charge during Tea Party targeting now runs agency's Obamacare office. Sarah Hall Ingram is a career IRS employee, having graduated from
Georgetown Law in 1982 to start her career in IRS Tax Litigation. She became Commissioner of the Tax-Exempt and Government Entitles Division of the
IRS in 2009. [...] Surely, the anti-Bush fervor and politics of an off-year election would have created a disproportionate number of liberal groups
applying for status even pre-Citizens United — a situation similar to the one that allegedly justified the IRS' improper scrutiny of
conservatives in 2010 — yet we haven't heard about Ingram coming down systematically on them.
IRS
Official in Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office. The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the
tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.
Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since
left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS' Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today [5/16/2013].
IRS official who oversaw unit targeting
Tea Party now heads ObamaCare office. The IRS official who led the tax-exempt organizations unit when Tea Party groups were targeted is
now in charge of the IRS office responsible for ObamaCare, two Capitol Hill sources told Fox News. The acknowledgement comes after the
administration announced that the official's successor Joseph Grant — who had only been on the job a few days — would
be retiring.
Official
in charge of corrupt IRS department promoted — to top ObamaCare enforcer. I see media headlines all over the
place describing [Joseph] Grant as the second person to "lose his job" or "resign" over the IRS scandal. That is not true.
No one has lost his job over this scandal yet. The Acting Commissioner was due to leave anyway, unless President
Obama actively re-appointed him for another term. The commissioner of the tax-exempt organizations department is retiring
gracefully. Furthermore, Grant only became the commissioner of his department last week. He was the Deputy
Commissioner before that, so he has strong links to the scandal, but he wasn't the top executive when the outrage occurred.
That would be one Sara Hall Ingram. And she didn't get fired or disciplined. She got promoted. She is now the
director of the IRS' Affordable Care Office. In other words, the person in charge during the worst abuse-of-power scandal in modern
history is now the chief enforcer for ObamaCare.
[Emphasis in original.]
Biggest Question About IRS Scandal: Why
The Apology? The Internal Revenue has always been perceived as the bane of law-abiding and long-suffering taxpayers.
It can also unfortunately be a punishing henchman of a corrupt administration. In the past it has allowed itself to be used to
punish critics and enemies of a despotic government more totalitarian than democratic. News that the Obama administration had
requested the hiring of thousands of new IRS to enforce Obamacare only confirmed fears that the IRS was being used once again to do an
administration's dirty work.
'Is
this still America?' Congressional hearing turns into IRS smackdown. The IRS under the Obama administration painted targets
on the backs of conservatives beginning in 2010, and ousted acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller apologized to the House Ways and Means
Committee on Friday [5/17/2013]. But members on both sides of the aisle were furious, and castigated him for the mismanagement and
political gamesmanship the IRS engaged in on his watch.
Oops, Maybe Government is Tyrannical.
Less than two weeks ago President Obama stood in front of graduates from The Ohio State University and told them to reject those who
warn of government tyranny. [...] Practically overnight people labeled conspiracy theorists by the elite were proven prescient
interpreters of how big government operates when news broke last Friday that the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups
for special scrutiny in their tax-exempt applications. The media pile-on against the administration is so ferocious Fox News could
run live feeds from its competitors without losing a beat. It should be so because the partisan treatment of hundreds of groups
is stunning.
IRS head on targeting
tea party: 'It is absolutely not illegal'. The outgoing leader of the Internal Revenue Service drew audible "wows" from
Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday [5/17/2013] for saying he doesn't think what the agency did to tea party groups was
illegal. "It is absolutely not illegal," Steve Miller, the acting commissioner of the IRS who resigned this week because of the
scandal, said while being questioned by Georgia Rep. Tom Price.
Obamacare isn't about
health care, it's about power. Obamacare's heavy reliance on the IRS seems somehow fitting, as the entire law relies on
a scheme of government controls and regulations to work its will on the health care system. The law imposes price controls on
insurance companies and extends a system of price controls for pharmaceutical companies. Obamacare also places a board of unelected,
unaccountable bureaucrats at the center of its plans to control health care costs.
How the IRS Scandal Threatens Obamacare.
Obamacare is not merely a massive overhaul of the health care system. It is also a substantial expansion of the Internal Revenue
Service. That's because the law relies on the tax collection agency to both enforce its individual mandate and administer the tax
credits the law offers to subsidize the purchase of health insurance. Following recent revelations that agents in multiple IRS
offices, including tax officials in Washington, targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny, a number of former and current Republican
legislators are already counseling caution about the agency's role in administering the law.
Will The IRS
Abuse Its ObamaCare Enforcement Powers Too? As nonconservative groups complain of politically motivated targeting by
the IRS, we're reminded it's the IRS that's going to be enforcing one of the greatest expansions of government power in our history.
IRS Admission Fans Flames
of Anti-'Obamacare' Push. The admission by the Internal Revenue Service that it singled out conservative advocacy groups
for intense scrutiny provides conservatives with what one Hill aide described as "fresh ammunition" to attack the 2010 health care
law — especially given the critical role the IRS is expected to play in implementing and regulating the law. The timing of the
IRS admission, coming just days before the House will vote on the full repeal of a polarizing law the IRS will have a major role in
enforcing, has conservative lawmakers and outside groups eager to talk.
Coming Next January: New Tax Form to Comply With
Obamacare Mandate . I've been wondering how the IRS was going to determine whether taxpayers were complying with the individual mandate contained in
Obamacare. I needn't have wondered. The IRS is a bureaucracy and what do bureaucracies adore almost as much as taxpayer-financed trips to Vegas for
conferences? Forms, of course.
New Obamacare
Challenge: Lawsuit Says IRS Is Flouting the Law As Written by Congress. Here comes another legal challenge to Obamacare:
On Thursday [5/2/2013], a group of small business owners and individuals in six states sued the federal government over an IRS regulation
that they say goes beyond the "plain language" of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In a nutshell, the plaintiffs argue that federal
subsidies intended to help lower-income people afford insurance are going to states that should not get them. The way the Affordable
Care Act is written, states that refuse to set up their own health care exchanges are not eligible for the federal premium subsidies.
IRS
moves to collect billions in fees from healthcare law. The Internal Revenue Service on Friday unveiled its proposal
to raise tens of billions of dollars through annual fees on health insurers, prompting fierce criticism from industry groups who
warn the costs will be passed along to consumers. The proposed rule from President Obama's healthcare law will be published
for public consideration in Monday's Federal Register. The rule would assess annual fees on most insurers that would
total $8 billion next year and rise thereafter, eclipsing $14 billion in 2018, according to the IRS.
You must not stand on your own two feet — even for one day. IRS: Parents Must Pay Federal Fine for
Uninsured Kids. In new, final regulations issued Wednesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said that parents must pay a
federal fine under Obamacare if their children or dependent spouses are uninsured for any part of the year.
House committees investigate whether the IRS illegally expanded
tax subsides to strengthen Obamacare. Exceeding its Mandate. Two House committees are investigating
whether the IRS illegally implemented an important provision of Obamacare. House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp
(R., Mich.) and Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) sent a letter on Tuesday [1/29/2013] to the acting secretary
of the Treasury Department and the acting commissioner of the IRS requesting documents and interviews with specific officials.
IRS Warns Employers: Do Not Try to
Avoid ObamaCare Insurance Mandate. The Internal Revenue Service warned employers in a new regulatory proposal not to come up with
clever schemes to avoid Obamacare's employer health insurance mandate. The IRS said it would soon issue "anti-abuse rules" to discourage
employers from taking advantage of any regulatory loopholes.
The New Face of Health Care — the IRS. When
President Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, aka "Obamacare") goes fully into effect in 2014, the American people will only then begin to
see the implications of its thorough government takeover of health care, in all its glory. But what they are not expecting is the massively expanded role of
the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS") in our lives, as the IRS is the chief agency responsible for enforcing the Act.
Illegal
IRS Rule to Increase Taxes & Spending under Obamacare. Contrary to the clear language of the statute and congressional
intent, this [IRS] rule issues tax credits in health insurance "exchanges" established by the federal government. It thus
triggers a $2,000-per-employee tax on employers and appropriates billions of dollars to private health insurance companies in
states with a federal Exchange, also contrary to the clear language of the statute and congressional intent. Since those
illegal expenditures will exceed the revenues raised by the illegal tax on employers, this rule also increases the federal
deficit by potentially hundreds of billions of dollars, again contrary to the clear language of the statute and congressional
intent. The rule is therefore illegal. It lacks any statutory authority. It is contrary to both the clear
language of the PPACA and congressional intent. It cannot be justified on other legal grounds.
Obamacare's Empty Mandates.
Turns out, the government has no way to enforce the individual mandate — the tax that scofflaws have to pay for failing to get health insurance
coverage. That's right. There is no penalty in the law for refusing to pay the tax. So that unlike paying income taxes, if you don't get
coverage, the IRS cannot seize your bank accounts or dock your wages. They can't even charge you interest on unpaid penalties! So how
is the IRS going to enforce it?
LePage says IRS is the 'new Gestapo' in
radio address. Gov. Paul LePage used his weekly radio address to blast President Obama's health care law and described the
Internal Revenue Service as the "new Gestapo." The IRS description was a reference to a provision in the Affordable Care Act that
requires most Americans to buy health insurance or pay an annual penalty when filing their tax returns. The provision, known more
broadly as the individual mandate, was the subject of a multi-state lawsuit, but was recently upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The IRS is the Iron Fist to Enforce
Obamacare. One of the arguments raised against the health care reform law is that few people want their
health care run by the same people who run the IRS. But the IRS will enforce the law. According to Newsmax,
the Obama administration is transferring $500 million to the IRS to allow the tax agency to begin enforcing tax
provisions of Obamacare outside the normal appropriations process and before the Supreme Court rules on the
constitutionality of the law.
Army Of IRS Enforcers Can't Make ObamaCare
Legitimate. After foisting its 2,700-page health law on the public, the White House now plans to enforce its detested mandate by siccing the
IRS on unwilling citizens. All that stands in the way is "the consent of the governed."
White
House has diverted $500M to IRS to implement healthcare law. The Obama administration is quietly diverting roughly
$500 million to the IRS to help implement the president's healthcare law. The money is only part of the IRS's total
implementation spending, and it is being provided outside the normal appropriations process. The tax agency is responsible
for several key provisions of the new law, including the unpopular individual mandate.
IRS Commissioner Can't Say How Many New Agents IRS Will
Need to Enforce Obamacare. Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman said at the National
Press Club on Monday [4/5/2010] that the IRS cannot say how many new agents it will need to enforce the new
health care law signed by President Barack Obama last month.
16,500 More Reasons to
Vote Republican in November. Thanks to the Democrats, the most hated agency in America, the IRS,
just got 16,500 agents bigger. By sprinkling in an additional 16,500 IRS agents into their health care
mix, the Democrats may have just placed upon their own backs a backbreaking straw.
IRS
chief: Buy health insurance or lose your tax refund. Individuals who don't purchase health
insurance may lose their tax refunds according to IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman. After acknowledging
the recently passed health-care bill limits the agency's options for enforcing the individual mandate,
Shulman told reporters that the most likely way to penalize individuals that don't comply is by reducing
or confiscating their tax refunds.
IRSteroids. As if
the Internal Revenue Service doesn't have enough power, the agency says it will regulate tax preparers. And
ObamaCare gives it even more clout.
GOP
lawmakers believe over $1 billion spent to promote Obamacare. Republicans are demanding greater
transparency on how much the administration spent to promote and implement Obamacare — and hitting
back at President Obama's claim that he "didn't make a hard sell." The new effort comes after Obama's
claim that the administration met its goal of enrolling more than 7 million people without spending billions.
"We didn't make a hard sell," Obama said. "We didn't have billions of dollars to spend on commercials like
our critics did." But both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill estimate the administration has spent
roughly $4 to 5 billion to get the Affordable Care Act running, including hundreds of millions to
build and repair healthcare.gov.
Gov't Spent $700
Million Promoting Obamacare. President Barack Obama contended that the government did not
"make a hard sell" for Obamacare, despite his administration spending nearly $700 million to promote
the law. "We didn't make a hard sell," Obama said in the Rose Garden on Tuesday, praising the
7.1 million sign ups for the Affordable Care Act. "We didn't have billions of dollars
of commercials like some critics did." However, last July the Associated Press reported that
Obamacare's marketing campaign would cost at least $684 million. [Updated later
to $684 million.]
The Editor says...
You must purchase insurance from us by March 31 or you will be fined, and the IRS will come after you.
Is that not a hard sell?
Watchdog
requests IRS review of group that is promoting ObamaCare. A watchdog group is asking the IRS to review the tax-exempt status of a
organization crucial in helping to promote ObamaCare. Cause of Action has asked the IRS to investigate Enroll America, a nonprofit that is
encouraging people to enroll in new coverage options under the healthcare law.
Even IRS Head Would Keep His Health Plan
Over ObamaCare. The American people don't want it, even Democrats think it's a train wreck, and now members of the agency charged with enforcing it
have said it's hazardous to our health, financial and otherwise. While testifying Thursday [8/1/2013] on Capitol Hill, Daniel Werfel, acting chief of the
Internal Revenue Service, the agency charged with enforcing ObamaCare's mandates, told a House committee he would rather keep his current health insurance plan
than make the switch to one offered by the Affordable Care Act.
House votes 232-185 to block the IRS from
enforcing ObamaCare. The House voted Friday to prevent the IRS from enforcing any aspect of ObamaCare, a bill meant to exact revenge against an
agency that Republicans say is incapable of neutral enforcement of the law. Members approved the Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act in
a 232-185 vote. Four Democrats supported the bill along with every Republican. The vote capped off several days of work in the House on bills
aimed at reining in government regulation and government overreach.
The New Face of Health Care — the IRS. When
President Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, aka "Obamacare") goes fully into effect in 2014, the American people will only then begin to
see the implications of its thorough government takeover of health care, in all its glory. But what they are not expecting is the massively expanded role of
the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS") in our lives, as the IRS is the chief agency responsible for enforcing the Act.
House committees investigate whether the IRS illegally expanded
tax subsides to strengthen Obamacare. Exceeding its Mandate. Two House committees are investigating
whether the IRS illegally implemented an important provision of Obamacare. House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp
(R., Mich.) and Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) sent a letter on Tuesday [1/29/2013] to the acting secretary
of the Treasury Department and the acting commissioner of the IRS requesting documents and interviews with specific officials.
Four Tactical Steps That Will Defeat Obamacare.
[#1.] Denounce this bill for the lying fraud scheme it is: Just as an example: The Congressional Budget
Office (CBO) "scored" the Pelosi bill to cost $1.055 trillion — far above Barack Obama's $900 billion
ceiling. Pelosi immediately held a press conference and announced her bill would cost $894 billion —
a figure that did not appear in the CBO report and which could be reached only by subtracting projected IRS-administered
penalties from the actual cost.
IRS Issues 159 Pages of Obamacare Rules.
It took the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) 159 pages to explain one new Obamacare tax on investments that will be used to pay for Obamacare.
Only individuals and families making more than $200,000 and $250,000, respectively, will be impacted by the tax, which "applies to a broad range of
investment securities ranging from stocks and bonds to commodity securities and specialized derivatives."
Anyone For More Obamacare Tax Rules?
This stack explains the tax on people making more than $200,000 (individuals) and $250,000 (families), and suggests that Obama's plan to lower
unemployment is to expand the ranks of the IRS until it employs as many people as the military.
My Doctor Is Now the IRS. The Congressional Research Service
Report for Congress, "A Brief Overview of the Law, Implementation, and Legal Challenges," gives a new definition to Nancy Pelosi's statement that
we had "to pass Obamacare to find out what's in it." Not only did Congressmen not read the 2,700-page law before they voted and passed it by
twisting arms and briberies, but they now have to be informed of the disaster they have created.
IRS:
Employers Face $36,500 Per Worker Tax for 'Obamacare Dumping'. The Internal Revenue
Service ruled it will impose a tax penalty on employers of up to $36,500 per worker for dumping
employees into the Obamacare exchanges. [...] The IRS ruling is an effort by the Obama
administration to stop employers with 50 or more workers from doing what critics of the health law
said they would do: pay a penalty for not providing insurance and dump workers into the unpopular
Obamacare program.
What the IRS
Obamacare ruling means. The headline at the New York times suggests that the Obama
administration has cut the escape for business' trying to avoid the costs of Obamacare: [...] But
while some might crow over this change here is what it's going to mean: [#1] Pink slips.
You don't have to provide health insurance to people who do not work for you. If the government won't
allow companies to make a cost-effective decision they will cut those costs a different way and the
cheapest and fastest is to cut people. [#2] Part Timers: If you can't afford to
lose people the next choice will be to reduce hours or create new part-time positions to replace the
full-time ones that required insurance coverage. [#3] Hiring Freezes: If you work
for a company on the edge of the Healthcare requirements and in an industry where part-time workers
simply won't do be prepared to do a lot more work with a lot less help.
IRS Warns Employers: Do Not Try to
Avoid ObamaCare Insurance Mandate. The Internal Revenue Service warned employers in a new regulatory proposal not to come up with
clever schemes to avoid Obamacare's employer health insurance mandate. The IRS said it would soon issue "anti-abuse rules" to discourage
employers from taking advantage of any regulatory loopholes.
16,500
more IRS agents needed to enforce Obamacare. New tax mandates and penalties included in
Obamacare will cause the greatest expansion of the Internal Revenue Service since World War II, according
to a release from Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas.
Obamacare's Hit Man.
Last week the Congressional Budget Office reported that it expects that the Internal Revenue Service and the
Department of Health and Human Services will spend up to an additional $200 billion over the next decade
on administering Obamacare. That's in addition to the estimated $1 trillion that will be spent in
2014-2019 under the new healthcare law. Much of the money will go to hiring hundreds of thousands
of bureaucrats to administer Obamacare over the next decade.
A Bigger,
Badder IRS: Brought to You by Obamacare. [Scroll down] And why is this tax
reporting stuff even in a health-care bill? To help fund it, that's why. To help Pelosi and
Reid and Obama get the faux deficit score they needed, the measure is expected to raise $13.7 billion
over ten years — though that's before administrative and discretionary costs, which will add
another $115 billion or so to the bill's official price tag. Pass the bill to find out what's
in it.
The IRS operates in cahoots with other federal agencies
The DEA:
Exclusive: IRS manual detailed DEA's use of hidden intel
evidence. Criminal defense lawyers are challenging a U.S. government practice of hiding the tips that led to some drug investigations,
information that the lawyers say is essential to fair trials in U.S. courts.
Creepy: IRS In On DEA's
'Special Operations' Trickery. It's amusing when lefties get upset at stuff like this. They're too thick to understand that
mammoth growth of the federal government will always lead to widespread abuse. Better to err on the side of sanity and assume the
worst from the federal level at all times.
The FEC:
The Other Targeting Scandal.
The IRS targeting scandal is best understood as part of a larger effort to limit the political speech of conservatives and business groups.
That became clearer last week regarding the Federal Election Commission, and now evidence is spreading to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Senior Republicans on the House Oversight Committee recently wrote to new SEC Chairman Mary Jo White to report on disturbing events that occurred
under her predecessor, and to request agency documents. As at the IRS, there's an emerging pattern at the SEC of senior officials rolling
over career staff to politicize the work of a powerful federal agency.
When Scandals Reach Into the Oval Office.
Evidence is not the same as proof. Proof comes as evidence accumulates. But the fact that Barack Obama is the only common supervisor of all
the corrupt activity in various departments of the federal government is certainly compelling evidence. [Jay] Carney's insistence that there is no
evidence whatever that this scandal goes as high as the oval office is simply wrong.
IRS Union Tied to FEC. The National Treasury
Employees Union (NTEU) represents the bureaucracy that staffs the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS. The NTEU also
represents the bureaucracy that staffs the Federal Elections Commission. The FEC. The NTEU has a political action
committee — the Treasury Employees Political Action Committee. TEPAC. TEPAC routinely gives over 90% of its
contributions to Democrats.
Republican says e-mails could mean FEC-IRS collusion. The
vice chairman of the Federal Election Commission told CNN on Monday [8/5/2013] he has seen numerous undisclosed e-mails between FEC staffers and the
Internal Revenue Service that raise new questions about potential collusion between the two federal agencies in the alleged targeting of conservative
political groups.
Another Agency Goes IRS.
One big question raised by IRS political targeting is whether Obama officials or their bureaucratic allies unleashed the power of the
administrative state for partisan ends. Now evidence is emerging that officials at another agency, the Federal Election Commission,
used their enforcement power as an anti-conservative sword. The House Ways and Means Committee this week released emails showing
that, in 2008 and 2009, the FEC's general counsel staff sought tax information about conservative political groups from Lois Lerner of
the IRS. Ms. Lerner [...] had previously worked at ... the FEC's general counsel office.
New Links Emerge in the IRS Scandal.
Congressional investigators this week released emails suggesting that staff at the Federal Election Commission have been engaged in their own conservative
targeting, with help from the IRS's infamous Lois Lerner. This means more than just an expansion of the probe to the FEC. It's a new link to
the Obama team.
Did IRS Help Other Agencies Target
Conservatives? We now know that IRS honchos shared information about conservative groups with other agencies, using the vast data
in the IRS databanks to help other federal officials make cases against conservatives. Now we need to know how much, how often and what
kind. Email exchanges between Lois Lerner, the Democrat at the center of the probe into abuses at the IRS, and a lawyer at the Federal
Elections Commission show Lerner and the lawyer teaming up to try to block a conservative group from winning a case before the commission.
E-mails
Suggest Collusion Between FEC, IRS to Target Conservative Groups. The correspondence suggests the discrimination of conservative
groups extended beyond the IRS and into the FEC, where an attorney from the agency's enforcement division in at least one case sought and received
tax information about the status of a conservative group, the American Future Fund, before recommending that the commission prosecute it for
violations of campaign-finance law. [Lois] Lerner, the former head of the IRS's exempt-organizations division, worked at the FEC from
1986 to 1995, and was known for aggressive investigation of conservative groups during her tenure there, too.
Obama
and Me: How I Knew Obama Was a Bad Guy Before Anyone Else. [Scroll down] I was Obama's classmate at
Columbia University, class of 1983. We were both pre-law and political science majors. I was also on the
Libertarian presidential ticket in 2008 — the first time in U.S. history that college classmates ran on opposing
presidential tickets. What are the odds? During the campaign, I was asked in hundreds of media interviews:
"Were you two friends at Columbia University? What was Obama like?" I always answered honestly: "I never met him,
never saw him, never heard of him. And I don't know a single classmate who ever met him either." I repeated this story
hundreds of times. At the time, I was also a regular guest on Fox News, where I branded Obama a radical socialist whose
policies would ruin the U.S. economy, retard economic growth and kill millions of jobs. I was proved right. That
must have made Obama even angrier. I had clearly gotten under Obama's skin. Soon the IRS came knocking. I
was targeted for destruction. It was a witch hunt, persecution and intimidation all in one.
Obama Makes the IRS Free Speech Cop
Too. As if the Internal Revenue Service did not have enough to do with administering Obamacare, President Obama wants to give it another job:
regulating the free speech of his political opponents, while leaving the political activities of the president's friends untouched. The new proposed IRS
regulations were placed in the Federal Register the day after the Thanksgiving holiday, and comments on them are due by the end of February.
Obamacare Whistleblower: I was Told IRS
Retaliation 'Came from the Top'. [Bill] Elliott appeared on [Sara Marie] Brenner's show last week to discuss the audit and the help he
received from South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, a South Carolina Congressman and a Democratic Senator from North Carolina, Senator Kay Hagan.
In the segment, he discussed how the IRS audit was ultimately squashed thanks to intervention by lawmakers; however, he noted that he was told that
the IRS investigation "came from the top."
IRS
intimidating health insurance broker helping people who lose policies. C. Steven Tucker,the man who helped cancer patient
Bill Elliott regain his health insurance policy, now believes that he is purposefully being intimidated by the IRS. The Washington Times
reported on Thursday that Tucker and Elliott received notices from the IRS on the same day, but for different matters. Since receiving his
first notice, Tucker has experienced a series of events that have left him feeling targeted, but very determined.
IRS Goes
After Obamacare Whistleblowers. By now, the news has spread online of the IRS audit notices sent to two Obamacare whistleblowers.
On November 25th, cancer victim Bill Elliott and C. Steven Tucker were informed of the ordeal each was to face. Elliott has been
waging a pitched battle with cancer. Tucker is the insurance agent and healthcare freedom activist who informed him that the canceling of
his insurance, wrought by the Obama administration for the sake pushing citizens into Obamacare, was illegal. [...] What subsequently transpired
for Tucker has deepened his impression that the twin IRS notices were no coincidence, but an attack by our federal government, an orchestrated
effort at intimidation of them both.
Cancer Patient and
ObamaCare Critic Says He's Being Audited by IRS. A cancer patient, who publicly discussed the cancellation of his insurance under
ObamaCare, now says he has been informed by the Internal Revenue Service that he is going to be audited. Bill Elliot appeared on Fox News
on November 7th to discuss the cancellation of his insurance. He claims he was told that his cancer was considered "beyond the catastrophic
previous condition" and his plan was being canceled because of ObamaCare regulations.
Lose Insurance Under
Obamacare, Speak Up, IRS Audits You. Yep, suddenly — and not coincidentally — [Bill] Elliot and [C. Stephen]
Tucker are being audited by the IRS, joining a list of other organizations and individuals who are also suddenly enduring an IRS audit or other
problems after disagreeing with Obama such as several Tea Party and conservative groups, prominent black physician Dr. Ben Carson who has
publicly criticized Obamacare, Catholic professor Ann Hendershott who also had the audacity to publicly disagree with Obama and even the
billionaire owners of the Chicago Cubs.
Cancer
Patient Who Spoke Out Against ObamaCare Now Being Audited. Bill Elliot was a cancer patient who lost his insurance due to
ObamaCare and couldn't pay the expensive new premiums. He was talking about paying the ObamaCare fine, going without health
insurance and "letting nature take its course." [...] Now suddenly Bill Elliot is being audited for 2009 with an interview only
scheduled in April 2014. Assuming he lives that long. That might be a coincidence, but Tucker is being audited back to
2003. That's a rather strange coincidence.
Lois Lerner allegedly loses her most important emails at the most convenient moment
It's a scandal within a scandal. This story is simply not believable because one government employee can't lose a
selective part of an organization's email due to the crash of her personal computer — even if that actually happened,
which it probably didn't. This is most likely just an evasive delay tactic to slow down the investigation of the IRS,
probably because the investigation is about to point directly at the White House.
First of all, Ms. Lerner's email messages don't reside on her computer. Her email resides on a server somewhere,
and the servers, if they are managed properly, have backup files stored at yet another location. (Ask
Oliver North how that works.1 E-mail
messages that North believed to be deleted were found and used against him in
litigation.2 A
total of 758 e-mail messages were sent, involving him in the Iran-Contra affair, and every one of them was
recovered.3) But
even if this latest foot-dragging excuse is valid, the whole thing is surprisingly convenient, isn't it?
Overviews:
Not
Just The FBI: Institutions Across The Board Have Forfeited America's Trust. In 2013,
the IRS admitted to targeting conservative groups. Lois Lerner deemed that these conservative
and Tea Party groups were guilty of having the wrong political opinion. For her actions, Lois
Lerner refused to answer questions, pleading the fifth, and was found in contempt of Congress by
the House of Representatives, but the Justice Department declined to prosecute her on contempt
charges. Instead, she was allowed to retire, collect her pension, and never be held accountable.
Ten
Reasons a Post-Presidency Impeachment of Barack Obama Should Happen. Amazingly, liberals still pretend the IRS
improperly targeting conservative and Tea Party groups wasn't a scandal. Lest they forget that Lois Lerner, the former
director of the IRS Exempt Organizations division at the time, admitted it happened! Not only were tea party groups
improperly targeted, according to documents obtained by Judicial Watch, but the whole scheme was also orchestrated out of
Washington, D.C. There was also evidence of White House involvement. Then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman was at the
White House at least 157 times while the IRS was targeting tea party groups. Obama's cabinet members didn't even visit
the White House that often. Some IRS employees even claimed that Obama himself requested the crackdown of tea party
groups. There was certainly ample reason to suspect coordination with the White House. The IRS was also
exchanging confidential taxpayer information with the White House the year Obama and Biden were reelected, and according to a
scholarly study conducted in 2013 by the American Enterprise Institute, the suppression of the tea party movement by Obama's
IRS helped him get reelected.
Six
Times the Obama Administration Should Have Appointed Special Counsel. [#4] The IRS scandal: Using the IRS
to target Obama's political enemies during an election year? Obama did try to distance himself from the scandal but
according to a report, IRS employees were "acutely" aware that Obama wanted a crackdown on conservative and Tea Party groups,
and Douglas Shulman, the IRS commissioner, visited the White House a whopping 157 times (more than anyone in Obama's cabinet)
while the IRS abuses occurred. Gee, do you think there's a potential conflict of interest here? Unlike other
scandals where investigations were left to Republicans in Congress, the Obama administration did investigate the IRS
scandal... did you know about this? Yep, Attorney General Eric Holder appointed a DOJ lawyer to run the investigation.
Her main qualification was that she was an Obama donor, and within a few short days of her appointment, it was announced the FBI
was not planning to file any criminal charges connected to the scandal. Of course not.
The
Democrats' Long History of Making Incriminating Documents Disappear. Remember Lois Lerner, who ran the IRS
effort to stop the Tea Party movement? Her laptop crashed. With perhaps 24,000 emails gone, the IRS didn't look
at the two sources of backup tapes, or the server hard drives, or the loaner laptops from which some emails were eventually
recovered. The IRS "Media Management Midnight Unit" magnetically "degaussed" 422 backup tapes, despite an agency-wide
preservation order and congressional subpoena.
These
5 Horrible Bureaucrats Beat the Clock and Kept Their Pensions. [#2] Lois Lerner: Lerner became infamous when
she used her position as director of the exempt organization unit at the IRS to bully conservative tea party groups applying for
tax-exempt status. In 2010, at the peak of tea party activism and just ahead of the midterm elections, she instructed her
team to flag applications with the words "tea party" and "patriot" in their names. [...] Once Lerner's partisan bias was publicly
revealed and Congress began to investigate, Lerner pled the fifth and then retired. Her full benefit package remains intact.
Republicans Go to Jail,
Democrats Run Free. This appears to be the first time that a president's minions have used the IRS to suppress
the free speech of an entire political movement in order to win an election. Numerous IRS officials lied to
congressional investigators about this autocratic campaign. Lois Lerner, the chief IRS official behind this illegal
harassment, never paid the price for these misdeeds. After she came under scrutiny and invoked the Fifth Amendment
while testifying on Capitol Hill, she was placed on paid leave (i.e. paid vacation) and then allowed to retire with full
pension, benefits, and $129,000 she had received in bonuses. Never mind that computer hard drives detailing this
scandal were thrown into shredders designed to pulverize metal. Again, not even the GOP's control of Congress could
make Lerner or any other IRS official pay any price for the biggest abuse of IRS power in modern American history.
No
Wonder the IRS Is 'Losing' E-mails: It Was Trying to Throw Innocent Conservatives in Jail.
Even a small child can connect these dots. The IRS is announcing the "loss" of mass numbers of e-mails
(do they have any computers that don't crash?) even as the e-mails that do exist are beginning to show the
extent of IRS corruption. [...] And in the last few days we learn the IRS has "lost" e-mails
from — among others — Lois Lerner and Nikole Flax. What a remarkable
coincidence. The scale of the wrongdoing is staggering. Targeting Americans for criminal
investigation without evidence, attempting to enlist multiple federal agencies in the effort, selective
audits, selective disclosures of confidential documents, selective questioning and delays of nonprofit
applicants — all in the service of suppressing dissent.
Overview / recap: More
Lerner Emails Destroyed — Just An Accident, Right? In May 2013, Lois Lerner, then
director of the IRS' Exempt Organizations Division, acknowledged that the agency had given especially hard
looks at applications for tax-exempt status from groups that had the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their
title. Lerner blamed the practice on "front-line people" in the Cincinnati office who weren't thinking
about politics, just doing their jobs. She wouldn't admit it, but the IRS was passively harassing groups
it felt were President Obama's political opponents and a threat to his 2012 re-election. The inspector
general's report said applications filed by several hundred groups were delayed for a year or more.
Seven
Giant Scandals That Barack Obama Just Couldn't Keep Undercover! [#5] IRS Scandal: Remember that time
when the Internal Revenue Service was caught red-handed, targeting conservative and tea party groups to omit their tax-exempt
status, just as Obama's second-term presidential campaign was gearing up? Not only that but two years worth of Louis
Lerner's emails just, poof! DISAPPEARED! It's magic!
13
Incompetent Failures in the Obama Administration. [#9] When allegations surfaced that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had
purposefully stalled the tax exemptions for conservative non-profit groups, director of the Exempt Organizations Unit Lois Lerner became a
central focus in the investigation. But the IRS repeatedly refused to turn over Lerner's emails to the public. At first they
claimed the server had been wiped, and the emails lost. Then they acknowledged there was a backup, but still refused to provide
them. Lerner even had a second email account she used to conduct IRS business under the name "Toby Miles." Nevertheless, the
Department of Justice announced last October that they would not be filing any criminal charges.
Another overview: A Government
Feared and Distrusted. Recently, it was discovered that information gathered not so secretly
by the IRS has been used to target certain groups who dare to criticize our government. Non-profit
groups with names including words like "Tea Party," "patriot," and "conservative," were deliberately singled out
for endless bureaucratic foot dragging while more liberal organizations passed inspection with ease. The IRS
scandal is possibly an even worse case of this administration's abuse of its own citizens than the NSA scandal.
Joe Average citizen, you not only have reason to fear and distrust the NSA's invasion of your personal life for who
knows what obscure reasons. You also have cause to fear and distrust the IRS because you now know you may be
targeted for your political and/or religious beliefs.
And another: IRS:
abuse and cover. First the agency lost whole troves of emails from disgraced former apparatchik Lois Lerner — emails
that would have shed light on her role in the ongoing scandal over the targeting of conservative groups by the agency. Then, on a
recent Friday afternoon (of course), the agency admitted it also could not find emails from several others connected to the scandal.
The disappearances are extremely convenient — especially because the IRS is being treated under a different standard than the
one it uses to treats taxpayers. Lerner and others will face no serious legal consequences without hard evidence of guilt —
evidence that has now vanished into the ether. But taxpayers who find themselves in a dispute with the IRS are presumed to be in the
wrong until they can produce hard evidence to prove otherwise.
Maybe just one or two more... How
Civilizations Collapse — Is U.S. Next? Who will police the tax police?
Former IRS official Lois Lerner and her subordinates were found to have targeted conservative
nonprofit groups for excessive federal scrutiny. While testifying before Congress, Lerner invoked
her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, and investigators later found that two years
of her emails had gone missing in a mysterious computer crash. Lerner has not been charged.
The Poisonous
Obama Years. Artful" Nixonian abuses of the IRS in order to intimidate and tarnish the reputations of political
opponents were once a Republican phenomenon. Today, yet another simmering scandal involving the misuse of the IRS has
ensnared Democrats. As such, it is dismissed as a non-issue by the left and partisans in the press. Americans recently
learned that, like Clinton, Lerner conducted official business via a private email account where she went by the name "Toby Miles."
The emails sent via that account are among the hundreds that have been shielded from congressional investigators, but those that have
been recovered reflect a searing disdain for conservatives against whom Lerner has been accused of conspiring to limit their ability
to participate in civic affairs. "Citizens United is by far the worst thing that has ever happened to this country," Lerner,
who has been accused of targeting conservative political action committees with undue scrutiny, wrote. "We are witnessing the
end of 'America.'" Motive and opportunity having been established, we are told that there is nothing to see here. You're
just being paranoid.
Lois
Lerner claimed ignorance of tea party in secret deposition. Lois Lerner claimed to
have little knowledge of the tea party movement and what it stood for, even as she oversaw the
IRS's intrusive scrutiny of tea party groups' applications for nonprofit status, according to newly
released transcripts of a long-secret deposition she gave. In her 2017 testimony, given in a
class-action lawsuit brought by tea party groups that the IRS admitted were wrongly treated,
Ms. Lerner portrayed herself as a cog in the machine, trying to figure out how to process
cases efficiently, rather than the anti-conservative crusader her private comments suggested.
She brushed aside her email to colleagues about joining a pro-Obama group ahead of the 2012
election as "a joke" and defended venomous remarks about the Republican Party. She said she
made the remarks in her personal capacity and didn't infect her official work. "Mistakes being
made in cases do not translate into IRS is politically motivated," she said in the
deposition. Ms. Lerner told Edward Greim, the lawyer who deposed her, that she "knew
there was a tea party movement" and had a vague sense that it was conservative, but didn't know
anything else.
Liberals
Still Think Obama Was the 'Best President Ever,' Here Are 14 Reasons Why That's Ridiculous. [#1] Unprecedented
abuse of power. Amazingly, liberals still pretend the IRS didn't improperly target conservative and tea party groups,
even though Lois Lerner, the former director of the IRS Exempt Organizations division at the time, admitted it
happened! Not only were tea party groups improperly targeted, according to documents obtained by Judicial Watch, but
the whole scheme was orchestrated out of Washington, D.C. There was also evidence of White House involvement. IRS
Commissioner Douglas Shulman was at the White House at least 157 times while the IRS was targeting tea party groups.
Even Obama's cabinet members didn't visit the White House that often. Some IRS employees even claimed that Obama himself
requested the crackdown on tea party groups. There was certainly ample reason to suspect coordination with the White
House. The IRS was also exchanging confidential taxpayer information with the White House the year Obama and Biden were
reelected. According to a scholarly study conducted by the American Enterprise Institute, suppression of the Tea Party
movement by Obama's IRS helped him get reelected.
Obama
administration was corrupt, more and more evidence reveals daily. The abuse of power started to become clear
when it was revealed the Internal Revenue Service was biased against conservatives. I still don't understand why that
woman is not in jail. She sat there and lied to the American people and to Congress with no accountability.
Mr. Obama used the agencies, and the awesome power of the federal government, against his political enemies. He
used the power of the state against those he didn't like. This was full-on banana republic dictator kind of stuff.
Obama Stole
an Election, Not Trump. [Scroll down] It's long been noted that anytime Democrats accuse Trump or
Republicans of something, it's the Democrats who are actually guilty of it. A scholarly study conducted by the American
Enterprise Institute concluded that suppression of the Tea Party movement by Obama's IRS helped him get reelected. [...] The
effectiveness of the Tea Party, combined with Obama's relatively small margin of victory in key swing states, suggests that
the IRS's suppression of the Tea Party movement likely tipped the scales in favor of Obama. "Had the Tea Party repeated
and built on their activism of 2009 and 2010 in 2011 and 2012, Obama would have lost the election. What happened to the
Tea Party boost? It didn't grow from 2010. It appeared to weaken," Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform wrote
in his book, End The IRS Before It Ends Us. "The Tea Party didn't fall down the stairs. It was pushed."
Lyin'
Biden: Not a 'hint of a scandal' during Obama administration? Please! In 2013, the Internal Revenue
Service targeted conservative political groups, many connected to the tea party movement, applying for tax-exempt
status. Judicial Watch, a watchdog group, secured documents showing that the handling of tea party applications was
directed out of the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C. "The documents also show extensive pressure on the IRS by
Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) to shut down conservative-leaning tax-exempt organizations. The IRS' emails by [Director]
Lois Lerner detail her misleading explanations to investigators about the targeting of Tea Party organizations," the group
wrote. Those documents also showed IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House nearly 160 times
while the IRS was actively targeting tea party groups.
Fitton:
John McCain staffer Henry Kerner nows runs anti-Trump Office of Special Counsel. Judicial Watch today
[6/14/2019] released newly obtained internal IRS documents, including material revealing that Sen. John McCain's former
staff director and chief counsel on the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee, Henry Kerner, urged top IRS
officials, including then-director of exempt organizations Lois Lerner, to "audit so many that it becomes financially
ruinous." Kerner was appointed by President Trump as Special Counsel for the United States Office of Special Counsel.
The explosive exchange was contained in notes taken by IRS employees at an April 30, 2013, meeting between Kerner, Lerner,
and other high-ranking IRS officials. Just ten days following the meeting, former IRS director of exempt organizations
Lois Lerner admitted that the IRS had a policy of improperly and deliberately delaying applications for tax-exempt status
from conservative non-profit groups.
Conservative
Groups Targeted in Lois Lerner's IRS Scandal Receive Settlement Checks. Dozens of conservative organizations
are receiving late Christmas presents years after the IRS handed them a lump of coal. The federal government in recent
days has been issuing settlement checks to 100 right-of-center groups wrongfully targeted for their political beliefs under
the Obama administration's Internal Revenue Service, according to an attorney for the firm that represented plaintiffs in
NorCal v. United States. Three of the claimants in the $3.5 million national class-action suit are based in
the Badger State.
America
in Throes of a Bloodless Revolution. I'm firmly convinced in my heart that America has been, and still is, in
the throes of a bloodless revolution, an attempt by some to subvert government agencies and resources to take away individual
privacy; to create an unbeatable voting base; to regulate medical care, education, media coverage, and gun control; and to
take authority over every aspect of life in America. When it was brought to light a couple of years ago that the
Internal Revenue Service had been subverted and used against right-wing political activist groups, Congress was all a
titter. Lois Lerner plead the Fifth, and for all intents and purposes, that was the end of it. Although the
Republicans control both houses of Congress, neither body has undertaken the task of digging out the rot amongst the rank
and file and identifying the upper echelon who ordered it.
Tea
party groups get revenge against IRS as judge approves $3.5 million payout. A judge late Wednesday [8/8/2018]
signed off on the settlement between the IRS and hundreds of tea party groups, closing out the last major legal battle over
what all sides now agree was unwarranted and illegal targeting for political purposes. The IRS agreed to pay
$3.5 million to groups that were wronged by the intrusive inspections, and insists it's made changes so that political
targeting can't occur in the future.
Six
Reasons Why Barack Obama Is the Worst President in History. [#6] Weaponizing the government against his
enemies: Perhaps the most well-known example of the Obama administration abusing its power to target Obama's political
enemies is the infamous IRS scandal. Over a two-year period leading up to the 2012 election, tea party groups and other
conservatives were improperly scrutinized by the IRS. Twelve different IRS offices across the country were involved and the
entire operation was orchestrated out of Washington, D.C., and there was also evidence of White House involvement. The
IRS also targeted private individuals critical of Obama, GOP candidates, and Romney donors. There are also examples of
conservative individuals being targeted as the result of gross abuse of power by the Obama administration. Conservative
author Dinesh D'Souza was indicted for campaign finance violations for a crime typically not prosecuted at all.
James O'Keefe of Project Veritas was put on a terrorism watchlist after a video was released of him dressed as a terrorist
crossing back and forth over the U.S./Mexico border to demonstrate the lack of border security.
Judge
Awards $3.5 Million Settlement to Tea Party Groups for Obama IRS Targeting Scandal. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen
testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform on March 26, 2014. Koskinen told Rep. Jason Chaffetz
(R-UT) during the hearing that Lois Lerner's emails were archived and it would take a long time to retrieve them. In
June 2014 the IRS told Congress Lois Lerner's emails were lost in a computer crash. But thousands of emails were later
recovered by an Inspector General that were not previously produced for Congress. The IRS leadership was targeting
conservatives and lying about it to Congress. The emails confirmed Lerner funneled information on conservative groups
to at least one Democratic lawmaker. The Obama DOJ later dropped charges against Lois Lerner. She retired with
full benefits.
Here are 1,366 well
sourced examples of Barack Obama's lies, lawbreaking, corruption, cronyism, hypocrisy, waste, etc.. [#170]
In May 2013, the Washington Post reported that the IRS had illegally targeted conservative groups for additional reviews.
Organizations with the words "tea party" or "patriot" were singled out for harassment, such as requiring them to provide a list
of donors, details about their internet postings on social networking websites, and information about their family members.
When this was first reported by the media in May 2013, Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that had conducted these illegal
activities, claimed that only low level employees had known about it, and that no high level IRS officials had known about it.
However, soon afterward, NPR reported that an Inspector General report showed that Lerner had been lying, and that she herself had
actually been aware of it since June 29, 2011.
Mueller
Worked with Lerner to Target Tea Party. Just when you thought the Deep State swamp couldn't get any murkier and the stench
any more repugnant, we are reminded by Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton in a Feb. 13 tweet of how Robert Mueller's FBI worked with Lois
Lerner's IRS to target Tea Party and other groups in the run-up to the Obama re-election campaign: [...] The treasure trove of documents
detailing the weaponizing of powerful government agencies, including Mueller's FBI, by the Obama administration to target the Tea Party
was obtained by Judicial Watch as a result of court orders stemming from Freedom of Information Act lawsuits after the political targeting
of the Tea Party.
An
emerging police state that spies on Americans? The left yawns. Ever since the McCarthy era, hasn't it
been a cultural norm from the left to holler about the U.S. becoming a police state? A police state that spies on
innocent Americans? [... But then] We had the Internal Revenue Service spying on and repressing internal dissidents, which
were not people who sought to harm us, as the left's heroes did, but who called themselves the 'Tea Party' and campaigned for
lower government spending. The IRS and its minions such as the notorious Lois Lerner, who looks every bit like the
warden she was, spied away, admitted their political motivation, and got off scot-free, retiring to their multi-million-dollar
beltway manions as their reward. And from the principled left? Silence.
Holder:
DoJ wrong to apologize to tea party groups for IRS targeting. [Eric] Holder said yesterday [2/7/2018] that
apologizing to tea party groups for being targeted by the IRS for their political beliefs was "unnecessary, unfounded and
inconsistent" with the responsibilities of someone who wants to lead the Justice Department. [...] Two federal judges
specifically accused the IRS of targeting conservative groups based on their ideology. If that doesn't warrant an
apology from government, what does?
Heads Must Roll Or The Deep State Wins Again.
In the IRS targeting case, there was a well-planned politically motivated government conspiracy to deprive the targets of
their rights and constitutional protections. When the plan was uncovered there were denials, destruction of evidence,
stonewalling and orchestrated media attacks against the victims. Finally, when the evidence of government wrongdoing
became incontrovertible the perpetrators, such as IRS official Lois Lerner, were allowed to retire with full benefits or
moved on to lucrative careers in the private sector. None of the miscreants faced justice or even acknowledged their
wrongdoing. We now see the same scenario playing out again in the treatment of those who signed the spurious FISA
warrant applications.
Pro-Israel
Group Sues IRS, Exposes Obama Admin's Anti-Israel Stance. The reality is that under Obama's IRS, Islamic groups
with ties to terrorists had no trouble getting a tax-exempt status, groups such as Gaza's Hope, Friends of Al-Rowwad USA Inc,
American Charities for Palestine, and Institute for Palestine Studies USA Inc. But Z Street, founded in 2009, to
"educate Americans about the Middle East and Israel's defense against terror," did not receive the tax-exempt status.
Why? Because the IRS determined that Israel was "a country with terrorists" and they needed to investigate if Z Street
was "funding terrorism." When Z Street mounted a lawsuit, IRS froze their application. Finally, Z Street
has now won their lawsuit, and Obama's anti-Zionism has been revealed.
The wrong
side of Z Street. If there was a federal agency that Barack Obama did not corrupt, it must be because it was
corrupt when he took over in 2009. The corruption of the IRS is a case in point. Its criminal misconduct perfectly
represents what Obama wrought in the agencies that he charged with dictating the way we live. Consider the case of Lori
Lowenthal Marcus and Z Street. Z Street is Lori's pro-Israel group. It had its application for tax-exempt
status held up at the IRS for seven years. When Lori asked why, she was told that IRS auditors had been
instructed to give pro-Israel groups special attention and that Z Street's application had been forwarded to a special IRS
unit for additional review. Not to put too fine a point on the legal issues, this wasn't kosher. It's illegal.
IRS
finally admits it targeted Israel-related groups, apologizes. Readers are familiar with the IRS targeting of
Tea Party and conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. But there has been another targeting story percolating
through the court system that has received little attention, until now. The IRS also targeted groups related to
Israel. The facts came to light in a litigation brought by Z Street, which waited 6 years for approval.
Lois
Lerner: 'Exceedingly low' public interest in her IRS testimony. Former IRS senior executive Lois G. Lerner told
a federal court last week that there's "no legitimate" reason why the public should see her testimony about her role in tea
party targeting, pleading with a judge to keep her deposition permanently sealed. Ms. Lerner and her former chief
lieutenant, Holly Paz, have said they faced death threats in the past, and say they fear any more attention to their behavior
would spur a new round of harassment. They said there's "exceedingly low" public interest in having their depositions
released, and they said tea party groups are pushing for disclosure out of "spite."
Former
IRS Head Lois Lerner Wants Testimony Sealed Permanently. While she was director of the Internal Revenue
Service, Lois Lerner targeted conservative Tea Party groups by denying or delaying tax-exempt status due to their political
leanings in opposition to the Obama administration. That is fact. The IRS admitted wrong-doing in this stunning
"apology": "The IRS admits that its treatment of Plaintiffs during the tax-exempt determination process, including
screening their applications based on their names or policy positions, subjecting those applications to heightened scrutiny
and inordinate delays, and demanding some Plaintiffs' information that TIGTA determined was unnecessary to the agency's
determination of their tax-exempt status, was wrong. For such treatment, the IRS expresses its sincere apology."
The Tea Party
settlement. Finally, after four and a half years, harassment of conservative groups by the Obama IRS is put to
rest, with the media downplaying the story. A William McGurn column in the Wall Street Journal, November 21, stated
that IRS-Tea Party litigation had been settled. A New York Times story on October 27, 2017 reported that the government,
in one lawsuit involving 428 groups, "agreed to a multimillion-dollar settlement," and that, in a second lawsuit comprising
41 groups, damages will not be paid, "but the I.R.S. acknowledged its conduct was wrong." It is not clear why the matter
dragged on four and a half years.
The Editor says...
On the contrary, of course it's "clear why the matter dragged on" so long. It's because Barack H. Obama was
in the White House until almost a year ago and he had the whole issue stonewalled.
Lock Up Lois
Lerner. Only the lawless Lois Lerner would feel threatened by legal proceedings initiated by her abuse of
government power. Calling her and her IRS co-conspirators "criminal thugs" is not a threat but an understatement.
What she fears is not violence but that the truth about her crimes, what she did and what she got away with, will be finally
and fully known and that she would no longer be able to hide behind a bogus and fraudulent Fifth Amendment pleading before
Congress. Critics were given reason to doubt the seriousness of President Trump's promise to "drain the swamp" after
his Department of Justice's decision to give one of D.C.'s swamp things a get out of jail free and not charge former IRS
official Lois Lerner in the Tea Party targeting scandal. Based on the available evidence, Lois Lerner should have been
measured for an orange jump suit a long time ago.
Lois
Lerner: Poster Child for Public Corruption. Well, isn't that rich? Lois Lerner, who almost
single-handedly weaponized the IRS, turning it into a bludgeon to be used against Tea Party and other groups in the 2012
reelection campaign of Barack Obama, now wants to be protected against threats and intimidation from the groups and people
she helped threaten and intimidate: Former IRS official Lois Lerner and her deputy are asking a federal court to keep
their testimonies in the Tea Party targeting case private forever, over fear of death threats and potential harm to their
families if the documents go public. Lerner and her deputy Holly Paz filed a motion last Thursday to keep the
materials — including tapes and transcripts of their depositions — sealed due to threats they have
received in the past.
Lois
Lerner trying to get IRS testimony sealed permanently because it would ENRAGE the public. The American public
has a right to know exactly what happened and if it's so bad that she feels it would put her family at risk, then she needs
to pay for personal protection to keep that from happening. She shouldn't be allowed to hide behind this notion that
she would be in harm's way if the testimony is revealed. While there might be some truth to her fears, she isn't the
first to be threatened because of something other people don't like.
Lerner,
Paz say they fear physical harm from enraged public, want IRS testimony sealed permanently. Former IRS
executive Lois G. Lerner told a federal court last week that members of her family, including "young children," face death
threats and a real risk of physical harm if her explanation of the tea party targeting scandal becomes public.
Ms. Lerner and Holly Paz, her deputy at the IRS, filed documents in court Thursday saying tapes and transcripts of
depositions they gave in a court case this year must remain sealed in perpetuity, or else they could spur an enraged public
to retaliate. "Whenever Mss. Lerner and Paz have been in the media spotlight, they have faced death threats and
harassment," attorneys for the two women argued.
Feds
to pay 'generous' settlement to tea party groups for targeting. The government apologized Thursday [10/26/2017]
for illegally targeting tea party groups for intrusive scrutiny and agreed to settlements with hundreds of organizations
snared in the targeting, bringing to a close one of the more embarrassing episodes of the Obama administration.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the IRS owed the groups an apology after years of poor treatment and even longer refusal
to concede bad behavior. He placed blame on "the last administration," saying the targeting that went on under
President Obama "was wrong and should never have occurred."
IRS
agent's email says groups were targeted 'primarily because of their political party affiliation'. Lawyers think
they have finally found the smoking gun in the IRS's tea party targeting scandal: an email from an IRS agent to her
supervisors alerting them that the agency was, in fact, singling out some groups' applications for extreme scrutiny
"primarily because of their political party affiliation." The email was released last month as part of a massive
document dump in a class-action lawsuit filed in Ohio by hundreds of conservative groups who were targeted for extra review
and intrusive questioning. It contradicts the IRS's official stance over the years contending that conservative groups
were wrongly scrutinized, but it was a result of their behavior, not their politics.
The
left's crowing that Lois Lerner's IRS targeted evenhandedly all along rings hollow. Collective guilt assuaged,
the left is now crowing that the IRS was even-handed all along in its targeting of tax-exempt groups for political harassment
under the Obama administration. It wasn't just the Tea Party; it was plenty of leftist groups, too — so the
claim goes, and it was made a few years ago without much merit. Now, with a new Treasury Department report out, I still
don't buy it. One good example of this thinking is from the Washington Post's Paul Farhi, who would have you
think, hyuk hyuk, in his vaguely patronizing accusation, that the mea culpas now belong on the side of the people
who didn't like what the IRS really had been caught doing.
Lois
Lerner and Non-Conspiracy Conspiracy. On Friday, September 8, 2017 — just before the weekend —
the DOJ announced that it would not prosecute Lois Lerner for her part in the IRS-Tea Party scandal. Evidence of Lerner's guilt
is overwhelming. [...] Yet the DOJ letter, signed by a Stephen E. Boyd, claims that after having reviewed the matter, that
"reopening the investigation would not be appropriate based on the available evidence," specifically focusing on the lack of
evidence of intent to discriminate.
The Unaccountable
IRS. To understand the pragmatic realities of federal governance in the 21st century, one must recognize the
existence of a fourth branch of government: the administrative state. We have some two million federal bureaucrats
with extraconstitutional legislative powers. Not only do they write the reams of regulations that order our lives, they have
the authority to enforce them capriciously. And thanks to absurd civil service protections, it is exceedingly difficult to
hold them accountable for abuses of power, even when Congress demands it. Of course, you can't censure federal bureaucrats
for their crimes if you don't even try. On September 8, Donald Trump's Justice Department announced it would not be
reopening an investigation into the conduct of Lois Lerner, the IRS official responsible for targeting and harassing conservative
groups in the 2010 and 2012 elections.
Before
Lois Lerner Targeted The Tea Party, She Helped The Clinton Foundation. Six years before she became the central
figure in the IRS's illegal targeting of Tea Party tax-exemption applicants, Lois Lerner cleared the way for the Clinton
Foundation's transformation from building a presidential library to being a $2 billion global political influence peddling
machine, according to documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation's Investigative Group. She helped
accomplish this feat through a 2007 letter on two legal issues of such magnitude that it's unlikely the Clinton nonprofit
could have become what it is in 2017, 20 years after its creation. The first issue concerned an otherwise innocuous
sounding merger of two nonprofits, while the second issue centered around an unprecedented expansion of the foundation's
activities far beyond its tax-exempt mission.
Tax
Day Justice: DOJ Investigation of Lois Lerner Called for by Ways and Means Chairman. The chairman of the
powerful House Ways and Means Committee called on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to review evidence that Lois Lerner "broke
the law to target Americans for their political beliefs." The request comes after the DOJ refused, under the Obama
Administration's leadership, to investigate allegations of wrongdoing by the former IRS Exempt Organizations Division
director. Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX), joined by Tax Police Subcommittee Chairman Peter Roskam
(R-IL), sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions requesting an investigation into allegations that Lerner used
her division's power to target American citizens' applications for non-profit status, or political action committees, based
upon the citizen's political beliefs.
Lois
Lerner demands secrecy in tea party targeting lawsuit testimony. The IRS manager most directly responsible for
the targeting of tea party groups has demanded that her deposition for an upcoiming class action lawsuit related to the
scandal be kept secret. Lois Lerner, former head of the tax exempt department at the IRS, claims that she has received
death threats in the past and fears that publicity surrounding her deposition will lead to similar threats.
Lois
Lerner demands secrecy, blames death threats over IRS tea party targeting. Former IRS senior executive Lois G.
Lerner told a federal court this week that she faces the possibility of death threats if her role in the tax agency's tea
party-targeting becomes public, and asked a judge to forever seal her upcoming deposition in a class-action lawsuit brought
by hundreds of groups that were targeted. Mr. Lerner and Holly Paz, another figure from the IRS tea party
targeting, told the judge they've already faced "harassment and death threats" before, and said they fear another media
firestorm if their version of events from the tea party targeting were to become public. The two women said they are
willing to testify, but said they could be putting "their lives in serious jeopardy."
IRS
chief: Officials who deleted Lois Lerner emails were not fired. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said
Wednesday the two unnamed employees who destroyed thousands of emails belonging to Lois Lerner, former head of the tax-exempt
unit, kept their jobs at the agency. During his impeachment hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, Koskinen said
the two officials had committed an "honest mistake" by wiping 422 back-up tapes believed to contain Lerner's emails in 2014.
The emails had been requested under a congressional subpoena during the investigation into the Internal Revenue Service's targeting
of conservative groups. "The IG's investigation found that they were not aware" of the subpoena, Koskinen said of the
employees who scrubbed Lerner's records.
IRS
Employees Erased 422 Backup Tapes Containing 24,000 of Lois Lerner's Emails. Investigators at the Internal
Revenue Service are looking to agency employees as the reason thousands of emails from former IRS official Lois Lerner were
lost, and the agency's watchdog said today their actions were a mistake. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax
Administration (TIGTA) J. Russell George testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and told
lawmakers IRS employees erased 422 backup tapes that housed 24,000 emails sent to and from Lerner. Employees erased the
contents of the tapes just a month after IRS officials were told that thousands of Lerner's emails were missing because of a
hard drive crash.
The IRS Deleted
422 Backup Tapes With Lerner Emails. The IRS "accidentally" erased 422 backup tapes that investigators believe
contained emails to and from IRS official Lois Lerner, according to the Associated Press. The tapes contained as many
as 24,000 Lois Lerner emails. The tapes were erased eight months after Congressional investigators requested all emails
to and from Lois Lerner and a month after the IRS informed Congress they were missing some of Lois Lerner's emails.
We
Are a Fish, Rotting From the Head. The IRS scandal would have sunk a Republican administration, perhaps leading
to impeachment. But the Democratic press is in on the joke, and the Obama administration is set to run out the clock in
its usual fashion.
IRS
Employee Admits He Would Go After, Target, and Try to End Conservative Groups. A self-identified IRS employee admitted
he would go after, target and try to end conservative groups who wanted to abolish the IRS, to Cleta Mitchell, an attorney representing
those groups, on a Washington Journal segment on C-SPAN. Mitchell, a political law attorney who has represented conservative groups
during the IRS targeting scandal since 2010, was a guest on C-SPAN to discuss the possible impeachment of the IRS commissioner John
Koskinen. The first caller was a self-identified IRS employee who said he would go after the groups Mitchell represents if their
goal was to abolish the IRS.
House
investigator calls for IRS chief to be censured over Lois Lerner emails. The House's chief investigator introduced a
resolution Wednesday [5/18/2016] censuring IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and calling for him to resign or be fired, saying he misled
Congress and even tried to thwart a subpoena seeking former agency employee Lois G. Lerner's emails. Rep. Jason Chaffetz,
chairman of the House Oversight Committee, announced the resolution ahead of a hearing next week in the Judiciary Committee, which is
exploring what steps Congress should take toward Mr. Koskinen. Mr. Chaffetz said censure was the first step on the path
toward impeachment, serving as an official condemnation. Impeachment is still very unlikely, particularly given the short amount
of work days left in this Congress and in the Obama administration's tenure overall.
Appeals
Court issues nightmare decision for Lois Lerner and the IRS. The wheels of justice slowly have been turning,
and those of us who feared that Lois Lerner and the IRS would get off scot-free despite their lawless targeting of Tea Party
groups have something to celebrate. And Lois Lerner may have had a troubled sleep last night if she was paying attention
instead of enjoying her six-figure pension with leisure activities. An appeals court judge in the Sixth Circuit has
delivered a blistering rebuke to both the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department attorneys that have defended it
in behalf of a unanimous three-judge panel. As a result, officials current and former will be forced to testify
under oath for their misdeeds in a civil action with big bucks at stake.
It's
Been 513 Days Since Any Big 3 Network Has Touched the IRS Scandal. The latest stunning development in the IRS
targeting scandal, that a federal appeals court on Tuesday scolded the IRS for failing to turn over its full list of groups
it targeted, has yet to be reported on any of the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) network evening or morning shows. However,
as NewsBusters' Scott Whitlock reported, all three networks on Thursday found time to gush over Barack Obama's "fancy footwork"
and "dancing diplomacy" in Argentina. In fact, it's been 513 days since any network has touched the IRS scandal.
Washington's
culture of corruption rots on. Last week saw the passage of a grim milestone in government corruption: Pepperdine University
Law Professor Paul Caron's TaxProf blog marked the 1000th day of the scandal involving the IRS's deliberate political targeting of conservative
"Tea Party" groups. There are some lessons in this, and they're mostly bad news. The first sad lesson is that the notion of an impartial,
professional civil service is a fiction. The big government designs of Democrats and the federal bureaucracy are aligned, and the bureaucracy
often deploys its powers in ways calculated to frustrate Republican presidents and to protect Democratic ones.
A Pattern Of Executive
Overreach. Recently, the Justice Department announced it would not be indicting anyone for their role in the most
serious domestic political scandal since the Nixon years. Starting in 2010, the IRS, under pressure from congressional
Democrats and the White House, engaged in blatant ideologically motivated discrimination against conservative organizations
applying for non-profit status. That the most feared bureaucracy in Washington was making decisions based on illegal
political criteria should send a chill down the spine of any American who cares about the First Amendment and the rule of law.
Cruz
to DOJ: Preserve Every Record Related to the IRS Scandal, Eh, For the Next Administration. Or Else. Yesterday,
Cruz sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch suggesting that it would be in the administration's best interests to preserve
all IRS records for the next administration. The request came after the DOJ covered up
closed its investigation into political targeting of conservative and pro-Israel groups by the IRS.
Cruz
asks feds to save documents in IRS probe. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wants the Justice Department to save
documents related to its two-year investigation of allegations that the IRS targeted conservative groups. "This
Administration's recent announcement ... has finally made it abundantly clear that the responsibility of ensuring a thorough,
fair, and impartial investigation of IRS employees and their potential criminal conduct will fall to the next presidential
administration, and relevant materials must be protected accordingly," Cruz, who is running for president, wrote in a letter
to Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Imprisonment,
Not Impeachment: What Rogue IRS Commissioner John Koskinen Really Deserves. The introduction of a resolution to
impeach IRS commissioner John Koskinen should come as no surprise considering the lawlessness of the Obama administration and
its use of the IRS to bludgeon its political opponents and the refusal by the DOJ to prosecute Lois Lerner for her political
targeting of the Tea Party and other conservative political groups, as well as her destruction of evidence. The resolution,
introduced by House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), Rep. James Jordan (R-OH) and 18 other committee members,
accuses Koskinen of making false statements under oath, failing to comply with a subpoena, and failing to notify Congress
that key evidence was missing or destroyed.
A Good Start. On October 27, the House of Representatives
moved to impeach the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, John Koskinen. It may seem odd that Koskinen is being punished since he wasn't
commissioner when the IRS scandal broke two years ago. But make no mistake, Koskinen is a worthy candidate for impeachment.
Judicial
Watch Statement on Obama Justice Department Decision to Close Obama IRS Investigation. Judicial Watch's
independent litigation proved the Obama IRS obstructed justice and destroyed evidence. And we uncovered that the IRS and
Lois Lerner conspired with the Justice Department and FBI on a plan to jail the very Americans the IRS was illegally suppressing.
In fact, Justice Department lawyers recently admitted in federal court that the IRS watchdog is still digging through IRS backup tapes
and has no idea when the search will be complete. This same Justice Department decides it can shut down an investigation before
it has all the evidence?
DOJ Lets Lois Lerner, IRS Off the
Hook. It was a foregone conclusion, but the Obama Administration's right hand just couldn't find anything wrong with what the left
hand did, even if it was designed to help the president win a second term by targeting his political opponents. The Department of so-called
Justice announced Friday that Lois Lerner and other IRS managers will not face any charges after singling out for harassment conservative groups
that applied for nonprofit status leading up to the 2012 election.
The
House Mobilizes Against A Rogue Agency — The IRS. After nearly a decade of unaccountable government,
including the unprecedented emergence of banana-republic state impunity in targeting dissidents, it seems a train brake has
finally been pulled. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has voted to impeach John Koskinen, the IRS
commissioner whose abuses of power have been arguably the worst in the entire Obama era. The IRS not only targeted tea
party and other conservative groups on political grounds with a whole array of harassment, it also thumbed its nose at lawful
orders to cooperate in an inquiry from its own overseers.
Kostiken
should be Imprisoned, not Just Impeached. The introduction of a resolution to impeach IRS commissioner John
Koskinen should comes as no surprise considering the lawlessness of the Obama administration and its use of the IRS to
bludgeon its political opponents and the refusal by the DOJ to prosecute Lois Lerner for her political targeting of the Tea
Party and other conservative political groups, as well as her destruction of evidence. The resolution, introduced by
House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), Rep. James Jordan (R-OH) and 18 other committee members, accuses Koskinen
of making false statements under oath, failing to comply with a subpoena, and failing to notify Congress that key evidence was
missing or destroyed.
Yes, the IRS chief has earned
impeachment. If you responded to an IRS audit the way [John] Koskinen's IRS has behaved, you'd be looking at huge penalties
and maybe prison time. He waited months to tell the IRS that an "accident" had destroyed the e-mail records of Lois Lerner, the
woman at the scandal's heart. Indeed, he made no real effort to secure those e-mails, despite a subpoena — allowing key
backups to be destroyed. Then he nonchalantly testified that Lerner's e-mails were all gone forever — and then showed
not a hint of shame after an inspector general came up with thousands of them.
GOP Moves to Impeach IRS Chief. Federal
investigators are done with former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner, but House Republicans are not finished with the
IRS. House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and 18 other committee members introduced a resolution on
Tuesday [10/27/2015] to begin impeachment proceedings against IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.
Impeachment drags IRS scandal into the spotlight. Just
days after former IRS official Lois Lerner escaped criminal charges from the Department of Justice, Republicans in Congress moved to
impeach the head of the tax agency for his role in trying to cover up the misconduct that landed Lerner under investigation.
The impeachment resolution, brought Tuesday [10/27/2015] by members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, capped off
a week that saw the embattled tax agency back under fire for a scandal that surfaced more than two years ago.
IRS
chief faces Senate grilling over Tea Party targeting. Members of the Senate Finance Committee blasted the head
of the Internal Revenue Service Tuesday [10/27/2015] for problems still lingering within the agency more than two years after
the targeting controversy came to light. Commissioner John Koskinen denied suggestions that the IRS had ever scrutinized
conservative groups for political reasons, citing the Justice Department's decision last week to close its investigation without
pressing criminal charges.
House
Republicans introduce measure to impeach IRS Commissioner Koskinen. House Republicans on Tuesday [10/27/2015] introduced a
resolution to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, accusing him of making "false statements" under oath and failing to comply with a
subpoena for evidence. House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and 18 other committee members introduced
the resolution to begin impeachment proceedings. In doing so, they followed through on a threat first made over the summer, when
Republicans accused the IRS leader of making inaccurate statements to Congress regarding the Tea Party targeting scandal and its aftermath.
Lois Lerner and the Rule of Lawlessness.
In a Friday news dump, Obama's Justice Department announced that following its "investigation," Lois Lerner will not be charged for any wrongdoing in the
case of the IRS' targeting of conservative organizations. The law, apparently, is only meant for little people. [...] Tellingly, the Committee
concluded that: "The IRS's treatment of these organizations was almost universally consistent with Lerner's personal political views —
this is, supporting Democratic candidates and opposing conservative tax-exempt organizations that engaged in political speech. Conservative
organizations that sought to participate in the nation's political discourse, such as the Tea Party, drew the strongest ire from Lerner."
Tea party targeting
accusations, legal issues persist for IRS after Justice ends probe. The IRS is still holding up the nonprofit applications
of tea party groups, including one that has been waiting nearly six years for approval, as conservatives panned the Justice Department's
announcement last week that it had cleared the tax agency, and former senior executive Lois G. Lerner, of any wrongdoing. The
Obama administration's decision, outlined in a Friday afternoon [10/23/2015] letter to Congress, said the IRS did mishandle nonprofit status
applications from conservative groups but said the bad behavior wasn't criminal.
The FBI & Hillary's e-mails: A Lois Lerner precedent?
The fix was in: Lois Lerner will walk away scot-free. On Friday, the Justice Department closed its two-year investigation into the Internal Revenue Service
targeting of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status and decided to charge ... no one. This, when Lerner admitted the IRS had singled out righty
groups, but blamed the "absolutely inappropriate" actions on "front-line people" — that is, lower-level folks. And then refused to answer more questions
by pleading the Fifth. Questions about, say, her orders to hold up applications from any outfit with "Tea Party" or "patriot" in its name.
Rep.
Jim Jordan: 'Flat Out Wrong' Not to Bring Criminal Charges Against Lois Lerner. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), head of the
conservative Freedom Caucus and a member of the House Oversight committee, says he strongly disagrees with the Justice Department's
decision not to bring criminal charges against former IRS official Lois Lerner for impeding conservative groups seeking tax-exempt
status. "That is just flat out wrong, in my judgment," Jordan told "Fox News Sunday" with Chris Wallace. "Here's a lady
who systematically and for a sustained period of time targeted people for exercising their most fundamental rights, their First
Amendment free speech rights.
Citizens
are no longer equal under Obama. Disgraced former IRS chief Lois Lerner is enjoying her "Get Out of Jail Free" card care of the
Obama administration. Who's surprised she won't face charges given the fact that most Americans believe the White House was in on
allegations the IRS targeted Tea Party and conservative groups applying for nonprofit status? It gets worse. During the
"investigation," IRS head John Koskinen stonewalled big time, refusing to provide Congress with information including Lerner's "missing"
emails. Sound familiar?
Justice Department Lets
Lois Lerner Off The Hook. The Justice Department will not seek criminal charges against former IRS official
Lois Lerner for her role in targeting conservative non-profits groups, CNN is reporting. The investigation into Lerner's
and the IRS' handling of conservative groups' tax-exempt applications uncovered substantial mismanagement and poor judgment,
but none of it rose to the criminal level, according to the letter, which Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik sent to
members of Congress on Friday [10/23/2015].
Justice
Department: No criminal charges for Lerner, others in IRS scandal. The Justice Department announced Friday afternoon
[10/23/2015] that it will not bring criminal charges against Lois Lerner or any other IRS official involved in the targeting of
Tea Party groups, in a decision Republicans ripped as a "free pass." In a letter to leaders of the House Judiciary Committee,
the department said the investigation into the controversy will be closed — and while they found "mismanagement, poor
judgment and institutional inertia," they found "no evidence that would support a criminal prosecution."
Networks
Censor Justice Department Ending Probe Into IRS Scandal. ABC, CBS, and NBC's evening newscasts on Friday [10/23/2015] all
failed to cover the Justice Department announcing that it would be ending its investigation into the IRS's targeting of conservative
groups. The Big Three networks' news program did find time to air reporting on the top Google searches for Halloween costumes,
the fewer number of turkeys available for upcoming Thanksgiving dinners, and the controversy over the first bear hunt in Florida in
20 years.
GOP outraged as Lois Lerner
escapes. Republicans on Friday [10/23/2015] were outraged by the announcement that former IRS official Lois Lerner will not
face any charges for her role in the scandal involving her agency's decision to slow-walk decisions about the tax-exempt status of conservative
groups. [...] The federal government is thus closing its nearly two-year inquiry into the matter without charging anyone.
IRS'
Lois Lerner Skates; An Ugly Precedent Is Set. Is there anyone out there subject to an Internal Revenue Service audit
or a multiyear delay in approval for tax-exempt status who won't be concerned that the process is politically rigged against them?
That's the message the Justice Department sent when, in a classic Friday night news dump, it decided to not file charges against IRS
tax-exempt groups chief Lois Lerner. In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Justice said that while it found "mismanagement,
poor judgment and inertia," there was no case for a criminal prosecution.
Government Investigation Tricks or
Treats. As reported at National Review, "Before Lois Lerner was embroiled in the IRS scandal, she was involved in a questionable
pattern of law enforcement at the Federal Election Commission," where she was Associate General Counsel for Enforcement. The FEC obviously
liked Lerner's style to raise her to such a position. Judicial Watch uncovered that when Lerner moved over to the IRS, she disclosed
confidential tax information of conservative organizations to the FEC. She also obviously still had adherents to her style there.
IRS
Commissioner John Koskinen Facing Impeachment. During a discussion with the Young America's Foundation
Saturday, Rep. Jim Jordan, a member of the House Oversight Committee, said Congress will impeach IRS Commissioner John
Koskinen. [...] The House is going to pursue impeachment because there needs to be consequences for the egregious behavior of
the IRS and "we think it's critical to preserving fundamental freedom, fundamental rights," said Jordan. Partisan hack,
longtime Democratic donor and IRS Commissioner, John Koskinen, has unreasonably delayed every FOIA request and ignored every
court order to turn over documents on the IRS scandal and the infamous Lois Lerner. After promising at his nomination
hearing that he would be honest and open, he's done exactly the opposite and he's smug about it.
Impeach
the IRS director. The Constitution's framers, knowing that executive officers might not monitor themselves,
provided the impeachment recourse to bolster the separation of powers. Federal officials can be impeached for dereliction of
duty (as in Koskinen's failure to disclose the disappearance of e-mails germane to a congressional investigation); for failure to
comply (as in Koskinen's noncompliance with a preservation order pertaining to an investigation); and for breach of trust (as in
Koskinen's refusal to testify accurately and keep promises made to Congress). Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the
Oversight and Government Reform Committee, says the IRS has "lied to Congress " and "destroyed documents under subpoena." He
accuses Koskinen of "lies, obfuscation and deceit": "He assured us he would comply with a congressional subpoena seeking Lois
Lerner's emails. Not only did he fail to keep that promise, we later learned he did not look in earnest for the information."
Jordan: Congress will
impeach IRS' Koskinen. This Congress will impeach Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen, Rep. Jim Jordan,
a member of the House Oversight Committee, told a group of students from the Young America's Foundation Saturday [10/3/2015].
"It is something that has to be done," said the Ohio Republican. "If we don't hold some people accountable in the executive
branch for the executive overreach we've seen in [the Obama] administration, then they'll never get the message."
Lois Lerner's
'Partners'. Unless you are a lawyer representing nonprofit organizations, it's unlikely you've ever heard of
NASCO, which is the National Association of State Charity Officials. [...] To know NASCO is to understand why Mr. Jones' 2007
letter to Lois Lerner, in which he discusses a "sentiment" for charities to become more transparent, is so typical of NASCO's
hypocrisy about transparency, honesty and ethics. Their annual conference was once completely closed off from representatives
of nonprofit organizations because NASCO did not like being criticized for their questionable and overbearing tactics.
Indeed, in his 2007 letter to Ms. Lerner, Jones criticizes "'push back' from the nonprofit sector." These bureaucrats
do not like criticism from those they regulate, and they are effective at chastening their critics.
The Poisonous
Obama Years. [Scroll down] "Artful" Nixonian abuses of the IRS in order to intimidate and tarnish the
reputations of political opponents were once a Republican phenomenon. Today, yet another simmering scandal involving the
misuse of the IRS has ensnared Democrats. As such, it is dismissed as a non-issue by the left and partisans in the press.
Americans recently learned that, like Clinton, Lerner conducted official business via a private email account where she went by the
name "Toby Miles." The emails sent via that account are among the hundreds that have been shielded from congressional
investigators, but those that have been recovered reflect a searing disdain for conservatives against whom Lerner has been
accused of conspiring to limit their ability to participate in civic affairs. "Citizens United is by far the worst thing
that has ever happened to this country," Lerner, who has been accused of targeting conservative political action committees with
undue scrutiny, wrote. "We are witnessing the end of 'America.'" Motive and opportunity having been established,
we are told that there is nothing to see here. You're just being paranoid.
America's descent into lawlessness. IRS
bureaucrat Lois Lerner was exposed as a rank partisan whose office gave particular scrutiny to would-be tax-exempt groups deemed opponents
of Obama's re-election efforts. She invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify before a congressional committee about her
actions at the IRS. Lerner has never been indicted. Almost everything former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has stated
about her improper use of a private email account and server has been proven false. A State Department staffer who worked on Clinton's
private server plans to invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying before a congressional committee about his role in privatizing Clinton's
email. But like Lerner, Clinton has escaped an indictment or jailing.
America's
descent into lawlessness. Internal Revenue Service bureaucrat Lois Lerner was exposed as a rank partisan whose
office gave particular scrutiny to would-be tax-exempt groups deemed opponents of Mr. Obama's re-election efforts. She
invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify before a congressional committee about her actions at the IRS. Ms.
Lerner has never been indicted.
IRS scandal: Time to fish or cut bait. If
we didn't know better, we'd suspect that senior Justice officials are intentionally stalling, delaying a decision on prosecuting Ms. Lerner
and others complicit in the IRS scandal until President Obama is safely out of office. [...] Indeed, we think there is ample evidence to
indict Ms. Lerner, who has acknowledged "absolutely inappropriate" actions by her division, while casting blame upon low-level "front-line
people" who worked for her. But it seems Ms. Lerner was at the center of the scandal. Just this past week, in fact, we learned
that she had a secret email account at IRS — named after her dog, "Toby Miles" — which she used to conduct official
government business.
Judge
to IRS: turn over the White House email information. One aspect of the Lois Lerner fiasco which has gotten
slightly less attention than Lerner herself and her mysteriously disappearing and reappearing emails is the allegation that
the White House had been requesting the tax information of certain conservative groups as well. Up until now any and all FOIA
requests for such correspondence with the White House has been refused, citing the privacy of taxpayers under federal statute.
But now a judge has handed down a ruling saying that this excuse isn't going to fly.
Lois
Lerner May Have Committed a Crime With Use of Private Email at IRS. In case you missed it yesterday [8/25/2015]
the Washington Times reported former IRS official Lois Lerner, the woman at the center of the IRS targeting
controversy, used a private email account under her dog's name to conduct official government business. The report came as a
result of a Judicial Watch lawsuit against the IRS for information about the scandal. The discovery of this private account
comes in addition to Lerner's use of another personal account on top of her government email system. In total, we know she
used at least three different email accounts during her time at the agency. Now, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton is
responding to the new revelation and notes Lerner may have broken the law if she shared confidential tax information on her
private account.
IRS
tea-party villain Lois Lerner had another secret email address. Embattled former Internal Revenue Service
official Lois Lerner used at least two separate private email accounts to conduct government business, it has emerged, after
the agency told a federal court that investigators discovered a second address as they sifted through her communications.
Lerner, considered a Washington Cruella de Vil by conservative groups who say she orchestrated a campaign to discriminate
against them, retired in September 2013 amid a scandal launched by her Exempt Organizations office's slow walk of tax-exempt
applications from right-wing organizations.
"Toby
Miles": IRS finds yet another Lois Lerner email account. Lois Lerner had yet another personal email account
used to conduct some IRS business, the tax agency confirmed in a new court filing late Monday that further complicates the
administration's efforts to be transparent about Ms. Lerner's actions during the tea party targeting scandal. The
admission came in an open-records lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm that has sued
to get a look at emails Ms. Lerner sent during the targeting.
Response
to Obama IRS Disclosure of New Lois Lerner Email Account. It is remarkable that the Obama IRS and Justice
Department waited two years to tell a federal court that Lois Lerner had a separate email account that contains documents at
issue in the IRS scandal. Especially since both agencies knew about this account since April of last year. It could be a
crime if Lois Lerner kept confidential taxpayer data on her non-governmental email account. This new disclosure follows
the Obama administration's Nixonian practice of "modified limited hangouts" of information about its IRS scandal and Lois Lerner "lost
and found" emails. Every step of the way, the Obama IRS has obstructed this court's orders to get Lois Lerner's emails recovered
and searched. The Court has already threatened contempt against both IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and Justice Department
attorneys over the Lerner email issue. And I suspect that Judge Sullivan won't be pleased by this latest revelation.
IRS
scandal: Lois Lerner's secret, personal email account was perfect cover. Former top IRS official Lois
Lerner — at the center of a well-orchestrated scheme targeting conservative organizations — used an
alias while at the IRS. In new documents just released, an IRS attorney has confirmed that Lois Lerner used another email
to conduct IRS business — under the name of "Toby Miles." That revelation prompts this question: why would the
director of the Exempt Organizations Unit use an alias — a secret, personal email account while at the IRS?
You don't have to think very long to come up with the answer.
Lerner,
in newly released emails, calls GOP critics 'evil and dishonest'. Newly released emails from Lois Lerner show
the former IRS official at the heart of the Tea Party targeting scandal calling Republican critics "evil and dishonest," and
even "hateful." The emails — part of a report released Aug. 6 by the Senate Finance Committee —
offer a revealing look at Lerner, who used to head the division that processes applications for tax-exempt status and was at
the center of the scandal over the alleged targeting of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
Federal
Judge: I Will Haul IRS Chief Here and Personally Hold Him in Contempt. IRS
Commissioner John Koskinen has been stonewalling Congress and the courts for more than a year over
Lois Lerner's "missing" emails. He's also ignored court orders to produce documentation and now,
U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan has had enough. During a hearing yesterday surrounding
a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, Sullivan said he "will haul into court
the IRS Commissioner to hold him personally into contempt" after the IRS failed to turn over ordered
documentation to the Court. The information ordered included status reports and recovered emails
belonging to former IRS official Lois Lerner. Sullivan also noted Department of Justice of attorneys
are in the same position for failing to turn over ordered documentation.
The Curious
Case of Lois Lerner's Physically Damaged Hard Drive. New documentation released by the
House Oversight Committee this week again raises questions on how Lois Lerner's hard drive was
physically damaged and whether there was some kind of deliberate act to destroy data on it.
The House Oversight Committee report cites an officially transcribed interview with John Minsek, senior
investigative analyst with the IRS Criminal Investigations (CI) unit. Minsek examined the Lerner
hard drive in 2011. In the transcribed interview, he notes Lerner's hard drive contained "well-defined
scoring creating a concentric circle in the proximity of the center of the disk." [...] So how did the
scoring get there?
IRS "Midnight
Unit" Destroyed Backup Tapes With Lois Lerner Emails. Backup tapes containing as many as 24,000
Lois Lerner emails were destroyed by an IRS entity officially known as the "Media Management Midnight Unit"
located in Martinsburg, West Virginia, according to documentation released this week by the House Oversight
Committee. In all, 422 backup tapes holding the emails were magnetically "degaussed" despite an
agency-wide preservation order and congressional subpoena.
IRS
Used Instant Messaging System to Hide Internal Communications. The IRS used a "wholly
separate" instant messaging system that automatically deleted office communications, according to
documentation released by the House Oversight Committee on Monday [7/27/2015]. The system appears
to have been purposefully used by agency officials responsible for the targeting of conservative
non-profits, in order to evade public scrutiny. The system, known as "Office Communication
Server" or OCS was used by IRS officials, including many in the Exempt Organizations (EO) Unit,
which was headed by Lois Lerner. As the Oversight Committee report states, the instant messaging
system did not archive any communications, so it is not possible to know what employees of the EO
unit discussed on it.
Top
5 Reasons IRS Commissioner John Koskinen Must be Impeached. In the wake of the Obama
administration scandal that saw the IRS illegally targeting conservatives and pro-Israel groups for
daring to oppose Democrat policies, little has been done. The administration appears to be in full
cover-up mode, with "crashed" hard-drives, missing emails, and lost backup tapes. Hoping to
jumpstart scrutiny of the IRS's plainly illegal activities, House representatives Jim Jordan and Ron
Desantis offer a powerful argument that IRS chief John Koskinen should be immediately terminated by
the President. And, if Mr. Obama refuses, that Congress should impeach the head of the troubled agency.
The Editor says...
If the administration is "in full cover-up mode," it is Barack H. Obama who should
be impeached.
IRS Failed
to Search Five of Six Locations for Lois Lerner Emails. The IRS failed to search five
of six possible sources of electronic media for Lois Lerner's emails, according to documentation
released by the House Oversight Committee on Monday [7/27/2015]. Over the course of investigations
into the Lois Lerner targeting scandal, Commissioner John Koskinen repeatedly assured Congress that
he would provide all of Lois Lerner's emails. But based on testimony from the Treasury Inspector
General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), this did not occur. The agency's ineptness — or
corruption — resulted in 24,000 Lerner emails being lost when they were "accidently" destroyed.
IRS
Produces Recovered Lerner Emails. The new documents show that Lois Lerner and other top officials
in the Exempt Organizations Unit of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), including soon-to-be Acting IRS Commissioner
Steve Miller, closely monitored and approved the controversial handling of tax-exempt applications by Tea Party
organizations. The documents also show that at least one group received an inquiry from the IRS in order
to buy time and keep the organization from contacting Congress.
With
new documents, stench of IRS scandal reaches into its third year. In 2013, Lois
Lerner, former head of the IRS non-profit section, pleaded the Fifth Amendment before the House
Oversight Committee. She had been called to testify about her division's unjustifiable harassment of
conservative applicants for nonprofit status. Just over a year later, it was reported that a
number of Lerner's work emails had gone missing due to a supposed problem with her hard drive. Then
last month, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration testified that IRS employees —
despite being under explicit orders not to destroy records — had "magnetically erased" as many as
24,000 of Lerner's missing emails from hundreds of data tapes where they were being stored.
IRS
Fails To Meet Deadline To Produce Lois Lerner's Emails. Emmet G. Sullivan, United States District
Judge for the District of Columbia, ordered the IRS last week to begin producing, every Monday, nearly 1,800 newly
recovered Lois Lerner emails. On Monday [7/6/2015], the IRS defied the order. The developments come in
the wake of Judicial Watch's FOIA lawsuit seeking documents about the Obama IRS' targeting and harassment of conservative
non profits (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Internal Revenue Service[).] Thanks to Judicial Watch's litigation, the
IRS was forced to admit that Lerner's emails were supposedly missing and, then, that the emails were on IRS back-up systems.
The
Penumbra School of Law. The administration at every level expresses its contempt for
Congress and its legal obligations knowing the attorney general will never prosecute its wrongdoing.
The most obvious at the moment involve record keeping by the IRS and Hillary Clinton. As you'll
recall, the IRS contributed to Obama's reelection campaign — perhaps even fixing its
result — by denying his opponents the tax exemptions to which they were entitled. Then it
made up cockamamie excuses why it could not produce the email record evidence which they were legally
obligated to preserve and produce. Now it turns out that the records requested did exist and
were destroyed after the agency was put on notice to keep and provide them to Congress.
IRS
Found to Have Erased Hundreds of Backup Tapes Regarding Tea Party Scandal. The IRS has been a
veritable circus of ineptitude since it was discovered to have been targeting tea party-affiliated groups.
The latest episode in this saga includes IRS employees "accidentally" deleting 422 computer backup tapes
regarding the aforementioned scandal. Yeah, and these people handle our most delicate information.
IRS
Deleted Hundreds of Back-up Tapes Containing Thousands of Lerner Emails After Congressional Subpoena
Was Issued. This used to be called obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence.
According to new information from the House Oversight Committee, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration
[TIGTA] Russell George and Deputy Inspector General for Investigations Tim Camus, the IRS deleted hundreds of
backup tapes containing thousands of emails belonging to former IRS official Lois Lerner, the woman at the center
of the conservative targeting scandal. The tapes were destroyed nine months after a congressional
subpoena was issued to the agency demanding they be preserved and turned over.
Destruction
of Evidence at the IRS. [Scroll down] Fox is told the hearing will definitively state there was a
destruction of evidence 10 months after a preservation order for the emails was in place, 7 months after a
subpoena was in place and 30 days AFTER the IRS realized there were potential problems locating the emails.
This destruction of evidence happened 22 days BEFORE the IRS Commissioner testified to Congress, in response to my
questioning on March 26, 2015, that they had the documents and they would provide all of them to Congress.
House
Republicans Considering Impeachment of IRS Head over Stonewalling in Lois Lerner Investigation. House Republicans
investigating the IRS's targeting of tea-party groups are seriously considering an effort to impeach IRS commissioner John Koskinen
or other agency employees for "culpable misdemeanors" pertaining to the destruction of e-mails written by Lois Lerner, the former
official at the heart of the scandal. "We've briefed the leadership's counsel, and I think that they're open to it, but it's
the type of thing where this town is like, 'oh, that's not how we do things, it's not really been used lately,'" a Republican member
of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee says. "But, quite frankly, we really haven't had executive branch
officials behave this way like we do now."
Exactly Who is Going to
Prison? Republicans are going to consider impeachment. Just like they considered repealing Obamacare or
stopping Obamatrade. I'll believe it when I see it.
IRS
erased Lerner emails even after subpoena: audit. As many as 24,000 emails may have been permanently
lost, but the inspector general has managed to recover about 1,000 messages from the tapes because the IRS only
"degaussed" the tapes but didn't destroy them. Still, the move to erase the tapes after they had been
requested by Congress didn't sit well with Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz, who accused IRS chief John Koskinen
of obstructing Congress' investigation into the emails and tea party targeting. "They destroyed evidence.
That's what they did," Mr. Chaffetz, Utah Republican, said.
My guess: a Louisville slugger. Lois
Lerner's Hard Drive Was Shredded. Former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner's hard drive
most likely crashed due to "an impact of some sort," like somebody hitting it or smashing it, according to new
congressional testimony. Then the hard drive was shredded and its pieces were sold for scrap. Lerner's
laptop, which crashed on June 11, 2011 between 5 and 7 PM, was sent to an IT technician two days later.
The Hewlett-Packard technician looking at her laptop determined that the hard drive failed because of an impact of some sort.
Another
Blow To IRS: Judge Demands Info on Lerner Emails, With 7/1 Hearings. Judicial Watch
announced today [6/22/2015] a second legal blow to the IRS which occurred on Friday. The agency was
ordered to report back to U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan by June 29 the status of the
recovery and release of emails of Lois Lerner and other IRS officials. The Court also ordered a
court hearing, scheduling a status conference for July 1, 2015. The developments are a
result of Judicial Watch's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit and continued pressure seeking
documents about the Obama IRS's targeting and harassment of Tea Party and conservative opponents of
President Obama (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Internal Revenue Service (No. 1:13-cv-01559)).
Judicial
Watch: Federal Judge Orders IRS to Account for "Lost" Emails. Judicial Watch announced
that U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to report
to him by June 29 the status of the recovery and release of emails of Lois Lerner and other IRS
officials. The Court also ordered a court hearing, scheduling a status conference for July 1,
2015. The developments come in Judicial Watch's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking
documents about the Obama IRS's targeting and harassment of Tea Party and conservative opponents of
President Obama (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Internal Revenue Service (No. 1:13-cv-01559)).
IRS'
Latest Email Excuse Draws It Closer To Rogue Agency Status. Let's cut to the chase
here: The IRS is obstructing justice because it doesn't want the truth to come out. The agency has
been caught red-handed targeting opponents of the Obama administration, including the tea party,
pro-Israel groups and conservative news media. It purposely delayed issuances of tax-exempt
status to nonprofit groups and held investigations entirely outside its own mandate. What the IRS
is hiding is bound to be the work of malicious political operatives cloaking themselves as impartial
civil servants, plotting among themselves against their political enemies through email. The
stiff-arms given by the IRS at every juncture — from Lerner's invoking her Fifth Amendment
right against self-incrimination at a House hearing to this latest claim about preventing
duplicates — is consistent with that scenario.
IRS
Finds 6,400 New Lois Lerner Emails, Gives Dumbest Excuse Yet For Not Releasing Them.
The Internal Revenue Service found 6,400 more Lois Lerner emails — but they're not
handing them over in court. The IRS' latest excuses are nothing short of infuriating.
Department of Justice lawyers Geoffrey J. Klimas and Stephanie Sasarak, acting as counsel for the
IRS, submitted a U.S. District Court filing June 12 in the case Judicial Watch v. Internal Revenue
Service. The court filing, provided to The Daily Caller, claims the IRS received new Lerner emails
from the Treasury Department's inspector general (TIGTA) but can't fork over the emails to Judicial
Watch, a nonprofit group suing to get the emails. Why? Because the IRS is busy making sure
that none of the emails are duplicates — you know, so as not to waste anyone's time.
IRS
Finds 6,400 Lois Lerner Emails But Won't Hand Em Over. The Internal Revenue Service
may have found 6,400 emails from Lois Lerner, who oversaw the tax agency's Exempt Organizations
Unit, but the government agency has no plans to share. Attorneys from the Department of Justice
representing the IRS say the emails won't be shared because the service is making sure that none of
them are duplicates. Lerner is at the center of a scandal in which the tax agency denied special
tax status to conservative groups.
IRS
using absurd excuse to avoid turning over newly discovered Lois Lerner e-mails. There
must be some seriously incriminating material in these e-mails if DoJ attorneys are willing to
beclown themselves by offering nonsense arguments to prevent their disclosure. Lois Lerner took the
Fifth Amendment for a reason. Most federal judges do not enjoy being mocked this way. But it is
possible to use nonsense arguments and filings to delay, and the goal clearly is to get past the 2016
election and hope that the public memory fades.
Federal
Judge: What's The Status On Lois Lerner's "Lost" Emails? Remember when the IRS claimed
they "lost" tens-of-thousands of emails belonging to former head of tax exempt groups Lois Lerner?
(Who by the way, is retired now with a full taxpayer funded pension after raking in hundreds-of-thousands
of dollars in bonuses). Remember when IRS Commissioner John Koskinen claimed there were no back up
tapes? Lerner's emails aren't lost and backup tapes do exist. Now, it's important to find out
what's in both.
Loretta
Lynch has a Lois Lerner decision to make. Republicans on the House Ways and Means
Committee have asked Attorney General Loretta Lynch for an update on whether she will pursue
criminal charges against former IRS employee Lois Lerner for her role in the IRS targeting scandal.
The committee last year identified three possible criminal charges that could be brought against Lerner,
and asked the Department of Justice to consider bringing those charges. At the time, the attorney
general was Eric Holder, and the committee chairman was Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich. The new chairman,
Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., asked Lynch on Thursday [5/28/2015] where that criminal referral stands.
House
GOP demands criminal investigation into Lois Lerner. Insisting Lois G. Lerner is still
a target, congressional Republicans sent a letter to new Attorney General Loretta Lynch Thursday [5/28/2015]
asking her to follow through on their official request last year for a criminal investigation into Ms.
Lerner's behavior at the IRS. Led by Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee,
the Republicans said it's been more than a year and the Justice Department has yet to respond to the referral
the committee approved on April 9, 2014, listing three areas where lawmakers believe Ms. Lerner may have
broken the law. "The committee continues to believe that these serious charges should be pursued by the
Department of Justice," Mr. Ryan and his fellow lawmakers said in their letter.
6,500
Lois Lerner emails recovered from backup tapes. While the old and largely forgotten
IRS scandals have been replaced by whole news sets of scandals, I guess there was still some work
going on in the background. The Inspector General for the Treasury announced this week that more
than six thousand of Lois Lerner's emails — lost when "her computer crashed" a few years
ago — have been recovered from backup tapes and will be turned over.
Thousands
of new Lerner emails found. An inspector general investigating the IRS's improper
scrutiny of Tea Party groups has found thousands of emails from Lois Lerner, the agency official at
the center of that controversy, according to committees involved in the probe. Treasury's
inspector general for tax administration (TIGTA) said it found roughly 6,400 emails either to or
from Lerner from between 2004 and 2013 that it didn't think the IRS had turned over to lawmakers,
the congressional committees said. The committees have yet to examine the emails, aides on
Capitol Hill said.
Networks
Ignore Discovery of 'Lost' Lois Lerner E-Mails. Despite a combined eight hours of air
time on Wednesday, all three network morning shows ignored the revelation that 6400 "lost" e-mails
from ex-IRS official Lois Lerner have been found. On cable, Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer alerted
viewers, reminding, "The IRS claimed the emails were lost when learner's computer crashed three years
ago. They will now be examined by the Senate Finance Committee."
How Lois Lerner evaded
charges. Good soldiers in the Obama administration don't get indicted, thanks to other
good soldiers. And no doubt they get rewarded, too.
A
Flawed Legal Analysis Is Helping Lois Lerner. On March 31, Ronald Machen, the outgoing
U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, wrote House Speaker John Boehner to inform him that the
Justice Department would not present Lois Lerner's contempt citation to a federal grand jury.
The letter explaining his decision is an exercise in misdirection — the kind of misdirection
that magicians use to fool an audience. Why? Because at no point in his detailed, seven-page
legal analysis does Machen mention the most important point demonstrating that Lerner did, in fact,
waive her Fifth Amendment right.
Feds
won't pursue contempt charges against Lerner for not testifying before House. The
Justice Department has declined to pursue contempt of Congress charges against Lois Lerner for
refusing to testify about her role at the IRS in the targeting of conservative groups. The
department announced the decision in a letter Tuesday [3/31/2015] to House Speaker John Boehner,
whose Republican-controlled chamber made the request to prosecute, after holding Lerner in contempt
for refusing to testify at committee hearings.
No
justice from the Justice Department. [T]he Obama administration's Internal Revenue
Service is institutionally incapable of self-correction. And, now it is even clearer that the
Obama administration's Department of Justice is incapable of holding accountable those responsible
for a massive illegal targeting scheme. Even worse, its own involvement in the scandal not only
means that it can't properly investigate the IRS, it should instead be investigated for cooperating
with the IRS in its campaign of censorship and oppression. The latest troubling development
comes as the Justice Department announced it will not pursue criminal contempt charges against
former top IRS official Lois Lerner — who's at the center of a scandal that unlawfully
targeted conservative and Tea Party groups because of their political views.
Shocker!
Obama's DOJ Won't Seek Contempt Charges for Lois Lerner, Networks Ignore. On Wednesday [4/1/2015], the
Department of Justice announced it would not be seeking contempt charges against Lois Lerner for refusing to testify
to Congress on the IRS targeting scandal. The Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks, so far, have refused to report
on this big development in the Obama IRS scandal that they apparently just don't want to talk about any more.
Lois Lerner
Skates. The Justice Department says Lois Lerner, who used her IRS office to target the
Tea Party, didn't waive her Fifth Amendment rights before Congress and won't be prosecuted for
contempt over her missing emails. [...] Lois Lerner, poster child for hard-drive crashes and
missing emails, won't face charges for contempt of Congress either. After pleading her innocence at that
2013 hearing, Lerner went on to invoke her Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. This raised the
question of whether the Constitution let her remain silent after she was not silent and pleaded her case.
No
Criminal Charges For Lois Lerner Of IRS, Keeps Bonuses, Nice Retirement. If you were
targeted by the IRS, you probably thought that retired but officially silent Lois Lerner —
who ran a key IRS division — might face charges. Congress found her in contempt after
she professed her innocence, and thereafter took the Fifth. Much later, she broke her
silence to Politico, saying she did nothing wrong, claiming that she was the victim. The
U.S. Attorney's Office was supposedly considering prosecution, but now it announced she is off the hook
and will not be charged with contempt.
IRS's
Lois Lerner won't be charged with contempt. The Obama administration informed House
Speaker John A. Boehner this week it will not prosecute former IRS executive Lois G. Lerner for
contempt of Congress, concluding that she did not waive her Fifth Amendment rights to avoid answering
questions when she was called to testify nearly two years ago. Ms. Lerner, the figure at the center
of the IRS's tea party targeting scandal, is still facing investigation over the intrusive scrutiny of
conservative groups, but the decision by U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen does away with at least some of her
legal jeopardy.
Outgoing
US attorney hasn't acted on Lerner contempt charge. Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney
for the District of Columbia appointed by President Obama and set to step down next month, has not
acted on a contempt of Congress charge for former IRS official Lois Lerner. Machen, who
announced at the beginning of the week he'd step down April 1 to return to private practice, has not
referred Lerner's case to a grand jury. Her contempt citation for not testifying at two hearings has
been in Machen's hands since May 2014.
EmailGate:
First Lois Lerner, Then Hillary Clinton, Now Eric Holder. How Corrupt Is This Administration? Although we all
talk about Hillary's EmailGate, we shouldn't forget that this controversy actually started with Lois Lerner. When
Republicans tried to find out whether the IRS had purposefully targeted conservative organizations, this former head of
the Internal Revenue Service said her email had suddenly disappeared. In other words, there's no way that Lerner's
hard drive suddenly crashed causing her to lose two years of emails. It's just not possible.
Lawyer:
Department of Justice Shut Down Search For Lois Lerner's Emails. The Department of
Justice blocked an attempt to force the Internal Revenue Service to search for Lois Lerner's missing
emails at off-site storage facilities, according to a lawyer pushing to obtain the emails. The
IRS never looked for Lerner's backup email tapes at the West Virginia storage facility where they
were being housed. Treasury deputy inspector general Timothy Camus told Congress that the IRS never
asked IT professionals at the New Martinsville, W.V. storage site for the backup tapes. Camus only
found the backup tape for Lerner's missing 2011 emails about two weeks ago.
Lois
Lerner's Hard Drive Was Searched By Legally Blind IRS Employee. The first IT
specialist to inspect the computer hard drive of former IRS exemptions director Lois Lerner was
legally blind, according to an affidavit filed last year by Stephen Manning, deputy chief
information officer for strategy and modernization at the IRS. Manning's July 18, 2014,
affidavit pertained to a lawsuit filed by True the Vote against the IRS alleging that Lerner led an
effort to target it and similar conservative groups by refusing to grant them tax-exempt status.
Among
IRS emails unearthed is one by Lerner that pretty much admits cover-up. Here's hoping
for Lois Lerner's sake that orange is her color and that she looks good in jumpsuits. As noted in
today's headlines, federal investigators have recovered 32,000 emails on 424 previously unaccounted
for backup tapes that relate to the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative organizations.
These are among the infamous "lost" tapes that the agency's chief, John Koskinen, swore under oath last June
had been "irrevocably lost because the disaster recovery tape onto which the agency's electronic correspondence
is backed up holds data for only six months." By November, Koskinen, feeling Congressional pressure, had
managed miraculously to pluck the missing 744 tapes from the ether and turned them over to the House Ways
and Means Committee.
IRS
watchdog reveals Lois Lerner missing emails now subject of criminal probe. The IRS's
inspector general confirmed Thursday [2/26/2015] it is conducting a criminal investigation into how
Lois G. Lerner's emails disappeared, saying it took only two weeks for investigators to find
hundreds of tapes the agency's chief had told Congress were irretrievably destroyed.
Investigators have already scoured 744 backup tapes and gleaned 32,774 unique emails, but just two
weeks ago they found an additional 424 tapes that could contain even more Lerner emails, Deputy
Inspector General Timothy P. Camus told the House Oversight Committee in a rare late-night hearing
meant to look into the status of the investigation. "There is potential criminal activity," Mr.
Camus said.
The Liberal Circus.
[Scroll down] The president said there was not a "smidgeon" of corruption in the selective
targeting of conservatives. Lois Lerner, the focus of investigations, pled the Fifth Amendment after
having received over $100,000 in merit bonuses. When congressional investigators wanted to subpoena
her computer records, IRS officials claimed both that her hard drive had crashed and that its data was
unrecoverable. The latter proved untrue; but then so far so has everything the IRS has said. The
only lesson is that any private citizen who replied to IRS inquiries in the manner that the IRS responded
to public subpoenas would be jailed.
IRS
Withheld Document From Inspector General Showing Existence Of IRS Email Tapes. The IRS
inspector general, tasked with the internal IRS investigation, reveals to House Oversight Committee
that the IRS withheld the documents showing the existence of the back-up tapes which contain
internal IRS email communication, thought to contain the missing Lois Lerner emails. [...] The
evidence so far showcases a chain of communication from the initial discussion with the Obama
Administration toward the IRS and Dept of Justice.
IRS
Employee Looking for Lois Lerner Emails Was Blind, Literally!. An IRS employee tasked
with trying to restore and obtain emails on Lois Lerner's IRS computer's hard drive was legally
blind. Stephen Manning, the deputy chief information officer for strategy and modernization at the
IRS, submitted an affidavit in the True the Vote vs. IRS litigation regarding the persons and procedures
used to attempt to recover Lois Lerner's hard drive containing emails pertaining to Tea Party targeting.
Treasury
IG: IRS Never Asked for Backup Tapes of Agency Emails. During congressional testimony
Thursday, the Treasury Deputy Inspector General Timothy Camus suggested the IRS did not do all it
could have to recover Lois Lerner's missing emails. Camus told Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) that while
investigating, his team realized the IRS had failed to turn over one relevant document. The IG
demanded and got the document in question, which subsequently led to the discovery of an additional
424 backup tapes they had not previously been aware existed at a government data center.
IRS
watchdog reveals Lois Lerner missing emails now subject of criminal probe. The IRS's
inspector general confirmed Thursday it is conducting a criminal investigation into how Lois G.
Lerner's emails disappeared, saying it took only two weeks for investigators to find hundreds of
tapes the agency's chief had told Congress were irretrievably destroyed. Investigators have
already scoured 744 backup tapes and gleaned 32,774 unique emails, but just two weeks ago they found
an additional 424 tapes that could contain even more Lerner emails, Deputy Inspector General
Timothy P. Camus told the House Oversight Committee in a rare late-night hearing meant to look
into the status of the investigation. "There is potential criminal activity," Mr. Camus said.
Lois Lerner Received
$129K in Bonuses. Former IRS official Lois Lerner received $129,300 in bonuses between
2010 and 2013, records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show. Over a three-year
period, Lerner, the head of the tax-exempt division at the heart of the IRS targeting scandal,
received a 25 percent retention bonus — averaging $43,000 a year — on top of
her regular salary. The federal government uses retention bonuses to incentivize valuable
employees who are considering retirement or private sector jobs to stay at their agencies. Former
acting IRS commissioner Steven T. Miller recommended Lerner for a $42,000 retention bonus in
December 2009, when she first became eligible for retirement.
Let's see her e-mails.
Contrary to earlier assertions by the IRS, the Lois Lerner emails Congress sought were not lost forever.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, says
authorities have now managed to recover roughly 16,000 Lerner emails. This has led Johnson to send
Koskinen a letter in which the senator writes, "I respectfully request your assistance in better understanding
the IRS's document-retention and -production process." We prefer the way the senator put it on Fox News:
"I smell a rat. I smell a number of rats, and that's what we are going to get to the bottom of."
Seven Misconceptions about
E-mail. [Misconception:] Emails can be deleted. Reality: By using utilities
or by checking recipients' workstations, they can almost always be recovered.
Lois
Lerner Tried To Block Supervisor's Visit Because She Feared Targeting Would Be Exposed. Former IRS
official Lois Lerner tried to block an IRS supervisor's visit to the Cincinnati office that she oversaw during the
period in which her division was targeting conservative groups. Lerner made clear that she didn't want the
official talking to employees involved in early congressional and inspector general probes into the "c4" business,
according to newly unearthed emails.
Docs:
Ahead of 2012 Presidential Election Lois Lerner Begged Supervisor Not to Visit IRS Office.
New emails obtained by Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act Lawsuit show former IRS
official Lois Lerner begged her supervisor not to visit the Cincinnati office or ask specific questions
related to Congressional inquiries into whether the agency was improperly targeting conservative groups
just ahead of the 2012 presidential election. As a reminder, it wasn't until May 2013 when Lerner
admitted inappropriate targeting had occurred and plead the Fifth in front of the House Oversight Committee.
Lerner Objected to IRS Deputy
Director Visit to Cincinnati Office During Congressional Inquiries. The newly released documents include an
intense chain of emails in which Lerner pleads with Grant, who was a supervisor to her, to "put this [Grant's planned visit
to Cincinnati] off please" at the very time during which both the internal IRS watchdog and Congress were investigating
whether the IRS had been inappropriately targeting conservative groups in the months leading up to the 2012 elections.
New
IRS Emails Surface: Evidence of a White House Cover-Up? Newly released emails expose
possible collusion between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and President Obama's Department of
Justice, a disturbing new development in the IRS targeting scandal. The IRS originally claimed
that the emails, which were sent and received by former IRS administrator Lois Lerner, were all
missing. On November 22, however, IRS Inspector General John Koskinen announced that
30,000 of Lerner's emails between 2009 and 2011 had been recovered.
IRS
Watchdog Continues to Hide Records on White House Leaks. An independent IRS monitor
announced Monday it will block the release of roughly 400 more pages of documents related to
unauthorized leaks of confidential taxpayer information to the White House. The Treasury Inspector
General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) told the watchdog group Cause of Action it would be withholding
nearly all of the 2,500 documents it located that were related to unauthorized IRS leaks to the White House.
Earlier this month, TIGTA told Cause of Action it was withholding roughly 2,100 of the documents and said it would
take an additional two weeks to review the rest.
New
Lois Lerner emails indicate Obama's DOJ involved in IRS targeting scandal. In the
month prior to the 2010 midterm elections, Internal Revenue Service investigator Lois Lerner met
with Justice Department officials to discuss the criminal prosecution of tax-exempt political
groups. It had previously been revealed that Lerner investigated avenues for prosecuting certain
tax-exempt status applicants upon the suggestion of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) when the watchdog
group Judicial Watch obtained Lerner's emails on that subject via a FOIA request.
Emails
confirm 2010 Lois Lerner meeting with DOJ elections prosecutor. Emails obtained by
Judicial Watch through litigation confirm that Lois Lerner was in contact with DOJ officials about
the possible criminal prosecution of tax-exempt entities two full years before what the IRS conceded
was its "absolutely inappropriate" 2012 targeting of the organizations.
Smidgen
Alert — Dept. of Treasury Blocks Release of IRS to White House Emails Because The Content
Would Be Illegal To Share With Court. As the Daily Caller partly outlines[,] Secretary
of the Treasury Jacob Lew, Obama's former White House Chief of Staff, who was chief of staff when
the illegal IRS/White House scheme was rolled out, took the emails and documents that were set to be
released and now refuses to ever turn them over. His rationale? Secretary Lew claims he cannot
release information about improper disclosures of confidential taxpayer information —
because [...] that would be an improper disclosure of confidential taxpayer information.
Will
'Lost' IRS Emails Reveal A Corrupt White House? Leaking taxpayer information to the White House isn't
new, just as the email shell game in the IRS fiasco no longer shocks. But the discovery of data "lost" on
backup tapes may expose the extent of administration guilt.
A
Transparent Conflict of Interest — Treasury Secretary Jack Lew Blocks White House/IRS
Email Release. Enough circumstantial information exists to speculate the information
within the denied documents could outline collusion between the White House and the IRS —
to formulate a list of political opponents for targeting. The enforcement mechanism used for
targeting includes the DOJ and various other government agencies (ATF, OSHA, EEOC, EPA Banking/Finance)[.]
According to the jaw dropping IRS letter — Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, interceded and blocked the
FOIA discovery from being released.
Miracle at the IRS. After
saying over and over — in press statements, in court filings, in congressional
hearings — that the emails that went missing when Lois Lerner's hard drive crashed were
gone forever, up to 30,000 Lerner emails have now turned up and are on their way to Congress. But
not thanks to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. To the contrary, the emails were reclaimed from
disaster-recovery tapes by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. It's yet another
reminder of Koskinen's failures. Remember, Koskinen was installed at the IRS to restore credibility after
the public learned the agency had targeted conservative organizations — and then lied about it.
What
Will We Find In "Lost" Lois Lerner Emails. The Internal Revenue Service inspector
general has recovered up to 30,000 of Lois Lerner's emails that were thought to be lost because of a
computer crash. The emails were recovered from back up recovery tapes from the IRS email system.
Previously, it was thought the emails were lost forever. [...] While it's possible the emails will
link Lerner to the White House, it's more likely the information will reveal Lerner's personal
agenda against conservatives including possible illegal behavior.
It's
Probably Just A Coincidence That 30,000 Lois Lerner Emails Were Discovered Right After The
Election. By now, the whole world knows that on Friday [11/21/2014], 30,000 "missing"
Lois Lerner emails were discovered. We don't want you to think that there's anything shady going
on here. It's probably just a coincidence that they were found a couple of weeks after an important,
mid-term election. These 30,000 emails were allegedly lost forever. But, lo and behold, they
were discovered on backup disaster recovery tapes! Yes, the same kind of backup disaster recovery
tapes that experts have been telling us existed all along.
The Editor says...
Notice also that this announcement came the day after Obama's imperial declaration of amnesty for
illegal aliens, which is likely to displace this topic on all the weekend political talk shows.
30,000
missing emails from IRS' Lerner recovered. Up to 30,000 missing emails sent by former
Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner have been recovered by the IRS inspector general, five
months after they were deemed lost forever. The U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax
Administration (TIGTA) informed congressional staffers from several committees on Friday that the
emails were found among hundreds of "disaster recovery tapes" that were used to back up the IRS
email system.
Where are the
Handcuffs? [M]ultiple agencies of the Obama bureaucracy have thumbed their collective
noses at the law and federal judges. The rule of law means absolutely nothing to the Left, and
it's high time they were held to account.
The IRS Admits To Breaking The Law.
The law requires that an FOIA search encompass all "reasonably retrievable" records, from which the
party served can then argue for exemptions from disclosure. It does not permit the target to
choose not to look at its pleasure.
IRS:
Um, Yeah, We Never Actually Looked for Lois Lerner's Emails or Anything. Today's
banana republic update comes to us from the exasperated watchdogs at Judicial Watch, which has a
Freedom of Information Act lawsuit pending in the IRS targeting scandal. Some months ago, we
learned that former Tax Exempt Organizations honcho Lois Lerner generates an intense bio-electric
field that causes every hard drive that comes anywhere hear her to crash and lose all its data,
something that never seems to happen to hard drives outside the government any more, but verily the
Age of Obama is an age of wonders. Lerner's mutant hard-drive crashing powers supposedly wiped
out a ton of electronic correspondence relevant to the scandal.
Judicial
Watch: IRS "did not undertake any significant efforts to obtain" missing Lerner emails.
Judicial Watch has spent a great deal of time and resources seeking information about the IRS targeting
of conservative groups. In September, Judicial Watch asked the court for permission to conduct
discovery into how "lost and/or destroyed" records might be recovered; the IRS is fighting transparency
efforts, but their latest response to the discovery request contains inconsistencies that could pull the
rug out from under IRS officials responsible for the cover up.
IRS
Admits to Court it Hasn't Searched for Missing Lerner Emails. Judicial Watch announced
today [11/5/2014] that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) admitted to the court that it failed to
search any of the IRS standard computer systems for the "missing" emails of Lois Lerner and other
IRS officials. The admission appears in an IRS legal brief opposing the Judicial Watch request that
a federal court judge allow discovery into how "lost and/or destroyed" IRS records relating to the
targeting of conservative groups may be retrieved.
Treasury
Department won't let witness testify about Lois Lerner's 'lost' emails until AFTER the
election. The chairman of a powerful committee in Congress is demanding access
'without delay' to a key witness in the Lois Lerner email saga that has engulfed the IRS, but the
Treasury Department insists she can't testify until after the midterm congressional elections.
House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, a Michigan Republican, demanded late Wednesday in a letter
to Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew that he must make Treasury counsel Hannah Stott-Bumsted available
before that Nov. 4 political milestone date. Stott-Bumsted was the first Treasury aide to learn
that the IRS was unable to locate two years' worth of disgraced official Lois Lerner's emails
because of a hard drive crash.
The Lois Lerner app.
Imagine if you downloaded something that ended up wiping out all the information you needed before
meeting with an IRS agent asking about discrepancies on your tax return. How sympathetic do you
think that IRS agent would be? But when it comes to the IRS itself, this is just what officials
would have us believe. Turns out too it's not just Lois Lerner, whose computer crashed right after
Congress asked for info about the tax targeting of conservative organizations.
Lois
Lerner Tries to Barge Into Neighbor's Home to Dodge Journalist. Jason Mattera [...] approached Lerner on the street in her upscale
neighborhood just outside Washington, D.C. and asked Lerner if she wanted to apologize to conservatives or to comment on her role in "using the
government as a weapon to crush political dissent." Lerner then dashed across a neighbor's yard and began knocking on the door.
IRS
Erased Key Records in Lawsuit, NetJets Says. There may be a pattern involving the IRS
losing e-mails and other key computer records. For months, the House Oversight Committee has been
pursuing the lost e-mails of Lois Lerner and other figures in the IRS tax-exempt organization
scandal. Now, the private-jet company NetJets is claiming in a lawsuit that as part of its tax
dispute with the agency the IRS "wiped clean a number of computer hard drives containing emails and
other electronic documents that the Government was required to produce."
Republicans and the IRS.
On Tuesday [9/22/2014], the Republican House passed several reform bills. One would ensure that
anyone who did what Lois Lerner did — i.e., send out confidential taxpayer info on her
private e-mail — would be violating the law. Others are designed to help taxpayers
appeal when their groups are denied tax-exempt status or to ensure that officials who deliberately
destroy federal records get the old heave-ho. Here's the problem: The bills now head to a Senate
controlled by Democrat Harry Reid. During his time as majority leader, Reid has ensured that the
best reforms passed by House Republicans never even come up for a vote — sparing President
Obama the bother of an embarrassing veto.
Lois
Lerner breaks silence. Employers won't hire her. She's been berated with epithets like
"dirty Jew." Federal agents have guarded her house because of death threats. And she's spent
hundreds of thousands of dollars defending herself against accusations she orchestrated a coverup in
a scandal that has come to represent everything Americans hate about the IRS. Lois Lerner is
toxic — and she knows it. But she refuses to recede into anonymity or beg for
forgiveness for her role in the IRS tea party-targeting scandal.
Lois
Lerner breaks silence: I'm 'not sorry for anything I did'. Lois Lerner, the former IRS
director accused of using her position to delay nonprofit applications to scores of conservative and
tea party groups, has broken her wall of silence in a sit-down interview with Politico to say: "I didn't
do anything wrong." "I'm proud of my career and the job I did for this country," she told Politico.
The Editor says...
I suspect that the most notorious criminals in history probably didn't think they were doing anything wrong, either.
Lois
Lerner Says She Is No Jeffrey Dahmer. During the interview with Politico, Lerner was
still defiant: "I didn't do anything wrong. I'm proud of my career and the job I did for this
country." Added Lerner: "Regardless of whatever else happens, I know I did the best I could under
the circumstances and am not sorry for anything I did."
Sorry,
Politico, But Lois Lerner Is Not A Victim. Lois Lerner. Hero. Servant. Brownie-baking
puppy lover. Sister of the Blessed State. This is about all a person reading Politico's new
exclusive "interview" with the former head of the I.R.S. division that oversees tax-exempt groups, might take away.
"I didn't do anything wrong" claims Lerner, who, like any innocent person, is flanked by a major law firm's partner, two
personal attorneys and her husband — a lawyer. "I'm proud of my career and the job I did for this country."
And in around 3,700 obsequious words, Politico seems to agree. What exactly did she do for her country,
you ask? Well, sitting in her $2.5 million house in Bethesda, Maryland, this question, like most others,
goes unanswered.
Lois
Lerner's Sob Story. Behold, the martyrdom of Lois Lerner. At least, that is the
takeaway from Monday's Politico interview with the former head of the IRS's tax-exemption
unit, the guileless victim of right-wing conspiracy theorists, Republican operators, and Darrell
Issa. "Lerner ... has been painted in one dimension: as a powerful bureaucrat scheming with the
Obama administration to cripple right-leaning nonprofits," writes interviewer Rachel Bade. In
reality, the scandal-hounded Lerner is — didn't you suspect? — "a much more
complicated figure than the caricature she's become in the public eye." Of course, Richard Nixon
was "complicated," too, but he did not get 3,700 rehabilitative words in Politico.
Cry us a river,
Lois Lerner. Everyone in Washington has a P.R. machine, or at minimum, an agenda.
That's certainly the case with Lois Lerner, the former IRS executive whose division targeted
conservative nonprofit applicants with delays and harassment. Lerner's division of the IRS
systematically obstructed and denied status to Tea Party groups while subjecting many of the
smallest ones — those most vulnerable and least likely to be lawyered up — to
inappropriate demands for information that was not legally required. In one case, this included the
content of the opening prayer recited in meetings, and in others, this IRS Inquisition demanded that
leaders of certain groups pledge never to run for office.
More Abject Failure from Koskinen's
IRS. John Koskinen has failed the IRS and the American people. IRS Commissioner
John Koskinen testified last week about the missing emails lost forever due to computer failures.
When questioned about any more crashes or computer issues recently, Koskinen told the House
Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee that "Hard drive crashes continue as we speak."
Can someone please buy the IRS reliable computers and a backup system?
The Editor says...
Of course there is nothing wrong with the reliability of the IRS computers.
Any computer hard drive will "crash" if it is hit with a sledgehammer. How does Mr. Koskinen know (with enough
certainty to pronounce under oath) that hard drive crashes are still occurring, or will soon occur? One can rationally
infer from Mr. Koskinen's statement that he is aware of on-going intentional destruction of computer hardware.
Citing
IRS Wrongdoing, Judicial Watch Asks Federal Court to Permit Discovery to Find 'Missing' Emails in IRS Abuse Scandal. Judicial
Watch announced today [9/17/2014] that it has filed a Motion for Limited Discovery in its Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit against the
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in order to force the agency to comply with federal court orders to produce information about how "lost and/or
destroyed" IRS records relating to the targeting of conservative groups may be retrieved.
White
House knew of destroyed emails two months before Congress. Congressional investigators have released tesimony showing that an
attorney for the IRS told the Treasury Department counsel of the destroyed emails, who then passed the information on to the White House.
The conversations took place in April — two months before the IRS told Congress of the destruction of evidence.
Attorney
Representing Conservative Groups Not Surprised by More "Lost" IRS Emails. Surprise! The IRS claims it has lost
emails belonging to even more employees embroiled in the scandal surrounding the targeting of conservatives. Guy covered the
details of the newest revelations earlier today and the AP reported about the lost emails over the weekend.
We
still don't know why Lois Lerner's Blackberry was wiped clean. As lawmakers return to Washington to continue the
search for thousands of missing subpoenaed emails related to the Internal Revenue Service's alleged targeting of conservative
groups, questions abound. Among the most pressing is the fact that a Blackberry belonging to Lois Lerner, a former official
at the center of the scandal, was wiped clean shortly after investigators started asking questions about her alleged role in the
targeting of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. Despite the fact that this revelation first came to light
in August, the IRS has yet explain why this was done.
Will Orange be the New Black for IRS Chief
Lois Lerner? First it was just Lerner's computer that was affected, then those of her closest co-conspirators, then "no more than
twenty" computers, and now an ever larger batch of burned out workstations. Even more interesting, the IRS has apparently not yet shared
this newest tidbit with Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, the distinguished and courageous jurist presiding over Judicial Watch's Freedom of
Information Act lawsuit.
IRS says it has
lost emails from 5 more employees. The Internal Revenue Service has lost emails from five more employees
who are part of congressional probes into the treatment of conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status, the
tax service disclosed Friday.
Why
did the IRS clean out Lois Lerner's Blackberry as probes began? Congress had little opportunity to debate the
Internal Revenue Service's missing-e-mail controversy while on break during the past month, but lawmakers will have plenty
to talk about when they return next week. One question likely to come up is why the IRS wiped out Lois Lerner's
Blackberry shortly after congressional staffers interviewed the then-IRS official about suspected targeting of conservative
groups. So far, the IRS has provided no answer. The issue came to light last month after U.S. District Court
Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered the IRS to explain its efforts to recover emails that went missing when the former
official's hard drive crashed in 2011.
IRS
scandal needs a special prosecutor. We have heard the phrase "phony scandals" applied
this summer to several important developments in President Obama's administration. Obama would now
love to place in this category even the IRS scandal, in which Lois Lerner's division of that agency
targeted and harassed conservative non-profit groups. Last summer, Obama had called that scandal
"inexcusable" and forced the head of the IRS to resign. How times change. This scandal, though
without the fatal consequences that attended the mismanagement of the Veterans Administration, is
nevertheless egregious and telling about the nature of the executive over which Obama presides. It
escalated significantly last month as evidence of a bureaucratic cover-up mounted. It bears watching,
and it deserves a truly independent investigation.
The Biggest Issue
in 2016. (1) Lois Lerner's lost e-mails were never "lost" at all, but have been archived, and (2) Lois
Lerner's BlackBerry, which also contained all the lost e-mails, was scrubbed and destroyed one year after her hard drive crashed.
Judge Sullivan shows no intention of letting Obama's underlings off the hook, and at this point a full-scale judicially ordered
independent prosecution of the crimes committed seems to be in the works. [...] We do not know today just who has been involved,
but it seems likely that the trail of wrongdoing stretches right into the White House. The longer they stonewall and lie, the
greater their criminal culpability. Already it seems certain that the criminal misconduct includes not only conspiracy to abuse
the power of the IRS, but also conspiracy to obstruct justice.
The Phony IRS Scandal
is Not So Phony. The Obama administration had clearly hoped to shut down the investigation
by claiming that the central figure in the investigation, Lois Lerner, and six other IRS staffers, had all
lost their emails when their computers crashed. They said that after they were unable to recover her
emails, they recycled the hard drive, so they didn't even have that to turn it over to the investigating
committee. Our friends at Judicial Watch have been leading the way in this investigation. And
this week they revealed that a Justice Department attorney told one of their attorneys that, in fact,
Lerner's emails were not lost. They stated that "...indeed all government computer records, are
backed up by the federal government in case of a government-wide catastrophe."
Judicial
Watch Statement on Discovery of Backups for "Missing" Lois Lerner IRS Emails. The Obama
administration had been lying to the American people about Lois Lerner's missing emails. There are
no "missing" Lois Lerner emails — nor missing emails of any of the other top IRS or other
government officials whose emails seem to be disappearing at increasingly alarming rate. All the
focus on missing hard drives has been a diversion. The Obama administration has known all along
where the email records could be — but dishonestly withheld this information.
The
Latest Admission from the Obama IRS is Not Only Maddening, It's Criminal. We were told
that the agency did have all of Lois Lerner's emails, then we were told they did not. The claim was
made that they were destroyed when her hard drive crashed. We were told that no backups of the
emails were done, even though that is required by law. On Tuesday [8/26/2014], Judicial Watch obtained an
admittance from the Justice Department that, contrary to the lies previously told, the backups were done, but
they would not search for the emails pertinent to the case because it would be too difficult. Now comes an
even more stunning admission from the Obama IRS that screams of criminal misconduct in the destruction of evidence.
IRS
scandal: Obama administration strategy = delay, derail, deceive. After being told
repeatedly by a number of administration officials — including the IRS Commissioner —
that former top IRS official Lois Lerner's computer problems resulted in the destruction of thousands of her
key emails, we have now been told that those emails actually exist — backed up by an emergency
system in the event of a catastrophe. The Obama administration is doing everything it
can — including presenting false and misleading information — to stall
what can only be described as a faux investigation.
IRS back-up baloney.
Some 15 months after Americans learned about the IRS' targeting of conservative groups, we still
have no clue how such an abuse was allowed to happen. And every day, the story only gets murkier.
This week, for instance, a government watchdog group, Judicial Watch, said administration officials
admitted that all the "missing" e-mails belonging to Lois Lerner (the woman at the heart of the
scandal) had been backed up after all — as part of a practice to back up all the
government's e-mails. No government official had said anything like that before.
IRS
Shocker: Filing Reveals Lerner Blackberry Destroyed. The IRS filing in federal Judge
Emmet Sullivan's court reveals shocking new information. The IRS destroyed Lerner's Blackberry AFTER
it knew her computer had crashed and after a Congressional inquiry was well underway. As an IRS
official declared under the penalty of perjury, the destroyed Blackberry would have contained the
same emails (both sent and received) as Lois Lerner's hard drive. We all know by now that Lois
Lerner's hard drive crashed in June 2011 and was destroyed by IRS. The emails of up to twenty other
related IRS officials were missing in remarkably similar "crashes," leading many to speculate that
Lois Lerner's Blackberry perhaps held the key. Now, the Observer can confirm that a year after the
infamous hard drive crash, the IRS destroyed Ms. Lerner's Blackberry — and without making any
effort to retain the emails from it. Judge Sullivan has had to pry information from the IRS to
learn anything about Ms. Lerner's Blackberry. Now, with these latest revelations, I'm confident
he's not finished.
Lois
Lerner's Blackberry deliberately destroyed after start of congressional probe: IRS
lawyer. Lois Lerner's Blackberry was intentionally destroyed after Congress had begun
its probe into IRS targeting of conservative groups, a senior IRS lawyer acknowledged in a sworn
declaration. Thomas Kane, Deputy Assistant Chief Counsel for the IRS, wrote in the declaration,
part of a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch against the IRS, that the Blackberry was "removed or wiped
clean of any sensitive or proprietary information and removed as scrap for disposal in June 2012."
That date — June 2012 — is significant because by that time, ex-IRS official Lerner had already been
summoned before congressional staffers who interviewed her about reports of the IRS' targeting of
conservative groups.
George
Will: IRS is 'off the rails' and 'corrupted'. George Will said Tuesday [8/26/2014] on
"Special Report with Bret Baier" that new revelations in the investigation into the IRS targeting
scandal show the agency is "off the rails" and "thoroughly corrupted." The president of the
conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch told Fox News Monday that Justice Department attorneys
have said the "missing" emails of former IRS official Lois Lerner likely still exist in back-up
computers. However, the attorneys told Judicial Watch that retrieving the emails would
be "too onerous."
Lois
Lerner's Emails Exist — and Always Have. The Obama administration is now
admitting that IRS Exempt Organizations Director Lois Lerner's emails, and all other "lost" IRS
records for that matter, have not been destroyed. They are backed up, as are all other government
records. To claim as the Obama administration originally did, that the emails were destroyed, is a
bald-faced lie. We all always knew that of course. But there is nothing this administration won't do
to change the subject when its shenanigans are uncovered. Now that they have been backed into a corner,
they say it is too much trouble to recover the information. Another lie. To suggest that these
backup systems are incapable of finding records is ludicrous. If records can't be recovered, why preserve them?
Will
IRS's Strategy of Destroying Evidence Pay Off? If the latest revelations about the IRS
are correct, then its officials have approached the abuse-of-power scandal with a clear strategy,
pretty much from the beginning. They have been betting that, since their illegal targeting campaign
against those who disagree with President Obama has had the backing of Democrats in Congress, they
needed only a media strategy, not a political one. And that media strategy appears to have been:
conceal or destroy potential (and actual) evidence, and assume that this activity will be less damaging than
whatever is in the files they've worked to hide. It's a direct challenge to the media, in other words.
GOP
lawmakers say DOJ probe into IRS 'compromised,' demand special counsel. House
Republicans are calling on the Department of Justice to appoint a special counsel for its probe into
the IRS targeting scandal, claiming new evidence shows the investigation is "compromised" due to
multiple instances of conflict of interest. One example, according to House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa and Regulatory Affairs Subcommittee Chairman Jim
Jordan, involved a DOJ attorney representing the IRS in litigation relating to the scandal who used
to work for the IRS and was involved in the targeting. However, Monday night [8/25/2014] a DOJ
source confirmed to Fox News that the employee in question, Andrew Strelka, "no longer works at DOJ."
Darrell
Issa: IRS Scandal Is 'Amazing Sequence' of Cover-Up, Denial. House Committee on
Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa ( R., Calif.) slammed the IRS' "amazing
sequences" of cover-ups during an appearance on Fox News, following a new report which suggests that
Lois Lerner's emails were never truly "missing" following a computer crash. Watchdog group
Judicial Watch learned Friday from a Department of Justice attorney that the federal government
backs up all their computer records in case of catastrophe. The Department of Justice now says it
would be "too hard" for them to obtain the emails from that database. Issa described the reports
as part of "What's emerging to be just an amazing sequences of cover-up, delay, denial, even what
now appears to be a false statement from the new IRS commissioner in which he said he moved heaven
and earth to get us Lois Lerner's lost emails.
Is
there no end to the Obama administration's duplicity in the IRS scandal? For months on end, Internal Revenue Service
Commissioner John Koskinen insisted that Lois Lerner's emails were destroyed when her computer's hard drive failed. Koskinen
even told Congress that IRS "moved heaven and earth" trying to recover the emails but simply could not find a way to do so. Now,
thanks to a determined federal judge, the country learns that all government emails are preserved in a doomsday kind of database.
Lerner's emails never were lost.
Networks
Dodge Huge IRS Scandal News as DOJ Attorney Says Lost Lerner E-Mails Do Exist.
Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton appeared on the Fox News Channel (FNC) Monday afternoon and
informed viewers that a Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney admitted to his organization on Friday [8/22/2014]
that the e-mails belonging to former IRS official Lois Lerner that were thought to be lost likely
still exist. He declared to FNC's Shannon Bream that the story of Lerner's hard drive being damaged
and destroyed and thus her e-mails were permanently lost has "all been a pack of malarkey" and "a
big lie." When it came to the major broadcast networks covering this huge story on their Monday
evening newscasts, there was no coverage to be found as ABC, CBS, and NBC all carried out the latest
censoring of news surrounding the IRS.
DOJ
attorneys suggest 'lost' Lerner emails likely still exist: Judicial Watch. In a
stunning revelation, the president of the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch told Fox News
that Justice Department attorneys have intimated that Lois Lerner's "lost" emails likely exist in
back-up computers. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the news came during a Friday
[8/22/2014] phone call with Department of Justice attorneys representing the IRS in Judicial Watch's
FOIA lawsuit against the IRS. Fitton said DOJ attorneys told him the federal government backs up
all computer records to ensure the continuity of government in [the e]vent of a catastrophe.
Judicial
Watch: DOJ Admits Lois Lerner's Emails Exist. A Justice Department official admitted
that former IRS official Lois Lerner's apparently missing e-mails actually exist on a backup server,
but the government doesn't plan to retrieve them. "A Department of Justice attorney told a
Judicial Watch attorney on Friday [8/22/2014] that it turns out the federal government backs up all computer
records in case something terrible happens in Washington and there's a catastrophe, so the government can
continue operating," Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton told Fox News's Shannon Bream.
Further
Misadventures of Obama's Deleted Administration. I think we'd all like to know more
about the IRS' policies for destroying hard drives, since they've been destroying so many of them
lately. It's been like a hard drive skeet shoot over there. Question: Is it safe for former Tax
Exempt Organizations director Lois Lerner to fly on commercial aircraft, since she evidently emits a magnetic field
that causes computers to crash all around her?
Judge launches special inquiry into missing IRS emails and Lerner
hard drive. Judicial Watch has sued over missing IRS emails in the federal district
court in D.C., pursuant to its FOIA request for such documents. The IRS was ordered to provide
explanations as to missing emails, particularly Lois Lerner. The IRS provided explanations, but
those were not good enough for the Judge, who launched his own inquiry into the matter, [...]
IRS
Scandal: Lies, [More] Lies, and Missing Hard Drives. In sworn affidavits filed in court by top
IRS muckety-mucks, the IRS maintains that Lois Lerner's computer was sent out to be fixed by a private contractor
because of an alleged problem with its hard drive. When the contractor was unable to retrieve the lost data,
the computer was forwarded to the IRS's criminal unit forensics lab, which was also unable to recover any data.
At that point the computer's hard drive was "degaussed" and batched with other defunct computer components for
destruction and/or recycling by an outside contractor. And since the IRS doesn't assign serial numbers to
internal computer parts, there's no way to track it down.
More
lost emails — When will Democrats have enough? Twenty different Obama administration
officials have lost or destroyed a portion of their email traffic. Email traffic that was, in some
cases, under subpoena or in others requested as part of a larger inquiry into the conduct of the
executive branch. [...] The brazenly contemptuous stonewall-and-erase-evidence approach to
congressional inquiries preferred by the Obama administration is perhaps this president's greatest
affront to our constitutional system of government. When you have records going missing across an
administration, it is impossible to conclude anything other than it is a coordinated and condoned
cover-up, and not just a series of incompetent, coincidental keystrokes wiping out information.
Tavenner: Transparency
for Thee But Not for Me. It has been widely reported that the latest Obama
administration official to delete emails requested by congressional investigators is Marilyn
Tavenner, who runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Far less coverage, however,
has been devoted to the ironic fact that Tavenner's agency administers the Physician Payment Sunshine Act.
The "Sunshine Act," as it is generally known, is a provision of Obamacare meant to ensure that physicians conduct
business transactions with complete transparency. In other words, the very bureaucrat whose emails have
conveniently gone missing oversees the agency tasked with keeping your doctor and his business associates honest.
Is
it time to view the Obama administration as a criminal enterprise? [C]onsider the
steadily accumulating evidence about the Obama administration's modus operandi with potentially
incriminating documents subpoenaed by Congress: A scandal erupts. Congressional hearings
are held. Documents are requested and withheld. Subpoenas are issued. Contempt
charges threatened. A few documents dribble out. Then come the admissions that, oh by
the way, emails required by multiple federal laws to be preserved have either been destroyed or "lost."
Over and over and over... The latest example comes from the Department of Health and Human Services,
which admitted Wednesday [8/6/2014] that hundreds of Obamacare emails subpoenaed in 2013 by the House
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform were destroyed months ago.
Lost
emails scandal spreads to top Obamacare official. The Obama administration admitted Thursday [8/7/2014]
that it has lost emails from the key official who oversaw the botched federal Obamacare rollout last year, and the
health department may have broken the law by failing to report the lost emails to the National Archives.
Marilyn Tavenner, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, thought she had saved the emails as
official records but now realizes they "might not be retrievable," the Health and Human Services Department
said in a letter to Congress detailing the problem.
IRS notches legal
win over lost tea party emails. The IRS won what might be Round One in a series of
contests pitting tea party groups against the agency, with a federal judge rejecting a conservative
group's bid for a court-appointed forensics expert to hunt for ex-official Lois Lerner's lost
emails. Judge Reggie Walton of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia said True the
Vote's lawsuit against the IRS failed to show "irreparable harm" in its injunction relief request
and that "the public interest weighs strongly against the type of injunctive relief the plaintiff seeks."
Issa:
More Than 20 Obama Officials 'Lost or Destroyed' E-mails After House Launched Probes.
The revelation that Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator Marilynn Tavenner did not
retain her e-mails means that more than 20 witness in the Obama administration to lose or delete
e-mails without notifying Congress, according to the top House investigator. "The Obama
administration has lost or destroyed e-mails for more than 20 witnesses, and in each case,
the loss wasn't disclosed to the National Archives or Congress for months or years, in violation
of federal law," House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.)
said of Tavenner's lost e-mails.
Key
ObamaCare official likely deleted emails now sought in House probe. A key ObamaCare official involved in the rocky
rollout of Healthcare.gov likely deleted some of her emails that are now being sought as part of an investigation into the problems
by a House committee, Fox News confirmed Thursday [8/7/2014]. The Department of Health and Human Services informed House
Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa in a letter Thursday that some of the emails belonging to Marilyn
Tavenner, who leads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, may not be "retrievable."
Law
Prof Gets Cute with Trey Gowdy On IRS Scandal & Gets Perp-Walked to the Democrat Walk of
Shame. The Democrats thought it would be a good idea to invite Professor Charles
Tiefer, a fierce critic of the GOP's lawsuit against President Obama, to testify against the
creation of a Special Counsel for the IRS scandal. They were wrong. Trey Gowdy's tough and
incisive arguments put Tiefer on the defensive, making it difficult for the Harvard Law grad to
answer even basic questions.
Lois
Lerner ripping 'crazies' on right: Why some media folks don't care. To be sure, this investigation has dragged
on a long time without proving a link between the White House and the Cincinnati office's targeting of advocacy groups,
especially on the right, for special scrutiny of their tax-exempt status. Critics say that conservative outlets
such as Fox have tried to keep the story alive. But the administration has done a decent job of bringing the
story back to the headlines. The IRS acknowledged that it could not find two years' worth of lost emails written
or received by Lerner, who pleaded the Fifth when summoned by Congress. And the commissioner, William Koskinen,
sounded downright arrogant when he showed up on the Hill.
IRS
commissioner: Even if we find those lost emails, Congress 'won't concede error' and will find
something else to attack. Even if the IRS recovers thousands of missing emails
belonging to key officials involved in the targeting of conservative groups, congressional
investigators will likely "go on to something else" and continue to hound the agency, according to
IRS commissioner John Koskinen. Investigators "won't concede error. They'll say it was worth
pursuing, which it is. Whether it was worth making a federal case out of it or not is another
issue," he said in an interview this week with Tax Analysts, a nonprofit group. Certain lawmakers,
he added, are determined to go after the IRS for any reason they can find.
Lois
Lerner: A Partisan Hack, Not A Public Servant. A congressional panel has released new emails from
top IRS official Lois Lerner, revealing a boiling hatred for the conservatives she illegally targeted. So
much for claims that she was just a disinterested bureaucrat. The latest batch of emails released Wednesday [7/30/2014]
by the House Ways and Means Committee contained more than a "smidgeon" of hatred and intolerance from the IRS chief
of tax-exempt organizations already famous for singling out conservative Tea Party groups for enforcement scrutiny.
"Great," Lerner wrote to an IRS colleague who complained about conservative radio at work. "Maybe we are
through if there are that many a******s."
New
Emails: Lois Lerner Referred to Conservatives As '***holes' and 'Terrorists'. A newly
discovered email exchange from Lois Lerner's official IRS email account "directly demonstrates Ms.
Lerner's deep animus towards conservatives, which she refers to as '---holes,'" House Ways and Means
Committee Chair Dave Camp wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday
[7/30/2014]. In that Nov. 9, 2012 email, Lerner further suggests that conservatives will ruin the
country: "So we don't need to worry about alien teRrorists (sic). It's our own crazies that will
take us down," she wrote. Camp (R-Mich.) told Holder the email "shows that Ms. Lerner's
mistreatment of conservative groups was driven by her personal hostility toward conservatives."
Ex-IRS
official Lois Lerner hated conservatives, new emails show. Newly released emails by
Lois Lerner, the former IRS official at the center of the tea party targeting scandal, show "deep
animus towards conservatives, which she refers to as 'a**h***s,'" according to a House committee.
The emails were among a batch of new evidence the House Ways and Means Committee turned over Wednesday [7/30/2014]
to the Department of Justice (DOJ) in support of an investigation of criminal wrongdoing at the IRS.
Lois
Lerner's 'Deep Animus Towards Conservatives' Revealed in New Emails. The discovery of
a new trove of emails sent from Tax Exempt Organization director Lois Lerner's official IRS
account — in which she compares conservatives to terrorists, and refers to them as
"crazies," "rabid," "whackos," and "a**holes" — illustrates the cunning of Democrats in
dragging this scandal out for years. If these new emails had been revealed at the outset of the
story, back when Barack Obama was pretending to be outraged by the abuse of IRS power for political
purposes, it would have been devastating. It would have been difficult for the pro-Obama
media to control the firestorm. But now, years later, it's more like a head-shaky footnote,
confirming what we already knew about Lerner — a partisan operative who was keenly
interested in using her power to serve her political interests.
How Litigating
Lost E-mails Works. Two federal judges in the last couple of weeks have issued very
plain, direct, and uncompromising orders to the IRS with tight timeframes. As I noted in my earlier
article, there is no good response the IRS can make to these orders. Judges — really, any
judge — deeply resent being lied to with a straight face. That sort of behavior shows clear contempt
for their authority. There is no reason to doubt for a moment that the absurdly fabricated lies told to
Congress by IRS officials will be accepted by these two judges. What might follow then?
The judges might, sua sponte, find the IRS official involved in direct contempt of court.
These officials could be sent to a federal jail and held as punishment for direct contempt.
All IRS roads lead to the archivist. The Internal
Revenue Service is the House of Representatives' public enemy No. 1. The agency has quietly admitted
that it has lost emails for seven employees at the center of the agency's targeting of conservative groups,
including the former employee at the heart of the scandal, Lois Lerner. The admission of a
loss of records during the course of a congressional investigation hints at either gross
bureaucratic negligence or a federal agency gone legally astray — perhaps both.
IRS
IT officials testify in court that Lois Lerner's emails may still exist. On Wednesday [7/23/2014],
House Republicans revealed that at least one Internal Revenue Service official believes that it is possible
that the agency did not "recycle" all of the hardware and backup tapes on which were stored former IRS executive
Lois Lerner's missing emails. This development may contradict testimony from IRS Commissioner John Koskinen
who told members of Congress that none of Lerner's emails could be recovered. The claim came from Stephen
Manning, an IRS IT official, and Todd Egaas, director of technology operations and investigative services for
the tax collection agency. Both testified in the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. last week about
the IRS's efforts to collect and recover data from Lerner's hard drive.
The
IRS Scandal and the Politicization of Justice. [T]he Justice Department
has been supposedly conducting a criminal investigation into the IRS targeting of conservatives
since Holder announced an investigation in May of 2013 without result. DOJ investigators apparently
had no idea that the emails of Lois Lerner and other key employees had been lost; investigators had
not bothered in all that time to interview any of the victims; and Holder put an Obama campaign
donor who works in the Civil Rights Division in charge of the investigation — a lawyer with no
experience in this type of investigation at all.
Tale
of the Tapes: IRS head confirms investigators have found backup tapes in Lerner probe. IRS
Commissioner John Koskinen, testifying before a House oversight subcommittee, stressed that he does not know
"how they found them" or "whether there's anything on them or not." But he said the inspector general's
office advised him the investigators are reviewing tapes to see if they contain any "recoverable" material.
The revelation is significant because the IRS claimed, when the agency first told Congress about the missing emails,
that backup tapes "no longer exist because they have been recycled." It is unclear whether the tapes in IG
custody contain any Lerner emails, but Koskinen said investigators are now checking.
Trey
Gowdy Eviscerates IRS Commissioner. Wednesday [7/23/2014] at a House Oversight and
Government Reform subcommittee hearing on the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) Rep. Trey Gowdy
(R-SC) would not let IRS Commissioner John Koskinen off the hook over his failure to bring
acceptable answers to Congress about the supposed loss of former IRS official Lois Lerner's emails.
IRS backup
tapes discovered!. You can tell that this is a huge story because the Mainstream Media
are completely ignoring it, leaving Fox News the privilege of continuing to break the story that
could well be bigger than Watergate. [...] [IRS Commissioner John] Koskinen is a savvy lawyer who
realizes that if he does not inform himself of the detailed facts, he can present testimony under
oath that there is no information to his knowledge about sensitive topics, without triggering
perjury liability. He has already employed this tactic multiple times in presenting incorrect
information to the Issa Committee, based on his failure to inform himself.
IRS
experts: Lois Lerner hard drive was just 'scratched' — not damaged beyond recovery.
Top IRS officials told congressional investigators that Lois Lerner's hard drive — the
one containing emails that could shed light on the IRS targeting scandal — was
irreparably damaged before it was destroyed completely in 2011. But now, investigators have had a
chance to talk to the technical experts inside the IRS who actually examined Lerner's computer, and
the experts say the hard drive in question was actually just "scratched," and that most of the data on it was
recoverable. The IRS computer experts also told the committee that they had recommended seeking outside
help in recovering the data from Lerner's computer — something IRS management declined to do.
Lois
Lerner's Hard Drive Was 'Scratched' Then 'Shredded'. Ex-IRS official Lois Lerner's
computer hard drive was "scratched" and the data on it was still recoverable. But the IRS did not
try to recover the data from Lerner's hard drive, despite recommendations from in-house IRS IT
experts to outsource the recovery project. The hard drive was then "shredded," according to a
court filing the IRS made to House Ways and Means Committee investigators.
In the tug-of-war between the Tea Party and the IRS, the Democrats pull for the IRS. Democrat
Rep. Elijah Cummings calls for end to 'public harassment' of IRS chief John Koskinen.
The top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform panel is objecting to a plan to call
the Internal Revenue Service commissioner to testify for a third time in a matter of weeks, calling
it "public harassment of an agency head." Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., sent a letter Monday [7/21/2014]
to Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., objecting to a decision to call Commissioner John Koskinen to testify at
a hearing on Wednesday. It would be the third time Koskinen appeared before the panel in the past month,
Cummings noted.
The Editor says...
Answering questions raised by Congress is Mr. Koskinen's job. As the head of the IRS, which is currently
up to its neck in scandals, Mr. Koskinen has a lot to answer for. Congressman Cummings is making a feeble
attempt to drum up sympathy for the IRS Commissioner.
What
Happened To the IRS IT Asset Management Team? An Ohio-based trade association, the
International Association of Information Technology Asset Managers (IAITAM), wants to know why the
IRS's IT Asset Managers have apparently "disappeared at a key juncture." IAITAM administers
internationally accepted certifications for information technology professionals, and according to
their records "at least three IT Asset Managers ... were working at the IRS prior to the 13 May 2013
Inspector General Report [that detailed the IRS abuse of conservative political groups]." However,
IAITAM claims in a press release Monday [7/21/2014] that those workers "were shuffled out from those
positions around the time of the report."
6
questions about the IRS's missing emails, from IT experts. Did the IRS intentionally
lose e-mails to cover up potentially incriminating communications relating to the agency's targeting
controversy, or did the records go missing because of bad technology management? As for the latter
question, few organizations are in a better position to make an assessment of the situation than the
International Association of Information Technology Asset Managers, which deals with these types of
issues on a regular basis.
IRS:
Lerner emails may exist after all. The IRS might not have lost the backups of former
agency administrator Lois Lerner's emails after all, according to a top IRS official. In
testimony released Monday, Thomas Kane, the IRS's deputy associate chief counsel, told House
Oversight investigators last week that the agency was examining whether all the backup tapes which
held the emails have been recycled. The IRS told lawmakers in June that the tapes had been
recycled, one of the reasons that an untold number of Lerner's emails were missing. Since then, the
IRS commissioner, John Koskinen, has repeatedly stood by those statements in congressional testimony.
IRS
official: Lost Lois Lerner emails may still exist. Could the IRS have those missing
Lois Lerner emails after all? New testimony from a key Internal Revenue Service official indicates
the IRS may not have lost two years of emails sent by former top IRS official Lois Lerner after all.
That is what the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee suggested Monday morning in a newly released
transcript of a recent closed-door interview with IRS Deputy Associate Chief Counsel Thomas Kane.
IRS
seeks help destroying another 3,200 hard drives. Days after IRS officials said in a
sworn statement that former top agency employee Lois G. Lerner's computer memory had been wiped
clean, the agency put out word to contractors Monday that it needs help to destroy at least another
3,200 hard drives. The Internal Revenue Service solicitation for "media destruction" services
reflects an otherwise routine job to protect sensitive taxpayer information, but it was made while
the agency's record destruction practices remain under a sharp congressional spotlight.
Lois
Lerner emails reveal gaping open-records loophole. The Lois G. Lerner emails released
this month revealed a potentially huge loophole in federal open-records practices when an IRS tech
staffer acknowledged that the agency doesn't regularly store — and never checks —
instant message chats as official government records. Analysts say there is no question that the
Internal Revenue Service and all other federal agencies should be storing chats and even cellphone text
messages that may constitute official government documents, but a check by The Washington Times suggests
that hardly any agency is doing so.
Now
IRS Reports EVEN MORE Computer Crashes, Doesn't Know If Emails Still Exist. IRS Deputy
Associate Chief Counsel Thomas Kane said in transcribed congressional testimony that more IRS
officials experienced computer crashes, bringing the total number of crash victims to "less than
20," and also said that the agency does not know if the lost emails are still backed up
somewhere. The new round of computer crash victims includes David Fish, who routinely corresponded
with Lois Lerner, as well as Lerner subordinate Andy Megosh, Lerner's technical adviser Justin Lowe, and
Cincinnati-based agent Kimberly Kitchens
Rep.
Stockman: Still Waiting for NSA Metadata on Lois Lerner's Emails. Rep. Steve Stockman
(R-Tex.) says he's still waiting for the National Security Agency (NSA) to hand over metadata of
emails sent by former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) official Lois Lerner, which he says is an
appropriate request by Congress to get to the bottom of the IRS scandal and protect Americans' First
Amendment rights. On June 13, Stockman sent a letter to NSA Director Michael Rogers requesting
that the agency "produce all metadata it has collected on all of Ms. Lerner's email accounts for the
period between January 2009 and April 2011." Stockman said he sent the letter just hours after the
IRS blamed a "computer glitch" for the allegedly lost emails, which House Republicans subpoenaed in
their investigation of whether the IRS inappropriately targeted certain conservative groups for
political reasons.
Lois
Lerner's Illegal Instant Message Trick. It was so brazen. Right there, over email,
Lois Lerner warned her colleagues "Congress has asked for emails... so we need to be cautious about
what we say in emails." Then she asked whether the IRS's instant messaging application was being
archived, and was told that — contrary to law — archiving had been disabled.
She responded: "Perfect."
IRS:
Lerner's hard drive was wiped clean in 2011. The IRS said under oath Friday [7/18/2014] that
former agency official Lois Lerner's hard drive was destroyed and recycled, echoing earlier testimony from
its commissioner. In its most extensive comments yet on Lerner's hard drive, the agency said in court
filings Friday that the hard drive was destroyed in 2011 to protect confidential taxpayer information.
Before that, the IRS said, the hard drive underwent a process designed to permanently erase stored data.
That process occurred after a series of IRS technical officers examined Lerner's hard drive, and found that
it couldn't be restored after a crash.
The Editor asks...
What are the names of those "IRS technical officers," and how did they wipe the data off Lois Lerner's
hard drive if it had "crashed?"
Former
Congressman Says 'Arrest and Confine' Lois Lerner Until She Talks!. Congressman Steve
Stockman, fresh from visiting the Texas border, was interviewed on TPNN's "The Capitol Hill Show"
with fill-in host, former Congressman Ernest Istook on Friday, to discuss the Obama border crisis,
the impeachment of Barack Obama, and whether to arrest the Obama IRS's Lois Lerner.
Department
of Justice: We Heard About IRS Missing Emails On The News. James Cole, deputy attorney
general in the Department of Justice, testified Thursday [7/17/2014] that the DOJ heard about the destruction
of IRS officials' emails in the news, even though DOJ has formally been investigating the IRS for more
than a year. "I think we learned about it after that, from press accounts," Cole told House
Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan at a hearing Thursday on the
DOJ's response to the wave of computer crashes at the IRS that wiped out seven different employees'
hard drives.
Would
You Believe, Another Crashed Hard Drive? House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Monday [7/14/2014] made yet another request to the federal
government for details about a crashed hard drive that may have contained information allowing criminal
charges to be brought against a federal official. Issa's newest letter concerns the hard drive of
April Sands, a former employee at the Federal Election Commission who resigned in the spring after
admitting to violations of the Hatch Act. That law puts restrictions on the ability of government
officials to conduct political activities while on the job, or from government offices.
Resolution
Filed for Arrest of Lois Lerner. On Thursday, Tea Party Congressman Steve Stockman
announced that he and several other lawmakers had "filed a resolution directing the Sergeant-at-Arms
to arrest Lois Lerner for contempt." Lerner has been at the center of the IRS scandal as she was
the head of the nonprofit department that oversaw tax exempt status designations. She and the IRS
waged a years-long campaign of harassment against Tea Party groups in an apparent effort to stymie
political efficacy. On Wednesday [7/9/2014], Congress discovered emails that show an attempt by
Lerner to cover her tracks as investigators investigated her department's actions.
IRS
scandal: Lois Lerner's 'perfect' method for hiding emails. At what most expected to be
a relatively routine House oversight committee hearing on Wednesday [7/9/2014], there was yet
another IRS bombshell. On April 9, 2013, just days after seeing the draft Treasury Inspector
General Report that revealed the IRS's massive Tea Party targeting scheme, Lois Lerner, then
director of exempt organizations at the IRS, sent an email to an IRS IT official asking whether the
IRS's internal chat system was searchable. What's equally as troubling and unbelievable is that
congressional investigators and the American people learned of this internal chat system only on
Wednesday — the first time this critical communications method inside the IRS was disclosed.
House
Drafting Statement to Arrest Lois Lerner for Contempt. Lerner has come under renewed
scrutiny this week on two fronts. Emails show that she was aware of a key email that later went
"missing." More importantly, other released emails show that she sought to hide information from
Congress as it was investigating the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups. The House has the power to
arrest and jail on charges of contempt.
Lois Lerner email: "we need to be cautious about what we say in emails". This
evidences a consciousness of guilt, even if somewhat after the fact of the harassment of conservative groups. She's also not
the brightest bulb in the theater — if you are worried about saying incriminating things in emails because Congress may
discover the emails, don't talk about it in emails.
Second
federal judge tells IRS to explain lost Lerner emails. U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton told Obama
administration lawyers on Friday [7/11/2014] he wants to see an affidavit explaining what happened with Lerner's hard drive.
The IRS claims her computer suffered a crash in 2011 that wiped her email records at the time clean. But at a hearing
examining a lawsuit against the IRS by conservative group True the Vote, Walton said he wants to know what happened to Lerner's
hard drive, which allegedly was recycled. He asked for an affidavit from those involved in handling the crashed drive.
Federal
judge to IRS: Explain these "lost" e-mails, please ... under oath. The excuse of "the
hard drive ate my homework" flies just as well in federal court as it does in any middle school, it
seems. After Judicial Watch filed a complaint over the lack of notice on their FOIA demand that the
Lois Lerner e-mails no longer existed, a federal judge ordered the IRS to explain what happened within
30 days — and that explanation has to come under oath.
Lois Lerner Did Print Out 'Some'
Emails, After All. Lerner's lawyer Bill Taylor initially claimed that Lerner did not print out and file her emails,
as the Federal Records Act required her to do, before they allegedly went missing in a 2011 computer crash and her hard drive
was "recycled" by the IRS. Taylor also claimed that Lerner "did not think it was required," despite clear instructions for
employees on the IRS website. But now the story is changing. Taylor told a Virginia-based publication Wednesday that
Lerner printed out "some" of her emails. "During her tenure as Director of Exempt Organizations, she did print out some
emails, although not every one of the thousands she sent and received," Taylor said.
Lawyer: Lerner may have printed some
emails. Former IRS official Lois Lerner said she warned her colleagues to be careful about what they write in emails
amid congressional inquiries, according to new emails released by House Oversight Republicans. She also asked whether the IRS's
internal messaging system could be searched, in the same email to an IRS colleague. It was sent April 9, 2013, less than
two weeks after the IRS inspector general that unearthed the tea party targeting practice shared a draft report with the agency.
What
Lois Lerner told her IRS colleagues not to say in emails. Embattled former Internal Revenue Service senior executive
Lois Lerner cautioned colleagues against including comments in official emails and text messages that might be seen by Congress.
"I was cautioning folks about email and how we have several occasions where Congress has asked for emails and there has been an
electronic search for responsive emails — so we need to be cautious about what we say in emails," Lerner said in an
April 9, 2013, email to IRS technology staff member Maria Hooke and Nannette Downing, manager of the IRS Exempt Organizations
Exam Unit. "Someone asked if OCS conversations were also searchable — I don't know, but told them I would get
back to them. Do you know," Lerner asked.
Former
IRS Director: IRS Scandal Due to Budget Restrictions. A former IRS director said Tuesday that IRS mismanagement
was due to budget restrictions and a backlog of applications, claiming it had nothing to do with tax-exempt organizations.
"This issue with the IRS performance has been building for a long time, and critical decisions were made actually back in 2003.
Training was cut back dramatically in 2003 because of budget restrictions," said Marcus Owens, former director for the Exempt
Organizations Division of the IRS for 10 years, during a panel discussion hosted by Citizens for Responsibility and
Ethics in Washington (CREW) at the Capitol.
Federal
Judge Orders IRS to Explain Lost Emails. A federal judge on Thursday [7/10/2014] ordered the IRS to explain
under oath how it lost a trove of emails to and from a central figure in the agency's tea party controversy.
Republicans
Say Ex-I.R.S. Official May Have Circumvented Email. Lois Lerner, the former Internal
Revenue Service official at the center of an investigation into the agency's treatment of
conservative political groups, may have used an internal instant-messaging system instead of email
so that her communications could not be retrieved by investigators, Republican lawmakers said
Wednesday [7/9/2014]. The accusation against Ms. Lerner, the former head of the agency's division
on tax exemption, came nearly a week after the I.R.S. gave investigators thousands of her emails, including
some that were destroyed when her hard drive crashed in 2011 but were recovered from the accounts of people
with whom she had corresponded.
IRS
Official Whose Computer Crashed Was Responsible For Spinning Congress On Targeting. Nikole Flax
served as ex-IRS official Lois Lerner's point person on delaying and reviewing all IRS responses to questions
about what Lerner called "c4 stuff." Flax was tasked with emailing "affirmative messages" to IRS
officials if she approved of their responses to questions about the targeting. Flax, a frequent White
House visitor, is one of seven IRS employees whose emails were allegedly destroyed in a wave of computer
crashes that afflicted the IRS' Washington and Cincinnati offices.
Litigating Lost E-mails.
[Scroll down] In such a hearing, all the absurdities, all of the impossible coincidences, all the smirking lies
would be brought before justices who are unaccustomed to lawyers arrogantly telling them childish fabrications.
These justices would then be able to interrogate those who have been having fun committing perjury to a House committee.
Given this current attitude by the high court towards Obama's duplicitous behavior, it is likely that the Supreme Court
would find that the Obama administration is not acting in good faith to produce the e-mails. The court might then
issue an order compelling officials to produce the records or be found in contempt of court.
Lois
Lerner discussed new IRS 'scrutiny' guidelines same month her emails disappeared.
Former Internal Revenue Service executive Lois Lerner, once the head of the division which oversaw
tax-exemption applications, spoke at a 2010 government conference where she joined former chief of
staff to the IRS commissioner Nikole Flax, in discussing new guidelines the agency would use when
scrutinizing applications. According to a report via The Daily Caller's Patrick Howley, Flax and
Lerner both briefed federal bureaucrats on the new approach to vetting groups applying for tax-exempt status
apparently amid a series of computer crashes that permanently deleted the emails of both IRS officials.
Court
Grants Judicial Watch Hearing Over Missing IRS Emails. Judicial Watch filed a Motion
for Status Conference in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to confer
about the emails of Lois Lerner and other IRS officials, which were the subject of longstanding
Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and a lawsuit, and which the IRS now
claims to have "lost" (Judicial Watch v. IRS (No. 1:13-cv — 1559)). U.S. District
Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan almost immediately granted our request and ordered a federal court
hearing on the missing IRS emails be set for July 10!
Another
federal judge tells IRS to explain itself on lost emails. The IRS recently told
Congress that a mysterious crash of the hard drives last year irretrievably destroyed nearly two
years of emails to and from Lerner and the others to and from people in other federal agencies,
including the White House. But True the Vote wants a digital forensics expert from outside the
IRS to assess the evidence. "Even if the ill-timed hard drive 'crash' was truly an accident, and
even if the IRS genuinely believes that the emails are 'unrecoverable,' the circumstances of the
spoliation at issue cry out for a second opinion," True the Vote's attorneys told Walton in the
motion filed late Monday [6/30/2014].
Shifting Sands.
This week, the efforts to push the IRS scandal under the carpet seem to be unavailing. Increased
numbers of IT experts say the crashed drive story is implausible. [...] In fact, no one seems to be
buying the IRS tale. A Fox news Poll indicates 76% of Americans believe the IRS deliberately
destroyed the emails evincing it had deliberately targeted Obama's opponents in violation of the
law. Capping off the week, we learned that the EPA is now also claiming crashed drives destroyed
a critical email trail.
Lois
Lerner's unconvincing defenders. Judging from an appearance on CNN by former IRS
executive Lois Lerner's attorney, William Taylor III, the embattled former IRS official at the
center of the targeting scandal is embracing an argument similar to the White House's defense of
the IRS as a whole: Republicans are on a political witch-hunt. More accurately, Taylor's
defense of his client is based on the notion that Lerner is the real victim of targeting here.
Lois
Lerner Attorney Claims She Pleaded The Fifth To Avoid Being Bullied. Sunday [6/29/2014] on CNN's "State of the Union," former
IRS official Lois Lerner's attorney, William Taylor was questioned by host Candy Crowley about why she would pled the fifth if she was
innocent. "If she's done nothing wrong she doesn't need to be subjected to the kind of bullying that goes on in that committee,"
Taylor said.
Lois Lerner Fights
Back! Let's look at his opening move: "She doesn't know what happened," Taylor said
of the 2011 computer crash that erased two years' worth of Lerner's correspondence. "It's a little
brazen to think she did this on purpose." First, he is actually asserting that she didn't do it on
purpose. But it did happen, so she either she did accidentally or someone with reach power and
understanding of the consequences of the e-mails ordered it done.
Lois
Lerner's Lawyer: 'A Little Brazen' to Say She Purposely Destroyed Hard Drive. Lois
Lerner is back in the news cycle after the IRS told a House committee recently a chunk of her
emails are missing because of a failed hard drive, with House Republicans holding multiple hearings
on the matter in the past week. And in an interview with POLITICO, Lerner's lawyer says it's "a
little brazen to think she did this on purpose." William Taylor III says all the Republican
hand-wringing about Lerner doing something sinister is just "silly" because, he said, she honestly
doesn't know what happened to the emails. He charges that Republican "critics of Ms. Lerner and the
IRS seize indiscriminately on small pieces of fact to claim they prove scandal." Taylor also
claims that Lerner "requested that IT use every possible resource" to fix the hard drive in 2011
after she discovered it crashed.
The IRS Says
It Lost a Bunch of Lois Lerner's Emails. That Deserves More Scrutiny. The loss of a
personal computer hard drive shouldn't be able to permanently eliminate emails from a well-run
workplace email system. Those emails are run through central email exchange servers, and backups
are typically kept using those central exchanges. Add to that Lerner's prominence in the
investigation — she has repeatedly declined to answer questions before Congress, invoking
her Fifth Amendment right not to self-incriminate — and the year it took for the IRS to
inform the House Ways and Means Committee that the emails were lost in a crash, and the dog-ate-my-emails
bit starts to smell rather fishy.
Breaking:
Meet Emmet Sullivan, IRS Judge Who Once Sicced a Special Prosecutor on DOJ. Americans are appalled over
the false testimony of four consecutive IRS Commissioners, Lois Lerner's countless acts of malfeasance, and the IRS's
targeting of conservative groups and specific individuals, among them Senator Grassley. The ultimate outrage came
over the lame, intellectually insulting assertions that all of the most relevant emails have gone missing from multiple IRS
computers at the same time.
About
That 'Server Ate My Emails' Thing. Is the IRS really claiming both the IRS' mail
server and Lois Lerner's local hard-drive crashed? If the server's hard-drive failed, that would
mean email for everyone within the organization who had an account on that particular mail server
would not be able to access their email accounts. Email still being sent from other email accounts
on the same mail server that hosted Lois Lerner's account, and during the same time period that Lerner
claims her hard-drive crashed, would indicate the mail server was still operational, despite any
misfortune that befell Lerner's local hard-drive.
IT
Trade Association Questions Whether Lerner's Emails Were Destroyed. Were Lois Lerner's
allegedly lost emails actually destroyed? An Ohio-based trade association, the International
Association of Information Technology Asset Managers (IAITAM), isn't so sure, and they don't find IRS
commissioner Koskinen's explanation of their loss very plausible. IAITAM administers internationally
accepted certifications for information technology professionals. According to the group's standards,
if Lerner's supposedly malfunctioning hardware was properly destroyed, there would be records of it.
'Suspicious':
Experts, GOP lawmakers question Lerner's lost email explanation. IRS Commissioner
John Koskinen, in testimony on Capitol Hill this week, cited those emails as proof of the hard
drive crash. But Lerner's communications with the agency's IT team referred to her desire to
retrieve "lost personal files" — not lost emails. And that detail is "very
suspicious," according to David Kennedy, chief executive of information security firm TrustedSec.
Kennedy said that when government computers crash, email recovery should be a priority. But in
Lerner's communication with the IT team, "There is no talk about the recovery of the emails,"
Kennedy said, adding, "It didn't seem like they really wanted to recover the data."
It's
Time For AG Holder To Appoint A Special Counsel To Investigate The IRS. You may have
heard that the Internal Revenue Service has lost some emails. We are going to help the agency find
them — either on their own, or through an investigation by a Special Counsel. These
aren't just any emails. They are emails from 2009 through 2011 that Lois Lerner sent as head of the
division of the IRS responsible for targeting conservative groups based on their political beliefs.
In March, the IRS promised to turn over these emails as part of the ongoing congressional investigations
into political targeting. Now the agency says they are lost, the result of an untimely crash of Lois
Lerner's hard drive. Other key employees' emails are lost too, apparently the result of the
coincidental demise of additional IRS hard drives.
The
sleeper case that could bust open the IRS scandals. In the absence of a special
prosecutor, the best opportunity for piercing the veil of secrecy and evasion that surrounds the
IRS handling of groups perceived as enemies of the Obama administration lies in civil litigation.
The National Organization for Marriage has just obtained a $50,000 settlement from the IRS for its
criminal release of confidential donor information to an opposition group. But so far Eric Holder's
Justice Department is not pursuing inquiries into who feloniously released that information.
IRS Spent $4.4 Billion on
IT. The IRS under the Obama Administration has spent over $4 billion on contracts
labeled under information technology and software despite IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testifying
this week that budgetary restraints prevented the agency from spending $10 million to save and
store emails. Koskinen said "declining budget resources" at the IRS caused the agency decided to
reject spending the $10 million needed to ensure emails were properly secured. A review of IRS
spending by the Free Beacon shows the agency has spent a massive amount on what it labeled as
IT/software and data processing contracts in the past five fiscal years. The official government's
spending website shows the IRS spent $4.4 billion during this time period.
Blitzer
Grills IRS Head: Why Shouldn't Taxpayers Use 'Crashed Hard Drive' Argument? After
days of getting hammered by Republican members of Congress on Capitol Hill over the last few days,
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen sat down with Wolf Blitzer on The Situation Room Thursday
afternoon [6/26/2014] and attempted to defend his agency's reaction to the scandal involving Lois
Lerner's missing emails. "I apologize to anybody who had their applications held up needlessly,"
Koskinen said. [E]verybody needs to be confident that the IRS is going to treat them fairly,
Republicans, Democrats, whatever organization they belong to. It's a serious matter."
Email
reveals how Lois Lerner targeted GOP Senator after she accidentally received invitation meant for
him. Congressional investigators say they uncovered emails Wednesday [6/25/2014]
showing that a former Internal Revenue Service official at the heart of the Tea Party targeting
scandal also sought to audit Republican Senator Chuck Grassley in 2012. According to the emails,
former IRS official Lois Lerner mistakenly received an invitation to an event that was meant for
the Iowa Senator. An event organizer had offered to pay for Grassley's wife, Barbara Ann,
to attend the event. In an email to other IRS officials, Lerner suggests referring the matter
for an audit. 'Perhaps we should refer to exam?' Lerner wrote in a December 4, 2012 email.
Meet
The Seven IRS Employees Whose Computers 'Crashed'. The Federal Records Act requires
IRS employees to save all of their emails pertaining to agency business and to also print those
emails out in case they have a computer crash. IRS commissioner John Koskinen claimed in
testimony in March that the IRS employees' emails were saved on servers, but then testified this
month that he doesn't know of any "magical way" to get the missing emails back. The IRS canceled
its six-year business relationship with the email-archiving firm Sonasoft in September 2011, weeks
after Lerner's computer crash, and also prematurely retired data storage devices at its IT offices
in Maryland.
IRS scandal
evolving too fast for reporters to ignore. A handful of former IRS executive Lois
Lerner's emails released by the House Ways and Means Committee seem to be serving as a Rorschach
test for political actors and members of the press alike. For some, the early reaction to those
emails revealed more about an individual's thinking about the IRS scandal, and the Republican-led
House committees, than it did about the alleged misconduct of one of the country's most powerful
law enforcement agencies.
Gohmert
and Flores Propose $1M Bounty for Lerner E-mails. Representatives Bill Flores and
Louie Gohmert, both Texas Republicans, have proposed a million dollar bounty for the recovery of
former IRS official Lois Lerner's e-mails. They've filed the Identify and Recover Sent Emails
Act, which, if passed, would award $500,000 to anyone with "pertinent information sufficient for
prosecution" of anyone involved in the destruction of Lerner's e-mails or a cool $1 million to
anyone who can recover the e-mails outright. How is the sizeable bounty to be funded?
From the IRS budget.
Jon
Stewart: IRS, federal government behavior 'borders on criminal idiocy'. Comedian Jon
Stewart isn't impressed with the Internal Revenue Service's story that it simply lost Lois Lerner
emails during a 2011 hard drive crash, saying that the government's behavior "across all platforms
borders on criminal idiocy." In response to the agency's assertion that IRS employees had an
email quota of 150 megabytes per mailbox he replied, "That's 1 percent of what Gmail
offers users for free," he said Tuesday [6/24/2014].
Lerner
sought IRS audit of sitting GOP senator, emails show. Congressional investigators have uncovered
emails showing ex-IRS official Lois Lerner targeted a sitting Republican senator for a proposed internal audit, a
discovery one GOP lawmaker called "shocking." The emails were published late Wednesday [6/25/2014] by the
House Ways and Means Committee and pertain to the woman at the heart of the scandal over IRS targeting of
Tea Party groups.
One
Million Dollar IRS Bounty Offered For Info Leading to White House. With idea that
surely someone somewhere knows something, one of the non-profits that was victimized by the IRS, is
offering a million dollar bounty for smoking gun evidence that leads to the White House. In May,
Catherine Englebrecht's group, True the Vote created The IRS Bounty which offers a million dollar
"crowd-funded award for new, relevant evidence implicating IRS senior leadership or Obama White
House officials in the IRS scandal."
Media
Bias and the Obama Scandals. If you are a New York Times reader, let me bring
you up to date: the IRS, urged on by Democratic Party politicians, has gone to considerable lengths
to suppress conservative-oriented nonprofit organizations. Among many other things, it sent
1.1 million pages of documents, some of them confidential materials that it is a felony to disclose,
to the FBI, encouraging the FBI to stir up criminal prosecutions of conservative donors. When its
activities came to light, the IRS stonewalled and likely destroyed incriminating documents, while its key
employee refused to testify under oath, relying on her privilege against self-incrimination. Scandal, anyone?
Now
EPA says it can't find emails requested by Congress because of hard drive crash. Does
the federal government have any systems at all to back its email archives? Maybe not, because the
Environmental Protection Agency is now using the same excuse as the IRS is using in response to a
Congressional subpoena: the computer ate our homework.
Trail Of Lost IRS Emails Might
Lead To White House. One of the seven people, including Lois Lerner who lost emails from the period of Tea Party targeting by
the IRS, served as chief of staff to former IRS head Steven Miller. She also made 35 visits to the White House. The funny
thing about emails is that they are never orphans. When you send one, there's always a recipient who has his or her own copy. The
"lost" Lois Lerner emails had recipients. How about subpoenas to all of them during the Tea Party targeting period?
IRS
Commissioner: 'I Do Not Remember' How I Was Told Lerner Emails Lost. While Jim Jordan
(R., Ohio) grilled IRS Commissioner John Koskinen about the first time he learned his agency had
lost Lois Lerner's emails, Koskinen insisted he remembers nothing about the situation. When Jordan
responded incredulously, Koskinen explained, "We were in the middle of filing season as all this
was going on."
IRS's Own Employee Manual Proves They Are Lying. ["]Refrain from sending large
attachments to work groups or audiences. Remember every email message and any attachments, embedded graphics and photographs require a copy
for each Exchange server store where each recipient's mailbox resides.["]
Welcome
To The Executive Dictatorship. There is almost nothing the president of the United
States cannot do. This week, we found out President Barack Obama's IRS not only targeted
conservative nonprofit applicants with impunity but then destroyed the emails that could have
illuminated the process behind such targeting. Meanwhile, the attorney general — the
executive officer charged with fighting government criminality — continues to stonewall
an independent prosecutor, maintaining along with his boss that there is not a "smidgen of
corruption" in the IRS.
IRS
Failed to Share News of Lost Lerner Emails. Testifying before the House Oversight
Committee today, U.S. Archivist David S. Ferriero said the IRS failed, as required by law, to
notify him that records — in this case the lost emails of Lois Lerner — had
been destroyed. "They did not follow the law," Ferriero said. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen
testified Monday [6/23/2014] that he knew of the lost email records in April and didn't tell a soul, not even
the committee to which he had promised to provide them.
The Merger of
the Party and the State. If you suspected that the Administration's plan was to
stonewall until things die down and it was safe to resume ruining the lives of its opponents, [IRS
Commissioner John] Koskinen's performance in recent days would have more or less confirmed it.
[...] On his previous appearance before Congress, the IRS Commissioner gave false testimony. As he
has now conceded, he has known since February that Lois Lerner's and other officials' emails were
"lost" and "irretrievable". Gone, forever, and the hard drives destroyed. Yet the following month
he was asked by Trey Gowdy why the IRS was taking so long to cough up the requested emails, and
said that it was because they had to be "screened". That was a lie.
Scarborough
Savages NYT For Burying IRS Email Scandal: 'This Is A Scam!' Co-host Mika Brzezinski
had just wrapped up explaining another possible scandal for New Jersey Republican Governor Chris
Christie, involving diverted funds for the Pulaski Skyway, when Scarborough pounced on the
newspaper. "Let's see, so this is the top of The New York Times," he began. "I'm trying to
figure out where the IRS story — is it on the front page? Because actually, there
was an investigation launched yesterday of the IRS — an internal investigation."
Mark
Levin: Democrat Response to House IRS Email Inquiry a 'Cover-up,' 'Criminal Corruption'. On
his Monday [6/23/2014] radio show, conservative talk show Mark Levin reacted to how congressional Democrats in a
House Oversight Hearing had conducted themselves earlier over the committee's inquiry into missing emails related
to an investigation of former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner. [...] "So let me be very blunt about
it — the Democratic Party now is conducting itself as the mob," Levin said. "The Democratic
Party is in a full-scale cover-up on this scandal — even more than Benghazi, on the IRS scandal.
"White House Learned of Lerner's Crashed Hard Drive 6 Weeks Before Congress". This is
criminal. No two ways about it. All of it. It matters not that the hard drives of key players crashed in ways that were statistically
near impossible; because the information is still out there somewhere [the NSA, perhaps, as noted by BBH in the comments? Or archived by an
off-site back up company?], and forensics experts would be able to find it. But Boehner still has not empaneled a select committee —
and no one is ever going to get to actual bottom of this if Congress can help it, because as I've surmised since day 1 of this breaking
scandal, it isn't only Democrats who were complicit, either actively or by omission, in the targeting of TEA Party groups.
IRS
Chief Admits: WH Wrong that Scandal Was Just 'Rogue Agents'. [Rep. Trey] Gowdy
pointed out that the White House inserted itself in the controversy, and asked whether the White
House's claim that misconduct was conducted solely by "two rogue agents in Ohio" was correct.
Koskinen responded, "Not that I know of." Gowdy then pressed Koskinen, and got him to admit that
the White House inserted itself into the scandal, and that a scandal could exist, even if it didn't
reach the White House.
IRS
Head Gets Cute About 'Lost' Emails & Has the Grin Wiped Off His Face. During a rare
Monday night hearing [6/23/2014], House Republicans hammered embattled IRS commissioner John
Koskinen over the "lost" Lois Lerner emails and over his continued insistence that there was no
criminal wrongdoing in their coincidental disappearance. While, as to be expected, Rep. Trey
Gowdy (R-SC) repeatedly challenged Koskinen, for instance, when he demanded that he cite a
particular statute or statutes (law, viz.) on which to base his claim that no criminal wrongdoing
occurred. When the commissioner replied, "you can rely on common sense," Gowdy went off: [...]
Fournier
to CNN: 'I Was Naive' to Give Obama Benefit of the Doubt on IRS. "A year ago exactly
tomorrow I called for a special prosecutor in this case while giving the president the benefit of
the doubt," he told CNN's John King. "I now realize how naive I was to give the administration the
benefit of the doubt. This needs to be investigated by an independent prosecutor." Congress has
now held several dramatic interrogations of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen over Lerner's missing
emails. Associated Press White House correspondent Julie Pace added that even if the lost emails
represented no sinister intent, the IRS wasn't exactly acting apologetic to a public that doesn't
yet believe its story.
CNN
Reporter Spars with Earnest on IRS Emails: Like Saying 'Dog Ate My Homework'. Josh
Earnest once again faced some tough questioning from reporters on his second day as White House
press secretary Tuesday, this time about missing emails tied to the IRS targeting scandal. CNN's
Jim Acosta confronted Earnest about the lack of evidence, which to him sounded like "the dog ate my
homework" excuse. "On the face of it, it doesn't sound credible," Acosta said. Earnest pushed
back, saying, "If you listen solely to the arguments that are offered up by Republicans, you might
have reason to question their credibility."
National
Archives boss: IRS 'did not follow the law' on lost Lerner emails. The top U.S.
official in charge of archiving federal records testified Tuesday that the IRS ran afoul of the law
by neglecting to tell his office that a trove of emails from the woman at the center of the
targeting scandal disappeared after an apparent hard drive crash. Archivist of the U.S. David
Ferriero, speaking before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, made clear that
federal agencies are supposed to report whenever their records are destroyed or even accidentally
deleted. But he said that after emails from embattled IRS official Lois Lerner vanished after a
computer failure in 2011, nobody told the National Archives. "They did not follow the law,"
Ferriero said.
Smoking
Gun in the IRS Scandal? During questioning by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman
Darrell Issa at his June 23, 2014 appearance and testimony, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen provided
a startling revelation, one that could conceivably lead to the dam bursting in the IRS scandal. At
the 2:21-2:28 mark of his testimony, Koskinen said: ["]All emails are not official records under
any official records Act, only emails are saved that reflect agency actions.["] [...] Koskinen's above
statement, coupled with the utterly ridiculous notion that the emails of seven IRS personnel potentially
implicated in the scandal have been lost forever, strains credulity, never mind common sense.
Fox
News Poll: Voters think IRS emails were deliberately destroyed. The consensus is:
it's no accident. More than three-quarters of voters — 76 percent —
think the emails missing from the account of Lois Lerner, the ex-IRS official at the center of the scandal
over targeting of conservative groups, were deliberately destroyed. That's according to a new Fox
News poll. That suspicion is shared across party lines, albeit to varying degrees. An
overwhelming 90 percent of Republicans think the emails were intentionally destroyed, as do
74 percent of independents and 63 percent of Democrats.
Issa:
'Serious Questions' Tonight for the IRS Commissioner. The House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee will hear testimony from IRS Commissioner John Koskinen in a rare,
prime-time hearing Monday night [6/23/2014]. "We have some serious questions for the
commissioner," Committee Chair Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) told Fox News Monday morning. "The
biggest one being, you came before us, you said you'd tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth, under oath. Do you believe you told the whole truth? Of course, the answer is, he
did not tell the whole truth."
Reminder:
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen is Major Democratic Donor. IRS Commissioner John
Koskinen is in the spotlight as he is set to further testify to Congress regarding the IRS
targeting of conservative groups. It is important to remember that Koskinen has shelled out nearly
$100,000 to Democratic candidates and groups. Koskinen has been contributing to Democrats for
four decades, starting with a $1000 contribution to Democratic candidate for Colorado Senate
candidate Gary Hart in 1979. Koskinen has been a reliable donor over the years, contributing a
total of $19,000 to the Democratic National Committee from 1988 to 2008. He has made a contribution
to the Democratic candidate for president in each election since 1980, including $2,300 to Obama in
2008, and $5000 to Obama in 2012.
'We
have a problem with you, and you have a problem maintaining your credibility'.
[Scroll down] Just ten days ago the IRS informed congressional investigators that a hard
drive crash had destroyed 28 months of emails to and from Lerner, who led the IRS's office in
charge of vetting and policing tax-exempt nonprofit groups. In an opening statement Monday night [6/23/2014],
Koskinen argued that 'it is not unusual for computers anywhere to fail, especially at the IRS in
light of the aged equipment IRS employees often have to use in light of the continual cuts in its
budget these past four years.' 'Since Jan. 1 of this year, for example,' he claimed,
'over 2,000 employees have suffered hard drive crashes.'
Fireworks
Erupt After GOP Rep Tells IRS Boss His Personal Integrity Is in Question. Monday
night at a evening congressional hearing on the Internal Revenue Service claims that Lois Lerner's
email's were lost due to a computer crash, Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) confronted agency commissioner
John Koskinen over whether he had contacted the FBI since he claimed he "can not say no crime was
committed," and that Lerner had pleaded the Fifth Amendment "to avoid criminal prosecution."
Turner grilled Koskinen demanding to know why the FBI has not be contacted asking, "Will you call
the FBI, integrity of your agency is absolutely at stake?"
An
arrogant and lawless IRS. It is a mix of arrogance and delusion that
seems designed to incense Republicans. Koskinen had delayed informing Congress of the lost e-mails
for months, even while assuring members they would be provided. "It was my decision that we
complete the investigation," he said, "so we could fully advise you as to what the situation was."
Translation from management-speak: We wanted to get our story straight before we advised you of
anything. Koskinen complained about the breadth of subpoenas and the "piecemealing out" of
information. Translation: We will provide you what we want when we want. "Every
e-mail," Koskinen assured the House Ways and Means Committee, "has been preserved that we have."
Except the ones they don't have — and somehow snuffed out, tied to an anvil and thrown
into the ocean.
Declarations Of
War. [Scroll down] I cannot remember an exchange between an appointed Cabinet
official and an elected federal legislator that's remotely comparable to these. Commissioner
Koskinen's arrogance and defiance are unprecedented. He appears unconcerned with what might follow
his open refusal to cooperate with the investigation, the most important such since Teapot Dome. No
appointee concerned with his tenure in his position would exhibit such an attitude except after having
secured assurance of protection against any significant penalty. Such protection could only issue
from higher up in the Administration: specifically, from the White House.
Readers
School Politico on 'Missing' IRS Emails. [Scroll down] ["]Most large corporate
and government entities keep backups possibly forever. Been in this business a long time,
contracting for both. Both corporate and government user emails are archived or mandated to archive
if the size reaches whatever limit set by their exchange (or other email) servers. In addition,
periodic backups of all servers (most weekly, some more often) would mean there are redundant
offsite backups, hundreds (thousands if incremental).["]
IRS
Cancelled Contract with Email-Storage Firm Weeks After Lerner's Computer Crash. The
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) cancelled its longtime relationship with an email-storage contractor
just weeks after ex-IRS official Lois Lerner's computer crashed and shortly before other IRS
officials' computers allegedly crashed. The IRS signed a contract with Sonasoft, an
email-archiving company based in San Jose, California, each year from 2005 to 2010. The company,
which partners with Microsoft and counts The New York Times among its clients, claims in its
company slogans that it provides "Email Archiving Done Right" and "Point-Click Recovery." Sonasoft
in 2009 tweeted, "If the IRS uses Sonasoft products to backup their servers why wouldn't you choose
them to protect your servers?" Sonasoft was providing "automatic data processing" services for
the IRS throughout the January 2009 to April 2011 period in which Lerner sent her missing emails.
Questions
Mount About Effort to Drive Democrat Votes for Cochran. [Scroll down] Two
observations about the Sonasoft story: first, the IRS's cancellation of the Sonasoft contract
occurred in the context of a $1.8 billion annual budget for information services, plus $330 million
annually for "business systems modernization." All of that, and the IRS couldn't afford an email
archiving service? Not only that, it had to recycle its backup tapes to save money? Ridiculous.
Paul
Ryan Unloads on IRS Commissioner in Hearing. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Friday laid into IRS Commissioner John
Koskinen for failing to keep Congress informed about the lost Lois Lerner emails, and was forced to conclude that he cannot believe Koskinen's testimony.
"This is unbelievable," Ryan began. "I am sitting here listening to this testimony... I just, I don't believe it. That's your problem, nobody
believes you."
White House Calls IRS
Investigation A 'Conspiracy Theory'. Friday at the daily briefing, White House press secretary Josh Earnest repeatedly dismissed
concerns over Internal Revenue Service claims that two years of Lois Lerner's emails are lost forever as "conspiracy theories."
Reference material: Spoliation of evidence. The spoliation of evidence is the
intentional or negligent withholding, hiding, altering, or destroying of evidence relevant to a legal proceeding. [...] The spoliation inference is a negative evidentiary inference
that a finder of fact can draw from a party's destruction of a document or thing that is relevant to an ongoing or reasonably foreseeable
civil or criminal proceeding: the finder of fact can review all evidence uncovered in as strong a light as possible against the
spoliator and in favor of the opposing party.
Black's Law Dictionary, 1991, page 1401.
Krauthammer's
Take: IRS Playing 'Adversarial Game' with Lerner Emails. Putting aside the validity of whether the emails are totally erased,
Krauthammer said the commissioner could at least acknowledge the frustrations caused by their absence, but instead defiantly claimed the agency
had nothing to apologize for during a recent congressional hearing. Instead, the administration has played an "adversarial game" with the
Congress throughout the process. "That's why people feel there is a true scandal underneath here because of the way in which they are
concealing, and delaying, and stonewalling," he said.
About Those Missing Emails.
Lois Lerner's emails are lost, and they need finding. In the meantime, their very disappearance tells us that Congress is sniffing
down the right trail. A year into congressional investigations of IRS targeting, we know two things beyond a doubt. We
know from the public record that starting in 2010 the most powerful leaders of the Democratic Party — President Obama, Senate
chairmen, House Democrats — ran a ceaseless campaign pressuring the IRS to silence conservative groups.
The Lost IRS E-mails Exist! When
you write an e-mail, it goes to your server to be sent to the person you e-mailed. Your server keeps a copy of that e-mail, and
of all your e-mails — sent and received. [...] When you read your e-mails from your PC, tablet, or smartphone, they are
all accessing the e-mails that reside on the server. The only reason you can access them from different devices is because
they exist on the server. We went through this with Al Gore years ago, when he destroyed his PC and supposedly lost
his e-mails. It was bogus then, and it's bogus now.
Kim Strassel and the WSJ on the Lost IRS Emails.
According to Strassel's column today [6/20/2014], the contents of Lois Lerner's hard drive were wiped out by forces unknown "about
10 days after the Camp letter arrived," that is to say, a letter from House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp inquiring into
targeting of conservative groups. [...] Thank heavens for Kim Strassel and her colleagues at the WSJ, because otherwise it
would seem as if few in the press were willing to focus serious investigative attention on this extraordinary scandal.
IRS
Official Whose Emails Were "Lost" Visited White House More Than 30 Times. Last night on The Kelly File Chief
Counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice Jay Sekulo revealed that the former chief of staff to former IRS Commissioner
Steven Miller, Nikole Flax, visited the White House 35 times after talking with former head of tax exempt groups Lois Lerner
about working to criminally prosecute conservative tea party groups for "lying" about political activity. At the White House,
Flax met with a top Obama aid during some of those visits. This entire exchange is worth your time.
"Never apologize, never
explain", the IRS brazens it out. It is one thing to say "Never apologize, never explain" as an adjunct or symptom of cultural
self-confidence, quite another in an atmosphere of duplicity, evasion, or brazen contempt. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen presented a
breathtaking example of the latter when he blithely admitted that the IRS had simply "recycled," i.e., tossed out, physically destroyed,
Lois Lerner's malfunctioning hard drive that (he claimed) was unrecoverable. "I don't think an apology is owed," he told a stunned
House Ways and Means Committee.
The Editor says...
If I had a hard drive crash in my own computer, and there was anything even remotely important on that drive, if I could not afford to
have the data recovered, I would wrap it up and stash it in my garage, hoping to someday be able to afford a professional recovery of the missing files.
On the other hand, if I had a hard drive that contained incriminating information, and an investigation of my business had just been announced,
and if I were inclined to feloniously destroy the evidence on that hard drive, I would make that hard drive disappear forever. I might also claim that
the hard drive had been "recycled."
The IRS case involves half a dozen simultaneous hard drive "crashes," which in my opinion were
probably induced with the same sledgehammer. All of those hard drives happened to belong to the central figures in a major scandal.
The likelihood of these events happening exactly as the IRS now claims are approximately zero. As is so often the case, the government
is lying to the American people. The truth will be known someday, and it may not be soon because the Justice Department has been
completely politicized. But that day would arrive sooner if the Republican-controlled House of Representatives asserted its
checks and balances on the Executive Branch.
Darrell
Issa calls White House attorney on IRS email loss. House Oversight Chairman Darrell
Issa is hauling in a former IRS counsel-turned-White House attorney to testify on the disappeared
Lois Lerner emails. The California Republican on Thursday evening [6/19/2014] requested Jennifer
O'Connor of the White House Counsel's office to testify on Tuesday morning about her knowledge of
the crashed hard drive of ex-IRS tax exempt chief Lerner. The IRS says the crash erased two years'
worth of Lerner's emails just when the IRS was beginning to pull conservative social welfare groups
for additional scrutiny.
We know the
whereabouts of the "lost" IRS emails. Access to any of those records can be had with a simple directive from
the President of the United States. The facility where the records are stored, along with the private emails, text
messages, google searches and 20 trillion domestic phone calls since 2001 is owned and operated by America's National
Security Agency which, among other things, is responsible for the monitoring of American citizens and storing any and all
digital interactions captured on private and public telecommunications lines. The NSA's most advanced intelligence
monitoring facility is located at Camp Williams and is called the "Utah Data Center." If the emails ever existed, whether
they were deliberately wiped or accidentally lost, the National Security Agency undoubtedly has a digital record of them.
On
the Missing IRS Emails, Two Observations. As Scott [Johnson] noted earlier today [6/20/2014], IRS
Commissioner John Koskinen testified before the House and Ways and Means Committee this morning. Koskinen was
grilled about Lois Lerner's lost emails, and was unapologetic. It is clear that the IRS made no systematic
effort to retain emails beyond six months, and Koskinen testified that this is OK because emails are not necessarily
"records." Documents that are not "records" can be deleted at will. Koskinen's position is tenuous,
however, in light of the broad definition of "record" under federal law.
The IRS Had a Contract With an Email Backup
Company. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said it can't provide emails sent between 2009 and 2011 that were requested
by congressional investigators because of hard drive crashes. The agency said that emails stored on dead drives were lost forever
because its email backup tapes were recycled every six months, and employees were responsible for keeping their own long-term archives.
IRS contracted with
email archiving company in 2005. Is that a smoking gun I smell? It turns out the IRS contracted with a company that
provides email backup services starting in 2005. This first came to light in the Twitter feed of moregenr, who noticed that the
IRS appears on the client list of email archiving service provider Sonasoft.
Ryan to IRS: "Nobody
Believes You". IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testified before the House and Ways and Means Committee
this morning [6/20/2014]. [...] In his testimony, we learn that in IRS-world, agency emails are not considered records
subject to preservation under otherwise applicable law. According to Koskinen, the agency's "email system is not
being used as an electronic record keeping system."
Is
It Time for a Special Prosecutor? The anniversary of the Watergate burglary arrived this week, along
with the disquieting revelation that it's not just disgraced former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner
who's taking the Fifth. Her email is clamming up, too. More than a year into the controversy over the
tax agency's targeting of conservative non-profit groups, IRS officials casually told congressional investigators
last week that a 2011 computer crash caused thousands of sought-after Lerner emails to disappear. So, can the
mess at the IRS now objectively be called an Obama administration scandal?
The IRS's
'Lost' Email Deception. As political pressure builds on Capitol Hill, it can finally
be revealed that a mysterious, politically progressive electromagnetic pulse may have hit the hard
drives of Lerner and six of her IRS underlings. Obama officials now claim the emails of all seven
government employees to outside organizations and agencies including the White House have been consigned
to oblivion. As a result of this devastating "attack" the IRS is suddenly claiming it no longer
possesses tens of thousands of emails from Lerner and her subordinates, a year after congressional
investigators demanded the likely incriminating electronic communications.
What
is the IRS hiding? The 24,000 documents, which should have been backed up nightly,
were requested more than a year ago but have now been determined to be "unrecoverable" by the
techies over at the IRS. You don't say? No one has indicated they will ask the National Security
Agency, which apparently has all emails ever sent in or out of this country, for help. John
Koskinen, the IRS commissioner who took the job only six months ago with a pledge to restore the
public trust, testified in March that emails were hard to find, but he never revealed any destruction
of them resulting from "computer crashes." That news came in a letter from him, of course, late
last Friday — when revealing information is always released — and begs the question
of whether Koskinen has any idea of what's going on, lied then or is lying now.
IRS
boss faces 'cover-up' claims ahead of Hill hearing on missing emails. A congressional
hearing Friday [6/20/2014] into how the Internal Revenue Service lost thousands of emails from an
ex-official accused of targeting conservative groups turned into an angry shouting match, with
Republicans accusing the IRS commissioner of lying to Americans. "This is unbelievable," Rep.
Paul Ryan, R-Wis., angrily told IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. That's your problem. Nobody
believes you." Koskinen responded, "I have a long career. That's the first time anyone's
said I don't believe you." "I don't believe you," Ryan shot back again.
Obama's
Unbelievable Missing IRS Emails. Reminiscent of nothing so much as Nixon secretary
Rose Mary Woods's infamous selective erasures of her boss's tapes, today's sought-after
communiqués are, we are told, victim of a crashed computer and a failed hard drive, both
belonging to Lois Lerner, the chief of the IRS tax-exempt office at the center of the controversy.
And in good Nixonian style, it's not just Lerner whose emails have gone unaccounted for. Six more
IRS employees connected to the original targeting outrage have records the agency cannot submit to
Congress — including Nikole Flax, chief of staff to the man eventually fired for his
role in targeting conservative groups while serving as acting commissioner.
'Nobody
Believes You': Ryan Blasts IRS Head Over Lost Emails. New claims have surfaced that
[Lois] Lerner's hard drive was destroyed and emails from several other officials also have gone
missing. Koskinen got the hearing off to a contentious start by telling House Ways and Means
Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) that he doesn't feel an apology is owed for the lost emails.
Camp had challenged Koskinen about why he did not apologize in his opening statement. Later, Rep.
Paul Ryan (R-WI) went off on Koskinen, telling him simply "nobody believes you." He called out
Koskinen for "burying" the disclosure about Lerner's lost emails in a 27-page letter to the Senate.
'Let
Me Finish!' GOP Rep. Dave Camp and IRS Commissioner's Testy Exchange. At the close
of Koskinen's prepared remarks, Camp immediately went for the gut in thanking the commissioner:
"What I didn't hear him from that was an apology to this committee." "I don't think an apology
is owed," Koskinen replied. And we're off. "There's not a single e-mail has been lost since the
start of this investigation." The back-and-forth remained at a near-boil for the next several
minutes, with Camp accusing the commissioner of deliberately keeping the lost emails a secret.
Despite knowing about the email loss in February, the IRS had not informed Congress until last
Friday. "It was my decision that we complete the investigation so we could fully advise you with
what the situation was," Koskined explained of the delay. "We were not keeping it a secret.
My position has been that when we provide information, we should provide it completely."
IRS commish:
No apologies for losing Lerner emails. [T]he lost emails are denting the IRS's credibility,
which has already suffered from the tea party scandal in which the agency targeted conservative groups for
improper scrutiny, asking questions about their religious leanings and donors. The agency also wrongly
blocked approval for some of those application, in some cases for years. "Nobody believes you," Rep.
Paul Ryan, the GOP's 2012 vice presidential nominee, told Mr. Koskinen, questioning how an agency as powerful
as the IRS could not have the capacity to store all emails. "You ask taxpayers to hang onto seven years
of their personal taxpayer info in case they're ever audited, and you can't keep more than six months of
employees' emails?"
White
House: No emails between White House, Lerner. The White House said Wednesday [6/18/2014] it has
found no emails between any person in the executive office of the president and a top Internal Revenue Service
official who has been connected to the improper scrutiny of political groups.
We Don't Need No Stinkin'
Emails. They're openly sneering at us now. Late on Friday [6/13/2014], the Internal Revenue
Service revealed that two-and-a-quarter years of Lois Lerner's emails have been "lost". Yesterday
the IRS told Congress that it is unable to produce the emails of six other officials involved in
the targeting of conservative groups, among them Nicole Flax, the chief of staff to then IRS
commissioner Steven Miller. We now learn that the IRS only retains email on its server for six
months. After that, the email exists only on the hard drive of the physical desktop computer of the
employee in question. And therefore, if that hard drive crashes, those emails are lost forever.
By the way, do feel free to try that excuse if the IRS asks you to produce any document more than six months old.
The Editor says...
I believe it is reasonable to surmise that the hard drive from Lois Lerner's computer "crashed" after it was
removed from her computer and repeatedly hit with a sledgehammer. I believe it is also safe to assume that the same thing
happened to the disk drives in the computers of the other central figures in the IRS scandal, since they all "crashed" at about
the same time. The Congressional investigators should press the IRS for the name of the "recycler" to whom the hard
drives were turned over for destruction, and demand a certificate that shows where the disk drives came from and the
person ordering the destruction.
IRS
Officials: 'Oops, Lerner's Hard Drive Is Gone Too'. Four year-olds can make up better
stories than this. I don't care how long it takes but I hope at least one or two Republicans stay
focused on this until somebody fries for it.
IRS
commissioner won't apologize for lost e-mails. In his most contentious hearing since
becoming commissioner six months ago, Koskinen testified about efforts the IRS has made to recover
e-mails that were lost when Lois Lerner's computer hard drive crashed in 2011. Lerner is the former
director of the Exempt Organizations office that held up the tax exemption applications of conservative
groups from February 2010 through the 2012 election. Ways and Means Chairman David Camp, R-Mich.,
pressed Koskinen on why he didn't notify Congress about the problem with Lerner's e-mails when he first
found out about it in February. "You can blame it on a technical glitch, but it is not a technical
glitch to mislead the American people," Camp said. "You say that you have 'lost' the emails, but
what you have lost is all credibility."
Sources: Lois
Lerner's emails likely gone forever. Ex-IRS official Lois Lerner's crashed hard drive
has been recycled, making it likely the lost emails of the lightning rod in the tea party targeting
controversy will never be found, according to multiple sources. "We've been informed that the hard
drive has been thrown away," Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the Finance Committee,
said in a brief hallway interview. Two additional sources told POLITICO the same late Wednesday
[6/18/2014], citing IRS officials.
The Editor says...
Politico is not exactly a Tea Party newsletter. In this case they are "citing IRS officials," which means they are
attempting to popularize the wishful thinking of the IRS; that is, that the "lost" (and no doubt incriminating) emails
are gone forever, so we might as well forget about trying to find them in the remote email servers, the off-site backup
tapes, and the Fusion Centers.
Wall Street Journal: IRS scandal 'worse
than Watergate'. The revelation that the computers of Internal Revenue Service
workers, including Tea Party prober Lois Lerner, were erased of critical emails sought by lawmakers
has elevated the affair to — and maybe beyond — an old familiar presidential
scandal, Watergate. "The IRS tea-party audit story isn't Watergate; it's worse than Watergate,"
according to deputy Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Daniel Henninger. "The Watergate
break-in was the professionals of the party in power going after the party professionals of the
party out of power. The IRS scandal is the party in power going after the most average Americans
imaginable," he added.
Democratic
Congressman Compares IRS Scandal to Area 51, Obama Birth Certificate and Benghazi. In
Friday's House Ways and Means Committee hearing about Lois Lerner's missing emails, Rep. Lloyd
Doggett (D-TX) compared the investigation to other famous conspiracy theories like Area 51, Obama's
birth certificate — and the murder of four Americans in Benghazi. He said it was not a serious
investigation and wondered how IRS Commissioner Koskinen could take it seriously.
The Editor says...
Ridicule is one of the first defenses used by dishonest politicians and their shills.
GOP
fury after report claims IRS 'recycled' Lerner hard drive. The top Republican on one
of the House committees investigating the IRS targeting scandal reacted furiously late Wednesday [6/18/2014]
to a report that ex-IRS official Lois Lerner's hard drive had been recycled, making it likely that many emails
sent to and from Lerner prior to the summer of 2011 will never be recovered. The Politico report cited
two anonymous sources, as well as Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who confirmed that the Senate Finance Committee
had been told that the hard drive had been discarded.
Lois
Lerner Emails: Nothing Digital Ever Dies. To say that the IRS "lost emails" has engendered skepticism is
putting it mildly, especially in right-of-center circles. "The Obama administration's claim that the IRS has 'lost' two
years of Lois Lerner's emails is implausible to anyone who understands how email systems work," writes conservative
attorney John Hinderaker, a Claremont Institute fellow. "The Obama administration is lying, and lying in a remarkably
transparent way." To hear the IRS tell it, it wasn't just the hard drive on Lerner's computer that crashed; it was
the hard drive on six other computers. The agency also lacked a centralized archive, it says now, and employed an
archaic practice of re-using the tapes backing up its system every six months — thereby erasing the material
already there. Who knew the IRS was so frugal?
IRS
'Lost' Emails From Official That Met With Top Obama Assistant. The IRS recently
claimed that it lost emails from Nikole Flax, who served as chief of staff to former IRS
commissioner Steven Miller. Flax was one of seven IRS employees including ex-official Lois Lerner
whose emails to and from White House officials and other Obama administration agencies were
purportedly deleted and could not be handed over to congressional investigators. Flax held
personal meetings with a top assistant to President Obama and also colluded with Lerner to
prosecute conservative activists. Flax made 31 visits to the White House between July 12,
2010 and May 8, 2013, according to White House visitor logs. Flax's visits started in the early
days of the IRS targeting program and ended just two days before the IRS scandal broke on May 10, 2013.
Pelosi:
'They Need a New Technology System at the IRS'. [Scroll down] "If the IRS truly got rid of
evidence in a way that violated the Federal Records Act and ensured the FBI never got a crack at recovering files
from an official claiming a Fifth amendment protection against self-incrimination, this is proof their whole line
about 'losing' e-mails in the targeting scandal was just one more attempted deception," House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) said in response. "Old and useless binders
of information are still stored and maintained on federal agency shelves; official records, like the e-mails
of a prominent official, don't just disappear without a trace unless that was the intention."
IRS Contempt of Congress.
The IRS is now telling Congress that it has lost the emails of no fewer than seven IRS employees
central to the targeting of conservative nonprofits, though that's only half the outrage. There's
also the IRS's quiet admission that it has spent most of the past year willfully defying Congress.
IRS
Head Koskinen Lied About 'Lost' Lerner Emails. Rep. Darrell Issa's House Oversight
Committee has subpoenaed IRS Commissioner John Koskinen to testify June 23 about Lois Lerner's
suddenly lost emails. One of the topics is expected to be his prior contradictory congressional
testimony. Koskinen testified about the emails at an Oversight hearing in March and, as
investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson notes, gave quite the opposite impression from the current
storyline that has every computer nerd in America rolling on the floor laughing. Koskinen said
the reason that requested emails were difficult to provide was that IRS emails "get taken off and
stored in servers." He failed to mention any Lerner hard-drive crash that allegedly occurred long
before, only to be divulged in this administration's habitual Friday data dump of unpleasant news.
Obama's
double asterisks on IRS. As Congress investigates the IRS chicanery, the IRS has
responded to a request for emails to and from Lois Lerner, who spearheaded the Tea Party
harassment, by saying, basically, that the dog ate its homework. Or, rather, the IRS claims,
somewhat dubiously, that "a hard drive crash" on Lerner's computer led to the loss of emails to
outside entities "such as the White House, Treasury, Department of Justice, FEC, or Democrat
offices." You know, the very people she's accused of coordinating her harassment with.
With those emails missing, it'll be harder to prove whether Lerner's Tea Party harassment might have
been at the behest of other wrongdoers, perhaps going as high as the Oval Office itself. But
since government agencies seldom "lose" evidence that makes them look good, reasonable people might
suspect that there's a cover-up going on.
Congress
to Obama: Send Us 'All Communications' Between Your Office and Lois Lerner. Rep. Dave
Camp (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is asking President Obama to
"ensure accountability" in the ongoing IRS investigation by providing his committee with "all
communications between Lois Lerner and any persons within the Executive Office of President for the
period between January 1, 2009 and May 1, 2011." The IRS informed Congress on Friday [6/13/2014]
that an untold number of Lerner's emails to outside agencies, including the White House, were lost during
the 2009-2011 time frame due to a "computer crash."
Issa
Subpoenas Lois Lerner's IRS Computer Hard Drive. Because the IRS told Congress late
last Friday that former IRS official Lois Lerner's computer had apparently crashed and her emails
from January 2009 to April 2011 were now lost, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee
issued a subpoena today for that computer hard drive, other electronic devices, and all
communications and documents related to that PC crash. "After a year of beating down efforts by
the Obama administration and its allies to obstruct an investigation into targeting, the IRS now
says it lost perhaps the most critical evidence," said House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa
(R-Calif.) in a June 17 statement.
If
you think the IRS' latest claim on 'lost' emails is unprecedented, Gawker has some news for
you. As the Internal Revenue Service tries its best to convince a skeptical nation
that it's unable to recover nearly two years' worth of subpoenaed emails because of a supposed
computer crash, it's important to remember that this isn't the first time that a federal agency has
"struggled" to produce requested correspondences. [...] Gawker editor John Cook wrote the State
Department nearly two years ago for all emails between Reines and reporters from various news groups,
including the New York Times and BuzzFeed, and State has yet to fulfill his request.
The
IRS's stunning and shameful record-keeping hypocrisy. [Scroll down] A local
hard-drive failure would have nothing to do with that record retention in a professional IT
environment. The data would still reside on the servers and could be easily reconstituted from the
backup. In fact, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testified in March that the data existed on the
agency's servers, and not the local hard drives. The claim that the IRS recycles its backup tapes
every six months is equally ludicrous. The federal government has more strict expectations for
publicly held corporations. Sarbanes-Oxley regulations passed more than a decade ago specifically
require retention of email data for five years, and make the kind of destruction claimed by
the IRS in this instance a crime punishable by 20 years in prison.
Krauthhammer
Slams Obama: What He Just Did "Is A High Crime". The IRS has conveniently "lost" all
of Lois Lerner's emails regarding the targeting of conservative groups over a two year period.
The same government that claims to capture all of Americans' phone call data and emails suddenly
claims that they cannot find any of Lerner's emails.
Lerner
on missing emails: 'Sometimes stuff just happens'. The two years of missing emails
from the account of Lois Lerner may be a problem for most people but for Lerner, it's just part of
life. "Sometimes, stuff just happens," Lerner wrote to an IT expert in 2011 who was trying to
retreive the emails that were lost in her "hard drive crash."
The
Real Story of the IRS Scandal. So now the IRS claims that a computer crash has
irrevocably erased pertinent e-mails (an excuse I will remember when I am audited). National
Review's John Fund reports that the IRS manual says backups must exist. If e-mails — which
exist on servers, clouds, and elsewhere — can be destroyed this way, someone should tell the NSA
that there's a cheaper way to encrypt data.
Six
More IRS Targeting Scandal Figures' Emails have Disappeared. The federal government
swooped into Gibson Guitar's Tennessee headquarters in August 2011, with armed agents, and shut the
company down temporarily. The suspected crime was using illegally imported wood. Not a particularly
important crime, yet the government treated it as if it was a clear and present danger to the
republic. No charges have even been filed in that case. In the case of the IRS, the suspected
crime is weaponizing government against citizens who exercised their rights as such. That is a
clear and present threat to the republic. There is an active cover-up happening right now in the
very heart of the IRS. It's time for a raid, a round-up, and trials.
'Lost'
IRS emails: Get real, Team Obama, we're not that gullible. Any American with even a
rudimentary knowledge of how electronic messages are sent knows that email records are largely
impervious to anything but the most widespread and systematic computer crashes. Further, we also
know that computer crashes are focused events. When a computer "crashes" it's not able to delete
incriminating emails from specific time periods while leaving all others intact. Indeed, in the
aftermath of this absurd assertion, the response from experts was overwhelming: The story makes no
sense. IRS emails were not permanently stored on Lois Lerner's computer alone (of course) but on
servers that preserve records. They would remain there even if Lerner decided to do something
outrageous like light her computer on fire in an effort to hide her criminal activity.
IRS
Commissioner Subpoenaed to Testify About Lost Lois Lerner Emails. Today [6/16/2014], the House Oversight
Committee subpoenaed IRS Commissioner John Koskinen to testify at a hearing Monday about Lois Lerner's "lost" emails.
On Friday, the IRS disclosed to Congress that it had lost many Lois Lerner emails dated from January 2009 to April 2011 due
to a previously undisclosed computer crash in 2011. In a letter to Koskinen today, Chairman of the Oversight Committee
Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said that the Federal Records Act (FRA) was passed by Congress to avoid this very scenario.
"The FRA requires agencies to make and preserve records of agency decisions, policies, and essential transactions, and to
take steps to safeguard against the loss of agency records," wrote Issa.
IRS
Was Required By Law to Print Out Lois Lerner's Emails. The Internal Revenue Service
is required by federal law to keep records of all agency emails and to print out hard copies of the
emails to make sure they get saved in the event of a computer glitch. The IRS recently claimed
that it lost 24,000 of 67,000 emails that ex-official Lois Lerner sent between 2009 and 2011, due
to a computer crash. The IRS, which agreed to turn over all of Lerner's emails to the House
Committee on Ways and Means, specifically lost emails Lerner sent to other Obama administration
agencies and the White House. Lerner is a major figure in the targeting scandal that has
hit the IRS.
'Plot
lines in Hollywood are more believable'. The IRS 'lost' the emails of six other
agency officials associated with a scheme to target conservative organizations — in
addition to those of former official Lois Lerner — and kept it a secret for months, the
House Ways and Means committee learned on Tuesday [6/17/2014]. The news prompted the House
Oversight and Government Reform Committee to issue broad subpoenas on Tuesday afternoon for hard
drives, thumb drives and other backups that Lerner and the tax authorities may have used to archive
her messages.
Why
Darrell Issa just asked the IRS to hand over a hard drive. House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa on Tuesday issued a subpoena to the Internal
Revenue Service, ordering the agency to turn over the hard drive they claim is responsible for
wiping out two years of critical email communications. Issa has dramatically widened his probe
into the IRS after the agency announced last week that it had lost the emails, which may have
provided information about an IRS policy of targeting for extra scrutiny and delay many
conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.
IRS
Knew Lerner Emails Were Missing For Months, 'Lied To' Congress. The Internal Revenue
Service (IRS) knew for months that Lois Lerner's emails had been destroyed, even before the current
IRS commissioner testified that his agency would produce all of them. The IRS knew as early as
February 2014 that Lerner's emails were missing, top lawmakers on the House Committee on Ways and
Means confirmed Tuesday. The IRS had this knowledge nearly three months before IRS commissioner
John Koskinen agreed at a hearing to turn over all of Lerner's emails to the committee.
Additionally, the IRS failed to deliver emails from six other IRS employees at the heart of the IRS
targeting scandal including former IRS official and frequent White House visitor Nikole Flax,
according to the Ways and Means Committee.
Attkisson
On Missing IRS Documents: If The Emails Really Are Lost, 'That's Quite A Story In Itself'.
[Sharyl] Attkisson said that regardless of whether the emails were lost accidentally or improperly, the
individuals responsible should be held accountable. "One official wrote me... to say this is entirely
implausible, and he said there are criminal penalties for destroying federal records, which makes sense,
including liability for negligence for not taking the necessary steps to protect files, including a federal
requirement to backup data. This doesn't happen. He said ... all email servers are backed up
with something called 'RAID' (Redundant Array Of Independent Disks), and it's nearly impossible for something
to delete the files, and that even if that were to happen they would not be gone forever," she said.
A Tale of Two Scandals.
In a truly stunning development in the Internal Revenue Service scandal, the agency last week informed Congress that
more than two years' of Lois Lerner's email communications with those outside that agency — from 2009 to
2011, meaning the key years at the heart of the targeting-of-conservatives scandal — have gone missing.
Quite strangely. The IRS says it cannot locate them. The reason is that Lerner's computer crashed.
GOP:
IRS lost emails go beyond Lerner. Two top Republicans said Tuesday [6/17/2014] that in addition
to Lois G. Lerner's emails, the IRS appears to also have lost records from six other agency employees
involved in the tea party targeting scandal. Reps. Dave Camp and Charles Boustany Jr., who are
respectively the chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee and a key oversight subcommittee, said one of
those employees whose records have been lost was Nicole Flax, the chief of staff for the acting IRS commissioner.
IRS Has Lost
More Emails... It's not just Lois Lerner's e-mails. The Internal Revenue Service says it can't
produce e-mails from six more employees involved in the targeting of conservative groups, according to two
Republicans investigating the scandal. The IRS recently informed Ways and Means chairman Dave Camp and
subcommittee chairman Charles Boustany that computer crashes resulted in additional lost e-mails, including from Nikole
Flax, the chief of staff to former IRS commissioner Steven Miller, who was fired in the wake of the targeting scandal.
WH
on Lois Lerner's Vanished Emails: 'You've Never Heard of A Computer Crashing Before?
The Internal Revenue Service has told Congress that many of the emails to and from Lois Lerner were
lost in a computer crash in 2011. "You've never heard of a computer crashing before?" White House
spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday [6/16/2014], when a reporter asked if that was a "reasonable
explanation." "I think it's entirely reasonable, because it's the truth and it's a fact, and
speculation otherwise I think is indicative of the kinds of conspiracies that are propagated around
this story," Earnest said.
Krauthammer:
Second Article of Impeachment Against Nixon Was For Abusing The IRS. ["]These guys
are living on a different planet. They asked for this a year ago, it's now discovered they are
lost. I've seen quotes from computer experts who worked for decades at Microsoft who say that this
can absolutely be found. And we already heard from one of the IRS officials a few months ago that
all of this stuff is backed up. Now, the idea — here we have Nixon lost
18 minutes. Obama's now lost two years of emails, and one thing that people don't
remember, the second article of impeachment for Richard Nixon was the abuse of the IRS to pursue
political enemies. This is a high crime; this is not a triviality.["]
Proof that Friday document dumps work! Only
CBS Covers IRS Losing Two Years of Lois Lerner Emails. On Monday [6/16/2014], only CBS This Morning
reported Friday's stunning revelation that the IRS somehow lost two years worth of emails from Lois Lerner, the
official at the center of the agency scandal in which conservative groups were unfairly targeted.
At the top of the morning show, co-host Norah O'Donnell wondered: "How did the IRS lose emails in
the scandal targeting conservatives after the government spent millions to back up data?"
IRS
Commissioner Subpoenaed to Testify on Lois Lerner's 'Lost' Emails. Rep. Jason
Chaffetz was even more perplexed than most Americans when he heard last week that the Internal
Revenue Service had lost two years of Lois Lerner's emails. He had been told "they're there" by no
less than IRS Commissioner John Koskinen himself. Lerner directed the IRS' tax-exempt division at
a time tea-party groups faced additional scrutiny or delays in their applications. Lawmakers are
now seeking her email communications to determine the extent of her involvement — or that of
others — with this alleged harassment of conservative groups.
The Ticking
IRS IT Department Time Bomb. It's not unusual for a political operative to take a
fall in order to be a "good soldier" under the theory that it is easier to get hired by a campaign
or put in a government job or a friendly think tank after committing an ethical lapse than to be
hired by a campaign or being employed by a friendly think tank after reporting on an ethical lapse.
This however doesn't apply to the IT department, these guys can often find better work at a
better wage outside of government and their expertese and ability to get job is not tied to.
Neal Boortz:
The IRS scandal is now worse than Watergate. News surfaced Friday that the IRS can't
find any of Lois Lerner's potentially incriminating emails because of "a computer crash." "You
really have to have your head in cement to not understand that the reason [the IRS] can't find
those emails is because they are very incriminating," Neal Boortz said. "They tie Obama and the
Whitehouse to the IRS scandal."
The
Latest On Lois Lerner's "Lost" Emails, With A Bombshell At The End. My opinion of the
federal government's efficiency is not high, but I find it hard to believe that this is really how
the IRS manages its records. I am not a tax lawyer, but I assume that any corporation subjected to
an IRS audit, or any other kind of government investigation, that had this lousy a system of preserving
records would be crucified. That is all very interesting, but the question remains: did
Lois Lerner really lose the only copies of her 2009-2011 emails in a hard drive crash?
Congress
will drag IRS commissioner into TWO hearings to explain how 28 months of Lois Lerner's emails were
'lost'. The aggressive Republican chairman of a House investigative committee
demanded Monday [6/16/2014] that IRS Commissioner John Koskinen explain — in
person — how 28 months of emails to and from embattled former official Lois Lerner
were 'lost' to a computer crash. California Rep. Darrell Issa, who chairs the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee, wrote to Koskinen in reaction to his agency's claim Friday that the
IRS no longer has copies of emails between Lerner and anyone outside the IRS from January 2009 through April 2011.
Darrell
Issa subpoenas IRS commissioner over lost Lois Lerner emails. House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa has subpoenaed the commissioner of the Internal
Revenue Service to testify next week before Congress about a trove of lost emails that could
contain evidence of a plan to targeted conservative groups. Issa, R-Calif., will hold a June 23
hearing aimed at finding out more about two year's worth of emails — from 2009
to 2011 — that the IRS has reported lost. The emails were from former top IRS
official Lois G. Lerner to Justice Department and Treasury officials. Issa had
requested the emails because he and other Republicans believe Lerner played a key role in the
targeting scheme and they believe she can link the targeting to even higher levels of the government.
Former
IRS Information Tech Worker Doubts Agency's Claim to have 'Lost' Lerner's Emails.
This person worked at the IRS facility in New Carrollton, Maryland. He worked on the agency's
Prime Systems Integration Services contract, or "Prime," a contract inked between the IRS and
Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) in 1998 to modernize the IRS' digital record-keeping system.
CSC is the primary contractor, but other well-known companies including IBM, BearingPoint, Northrup
Grumman, Unisys and Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) are secondary players on the
same contract. The former IRS IT contractor finds it difficult to believe that the IRS could
really have lost two years' worth of Lois Lerner's emails. First, he points to the United States
Code for government record retention.
IRS
scandal gets Nixonian: The 18½-minute (or 26-month) gap. The case against
Nixon was airtight. The Watergate break-in was bad, but there was more, much more. Article 2
of the Articles of Impeachment against Nixon charged that he "endeavored to obtain from the Internal Revenue
Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax
returns for purposes not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens,
income tax audits or other income tax investigation to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner."
And he had. There was proof. Watergate was worse, got all the press, but Nixon had completely abused the
power of the presidency and had to go.
The
Dog Ate My E-Mails, for Two Years. Who knew that the Obama administration had a
penchant for black humor? Earlier this year, in February, President Obama told Bill O'Reilly during
an interview on Fox News that there was "not even a smidgen of corruption" in the IRS scandal
involving the targeting of conservative nonprofit groups. In July 2013, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew
foreshadowed his boss's nonchalance by insisting that there was "no evidence" that any political
appointee had been involved in the scandal.
CNN
Mocks Lois Lerner's Vanished IRS Emails. CNN anchor John King scoffed at the IRS' excuse last week that over
two years of emails from disgraced official Lois Lerner were inadvertently lost in a hard drive crash, joking you'd have to
believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny to "believe that [her] emails just suddenly went 'poof.'" King discussed
the IRS' explanation Monday morning [6/16/2014] with a CNN panel, noting that the tax revenue service trotted out the
story over a year after Republicans initially requested Lerner's emails. As former head of the IRS Exempt Organizations
office, Lerner was accused of orchestrating a deliberate campaign targeting Tea Party and other conservative organizations
for extra scrutiny.
IRS
Commissioner, in March: Lerner's Emails Are 'Stored in Servers'. In one of the Obama
administration's most shameless weekend news dumps, the IRS claimed on Friday afternoon that a hard
drive glitch erased many of Lois Lerner's emails sent between 2009 and 2011. The Associated Press
reports that Congressional Republicans are irate over this tardy and dodgy "disclosure," which is
sure to catapult the IRS targeting scandal back into the spotlight.
The White House now speaks for the IRS? White
House: IRS made good-faith effort on e-mails. Facing a furor from angry Republican lawmakers, the White
House said Monday [6/16/2014] that the Internal Revenue Service engaged in a good faith effort to find lost emails from
an IRS official whose division processed applications for tax-exempt status by politically oriented groups.
Watch
the IRS Commissioner Testify They Had ALL of Lois Lerner's Emails & Would Turn Them Over! Congressman Jason
Chaffetz angrily reminded Americans that contrary to current reports, the IRS commissioner had smugly testified in March that
all of Lois Lerner's emails would be turned over to Congress after receiving their subpoena. Friday afternoon [6/13/2014]
officials made the maddening announcement that the IRS had "accidentally" deleted emails from Lois Lerner that might explain
how the Tea Party targeting scandal occurred.
America, the
Headless Horseman. Forget the endless scandals that seem to come at us every other
day — the latest being the Benghazi terrorists using State Department cell phones (!), a crusade of
Hispanic children pouring over our Southern border in the company of cartel drug lords and, of
course, the suddenly "missing" IRS emails of Lois Lerner — the Obama administration has reached
levels of hitherto unknown incompetence. It is a complete and utter debacle.
Obama thinks
Americans are Stupid. If the average hard-working American taxpayer gave that excuse
to the IRS enforcers how understanding would they be? The IRS Commissioner John Koskinen
(appointed to the post by Barack Obama) had previously assured the House Oversight and Government
Reform Committee that these emails had been archived and would be made available for inspection.
The IRS has voluminous records stored away on all Americans going back years. The government spends
tens of billions of dollars on record-keeping and computer technology. How stupid does Obama thin
Americans are?
Just
How Stupid Does Obama Think We Are? I have a sixth grader and a seventh grader and
when I posed this dilemma to them they both rolled over laughing. At the tender ages of 11 and 13
even they understand that email, both inbound and outbound, by definition is not prisoner to the
computer from which it either originated, or on which it was ultimately received. It is
transmitted over a vast array of interconnected servers to move from point A to ultimately arrive
at point B. Many call this newfangled contraption the world wide web, or internet.
Additionally most organizations have a central email server (SMTP), or, depending on their size, array of
servers, through which all email is transmitted.
Did
The IRS Really Lose Lois Lerner's Emails? Let a Special Prosecutor Find Them. A sloppy mistake, the
government calls it, but you couldn't blame a person for suspecting a cover-up — the loss of an untold
number of emails to and from the central figure in the IRS tea party controversy. And, because the public's
trust is a fragile gift that the White House has frittered away in a series of second-term missteps, President
Obama needs to act. If the IRS can't find the emails, maybe a special prosecutor can.
The IRS Loses
Lerner's Emails. The suspicion that this is willful obstruction of Congress is all
the more warranted because this week we also learned that the IRS, days before the 2010 election,
shipped a 1.1 million page database about tax-exempt groups to the FBI. Why? New emails
turned up by Darrell Issa's House Oversight Committee show Department of Justice officials worked
with Ms. Lerner to investigate groups critical of President Obama.
Lois Lerner's
Lost Emails: Questions for the IRS. According to the House Ways and Means Committee,
the IRS reports having "lost" former IRS manager Lois Lerner's emails to and from other IRS
employees sent between January of 2009 and April of 2011 due to a 'computer crash.' In light of
the disclosure, these are some of the logical requests that should be made of the IRS: [#1] Please
provide a timeline of the crash and documentation covering when it was first discovered and
by whom; when, how and by whom it was learned that materials were lost; the official documentation
reporting the crash and federal data loss; documentation reflecting all attempts to recover the
materials; and the remediation records documenting the fix. This material should include the names
of all officials and technicians involved, as well as all internal communications about the matter.
[#2] Please provide all documents and emails that refer to the crash from the time that it
happened through the IRS' disclosure to Congress Friday that it had occurred. [...]
The
Obama Administration's Claim That Lois Lerner's Emails Are "Lost" Is Ludicrous. This
is what the administration said: ["]The IRS told congressional investigators Friday it cannot
locate many of Lois Lerner's emails prior to 2011 because her computer crashed that year.["] This
statement, on its face, is silly. Emails are collected on email servers. Each user (e.g., Lois
Lerner) has an account on an email server, where that person's emails are collected. It is common
for emails to be deleted from the user's own desktop or laptop computer, but no one worries about
that. When it is time to collect emails — something I do all the time in my law
practice — you go to the email server and pull out the user's entire account. A crash of
the user's computer is irrelevant and will not cause emails to be "lost."
IT
experts call BS on IRS claim to have lost Lerner emails. Jason Howerton of The Blaze
interviewed veteran IT expert Norman Cillo, "an Army veteran who worked in intelligence and a
former program manager at Microsoft," who laid out six reasons, complete with charts, why he
believes Congress is being lied to. [...] He goes on to describe the ways in which data can be
recovered from a personal computer disk that has crashed, as well, citing his experience with a
data recovery firm that can pull data off a computer that has been sitting at the bottom of a lake.
Now, this case is going to get interesting, when the cover-up starts to get traced back to its
origin. This is by definition a conspiracy, since multiple parties had to be involved. Some of them
are going to get cold feet. Ace reporter Sharyl Attkisson lays out the questions she would present,
and they are enough to make the IRS officials involved start thinking about copping a plea and
implicating the higher ups.
A
Dog Ate 2 years of Lois Lerner's Emails. Now What? So the IRS suffered a catastrophic hard disk
failure and — lo and behold! — two years of Lois Lerner's emails have vanished: poof!
Just like that. Imagine. Evidence of those happy days targeting conservative groups, gone. [...] When we
lost a hard disk at my office with lots of archival material, we were pretty glum. [...] But here's the thing.
After we lost that hard disk, we wised up and started backing up. We have redundant backups in our
office and offsite back ups as well. And we're a tiny company with no IT department. The IRS
commands the resources of the federal government and as much of your money as it chooses to glom on to.
Is it credible that they have no backups of two years' worth of emails of a senior staff person — a
senior staff person who just happens to be at the center of a huge scandal?
IRS
Commissioner previously testified Lois Lerner emails were archived. As news breaks that the IRS is
claiming to have lost 2 years worht [sic] of Lois Lerner's Emails to Outside Agencies Are Gone, Representative
Jason Chaffetz took to Twitter to point out previous testimony in which it was claimed Lerner's emails were
archived. [Video clip]
2013
Treasury IG Report May Hint What Was in Destroyed Lerner Emails. A cottage industry
grew up following the revelation that Rosemary Woods, Richard Nixon's secretary, performed feats of
contortionism worthy of Barnum and Bailey in order to "accidentally" erase 18½ minutes of a
June 20, 1972, tape that most experts agree contained a conversation between the president and Chief of
Staff H.R. Haldeman discussing Watergate. Perhaps some day we'll have a similar photo of how Lois
Lerner "accidentally" crashed her computer to erase nearly two years of emails. To this day, we
don't know what those missing 18½ minutes contained. Oliver Stone in Nixon used the
tape gap to try to link him to the JFK assassination. Many Watergate experts think since other
meetings Nixon had during the day referred to the FBI, that Nixon may have told Haldeman specifically
to tell the FBI to back off and halt the investigation so that it led only to the original conspirators.
Will the missing Lerner emails suffer a similar fate?
IRS
says it cannot locate Lois Lerner emails prior to 2011. The Internal Revenue Service
told Congress Friday it has lost a trove of emails to and from Lois Lerner, a central figure in the
agency's Tea Party controversy, sparking outrage from congressional investigators who have been
probing the agency for more than a year. The IRS said it cannot locate many of Lerner's emails
prior to 2011 because her computer crashed during the summer of that year.
All the President's
Apologists. Of all the controversial revelations of 2013, from the news that White House
operatives may have altered the Benghazi talking points to the discovery that the National Security Agency
was collecting and warehousing the communications records of average Americans, the details involving the
targeting of conservative groups by the most intrusive agency of the federal government was by far the most egregious.
All the President's
Apologists. During the annual meeting of the American Bar Association in May 2013, a
senior official at the Internal Revenue Service named Lois Lerner divulged information she knew
would be released in a forthcoming report by the tax agency's inspector general. She preemptively
apologized for what she called the "inappropriate" scrutiny of conservative groups applying for
tax-exempt status, which came under her bailiwick as the director of the IRS Exempt Organizations
Division. [...] Surely, it had been Lois Lerner's intention to defuse the politically explosive
ramifications of the scandal when she begged forgiveness for her department's misuse of authority
even before anyone knew what had happened. But the significance of her disclosure, along with the
illuminating discovery that she had actually planted the question to which she had responded, was
immediately apparent.
IRS
Says It Lost Two Years of Lerner E-mails. House Ways and Means Commitee chairman Dave
Camp has hit a roadblock in his investigation of the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of
conservative groups: The IRS says it has lost over two years' worth of e-mails sent by former
agency official Lois Lerner, the one of the chief subjects of the committee's investigation.
Camp, who is retiring in November, is calling for an investigation into the matter and forensic
audits by the Department of Justice and Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration.
Lois
Lerner's "Lost" Emails. Eliana [Johnson]'s report is just stunning — no
matter how many times similar "mishaps" have occurred in this administration. The IRS, like other
government agencies, has lots of reasons to maintain e-mails, so I'm curious about whether they
will be similarly informing courts, Congress, litigants, FOIA petitioners, and other people and
bodies they must periodically make disclosures and reports to that they've lost nearly two years'
worth of agency communications? Or was this just one of those highly, highly unusual computer
crashes that affects only the e-mail account of Lois Lerner and any executive branch official with
whom she happened to exchange messages?
The two-year gap.
The IRS has informed the House Ways and Means Committee that it has lost Lois Lerner email messages
from January 2009 — April 2011. Harkening back to the allegedly accidental erasure of
18½ minutes of critical Oval Office recordings that contributed to Richard Nixon's resignation
from office, the IRS attributes the loss of Lerner email to a computer crash. Some email survives: the
agency retains Lerner email to and from other IRS employees during this period. The IRS claims it
cannot produce email written only to or from Lerner and outside agencies or groups, such as the White House,
Treasury, Department of Justice, FEC, or offices of Democrat congressmen. Funny how that works.
IRS
Claims to Have Lost Over 2 Years of Lerner Emails. Today [Friday 6/13/2014], Ways and
Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) issued the following statement regarding the Internal
Revenue Service informing the Committee that they have lost Lois Lerner emails from a period of
January 2009 — April 2011. Due to a supposed computer crash, the agency only has Lerner
emails to and from other IRS employees during this time frame. The IRS claims it cannot produce
emails written only to or from Lerner and outside agencies or groups, such as the White House,
Treasury, Department of Justice, FEC, or Democrat offices.
The IRS is used as a weapon against conservative individuals and groups
For years, I've heard people joke that if you get on a powerful politician's bad side, you'll get audited by the IRS and they'll make your life miserable.
The first time I noticed this cause and effect was in 1996, when Patricia and Glenn Mendoza shouted something at President Clinton as he passed by.
They were arrested for it, and sure enough, they had trouble with the IRS shortly
thereafter.*
Overviews:
Eric,
Merrick, and Jeff. Then there was Lois Lerner, who was the former director of the
Exempt Organizations Unit of the IRS. Lerner took to heart Obama's criticism of the Supreme
Court's 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling, and systematically
denied tax-exempt status to conservative organizations. In May 2013, she confessed to the
targeting of conservative groups, and later, appearing before Congress, she declared her innocence
and then invoked the Fifth Amendment to refuse to answer any questions. On April 9, 2014, the
House Ways and Means Committee sent a letter to the DOJ referring Lerner for criminal
prosecution. The letter stated: "In particular, the Committee found that Ms. Lerner used
her position to improperly influence IRS action against conservative organizations, denying these
groups due process and protection rights under the law. The Committee also found she impeded
official investigations by providing misleading statements in response to questions from the
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. Finally, Lerner risked exposing, and may
have actually disclosed, confidential taxpayer information, in apparent violation of Internal
Revenue Code section 6103 by using her personal email to conduct official business."
Six
Democrat Scandals That Should Have Ruined Careers. The IRS Targeting Scandal involving the infamous Lois Lerner
may be the worst scandal in American history, including Teapot Dome and Watergate. Our federal government militarized
the Treasury Department for the purpose of targeting conservative groups. If a group with "patriot" or "Tea Party" in
its name applied to the IRS for non-profit status, they were either harassed or summarily dismissed. Using the
authority of the IRS to attack political opponents is bad enough. It was a scandal that should have been at least
worthy of President Barack Obama's impeachment and potential imprisonment of key players. But what was most scandalous
regarding the IRS Targeting Scandal was the timing. J. Russell George, the Inspector General who investigated the
scandal, was aware of the IRS shenanigans in 2012, well before the reelection of Obama. In serious instances, which
this scandal certainly was, Inspectors General are required to notify Congress within seven days of discovery. But
George was silent, and didn't alert anyone until after the election. It was a blatant example of partisanship, waiting
until the election was over, yet only Congressional Republicans seemed to care. To date, no one has been
truly held accountable.
Catherine
Engelbrect and the Prestigious True The Vote Organization Release Powerful Warning on the Marxist Coup in 2020.
Catherine Engelbrecht is the Founder and President of True The Vote the nation's largest voters' rights group. [...] The
voter rights organization was so successful that True the Vote and its founder Catherine Engelbrecht, were targeted by top
federal government agencies including the IRS, DOJ, FBI, ATF, OSHA. Under the Obama Administration, those agencies launched
23 audits, investigations, and inquiries, persistently attacking the patriotic group. Engelbrecht and her organization
were harassed by the Obama IRS for months. The Obama IRS wanted to know Facebook posts, tweets and where Catherine
intended to speak.
Squeaky clean, huh? Obama forgot about
these 25 scandals. [#3] Obama IRS targets conservatives: In 2010, the Internal Revenue Service began
subjecting tea-party and conservative groups to intrusive scrutiny when they applied for nonprofit status. The IRS
later issued an apology and blamed mistakes on low-level employees. But it fought for more than five years demands for
full disclosure and documents sought by tea-party groups. In March of 2016, a federal appeals court accused the IRS of
stonewalling the release of lists of tax-exempt organizations targeted for political scrutiny and scolded the tax agency for
compounding an offense by continuing to fight disclosure.
Listen to Joe diGenova.
If diGenova's track record holds, a legal rain of ruin is about to befall the deep state operatives who tried to steal the
2016 election and, failing that, to unwind the result. And if, in fact, the enormous surveillance powers of our
intelligence agencies were usurped by the Obama administration to spy for years before the election on the opposing political
party, then the implications go far beyond just one election and one presidential candidate. If that happened, then
there can be no doubt that, when candidate Obama promised to "fundamentally transform America," he really meant it. If
Obama's "fundamental transformation" involved not only the atrocious harassment and intimidation of the Tea Party patriots by
his Internal Revenue Service, but also included surveillance state spying on the Republican Party generally, there must be no
question about whether the deep state actors should be punished for their actions.
Obama Minions
Shouldn't Act High and Mighty When It Comes to Abuse of Power. Let's start with the IRS scandal. Where
were the restrictions to protect everyday Americans from people like Lois Lerner, the former IRS official who oversaw the
organization's systematic discrimination and intimidation of conservative nonprofits? Don't count on a Democratic
Department of Justice to act as a watchdog — despite clear evidence of illegal behavior and unprecedented abuses
of power by the IRS, Obama's DOJ decreed that no criminal acts had been committed. The scary thing is that if
Republicans didn't take control of Congress in the wake of the scandal, the IRS likely would have continued this kind of
behavior through 2016. Even though the IRS had destroyed evidence in the middle of the investigation, that Lerner used
an e-mail account under the name of "Toby Miles" for official business, and that she was held in contempt of Congress, our
cool-guy-in-chief said "not even a smidgen of corruption" plagued the agency.
Who Will Hold the IRS Accountable?
Americans don't toss and turn at night over fears of a hazy network of Russian hackers. But they do fear letters from
the IRS. To their credit, a few conservative Republicans in the House still draw attention to the unresolved scandal at
the IRS. "Frankly in my view the most corrupt IRS commissioner that I've ever dealt with continues in my view to mislead
Congress," according to Kevin Brady, chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means. "And until he's removed I don't
think the IRS will ever regain its credibility." Brady is referring to the still-unsacked John Koskinen, the Obama-appointed
IRS commissioner who stonewalled Republicans during the Lois Lerner investigation.
The
Worst Perversion. Under the Obama administration's watch, the Internal Revenue Service and other federal
agencies from the BATF to the NLRB were illegally used to target and harass the president's political enemies. The IRS
targeting scandal was the most high-profile of these, but others are just as worrisome. Federal investigations and
congressional oversight were obstructed, and investigators were lied to outright — a serious crime. The
administration protected the wrongdoers and saw to it that they retired with generous federal pensions rather than serving
federal sentences for their crimes. [...] Having an IRS that sorts nonprofits by their political stances in order to
facilitate the harassment of political rivals is in real terms far worse than anything Bill Clinton got up to with Monica
Lewinsky, and far worse than the shenanigans that Gordon Liddy and the rest of the Nixon henchmen got up to in the
Watergate. The BATF harassment of True the Vote and other Obama-administration enemies is the stuff of which banana
republics are made.
The
Endless Scandal That Is the Obama Administration. The exercise in futility on the part of TaxProf in highlighting
the "IRS Scandal," which was instigated and maintained by President Obama himself, is finally likely to have some relevance to
the real world, starting on January 21, when Donald Trump takes office. TP has done yeoman's work in documenting this
scandal, although with Obama in office, it has been mostly meaningless. This is one particular part of the swamp Trump
must drain. A good start would be firing and indicting everybody in IRS who was responsible for this abomination.
'Legacy':
10 Ways Barack Obama Broke the American System. [#7] IRS scandal. Encouraged by Obama's attacks on "dark money"
and conservative political donors, the Internal Revenue Service began singling out conservative non-profit organizations for
excessive scrutiny, denying them the ability to operate during the crucial 2012 elections, and trying to pry loose private
information on their donors, their meetings, and even the content of their prayers. To this day, no Obama administration
official has been punished for that horrific abuse of power.
Obama
Says He's Had A Scandal-Free Administration. Here Are 11 of His Scandals. [#3] The IRS targeted
conservative organizations. In 2013, Lois Lerner, who directed the Internal Revenue Service's Exempt Organizations
Unit, admitted that Tea Party organizations were targeted under the agency, but blamed it on lower-level employees.
Such organizations were heavily scrutinized with invasive questions. Since then, Lerner and IRS commissioner John
Koskinen have denied any wrongdoing and have stonewalled congressional efforts to investigate the matter, citing computer
crashes for being unable to turn over related emails. Meanwhile, a federal court concluded in August that conservative
groups might still be facing targeted scrutiny from the IRS.
2010-2016:
The Era of Political Repression in America. [Scroll down] Since 2010, the "Democratic" government attacked and successfully suppressed the Tea Party
and other grassroots conservative groups. Obama's IRS was screening non-profits' applications by keywords such as "Tea Party" and "patriots,"
then delaying them and harassing their founders. The IRS also specifically targeted individual conservative donors for audit, along with
organizations associated with the Republican Party, such as Crossroads GPS, and their supporters. "Democratic" state prosecutors ordered
pre-dawn SWAT raids on allies of Republican Scott Walker in Wisconsin, and jailed political author and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza for "illegally"
contributing $20k to a Republican candidate without real chances in New York. All these attacks share one common attribute — the
opposition has been attacked under allegations of financial crimes. Of course, this is not the same as murdering opposition, but such
attacks are also harder to notice, and they soil the victims rather than the perpetrators. And such pressure tactics have an even stronger
deterring effect than the murder of opposition leaders — there are only a few leaders who can be murdered, but there are about a million
audits conducted every year. Thus, to an ordinary person, going to a meeting or donating $300 to a political organization, weaponized
IRS audits are a bigger threat than targeted murders.
Alphabet Soup Corruption.
[Scroll down] The Internal Revenue Service is likewise now a tainted agency, having lost the public trust. In similar
fashion to the Clinton email scandal, the FBI found that the IRS had mismanaged taxpayer accounts, but argued that the agency had
no deliberate intent to break the law. Yet Lois Lerner, an IRS director of tax-exempt organizations, publicly confessed to
targeting Tea Party groups and others deemed inordinately conservative. Lerner, who pled the Fifth Amendment before Congress
and was held in contempt, was allowed to retire with full pension, after ensuring that several conservative grassroots organizations
were denied tax-exempt status in the critical months before the 2012 presidential campaign.
Timely news and commentary:
Don't
Shoot Matt Taibbi Either, Take 3. The misuse of the IRS for political purposes is an
old story. No one at the IRS will ever pay a price for its continuing misconduct insofar
as it is directed at anyone who annoys the Democrats and the deep state. The question raised
by Taibbi's case is who's zoomin' who — i.e., who sicced the IRS on Taibbi? It
would be nice to know.
IRS
investigation of Taibbi stinks worse than you thought. Remember the minor
controversy — maybe not so minor, if you were paying attention — regarding
the IRS showing up at Matt Taibbi's door the day he testified before Congress about the
government's censorship efforts? No? Well the MSM didn't think it odd that one of the
most feared government agencies in America (who doesn't shiver when they hear the word "audit?")
sends agents to your house. IRS agents almost never do that, because it is scary, expensive,
and unnecessary unless there is a criminal investigation going on. It is extremely
rare. The timing was certainly odd, and it was noticed. A few people, conspiratorially
I am sure, thought that maybe it was an intimidation tactic. Shocking, I know, especially
since the whole point of the hearing that Taibbi was testifying at was the "weaponization of
government," which is something the Democrats vehemently deny happens.
The
IRS Opened its Investigation into Reporter Matt Taibbi's Taxes on Christmas Eve, the Same Day He
Dropped Twitter Files #9. In a letter to IRS Director Daniel Werfel Wednesday, House
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) revealed that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
opened a case targeting independent journalist Matt Taibbi on Christmas Eve 2022, coinciding with
Taibbi's Twitter Files reporting on the intelligence community's collusion with multiple tech
platforms. The IRS, according to recently obtained documents, then produced a dossier on
Taibbi that included information such as his voter registration records, whether he possessed a
hunting or fishing license, and whether he had a concealed weapons permit.
IRS
whistleblower breaks cover after claiming Hunter Biden was given preferential treatment during tax
probe. The IRS whistleblower in the Hunter Biden probe has broken his cover after
claiming the president's son was given preferential treatment in a tax probe. Gary Shapley, a
14-year IRS agent, said he immediately saw deviations in Hunter's tax probe investigation when he
was assigned the case in January 2020. He became concerned that prosecutors were mishandling the
'controversial' case and felt bound to blow the whistle due to his oath of office. 'This is a
job, and my oath of office is to treat everybody fairly that we investigate,' he told CBS News.
'[This case] was way outside the norm of what I've experienced in the past. There were
multiple steps that were slow-walked — were just completely not done — at the
direction of the Department of Justice.
Matt
Taibbi Reveals New Details About IRS Investigation Of Him That Began Shortly After First Twitter
Files Release. The IRS opened an investigation into journalist Matt Taibbi in 2022,
immediately following his publishing of a Twitter Files report, according to a letter sent to the
IRS on Wednesday by Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, which was shared on Twitter by
Taibbi. Taibbi released his first edition of the Twitter Files on December 2 in which he
revealed alleged misconduct between the social media giant and government agencies. Documents
indicate the IRS began an investigation into Taibbi's 2018 tax return on December 24, 2022,
according to Jordan's letter; the IRS did not reach out to Taibbi regarding the 2018 return until
last Christmas Eve, three weeks after his first Twitter Files release. "During the pandemic IRS
revenue officers were not making field visits," the IRS reportedly explained as their reason for
hesitating for such a long time before opening the investigation.
The
Obama IRS targeting political opponents in an effort to silence them before elections. It was
a clear violation of the First Amendment, yet every participant of the government was above the law.
They destroyed computers and lied to Congress, but the Justice Department let them off. ["]The
U.S. Justice Department has reached a settlement with dozens of conservative groups that claimed the Internal
Revenue Service unfairly scrutinized them based on their political leanings when they sought a tax-exempt
status, court documents showed.["] [...] It looks like the Biden IRS is still targeting political
enemies instead of doing their job. I have been a CPA for 46 years and not once have I seen a house
call. Should we trust the IRS with 87,000 more agents?
The
IRS lets pirates function as nonprofits. My memory is long enough to remember that the IRS did everything
possible to prevent Tea Party and Jewish conservative groups from claiming nonprofit status in the years leading up to
Obama's 2012 reelection. We know that wasn't accidental. Likewise, there's no accident behind the fact that
the IRS continues to give tax-deductible status to a group that even the Ninth Circuit conceded is a terrorist
organization in a piratical mode. The federal bureaucracy does not exist for America's benefit; it functions
entirely for its own.
Some
unanswered questions about those Biden classified documents. The case the strange timing and announcement
of the document discovery reminds me of is Lois Lerner's initial announcement that she regretted the customer service
problem her IRS agents had caused by unnaturally delayed customer service for certifying Tea Party groups.
Incompetents at the Cincinnati field office were blamed, but don't worry, they had it all fixed now. Why
pre-emptively admit there was a problem at all? [...] Turns out there was a lot more to that story, a systematic bid to
sic the IRS onto Tea Party groups to withhold their certifications as tax-free outlets, to swing the 2012
election. Lois Lerner ended up testifying to Congress, with a load of taking the fifths and not recalling, as
emails rolled out about her deriding conservative groups and eventually, huge numbers of these emails getting
"accidentally" destroyed. We know there was something big with that one during Joe Biden's vice presidency.
The initial announcement was the signal that something very funny was going on, something far worse than what they were
trying to spin.
Documents
Reveal Senate Democrat Pressured IRS, DOJ to Target Conservative Groups. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse,
D-R.I., called for revoking a tax exemption for a conservative group for not masking up and socially distancing during
the pandemic, insisted on a slew of investigations of other conservative groups, and pressed for the Internal Revenue
Service to expand its reach. A total of 176 pages of correspondence from and to Whitehouse was obtained from
the IRS by the conservative watchdog group American Accountability Foundation through the Freedom of Information Act and
shared with The Daily Signal. "It's abundantly clear that [Whitehouse] is trying to take the 87,000 new IRS agents
and put them to work investigating me and my friends because he doesn't like their politics," Tom Jones, president and
founder of the American Accountability Foundation, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Tuesday. The letters
span from Jan. 19, 2021, the day before President Joe Biden took office, into May 2022.
The
Trump Special Counsel is Another Clinton Payback. Under Obama, the IRS and the DOJ had illegally targeted
conservative nonprofits in order to silence political dissent. While Lois Lerner, sourly testifying before
Congress, became the profoundly unsympathetic face of the IRS, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee
revealed who was playing a key role in criminalizing dissent. "The Justice Department convened a meeting with
former IRS official Lois Lerner in October 2010 to discuss how the IRS could assist in the criminal enforcement of
campaign-finance laws against politically active nonprofits. This meeting was arranged at the direction of Public
Integrity Section Chief Jack Smith," the Committee stated. According to the Republican National Lawyers
Association, "Public Integrity Section Chief Jack Smith told investigators that officials at the Justice Department
discussed targeting conservative nonprofit groups with Lerner as early as October 2010." A year later, Smith
became a Wasserstein Fellow. Despite all this, Smith flew under the radar. While Lois Lerner was denounced,
Smith remained virtually as anonymous as his name, including his actual name, John Smith, but Smith was just doing his
job. Not on our behalf, but for those who had put him in his role.
The
Internal Revenue (Election Rigging) Service. [Scroll down] I'm focusing now on the IRS, which first hit
my radar screen when with no consequences whatsoever[,] Loretta Lynch's Department of Justice declined to press criminal
charges against Lois Lerner, whose outfit delayed and denied the Tea Party reform groups the tax-exempt status to which they
were entitled, hamstringing them against the very well-financed (probably including illegal funds from abroad) Obama
crowd. This time, pay attention to Black Lives Matter, an utterly corrupt outfit whose riots and lootings destroyed so
many cities and wreaked havoc on the black communities and their businesses. The damage continues to this day as the
riots fueled the defund police movement, a ridiculous effort that leaves the poor and the black communities particularly
vulnerable to violent crime, and as another consequence caused an exodus of needed businesses from those places.
Democrats
get ready to unleash the IRS for selective enforcement on political opponents. Democrats have an amazing array
of third-world dictator tricks targeting their Republican opponents. Item A is their bid to use the IRS to cut off
Republican freedom of assembly. [...] They're so concerned about superspreader events, they want to permanently shut down
conservative groups themselves for thier events so that conservatives can't assemble at all. Sounds pretty convenient
for their purposes. Not only do they want to take away our freedom of speech, freedom of press, and freedom of
religion, they'd also like to take away freedom of assembly. Just like they did during the Obama presidency when
conservative groups such as the Tea Party were targeted by the IRS with long delays for approval and long intrusive
questionaires about distant relatives. That targeting, according to some accounts, actually swung the election to the
low-popularity President Obama in 2012. Now they're back up to their dirty tricks, trying to use COVID as an excuse to
shut conservative groups down and deprive them of their constitutionally guaranteed right to assembly. Instead of
fining groups for violations or whatever is normally done, their plan is to shut the groups down.
Senator
on Panel that Oversees IRS asks Tax Agency to Strip Conservative Group of Nonprofit Status Over COVID-19 "Superspreader"
Events. Reminiscent of the Obama Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) witch hunt of conservative groups, a U.S.
Senator who sits on the committee that oversees the tax agency is pushing it to revoke a student charity's nonprofit
status. The veteran lawmaker, Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, says the conservative student organization,
Turning Point USA, should lose its nonprofit rating because it held large events that could help spread COVID-19. In a
letter to IRS Commissioner Charles P. Rettig the senator describes the gatherings as "superspreader" events. He
specifically mentions a Palm Beach, Florida winter gala at the Mar-a-Lago Club famously owned by former President Donald Trump.
"According to press reports and social media posts, many participants gathered and mingled indoors without wearing masks, in
violation of Palm Beach County's COVID-19 regulations," Whitehouse, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, writes to the
IRS chief. The powerful chamber has oversight over the IRS, among many other government agencies. "In holding
these 'superspreader' events, Turning Point USA knowingly exposed hundreds of young people and staff working at the events to
serious risk of infection," the letter continues. The legislator asks the IRS to review whether the group, which has
more than 250,000 student members, should continue to enjoy its tax-exempt nonprofit status.
True
The Vote Wins Historic $2 Million Settlement Against IRS. Last week Catherine Engelbrecht announced a historic
legal victory in her decade long battle against the IRS for targeting her group, True The Vote, as part of the Obama
administration's weaponization program against political opposition. U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton issued a
stunning ruling (full pdf below) in favor of True the Vote, and penalized the IRS. Judge Walton forced the IRS to pay
maximum attorney's fees due to discrimination against the conservative organization that stemmed from the Lois Lerner
scandal. The financial award is likely to exceed $2 million.
True
the Vote Wins Battle Against IRS as Judge Orders Tax Agency to Pay Legal Fees in Decade-Long Fight. True the
Vote, a nonpartisan conservative election integrity group that fought a nearly decade-long battle with the IRS and other
federal agencies that unfairly targeted the group, has won a major decision in federal court and shall be awarded maximum
attorney fees. "This is a huge victory for every American who thinks that they can't go up against the government and get
what they deserve," Catherine Engelbrecht, True the Vote's founder, told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview ahead of
the group's public announcement of the victory. "This is an opportunity to make very clear that we didn't back away and,
therefore, American citizens didn't back away — and we won."
Joe
diGenova Discusses Declassification and the Origin of the Obama Political Surveillance Operation. Now that we
have significant research files on the 2015 and 2016 political surveillance program; which includes the trail evident within
the Weissmann/Mueller report; in combination with the Obama-era DOJ "secret research project" (their words, not mine); we are
able to overlay the entire objective and gain a full understanding of how political surveillance was conducted over a period
of approximately four to six years. This is likely why there is institutional panic. Working with a timeline, but
also referencing origination material in 2015/2016 — CTH has tried to show how the program operated. The
exploitation of government collected information explains an evolution from the IRS Files in 2010 to the FISA Files in 2016.
More importantly, research indicates the modern political exploitation of the NSA database, for weaponized intelligence
surveillance of politicians, began mid 2012.
So
IRS Tea Party persecutor Lois Lerner had help all along: John McCain. Sen. John McCain, not too long
after seeking conservative and Republican votes in his failed 2008 bid for the presidency, went right after those same
conservative voters without telling them, by egging on the IRS to ruin them. It's the sort of political back-stabbing
that defies belief, taking an active role in destroying the Tea Party, which was an authentic grassroots movement of local groups
calling for smaller government. Sure enough, Judicial Watch has found McCain's central role right there in the documents.
John McCain Staffer Told Lois Lerner
To Audit Non-Exempts Till They Collapsed. Judicial Watch released some documents revealing that a John McCain
staffer urged Lois Lerner to audit non-exempt organizations until they financially collapsed. What he didn't know was
Lerner was already attacking the 501(C)(3), groups. By April 30th, 2013, Sen. John McCain's staff director
Henry Kerner, had moved on to be the chief counsel on the McCain-chaired Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee[.]
On that last day of April he urged a group of senior IRS officials, including the infamous director of exempt organizations
Lois Lerner that if she thinks the groups were being political to "audit so many that it becomes financially ruinous."
Judicial
Watch Obtains IRS Documents Revealing McCain's Subcommittee Staff Director Urged IRS to Engage in "Financially Ruinous"
Targeting. Judicial Watch today [6/21/2018] released newly obtained internal IRS documents, including material
revealing that Sen. John McCain's former staff director and chief counsel on the Senate Homeland Security Permanent
Subcommittee, Henry Kerner, urged top IRS officials, including then-director of exempt organizations Lois Lerner, to "audit
so many that it becomes financially ruinous." Kerner was appointed by President Trump as Special Counsel for the United
States Office of Special Counsel. The explosive exchange was contained in notes taken by IRS employees at an
April 30, 2013, meeting between Kerner, Lerner, and other high-ranking IRS officials. Just ten days following the
meeting, former IRS director of exempt organizations Lois Lerner admitted that the IRS had a policy of improperly and
deliberately delaying applications for tax-exempt status from conservative non-profit groups.
McCain
Flunky Weaponized the IRS, Is Now In Control of All Internal Probes. The revelation two nights ago that John
McCain's Staff Director urged the IRS and Lois Lerner to target the tea party until its "financially ruinous" is bad
enough. However, it gets worse. It must be noted that he is now in charge of all internal investigations in the
government and he is in control of whistleblowers. In his past positions, he was in investigative control during Fast &
Furious, Benghazi, and other probes. The man weaponized the IRS. His goal was to target conservatives through the
IRS. Why is he in one of the most powerful positions in government, internally investigating a corrupt DoJ/FBI when he
appears corrupt himself?
Is
there a single Democrat anywhere who [cares] about America? Not only did the IRS methodically delay targeted
applications for non-profit status but they also interrogated the applicants with lengthy and frivolous questionaires.
In one case, the agency asked a pro-life group to list "the content of their prayers". In spite of a largely uninterested
media, the IRS scandal generated a sufficient uproar that the Obama FBI and the DOJ were both tasked with investigating the
agency. Both probes resulted in no criminal charges, although there was overwhelming evidence that key officials in the
IRS had conducted politically motivated targeting of these groups. But a two-headed scandal of significantly more
import was about to be revealed.
Lois
Lerner Demands Privacy Protections the IRS Denies Everyday Americans. Disgraced former Internal Revenue Service
(IRS) official Lois Lerner recently asked the presiding judge in a recently settled Tea Party lawsuit to seal her testimony
to keep it secret from the public. Readers will recall Ms. Lerner as the central figure in the 2014 scandal that
targeted conservative and pro-Israel nonprofit organizations because of their philosophical beliefs. The resulting
outrage was swift, intense and justified. Even Barack Obama condemned the behavior, before his administration circled
its wagons, refused to prosecute her and joined the effort to sweep the entire ordeal under the rug. When compelled to
testify before Congress to answer for her transgressions, Lerner defiantly refused to answer any questions by invoking her
Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. She ultimately obtained an early retirement, with a full pension
paid by the same taxpaying American public whose rights she violated.
Is the IRS Scandal
About to Break Wide Open? Lost emails, destroyed hard drives, foot dragging, stonewalling, and a smirking,
sneering IRS commissioner doing his best to obscure the truth — this has largely been the response by the Internal
Revenue Service to investigations by Congress and FOIA requests from conservative groups trying to discover the truth about
the IRS targeting scandal. But one federal judge appears to be just as curious as the rest of us about what exactly the
IRS was up to when it targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny in approving their tax-exempt status.
Why
Are Trump's DOJ Appointees Protecting the IRS? Various media sources have reported that federal District Court
Judge Reggie Walton has ordered the IRS to finally respond to various legal requests for information and documents made by
the conservative tea party organizations that sued the agency. But the question that no one is asking is why that order
was even necessary, and why the Justice Department, which is now supposedly under the control and authority of the new
administration, hasn't reversed its obstinate, inflexible, and stubborn defense of the IRS. It was over four years ago
that the inspector general for tax administration at the Treasury Department released a report detailing that the IRS had
targeted conservative nonprofit organizations seeking tax-exempt status, and that then-IRS employee Lois Lerner admitted what
had been happening at an American Bar Association meeting in Washington.
American Leninism.
Consider the IRS campaign against Tea Party groups seeking tax waivers. Add to that the "John Doe" campaign against
conservatives in Wisconsin, a campaign that included the use of midnight raids by SWAT teams on the homes of
conservatives. It seems fair to conclude that the U.S. left views politics not in a debating society context, but in a
civil war setting — the aim being the obliteration of the enemy. I am not aware of any editorials in the
leftist media denouncing police state tactics against conservatives, tactics clearly intended to destroy conservatives so
that their "kind" do "not rise again." The Wall Street Journal editorial page stood alone in the media against the
outbreak of leftist totalitarianism during President Obama's second term.
What
a Tea Party Leader Thinks of Lois Lerner's Latest Move in Court. One tea party leader is still looking for
answers from the IRS. Lawyers for Lois Lerner, who resigned under fire as a division chief at the Internal Revenue
Service, argue that more details of her reported targeting of tea party groups should not be revealed because her safety is
in danger. But Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to election
integrity, said she wants to see such documentation released. True the Vote was one of hundreds of conservative,
nonprofit organizations whose applications for tax-exempt status were unfairly slowed or spiked by the IRS, and Engelbrecht
said she intends to see the details come out.
IRS
Officials Claim Lives in Danger if They Testify About Tea Party Bias Case. Current and former IRS officials are
asking not to publicly testify about the agency's alleged bias against Tea Party and other conservative organizations,
claiming they are in danger if they do so. Former official Lois Lerner and Holly Paz both argued in recent filings
under seal in the U.S. District Court in Cincinnati that the death threats and other harassment they have faced take
precedence over the public's right to hear their testimony on the case of IRS bias against conservative groups, USA
Today reported.
An
Important Legal Ruling Against the IRS May Have Huge Implications. In a major victory in the ongoing Lois Lerner scandal at the IRS,
non-profit election integrity organization True the Vote defeated an IRS motion to quash discovery in True the Vote v. IRS.
The ruling means that everyone involved in the scandal could be compelled to submit every document related to the case and be deposed by
True the Vote's legal team.
Obama's Chaos
Strategy: The Case of the IRS IED. As Lois Lerner attempts to garner the public's sympathy and a sealing
of her testimony in a federal case looking into the targeting of political opponents during the Obama Administration, new
reports now suggest that the House of Representatives will recommend the Department of Justice (DOJ) file criminal charges
against her. Lerner is the former IRS Exempt Organizations Director and, as such, she is the central player in the
pending explosion of the Obama era IRS scandal. The IRS targeting scandal of profiling and harassing conservative
political groups began in March 2010, shortly after the January 2010 Citizens United case was decided by the Supreme
Court. No Tea Party applications were approved for the next 27 months, while numerous liberal groups were
routinely cleared.
Impeach Obama IRS Commissioner
John Koskinen Now! Koskinen has aided and abetted the Obama administration in covering up a scandal of
monstrous proportion and severity — the chilling Obama administration scheme that involved former IRS employee
Lois Lerner to deploy the awesome power of the IRS in order to cripple conservative groups and target conservative
individuals and help President Obama win re-election in 2012.
GOP
calls for IRS Commissioner Koskinen to be fired. Congress's top tax expert led Republicans Wednesday [4/5/2017] in
demanding President Trump fire IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, saying the tax agency cannot be repaired as long as he's at
the helm. "Trust in the IRS is hitting rock-bottom," the Republicans, led by Rep. Kevin Brady, chairman of the
House Ways and Means Committee, said in a letter calling on Mr. Trump to take action. The 15 committee Republicans
said not only did the IRS destroy evidence from key figure Lois G. Lerner's computer in the tea party targeting probe, but
the agency also "intentionally" made the tax experience painful for customers in order to make a political point to the GOP.
Conservatives
Confused Why Koskinen Still Has Job at IRS. Current IRS Commissioner John Koskinen was not leading the agency
when it was targeting conservative groups that opposed President Obama's policies, but he was pretty uncooperative during
Congress's investigation into the scandal during his own tenure. It's for that reason Republicans are wondering why
President Trump has not relieved him of his duties. "President Trump should fire Commissioner Koskinen and replace him
with someone that will bring integrity and competence to the IRS," Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) told Fox News on Tuesday
[4/4/2017]. Fifty-four of Goodlatte's colleagues also penned a letter to the White House urging the administration to
remove Koskinen.
Judicial
Watch Obtains 695 Pages of Obama IRS Scandal Documents — Records Not Produced in Initial Congressional
Investigation. Judicial Watch today [4/4/2017] released 695 pages of new documents from the Internal Revenue
Service (IRS) that contain admissions by IRS officials that the agency used "inappropriate political labels" to screen the
tax-exempt applications of conservative organizations. Other records reveal that the IRS was going to require 501(c)(4)
nonprofit organizations to restrict their alleged political activities in exchange for "expedited consideration" of their
tax-exempt applications. The documents were produced after a revelation by the IRS that it had located "an additional
6,924 documents of potentially responsive records" relating to a 2015 Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
lawsuit about the Obama IRS targeting scandal.
Bribery:
New Documents Show IRS Targeting Scandal Was More Expansive. New documents obtained by government watchdog
group Judicial Watch show the IRS targeting scandal was more expansive than previously known and show IRS officials admitting
the tactics used to hinder conservative groups were inappropriate. The documents, which total 695 pages, were previously
withheld by the Obama administration from Congress and were not included in the Congressional investigation into IRS abuse.
Conservatives
Demand IRS Commissioner's Head In White House Meeting. An off-the-record White House meeting with roughly two
dozen conservative leaders Wednesday [3/30/2017] included explicit calls for President Trump to fire IRS Commissioner John Koskinen,
according to a source in the room. White House conservative liaison Paul Teller organized the meeting Wednesday between Trump
staffers and leaders of conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation and Judicial Watch. Talk of Koskinen's firing was
part of a larger discussion on clearing out Obama-era personnel from the executive branch where possible, the source said.
The IRS
Scandal, Day 1420: A Hidden Cause. Contrary to the conventional storyline, there exists an institutional policy
that was the first impetus in prompting IRS employees to target groups based on their political viewpoints. [...] Seven years
after the targeting scandal began, the rule that enabled this inexcusable behavior still exists. Until that rule is
removed from the internal manual used by all IRS employees, targeting of politcal opponents will remain a very real threat.
Fortunately, removing the offending provisions is a simple process that can be started at any time and completed without the need
for new legislation or formal notice-and-comment rule-making.
Two
Years Later, IRS Locates 6,924 Documents Related to Tea Party Targeting. The Internal Revenue Service has
located 6,924 documents potentially related to the targeting of Tea Party conservatives, two years after the group Judicial
Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for them. The watchdog group intended to find records regarding how
the IRS selected individuals and organizations for audits that were requesting nonprofit tax status. The agency will
not say when it will make the documents available to the public.
IRS
has 7,000 unreleased documents related to conservative and Tea Party targeting. The IRS has told a federal
court that they've recently identified almost 7,000 more documents that could contain information on how the agency targeted
the tax-exempt applications of Tea Party organizations or other conservative political groups starting back in 2010,
according to a court document. But IRS in the document would not commit to a timeline for releasing the documents.
Scandal
'Free' Obama. Well, let's start with the IRS scandal — or is there another word for what happens
when public officials in one of government's most sensitive departments make decisions based on ideology. Let's see,
how about when any organization with the words "tea party" in its name applies for tax-exempt status? Lois Lerner, who
headed the tax exempt division resigned. But guess that's only a "significant scandal" for those groups still waiting
to hear back from the IRS.
The
IRS Scandal Still Matters. Years after the Internal Revenue Service scandal broke and long after the media lost
interest in the agency's practice of subjecting conservative groups to special scrutiny and delays, the government is quietly
seeking to bury it. A ruling from a federal judge earlier this month demanding that the IRS finally resolve stalled
applications for non-profit status has gotten results. Many of these small groups often affiliated with the Tea Party
movement have now been granted the designation they needed to begin fundraising.
New
Documents Reveal Top Obama IRS Official Admitted Cincinnati Office Targeted Office Targeted Groups Based on 'Guilt by Association'.
Judicial Watch announced today [11/16/2016] that it has obtained 1593 pages of new documents from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), including
notes from a 2011 interoffice meeting revealing a top IRS official admitted that Cincinnati office agents were targeting organizations requesting tax
exempt status based on "guilt by association" and "party affiliation." According to former IRS Director of the Office of Rulings and Agreements
Holly Paz, "they think they know what the org is really doing, rather than looking at actual activities."
IRS
denies tea party groups after long wait for decision on tax-exempt status. Nearly seven years after it applied
to the IRS for nonprofit status, the Albuquerque Tea Party has finally been given a decision: Denied. The tax
agency, under orders from a federal judge, is belatedly tackling the remaining tea party cases that it delayed for years, and
so far the tea party isn't doing well. Only one of the three groups in the case was approved, and the other two,
including Albuquerque, got notices of proposed denials last week. The applicants will have a chance to appeal, but the
denials aren't sitting well with the groups, whose attorney said it's more evidence that the IRS continues to single out the
tea party for abuse.
Judge
orders IRS to stop targeting conservative groups. A judge in Ohio is ordering the IRS to stop targeting
conservative groups applying for tax exempt status and to make an immediate determination on an application by a Tea Party
group in Texas. The decision, made public on Friday, leaves no doubt that despite their claims to the contrary, the IRS
is still playing politics in determining the tax exempt status of conservative groups — some of whom have been waiting for
years to be approved.
Obama's
Tax Lawyers Had Conservative Groups' Confidential Information. President Barack Obama's White House hired at
least two Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys who accessed conservative groups' confidential taxpayer information while
defending the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) during the targeting scandal. The two were among 10 Justice Department Tax
Division lawyers Obama has kept on the White House staff without taxpayer privacy training since April 2009, nonprofit
government watchdog Cause of Action Institute (CofA) said in a report made public Wednesday [10/12/2016]. Obama "is the
first president to have recruited litigation specialists from the DOJ Tax Division, some of whom had knowledge of confidential
taxpayer information concerning his political opponents," the report said. "The DOJ has supplied a regular stream of
Tax Division lawyers to the Obama White House for more than seven years, all without any apparent guidance or safeguards to
ensure against the unauthorized disclosure of taxpayer information."
IRS
subjects tea party groups to new round of scrutiny, publicizes tax return data. The IRS' battle against holdout
tea party groups is heating up again, after the tax agency promised it would begin processing their long-delayed applications,
but sent a new round of prodding questions demanding still more information. More jarringly, the IRS then publicly released
one of the sets of questions it sent to the Texas Patriots Tea Party — a move the group's lawyer says puts secret taxpayer
return information, supposed to be protected, out in the public. Tax experts say the IRS may be on safe legal ground, since
the filing was made as part of a court case, and that's one of the few narrow exceptions to strict IRS privacy laws.
The
Weaponized Government Continues — U.S. Dept. Of Labor Target Peter Thiel. Do you think it is
coincidental that Peter Thiel is suddenly sued by the DoL a few months after publicly putting his influence on the line
politically? If so, that's a very naive position. The President Obama Treasury Department already admitted to the
targeting of political opposition, Tea Party Groups, through the IRS. President Obama claimed "not a smidgen of corruption",
the IRS commissioner was fired, IRS division head Louis Lerner plead the fifth, and replacement IRS head John Koskinen apologized
for what he initially called a "rogue operation based entirely in Cincinnati". However, it was later proved this wasn't
just a rogue operation.
The
IRS Commissioner Belongs in Prison. If you do not know the story — in which case, shame on
you — a brief recap: After years of pressure from Democratic grandees including Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
and Senator Chuck Schumer, the IRS began targeting conservative nonprofit groups for various kinds of illegal
harassment. Applications for nonprofit status were wrongfully delayed and denied, while investigations into those
organizations' tax statuses were turned into partisan fishing expeditions in order to expedite harassment against donors,
volunteers, and political activists. This involved organizations that are under the law explicitly permitted to
engage in political activity. Democratic officials at the state level joined in and continue to do so, with California
attorney general Kamala Harris demanding donor lists from California-based nonprofits that came into her crosshairs —
with no legal justification. This is a flat-out illegal campaign of criminal harassment and intimidation of political
activists involving the criminal misuse of federal resources for illegal partisan political ends.
Nets
Omit IRS Head Admitting to Targeting Tea Party Groups at Hearing. At a contentious impeachment hearing
conducted by the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday [9/21/2016], IRS Commissioner John Koskinen admitted that his agency targeted
Tea Party groups looking to obtain tax-exempt status. "They were totally improper criteria used to select organizations,
applying for c-4 designation for further review," testified Koskinen before the committee, "Those organizations predominantly were
conservative organizations." This stunning abuse of power went unreported by the "Big Three" networks Wednesday evening and
Thursday morning. The only reference to Koskinen being in a hearing that day was made by NBC that evening, but the report had
nothing to do with a possible impeachment or his testimony. During her report on NBC Nightly News, reporter Katy Tur used a
clip of the commissioner, talking about how tax-exempt organizations can spend their funds, to take a swipe at Donald Trump and his
foundation for alleged self-dealing.
Jim
Jordan Smacks Down IRS Commissioner at Impeachment Hearing. Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan went to town Wednesday
against IRS commissioner John Koskinen at Koskinen's congressional impeachment hearing over his response to the IRS
conservative targeting scandal. In a triumphant smackdown, Jordan showed Koskinen to his face that the IRS is still
engaging in targeting of conservative groups, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals. [Video clip]
Judiciary
Committee Set to Audit Top IRS Tax Agent. For the first time, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen will come under
oath to plead his case, appearing before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. A product of compromise, that
impeachment hearing means different things to different factions of Congress. Freedom Caucus members, who have been
demanding Koskinen's early retirement for months, see the hearing as a formality necessary to fire Koskinen. Others see
it as a prerequisite to a longer impeachment process and an opportunity to afford the taxman his right to due process.
IRS
chief Koskinen says he was misled, doesn't deserve impeachment. Mr. Koskinen was appointed to be the
troubleshooter after the tea party targeting scandal. But he ran into problems in trying to fend off the congressional
probes into the targeting, including overseeing the deletion of backup tapes containing emails sent or received by senior
executive Lois G. Lerner — a key figure in the targeting probe. Mr. Koskinen had assured lawmakers
that everything was being preserved and said his staffers couldn't find any backup tapes. But inspector general investigators
quickly located many of the tapes, though not before more than 400 were erased despite a subpoena for their contents.
Republicans
Cave on IRS Impeachment — Just as They Always Do. Last October (2015), Utah representative Jason
Chaffetz, one of the few Congressman who actually takes his job seriously, presented four Articles of Impeachment of IRS
Commissioner John Koskinen to the House Judiciary Committee. It should have been a slam dunk. [...] One of the reasons
(not a good reason) the House will not pursue impeachment is that [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell apparently called
over and said that the Senate will do nothing regarding Koskinen, regardless of whether the House passes Articles of
Impeachment or not. But what does that have to do with it? The House has an obligation to do their job.
What the Senate plans to do should be irrelevant to the House completing its job.
Republicans
move to impeach IRS chief. House conservatives moved on Tuesday [9/13/2016] to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen over
allegations that he misled investigators over the agency's inappropriate targeting of Tea Party groups. Rep. John
Fleming, R-La., introduced the resolution to impeach Koskinen on Tuesday afternoon. "[Koskinen] engaged in a pattern of
conduct that is incompatible with his duties as an officer of the United States," Fleming said on the floor.
Democratic
Senator Sought Justice Department and IRS Criminal Prosecutions of Conservatives in 2013. Judicial Watch today
[9/13/2016] released 72 pages of Department of Justice documents revealing email conversations between Department of Justice
officials and the staff of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) regarding the criminal prosecution of Tea Party groups for
alleged violation of IRS rules. The conversations were in preparation for a briefing by Justice Department officials
for Sen. Whitehouse's staff and for a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism hearing on April 9,
2013. One internal agency email exchange indicates Sen. Whitehouse's interest in seeking criminal prosecution
of groups targeted by the IRS.
IRS
refuses to abandon targeting criteria used against tea party, conservative groups. The IRS is refusing to
recant the targeting criteria it used to single out tea party groups for intrusive scrutiny, according to court filings made
public Wednesday that show the tax agency still struggling with the fallout from the scandal. At least three tea party
groups are still awaiting approval from the IRS more than three years after agents publicly admitted they'd asked
inappropriate questions and put the groups through unreasonable delays in obtaining tax-exempt status.
IRS
vows to finally stop targeting tea party groups. The IRS is still holding up three tea party groups'
applications, Commissioner John Koskinen admitted in a letter to Congress last week — but he insisted he agents
are finally about to begin processing them. Mr. Koskinen is hoping to head off yet another judicial spanking for
his agency, which has suffered a string of defeats in federal courts that ruled he is still improperly targeting conservative
groups and mistreating them more than three years after the tax agency admitted to its bad behavior. Not only are three
groups still awaiting approval, but the IRS had left open the possibility of kick-starting the use of its targeting, or "be
on lookout" (BOLO), lists that the agency used to figure out who it was subjecting to intrusive scrutiny. Now,
Mr. Koskinen is finally moving to shut the operation down for good.
Will
Predatory IRS Finally Be Brought To Justice? Two months ago, it looked as if the IRS scandal over targeting
conservative groups had reached a legal dead end. But an appeals court, in a stunning reversal, revived it this
week. Will justice finally be done? We hope so. The Washington, D.C., Circuit Court, overturning a June
lower-court decision, let the suit go forward because, as LSU law professor Philip Hackney noted in the Surly Subgroup blog,
"it found that the IRS had not voluntarily ceased its unlawful actions." In other words, the IRS is still doing what it
was accused of in the first place and was supposed to halt.
IRS
vows action on years-old tea party applications held up by targeting. Under pressure from the federal courts,
the IRS did an abrupt about-face this week and said it will finally begin processing some of the tea party applications it
has blocked for years — but the agency still refuses to say what the new process will be. The Texas Patriots
Tea Party, which first applied for tax-exempt status more than four years ago and has been blocked ever since, received a
notice from the Justice Department on Tuesday [8/16/2016] saying it is finally going to see some action. But the department's
attorney, Joseph A. Sergi, said he didn't have any more details to provide, leaving it unclear whether the agency will move
quickly, what sorts of standards it will impose and whether it will require another round of questions for the groups to answer.
The
IRS just admitted they could resume targeting conservatives. As we all know, the Obama administration has made
sure that no one at the IRS suffers any consequences for the political targeting of conservatives prior to the 2012
election. Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch have refused to prosecute any of the bureaucrats who were involved. They
have declined to enforce the contempt citation against Lois Lerner for refusing to provide any information to Congress about
her misbehavior and the inexcusable (and unlawful) abuse of the IRS's power and authority for political purposes.
Federal
Judge Says IRS Still Targeting Tea Party With Classic 'Catch-22'. A federal appeals court unanimously confirmed
Friday [8/5/2016] that Internal Revenue Service (IRS) officials targeted Tea Party and conservative non-profit applicants,
with one of the judges calling the tax agency's actions indefensible. "It being plain to the Inspector General, the
District Court, and this court that the IRS cannot defend its discriminatory conduct on the merits," U.S. Court of Appeals
for the D.C. Circuit Judge David B. Sentelle wrote.
IRS Colleagues
Called Lois Lerner 'Volatile'. Disgraced former IRS official Lois Lerner, made famous by the agency's
conservative targeting scandal, was a "volatile" "micromanager" who "targets people," her colleagues told the FBI.
Lerner headed the IRS office that targeted conservative and Tea Party non-profit applicants. She sent their tax exemption
applications to a bureaucratic "black hole" prior to and after the 2012 election, FBI interviews obtained by the conservative
watchdog Judicial Watch show. The documents reveal a side of Lerner's disruptive personality that was previously
unreported. The interviews were conducted in 2013 and 2014.
FBI
documents confirm everything suspected about IRS slow walking Tea Party applications. The truth has finally
tied its shoes and caught up with the lies told by IRS officials with regard to the treatment of applications for tax exempt
status by Tea Party groups. FBI documents released by Judicial Watch include interviews with IRS employees in the
Cincinnati tax exempt office run by Lois Lerner that prove employees were under instructions to bury the applications of Tea
Party groups.
IRS
Sent Tea Party, Conservative Applications to Black Hole. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) officials orchestrated
a complex scheme to dump conservative and Tea Party non-profit applicants into a bureaucratic "black hole," according to FBI
documents made public Monday [8/1/2016] by a government watchdog group. The documents describe how the IRS targeted the
groups applying for tax exemptions beginning in 2010 and continuing beyond the 2012 election in a scandal that culminated in
top agency official Lois Lerner's retirement following a series of investigations. The IRS sent applications associated
with the Tea Party to "Group 7822," a special team apparently developed specifically to snare targeted organizations' tax
exemption requests, FBI narratives of interviews called "302s" obtained by watchdog Judicial Watch show.
Court
says IRS must prove it stopped tea party targeting. A federal appeals court slapped the IRS with yet another
rebuke Friday, ruling that it did, in fact, discriminate against tea party groups and insisting the tax agency prove that
it's permanently stopped the unconstitutional targeting of groups because of their political leanings. The U.S. Court
of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said tea party groups can't sue individual IRS employees such as former senior executive Lois
G. Lerner, but said the tax agency itself has not sufficiently proved that it has banned any future targeting. The
three-judge panel sent the case back to a lower court for a more thorough ruling.
Court finds IRS may still be
targeting conservatives. A federal court ruled Friday [8/5/2016] that the Internal Revenue Service has not yet demonstrated that
officials stopped targeting Tea Party groups in a decision that excoriated the tax agency for its "discriminatory" treatment of conservative
organizations. "This is a blistering rebuke to the IRS and its defenders," Walter Olson, senior fellow at the Cato Institute Center for
Constitutional Studies, said of the court's ruling. "It takes on squarely the defense the IRS had raised in this case which is, 'Whatever
happened, we promise not to do it again.'" "The court goes through and systematically takes that apart in a way that's very damaging to the
IRS's overall defense," he added.
Obama
IRS Waited Years to Tell the Truth. Following up on some mega disclosures last week, this week we released 105
pages of newly obtained FBI "302" documents revealing that, beginning in 2010 and lasting through the Obama reelection
campaign in 2012, the IRS orchestrated a deliberate policy of burying conservative groups' tax exemption applications in
bureaucratic delays. Interviews with numerous Cincinnati IRS employees in mid-2013 reveal that "Tea Party" group
applications were automatically denied approval and assigned to a special "Group 7822" for an extended "inventory" process
while waiting for decisions from IRS headquarters in Washington, DC. One IRS manager "asked why progressive cases were
not segregated similar to the Tea Party cases, but she did not get any satisfactory answers."
Judicial
Watch: Obama Donor/DOJ Prosecutor Spent 1529.25 Hours Investigating the IRS' Targeting of Conservative Groups. Judicial
Watch today [8/2/2016] released a letter from the Justice Department admitting that Democratic Party/Obama campaign donor and Justice Department
attorney Barbara Bosserman spent 1,529.25 hours investigating the IRS' targeting of conservative organizations in 2010 and 2012.
According to Federal Election Commission records, Bosserman contributed $6,750 to Obama campaigns and the DNC from 2004 to 2012, including
12 separate contributions to Obama for America between 2008 and 2012.
Judicial
Watch: FBI Investigation Documents of IRS Scandal. Judicial Watch today [7/27/2016] released 294 pages of new Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) "302" documents revealing that top Washington IRS officials, including Lois Lerner and Holly Paz, knew that the agency was specifically
targeting "Tea Party" and other conservative organizations two full years before disclosing it to Congress and the public. An FBI 302 document
contains detailed narratives of FBI agent investigations. The Obama Justice Department and FBI investigations into the Obama IRS scandal resulted in
no criminal charges.
FBI
Investigation Documents of IRS Scandal. Judicial Watch today [7/27/2016] released 294 pages of new Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) "302" documents revealing that top Washington IRS officials, including Lois Lerner and Holly Paz, knew that the agency
was specifically targeting "Tea Party" and other conservative organizations two full years before disclosing it to Congress and the
public. An FBI 302 document contains detailed narratives of FBI agent investigations. The Obama Justice Department
and FBI investigations into the Obama IRS scandal resulted in no criminal charges.
Documents
indicate IRS officials knew of Tea Party targeting since 2011. A new batch of FBI documents released Thursday
[7/28/2016] by Judicial Watch indicates that several senior Internal Revenue Service (IRS) officials were aware of the
targeting of conservative groups almost two years before they told Congress. Lois Lerner, who oversaw tax-exempt groups
for the IRS, and top IRS official Holly Paz "knew that agents were targeting conservative groups for special scrutiny as
early as 2011," the conservative legal advocacy group said in a release Thursday. The IRS did not respond to requests
for comment. The detailed narratives of FBI agent investigations, known as FBI 302 documents, were obtained through
a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch.
From
Cincinnati to Washington: How Lois Lerner's IRS Ruthlessly Targeted the Tea Party. The IRS is a vast
organization, employing ninety-five thousand people, who enforce a code 3.7 million words long that oversees taxes on
everything from income to corporations to employment to estates to gifts to excises. It's home to agents and auditors
and specialists and examiners and investigators and lots and lots and lots of lawyers. It also oversees organizations
that are "exempt" from paying taxes. The Exempt Organizations unit at the IRS is in fact a big operation; on any given
day it oversees a universe of 1.5 million recognized tax-exempt organizations. Precisely because the IRS handles so
many nonprofit groups, it maintains a dedicated unit in Cincinnati — known as the Determinations unit —
that processes initial tax-exempt applications. The Cincy Determinations unit in turn is divided into thirteen groups,
one of which handles the initial "screens" of applications. The typical screener spends fifteen to thirty minutes on an
application, and completes twenty to thirty a day.
Report:
IRS's Lois Lerner passed more than a million pages of confidential docs to the DOJ. President Obama will be
joining Hillary Clinton on her campaign trek soon, after sitting by her side in April and explaining away the FBI's
investigation into her private email server. "There's classified and there's classified," the president explained to
Fox News' Chris Wallace, adding that he as president handles "classified" information all the time. It's no surprise,
then, that Lois Lerner fit right in at the Obama administration's IRS, where new documents show that she herself used her
personal discretion in determining which tax returns were confidential and which were confidential.
New Documents
Suggest IRS's Lerner Likely Broke the Law. It is likely the largest unauthorized disclosure of tax-return information
in history: the transfer of some 1.25 million pages of confidential tax returns to the Department of Justice in October
of 2010. And some say it may have been illegal. The documents, which consisted chiefly of non-profit tax returns,
were transferred to the DOJ's criminal division from the IRS at the request of Lois Lerner, who wanted to get the information
to the DOJ in advance of a meeting where she and several of the attorneys in the public integrity section of the department's
criminal division discussed their concerns about the increasing political activity of non-profit groups.
Regime of Lies. In
2013, when evidence surfaced that suggested the IRS was targeting conservative groups, Obama insisted that couldn't be the
case, but nevertheless dispatched his henchman, then-Attorney General Eric Holder, to launch a half-hearted investigation
into the affair. Nothing incriminating was discovered and no charges were filed — and later in 2015, in an
appearance on "The Daily Show," Obama said that the "scandal" was the result of poorly trained IRS employees and doubted if
conservative groups were truly targeted. Last week, however, the IRS released a list of 426 organizations it had
targeted during the scandal. Nearly all of them are conservative or appear conservative-leaning.
Here's
How the IRS Treated Me Because I'm a Conservative. I suffered through fifteen months of stonewalling followed
by demands to quickly meet a financial and ideological inquisition. I am now a plaintiff in a class action lawsuit
against the IRS, because we now know the IRS had flagged applications based on criteria like this: a) Have names
including "Tea Party," "Patriots," or "9/12 Project"; b) Deal with government spending, government debt, or
taxes; c) Deal with education of the public by advocacy or lobbying to "make America a better place to live";
or d) Criticize how the country is being run. The motto of my site — "resisting the re-education of
America" — probably fit (c) and (d). This is likely why last week, Dissident Prof was exposed
as #130 in the IRS's list of 426 targeted groups.
Life on the IRS's enemies list.
Last month, the IRS released a "near-complete" list of the many groups it targeted, pestered and harassed. The release
came more than three years after the tax collector was forced to admit that it intensely scrutinized tea party organizations,
and denied many of them nonprofit status. [...] After spending seemingly endless hours fighting Lerner's nonprofit organization
division at the IRS, the Rock River Patriots could fight no more. The group dropped its fatiguing pursuit of 501(c)(4)
status after the IRS eventually ceased its push to penalize the organization with fines and penalties. The agency has yet
to give the Rock River Patriots its application fee back.
IRS
targeting scandal: We will not allow Team Obama to run out the clock. We have been in federal court since
2012 challenging the unconstitutional targeting by the IRS of conservative and Tea Party groups. This unlawful scheme
was designed to punish organizations because of their conservative political beliefs. In April, we were in the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit presenting arguments on behalf of 38 organizations that we represent in our federal
lawsuit. In arguments before the panel, the court was very critical of the IRS. As Judge David B. Sentelle
put it: "It's hard to find the IRS to be an agency we can trust." That's very true. And, you can add
that the IRS is an agency committed to concealing the truth and dedicated to delaying the release of information.
Read the Full
IRS "Enemies List". The federal Internal Revenue Service has finally released a comprehensive list of
non-profit groups whose applications for tax-exempt status were held up by bureaucrats around the time of the 2012
election. The list was filed in federal court in late May as part of an ongoing class action lawsuit waged by
conservative groups against the IRS. The news was first reported by the Washington Times, but until Media Trackers obtained
copies of the federal court filings, the list was not published in many of the stories detailing the development. A
majority of groups on the list are conservative organizations skeptical of the Obama administration's policies.
Finally!
IRS Lists Tea Party Groups It Targeted, Nets Refuse to Report. After more than three years of stonewalling the
IRS has finally released an almost complete list of organizations that the tax agency scrutinized in the Tea Party targeting
scandal, but you wouldn't know that if you got your news from the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks. In fact, it's
been 587 days since any network reported on the IRS scandal, when CBS This Morning made a mention of it on October 28,
2014. NBC last noted the targeting scandal 614 days ago and it's been over two-years — a whopping 760 days —
since ABC last mentioned it on the May 8, 2014 Good Morning America.
IRS
finally reveals list of tea party groups targeted for extra scrutiny. More than three years after it admitted
to targeting tea party groups for intrusive scrutiny, the IRS has finally released a near-complete list of the organizations
it snagged in a political dragnet. The tax agency filed the list last month as part of a court case after a series of
federal judges, fed up with what they said was the agency's stonewalling, ordered it to get a move on. The case is a
class-action lawsuit, so the list of names is critical to knowing the scope of those who would have a claim against the IRS.
IRS
must publicize sensitive tea party data obtained in targeting, Obama administration says. The IRS says it has stopped
targeting the tea party — but three years later, the tax agency is still holding on to the sensitive information it pried
from the conservative groups through invasive questions, and officials are even vowing to make the answers public. Groups
caught up in the scandal say that is proof the targeting is continuing, and they want the IRS to expunge the information or,
at the very least, to make sure it is never released.
How
Is the IRS Auditing Churches? Group Demands Answers. A nonprofit legal organization that advocates
freedom of religion is demanding the Internal Revenue Service explain how it audits churches. "The freedom of religion
is too important to ... allow an administrative agency with enormous power like the IRS to just do as it pleases, with no
accountability," Erik Stanley, Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel, told The Daily Signal in an interview.
Alliance Defending Freedom filed a motion with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on April 8, alleging
the IRS has failed to fully comply with a legal obligation to release documents related to the federal agency's internal policies
and procedures.
Overview: The IRS Attacks the Tea Party.
In the lead-up to the 2012 election, many conservative organizations and Tea Party groups that had sought tax-exempt status
from the IRS were frozen in limbo, unable to participate fully during election season because they were wasting away on an
IRS list specifically created to stymie right-leaning groups hostile to President Obama's radical leftwing agenda. In
spring 2013, the IRS admitted to using keywords to target conservative organizations seeking tax exemption. The agency said
it used the keywords as a way to quickly flag applications for closer scrutiny because, after the First Amendment-affirming
Citizens United ruling in 2010, the IRS was overloaded with applications. Some of the keywords used to target
conservative groups included "Tea Party" and "patriots," as well as the word "Israel." Other key phrases and concepts
used by the IRS to apply a heightened level of scrutiny included questioning government spending, government debt, government
capability, or criticizing how the country was being run, advocating for education about the Constitution or the Bill of Rights,
and any challenges to the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare).
IRS
sued for refusing to release secret 'church investigations' procedures. Government watchdog groups have filed a
motion in federal court to compel the IRS to reveal how it determines when to initiate "church investigations" after accusing
the tax-collecting agency of "stonewalling" efforts to bring to light its procedures. The motion, filed jointly Friday
[4/8/2016] by the Alliance Defending Freedom and Judicial Watch, came in response to a legal settlement struck in 2014 with an
atheist organization, which said the IRS had "resolved the signature authority issue necessary to initiate church examinations."
Court
rebukes IRS for tea party targeting, orders release of secret list. A federal appeals court spanked the IRS Tuesday, saying it
has taken laws designed to protect taxpayers from the government and turned them on their head, using them to try to protect the tax agency
from the very tea party groups it targeted. The judges ordered the IRS to quickly turn over the full list of groups it targeted so that
a class-action lawsuit, filed by the NorCal Tea Party Patriots, can proceed. The judges also accused the Justice Department lawyers,
who are representing the IRS in the case, of acting in bad faith — compounding the initial targeting — by fighting
the disclosure.
IRS
Baloney Meets Sixth Circuit Grinder. Yesterday the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (the
Circuit that includes Ohio and thus the IRS's Cincinnati office) released its decision in United States v. NorCal Tea Party
Patriots. In the court's published decision, rejecting the IRS's petition for extraordinary relief in a pending class action
by the NorCal Tea Party and others mistreated by the IRS, the baloney meets the grinder.
Federal
appeals court slams IRS in Tea Party case, demands documents. In a blistering rebuke of the IRS, a Cincinnati-based
federal appeals court has ordered the tax-collecting agency to quit stalling and produce the names of organizations it targeted
based on their political leanings. The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
6th Circuit gave the IRS two weeks to turn over the documents sought as part of a class-action lawsuit brought by the NorCal
Tea Party Patriots. "The lawyers in the Department of Justice have a long and storied tradition of defending the nation's
interests and enforcing its laws ... The conduct of the IRS's attorneys in the district court falls outside that tradition," the
opinion said.
No "Major Scandal" in Obama Administration? The IRS targeted
conservative groups applying for non-profit status from 2010 to 2012. In what some see as an attempt to influence elections, the IRS began requesting inappropriate
information disproportionately from conservative groups and then delaying their approval, generally chilling free speech throughout the country. Lois Lerner,
at the heart of the scandal, has refused to testify before Congress, pleading the Fifth Amendment. The media continue to argue that President Obama is not connected
to this scandal, but it can be tied directly to the White House. The President has tried to assert that there isn't a "smidgeon" of corruption at the IRS.
Federal
judge certifies tea party in class action lawsuit against IRS. A federal judge on Tuesday [1/12/2016] certified
a class-action lawsuit against the IRS for its political targeting, advancing the cause of more than 200 tea party groups who
said they were denied their First Amendment rights by the tax agency's actions. Judge Susan J. Dlott in the Southern
District of Ohio issued an order certifying the class, though she sealed the order for now to protect private taxpayer information.
Lerner,
in newly released emails, calls GOP critics 'evil and dishonest'. Newly released emails from Lois Lerner show the former
IRS official at the heart of the Tea Party targeting scandal calling Republican critics "evil and dishonest," and even "hateful."
The emails — part of a report released Aug. 6 by the Senate Finance Committee — offer a revealing look at
Lerner, who used to head the division that processes applications for tax-exempt status and was at the center of the scandal over the
alleged targeting of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
IRS finds yet another
Lois Lerner email account. Lois Lerner had yet another personal email account used to conduct some IRS business, the tax
agency confirmed in a new court filing late Monday [8/24/2015] that further complicates the administration's efforts to be transparent
about Ms. Lerner's actions during the tea party targeting scandal. The admission came in an open-records lawsuit filed by
Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm that has sued to get a look at emails Ms. Lerner sent during the targeting.
IRS
Scandal: Lerner A Secessionist? No, She Just Hates Southerners. Tuesday [8/11/2015], according to the Tax
Prof's calculations, is Day 824 of the IRS scandal. That would be 823 more than the number of conservative groups that the
Lois Lerner regime granted tax-exempt status during President Obama's first three years in office. We've long known that
there has been some nasty business going on at the IRS, with Lerner and others harassing conservative and Tea Party groups
trying to organize under a tax-exempt status. But the virus still elicits mild surprise when it's exposed to the air,
as a Senate Finance Committee report released last week illustrates.
IRS
Awarded One Conservative Group Tax-Exempt Status in Three-Year Period. The Internal Revenue Service gave only
one conservative advocacy group tax-exempt status because of its "deliquent" handling of applications from Tea Party and
conservative groups, according to a report released by the Senate Finance Committee last week. As reported by Americans
for Tax Reform, former head of the IRS Exempt Organizations Unit Lois Lerner so severely failed to manage her staff that she
prevented the government agency from granting non-profit status to all but one conservative group in a three-year period.
IRS's
Lois Lerner called conservatives [nasty names] in emails. A trove of IRS emails show top official Lois Lerner had
a deep commitment to the Democratic Party and a significant dislike for the new conservative grassroots groups that formed under
the Tea Party banner and sought tax-exempt status from the agency. [...] The emails are included in a bipartisan report issued
Wednesday [8/5/2015] by the Senate Finance Committee, which cited "gross mismanagement" and also "personal politics" as the root
cause of the IRS mishandling of tax-exempt applications from Tea Party organizations.
Jailtime
For IRS' Political Hacks. After a year's stalling by the IRS, the Senate Finance Committee has released
its bipartisan report, denouncing the tax-collection agency's partisanship and incompetence. When are these people
going to jail? The Senate report wasn't entirely satisfactory, given that its criticism was primarily in the
compromise language of "gross mismanagement" to describe the agency's targeting of Tea Party dissident groups.
Using legal technicalities to silence and repress political dissent under the color of the nation's most feared
enforcement agency isn't mismanagement. It's a crime.
McConnell:
Obama Administration 'Misled' Congress, Hid Evidence to Conceal IRS Targeting. Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) accused the Obama administration of misleading Congress
and hiding evidence in order to conceal the effort by the Internal Revenue Service to target
conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. The Hill reported that McConnell slammed
the White House in a statement Wednesday [8/5/2015] following the release of a bipartisan Senate Finance
Committee report that revealed the extent to which the "delinquent" IRS mismanaged applications from
Tea Party groups. "The report makes clear that civic groups were harassed specifically because
they identified as conservative," McConnell declared. "It underlines the seething contempt partisan
officials like Lois Lerner had for them. It also reveals that administration officials continually
misled Congress and attempted to hide evidence that might have brought the truth to light sooner."
Lois
Lerner Wanted To Audit A Group With Ties To Bristol Palin. Embattled ex-IRS official
Lois Lerner inquired about auditing a pro-abstinence group with ties to Bristol Palin, the daughter
of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, according to a Senate report released on Wednesday [8/5/2015].
Senate Finance Committee chairman Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, disclosed Lerner's email —
which she sent in April 2011 — in an addendum to a report detailing the results of a two-year
investigation into whether the IRS unfairly targeted conservative groups. The bi-partisan report
concluded that Lerner and the IRS often ignored applications for tax-exempt status submitted by Tea Party
organizations and other groups.
10
tea party groups still awaiting approval from IRS. Ten tea party groups are still
awaiting approval by the IRS years after they applied for tax-exempt status, Senate investigators
revealed Wednesday in a report that recommends the tax agency issue a ban preventing employees who
work on nonprofit applications from engaging in political activity. Investigators said the
IRS's top brass showed bad management in letting the division that handles nonprofit applications
run amok, but the report cleared those top officials of more serious charges of trying to punish
groups politically opposed to President Obama.
Networks Refuse
to Report on Latest IRS Scandal Revelations. None of these three stunning IRS scandal
developments, that have unfolded this week, have yet to be reported on by any of the Big Three network
evening or morning shows. The cover-up behind the IRS targeting scandal continues to unravel,
despite President Barack Obama's protest to The Daily Show's Jon Stewart last week that "the truth of
the matter is there was not some big conspiracy." This week's revelations provided the perfect
opportunity to catch Obama in a "gotcha" moment but so far ABC, CBS and NBC have reacted with total silence.
Federal
judge threatens to hold IRS chief in contempt. A federal judge threatened to hold IRS
Commissioner John Koskinen in contempt Wednesday [7/29/2015] after the IRS failed to produce, as
ordered, newly recovered emails of former IRS official Lois Lerner. U.S. District Court Judge
Emmet Sullivan had ordered the IRS on July 1 to turn over Lerner emails on a weekly basis in
response to a lawsuit by the watchdog group Judicial Watch. The lawsuit focused on the 2013
scandal in which the IRS acknowledged agents had improperly singled out Tea Party and other conservative
groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status during the 2010 and 2012 elections.
Federal
Judge Threatens to Hold IRS Chief and DOJ Attorneys in Contempt of Court Over Lerner Cover-Up. U.S
District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan today [7/29/2015] threatened to hold the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue
Service and Justice Department attorneys in contempt of court after the IRS failed to produce status reports and
newly recovered emails of Lois Lerner, former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the IRS, as he had
ordered on July 1, 2015. During the a status hearing today, Sullivan warned that the failure to follow
his order was serious and the IRS and Justice Department's excuses for not following his July 1 order were
"indefensible, ridiculous, and absurd." He asked the IRS' Justice Department lawyer Geoffrey Klimas, "Why
didn't the IRS comply" with his court order and "why shouldn't the Court hold the Commissioner of the IRS in
contempt." Judge Sullivan referenced his contempt findings against Justice Department prosecutors in the
prosecution of late Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) and reminded the Justice Department attorney he had the ability to
detain him for contempt. Warning he would tolerate no further disregard of his orders, Judge Sullivan said,
"I will haul into court the IRS Commissioner to hold him personally into contempt."
Ted Stevens recap: Same
Plot, Different Actors. [Scroll down] In the Stevens case, the government
suborned perjury, hid a critical witness for the defense, and suffered no consequences of note for
that. With Stevens out of the Senate, the Democrats rammed through ObamaCare before the
serious misconduct of the FBI and DoJ attorneys was known, too late to provide solace to Stevens,
who died in a plane crash before the truth was revealed.
Ted
Cruz presses IRS commissioner on non-profit targeting. It's been two years since the IRS targeting
scandal broke, but Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Ted Cruz, said on Thursday [7/30/2015] they're still looking for
answers. The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts,
chaired by Cruz, on Wednesday questioned IRS Commissioner John Koskinen about the agency's cooperation with
investigations, and rehashed accusations of a White House conspiracy to target conservative groups. "The
American people have a right to be angry when an instrument of the american government is used a partisan cudgel,"
said Cruz, a 2016 presidential candidate running on abolishing the IRS. "I have to say, Richard Nixon's
ghost must have been smiling."
Cruz
compares Obama to Nixon. Sen. Ted Cruz compared the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS to the Watergate
scandal during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday [7/29/2015]. The Texas Republican and presidential
candidate blasted the Obama administration in his opening remarks, saying "When Richard Nixon did it it, it was wrong and he
rightly resigned from the presidency in disgrace." "No politician has the right to use the machinery of the executive
branch to target their political enemies," he went on to say.
IRS
gets lashing from judge for refusing to release Lerner emails, other documents. A federal judge Wednesday
[7/29/2015] rebuked the Obama administration's IRS for refusing to divulge documents, including Lois G. Lerner's
emails, and warned that he would hold in contempt those who break his orders. Judge Emmet G. Sullivan called
the administration's defense "nonsensical" and said the IRS must release documents every Monday to Judicial Watch, a
conservative public interest law firm that requested the documents under open records laws and then sued after the IRS
didn't comply.
IRS
Concealed Internal Communications By Using Instant-Messaging System. Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
officials — including ex-director of exempt organizations Lois Lerner — used an instant-messaging
system in a seemingly deliberate effort to prevent their communications from being archived. Americans for Tax
Reform observed that new documents released by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform demonstrate that
IRS officials used an instant messaging system called the "Office Communication Server," denoted OCS, that did not
archive their communications.
Lois
Lerner Used Instant-Messaging System Because It Didn't Save Her Messages. The Internal Revenue
Service (IRS) used an instant-messaging system that did not automatically save the messages they sent, according
to newly released emails obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Disgraced
former IRS official Lois Lerner loved the agency's "Office Communication Server" (OCS) specifically because it
left no record of her messages during the period in which her department was targeting conservative and
tea party groups.
New
IRS Lerner emails show agency tried to block Congressional scrutiny: Watchdog. The
IRS sent one of its intrusive scrutiny letters to a nonprofit group in order to throw up a
smokescreen and prevent the group from complaining to Congress about poor treatment, according to
one of Lois G. Lerner's apparently lost emails, which were recovered by auditors and released by an
interest group Tuesday [7/28/2015]. Judicial Watch, which had sued to force the production of the
Lerner emails, said the emails confirm Ms. Lerner, the central figure in the targeting probe, and
her colleagues were aware of the sensitive nature of the cases, but appeared to hide details of the
massive backlog they were amassing as they held up hundreds of tea party and conservative group
applications for nonprofit status.
The Stonewall
at the Top of the IRS. Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen needs to go.
When it was revealed in 2013 that the IRS had targeted conservative groups for exercising their First Amendment
rights, President Obama correctly called the policy "inexcusable" and pledged accountability. He even fired
the then-acting IRS commissioner because he said it was necessary to have "new leadership that can help restore
confidence going forward."
House
chairman: Documents prove IRS 'political targeting' of conservatives. The chairman of
the top House committee probing the IRS political witch hunt of President Obama's foes said
documents prove that the agency targeted conservatives and then tried to destroy the evidence and he
promised "news" on the panel's investigation next week. "I promise you — there will
be news on the IRS side as early as next week. So stay tuned," said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chair of
the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Chaffetz
asks Obama to fire IRS chief Koskinen for 'obstruction' of congressional probes. The
head of the top House investigative panel Monday called for the firing of IRS chief John Koskinen,
arguing he has repeatedly "obstructed" congressional probes into the agency's political targeting of
taxpayers. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and
Government Affairs, made his request Monday [7/27/2015] in a letter to President Obama, arguing the
president vowed in 2013 to "work hand-in-hand with Congress to fix the problem."
The Editor says...
One might as well send a letter to Barack H. Obama asking him to immediately resign. Asking corrupt politicians to do
the right thing is like going to the airport and asking for a free ride to Hawaii. It isn't gonna happen.
"We
Need A Woman of Your Special Skills". The woman who "discovered" all of those deleted emails at the
IRS was the one person the State Department felt it had to have onboard to "vet" Hillary's emails? I wonder why.
House Republicans
to Obama: Fire IRS chief. House Republicans on Monday [7/27/2015] demanded that
President Obama fire IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and announced that they have begun contempt
proceedings against the tax chief. Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), flanked by more
than a dozen other Republicans on his committee, said the panel would use any and all methods
available — including contempt of Congress charges or impeachment — to take
aim at Koskinen.
The Editor says...
The Republicans don't have the collective backbone to impeach Commissioner Koskinen, as he is
surely aware, and if there's a contempt of Congress charge in the works, there is probably a
presidential pardon being written, too.
President
punts on IRS. Because there's a looser vibe on late-night talk shows perhaps President
Obama felt free to play looser than usual with the facts. But his characterization of the IRS
scandal during an appearance on Jon Stewart's show this week isn't as easily laughed away as it may
have been by the audience. Yes, the president tried to rewrite a bit of embarrassing history,
chalking up the IRS targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status as the simple fallout
from a "crummy" law enacted by Congress.
Report:
IRS Used Donor Lists to Target Conservatives for Audits. President Obama appeared on
the Daily Show this week and claimed that the IRS never targeted the Tea Party. Yet according to
an explosive new report from Judicial Watch, the IRS used donor lists from certain organizations to
target specific people for audits: [...]
FreedomWorks:
We Refuse to be Silenced by the IRS. In light of recent revelations that the IRS used donor lists
to target right-leaning groups for audits and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) stating that targeting
of conservatives is still possible, FreedomWorks CEO Adam Brandon commented: "It is completely unacceptable,
and 100 percent illegal, for the IRS to target donors of right-leaning groups for audits. Even after
the Lois Lerner scandal, this problem has not been fixed. This has to change now."
IRS
Scandal: It's Dangerous On Wrong Side Of Obama. Documents produced by the IRS confirm
that being on the wrong side of this administration is a dangerous place to be. Judicial Watch,
which used the Freedom of Information Act to pry the documents from the government's grasp, said
Wednesday they "confirm that the IRS used donor lists to tax-exempt organizations to target those
donors for audits." Among these groups was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. That organization "may
find itself under high scrutiny," an IRS official whose name was redacted told IRS attorney Lorraine
Gardner in an email.
A
bit foggy on that IRS scandal, Mr. President? U.S. House members are meeting today,
July 23, for a hearing on the IRS — and President Obama may have provided some fodder
for Republicans. The House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight will hold a hearing on the
Internal Revenue Service's audit selection process and internal controls within the Tax Exempt and
Government Entities division. The hearing comes just after President Obama appeared on "The Daily
Show" and claimed the IRS did not target tea party and conservative groups.
AO:
'Americans Still Vulnerable to IRS Audits Over Personal Beliefs'. A House Oversight
subcommittee hearing today will provide more pushback to President Barack Obama's claim to the Daily
Show that there was no IRS targeting of conservative nonprofits. The hearing, which will take
testimony from IRS commissioner John Koskinen, will zoom in on a new report from the Government
Accountability Office that will deliver this bombshell: The GAO now says that IRS political
"targeting is indeed possible in the audit process" for nonprofits, largely due to poor agency
oversight and controls. "Unfortunately, the IRS has not taken sufficient steps to prevent
targeting Americans based on their personal beliefs," the GAO says.
The Hell
That is the Obama White House. [Scroll down] And what exactly is the I.R.S. scandal
about — to take just one case? It's a plan unprecedented in modern American politics to
push the political system towards a one-party state by using the taxing authority of the government to
cripple and destroy the political opposition. The administration's campaign to promote voter fraud
by opposing measures to stop it (and defaming them as "racist" is guided by the same intentions and desire.
And why shouldn't Obama want to destroy the two-party system since he is also in utter contempt of the
Constitutional framework, making law illegally, and defying an impotent Congress to stop him? Of
course every radical, like Obama, hates the Constitutional framework because, as Madison explained in
Federalist #10, it is designed to thwart "the wicked projects" of the left to redistribute income
and destroy the free market.
Obama
Outrageously Denies IRS Targeting Scandal on Daily Show, Nets Censor. President Barack
Obama outrageously denied there was anything scandalous about the IRS-Tea Party controversy, in his
Tuesday [7/21/2015] interview on The Daily Show, as he lectured Jon Stewart that: "When
there was that problem with the I.R.S. everybody jumped, including you... you got this back office
and they're going after the Tea Party. Well it turned out no." Obama went on to assert "the
truth of the matter is there was not some big conspiracy there." Obama was never challenged by
Stewart on this dodge despite the recent bombshell news that Lois Lerner had a meeting with the Justice
Department and the FBI to target Obama opponents. While all Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) network
morning shows, on Wednesday [7/22/2015], offered glowing coverage of Obama's sitdown with Stewart,
not one of them picked up on Obama's scandal denial.
New
Documents Show IRS Used Donor Lists to Target Audits. Judicial Watch announced today
[7/22/2015] that it has obtained documents from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that confirm that
the IRS used donor lists to tax-exempt organizations to target those donors for audits. The
documents also show IRS officials specifically highlighted how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce may come
under "high scrutiny" from the IRS.
IRS
Targeted Mainstream Conservatives. The information was made public late Wednesday [7/22/2015].
The documents reveal, according to the organization, that the IRS used donor lists from conservative tax-exempt
organizations to target donors for audits. In 2010, they say, the IRS considered cross checking donor lists
against gift tax filings and commencing audits against taxpayers who failed to file. Some audits were
initiated, but the IRS ultimately stopped the effort. Such audits are the subject of controversy because
the Supreme Court has ruled against them as a violation of the First Amendment.
Obama:
'Real' IRS Scandal Is That It's 'Poorly Funded'. During an interview on the Daily
Show, President Obama insisted that the IRS scandal isn't real. He blames Republicans for not
providing enough money to the federal agency to allow it to do its job. Obama explained that
accusations that they were specifically targeting conservative organizations was false and that IRS
employees were simply implementing laws passed by Congress "poorly and stupidly."
Obama
defends IRS, says tea party targeting didn't happen. President Obama defended the IRS
Tuesday [7/21/2015] in an interview with "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart, saying the tea party-targeting
scandal was actually Congress' fault for passing "a crummy law" and that the real problem is the agency
doesn't have enough money. Mr. Obama, who has overseen a series of scandals at the IRS, the Veterans
Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and now the Office of Personnel
Management, was asked why government didn't seem to be working on his watch.
Midnight
raids, secret subpoenas: IRS' Lerner close friends with leader who targeted Scott Walker. The official
behind the IRS' conservative nonprofit targeting scandal, Lois Lerner, was friends with the Wisconsin regulator who
targeted Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's conservative aides and allies. Lerner and Kevin Kennedy, director of the
Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, were friends for 20 years and traded emails on campaign finance,
politics, and personal matters between 2011 and 2013, emails obtained by the Wall Street Journal reveal. That was
the same time frame the IRS increased its harassment of conservative groups and Wisconsin prosecutors conducted a secret
John Doe probe of Walker's allies, raising the troubling question of whether they coordinated their investigations.
You
Can't Keep Up with Obama's Incompetence, Corruption, and Hyperactivity. Wednesday's
[7/8/2015] headlines revealed a far broader and darker abuse of power. "The FBI and Justice
Department worked with Lois Lerner and the IRS to concoct some reason to put President Obama's
opponents in jail before his reelection, and this abuse resulted in the FBI's illegally obtaining
the IRS files of innocent Americans," said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. The conservative
watchdog group uncovered an IRS document that shows how the agency furnished the FBI with 21 computer
disks bearing 1.25 million pages from some 113,000 tax records. This transfer included the
improper disclosure of "confidential taxpayer information," which is covered by two laws that carry
criminal penalties: Internal Revenue Code Section 6103 and the federal Privacy Act.
Given Team Obama's Chinese-style stonewalling, congressional investigators are unlikely to solve this
mystery. They also lack police power to do much about it. Thus, it's time for a special prosecutor.
It
looks like Lois Lerner may have also been behind conservative targeting in Wisconsin. Remember
those horrifying police raids in Wisconsin a while back? With no hyperbole, it was modern-day tyranny
that should have incensed the entire nation, regardless of political affiliation or viewpoint. Instead,
very few ever even heard about it. Why? Because progressives were the perpetrators and conservatives
were the targets. The raids were part of a so-called "investigation" of conservatives who were supporting
Scott Walker. Well new email evidence suggests that Lois Lerner may have been in cahoots with a Wisconsin
official regarding the investigation.
Overview / recap:
More
FOIA Documents Reveal IRS Targeting Stemmed From DOJ and White House. As a result of a
trillion dollar stimulus filled with scheme and graft; and as a result of Obamacare being similarly
schemed in backroom deals and late night votes; President Obama was "shellacked" in the November
2010 election. [...] The Obama Team response to the 2010 Shellacking was to use the Dept. of Justice
(AG Eric Holder) to weaponize the IRS and go after groups — like Tea Party Groups — organized under
the financial umbrella of 501(c)(4) donation structuring. Years later, when the scheme was
discovered — the White House denied knowledge ("not even a smidgen of corruption"), the
DOJ feigned ignorance, and the IRS began working overtime trying to hide the construct of the prior
communication, planning and strategy.
Surprise,
Surprise: Lois Lerner Had Friends in Wisconsin. The [Wall Street] Journal has been
doing an outstanding job peeling the corrupt onion of Wisconsin's astonishingly abusive "John Doe"
investigations, and — given the similar objectives of the John Doe investigations and the
IRS Tea Party targeting — these latest revelations are hardly shocking. Both the IRS and
the Wisconsin investigators were dead-set on reading confidential donor lists and determining exactly how
conservative organizations communicate. The IRS sought its information through lawless and
discriminatory document demands, while Wisconsin officials used the blunt instrument of predawn raids
and electronic snooping that would make the NSA blush.
New
Docs Reveal DOJ, IRS, and FBI Colluding to Prosecute Obama Opponents. Documents
released today [7/7/2015] by Judicial Watch show the Department of Justice colluding with the
Internal Revenue Service to cook up criminal prosecutions of targeted non-profit conservative
groups. The newly obtained records include an official "DOJ Recap" report detailing an October
2010 meeting between Lois Lerner, DOJ officials and the FBI. The documents also reveal that the
Obama DOJ wanted IRS employees who were going to testify to Congress to turn over documents to the
DOJ before giving them to Congress.
Judicial
Watch: Lois Lerner, DOJ Officials, and FBI Met to Plan Criminal Charges for Obama Opponents. Newly obtained
documents from the conservative educational foundation Judicial Watch detail an official memo from October 2010 of a
meeting between Lois Lerner and officials at the Department of Justice and the FBI to plan for the prosecution of targeted
nonprofit organizations. A lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act produced the documents which
included the memo as well as revelations that the Justice Department wanted IRS employees to turn over sensitive
documents before giving them to Congress, Judicial Watch said in a press release Tuesday [7/7/2015]. In a letter
from Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, then-House Oversight Committee Chairman said "this
revelation likely means that the IRS — including possibly Lois Lerner — violated federal tax
law by transmitting this information to the Justice Department."
The IRS scandal just
got even worse. So the Obama IRS wasn't just persecuting right-leaning nonprofits —
it was out to prosecute them, too. And with the help of the Obama Department of Justice and FBI.
Via Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, the watchdog group Judicial Watch just got evidence of the plot.
A "DOJ Recap" on an Oct. 8, 2010 meeting tells how officials from the three agencies discussed "several
possible theories to bring criminal charges under FEC law" against groups "posing" as tax-exempt nonprofits.
As part of the project, the IRS handed the FBI 21 computer disks with 1.23 million pages of confidential
IRS returns from 113,000 nonprofit 501(c)(4) groups — nearly every 501(c)(4). This, though
federal law generally bans the IRS from sharing such data.
New
Documents Reveal DOJ, IRS, and FBI Plan to Seek Criminal Charges of Obama Opponents.
Judicial Watch today [7/7/2015] released new Department of Justice (DOJ) and Internal Revenue
Service (IRS) documents that include an official "DOJ Recap" report detailing an October 2010
meeting between Lois Lerner, DOJ officials and the FBI to plan for the possible criminal prosecution
of targeted nonprofit organizations for alleged illegal political activity. The newly obtained
records also reveal that the Obama DOJ wanted IRS employees who were going to testify to Congress to
turn over documents to the DOJ before giving them to Congress. Records also detail how the Obama IRS
gave the FBI 21 computer disks, containing 1.25 million pages of confidential IRS returns from
113,000 nonprofit social 501(c)(4) welfare groups — or nearly every 501(c)(4) in the United
States — as part of its prosecution effort.
Watchdog:
IRS workers mistakenly erased tea party emails. Investigators are blaming two IRS workers at a computer
center in West Virginia for erasing thousands of emails related to the tax agency's tea party scandal, impeding
congressional investigations into the treatment of conservative political groups.
The
Obama Presidency — A Cacophony of Corruption. [Scroll down] Then, of course, there is Watergate.
That's the scandal where Richard Nixon allegedly thought about using the IRS to go after his political enemies in order to
help assure his re-election. Excise the word "allegedly," and — according to the Treasury Inspector General
for Tax Administration — that is a pluperfect description of the Obama administration's targeting of conservative
opponents of his policies leading up to the 2012 presidential election.
Obama
IRS Political Appointees Protected Tea Party Probe Requests. Senior IRS officials set
up a special internal committee after congressional investigators sent information requests to the
IRS's two White House political appointees to investigate conservative and tea party non-profit
applicants. Mary Howard, the IRS's director of privacy, governmental liaison and disclosure
division, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Wednesday she never saw any of
the information requests because the requests were forwarded to the special committee. Howard is
also the tax agency's chief Freedom of Information Act officer. "I think Lois Lerner was just the
tip of the iceberg," Howard said.
What
is wrong with Democrats? Democrats pushed the IRS to target Republicans; Richard Nixon was
excoriated and faced impeachment for far less when it came to trying to use the IRS against a few political
opponents — and his critics included many Republicans. Have any Democrats objected to the
use of the IRS for doing the "wet work" of the Democratic Party? What is wrong with Democrats?
Of course, weaponizing the IRS is just part of a broader attempt to restrict the free speech of conservatives
and Republicans.
How
a rogue fourth branch of government is threatening our republic. Two years ago this
month, we learned of the burgeoning scandal at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) — the
deliberate targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups — a coordinated move to keep
these groups on the sidelines during a critical election. [...] But over the course of the two years
when the scandal broke, one thing has become very clear: unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats
were at the center of this scheme. What's equally troubling — there's been no accountability.
Not one person has been fired. Zero. The IRS, along with a long list of other agencies, is
run by bureaucrats. And these bureaucrats destroy our liberty and threaten our democracy.
GOP
has waited two years for info on IRS correspondence with Dem senators. Washington
Republicans said this week that their requests to the IRS for correspondences between the agency and
congressional Democrats remain unfulfilled after two years, raising questions about whether the
Obama administration is trying to withhold information for a third-straight election cycle.
"Instead of holding the IRS accountable, Democrats are trying to cover-up their involvement in the
IRS targeting scandal," National Republican Senatorial Committee spokeswoman Andrea Bozek said
Friday [5/15/2015].
IRS
takes steps to stop targeting of conservative groups, report says. The IRS has taken "significant actions" to
stop agents from targeting political groups based on their names and policy positions, according to a report issued Thursday
[4/30/2015] by the government watchdog who disclosed the inappropriate activity two years ago.
Two
years later, IRS probes drag on. Exactly two years after the IRS first admitted
improperly scrutinizing Tea Party groups, congressional investigations into the tax agency show no
sign of drawing to a close anytime soon. Congressional Republicans say they are deeply
irritated that they haven't finished off the investigations launched after Lois Lerner apologized
for the IRS on May 10, 2013, and insist that President Obama's Justice Department has stonewalled
their efforts. Top lawmakers like Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) note that they've
only just received thousands of emails to and from Lerner that the IRS said were unrecoverable close
to a year ago.
Do
Judicial Watch and Wayne Allyn Root now have the smoking gun on IRS? Thanks to
assistance from Judicial Watch and the Freedom of Information Act, prominent conservative Obama
administration critic Wayne Allyn Root believes that "I was targeted by the IRS in a coordinated
attack at the highest levels of government... and we now have the proof." In a Foxnews.com
story, he narrates the story of his audits by the IRS and what has been discovered in the course
of responses to FOIA.
New
Documents Tie Obama and Senate Democrats Directly to the IRS Scandal. The entire article
is worth reading, but the short version is as follows: Root was targeted for audit in 2011, disputed
the findings in Tax Court, and won in 2012. Only five days later, Root was again targeted for a
separate audit, an unprecedented step. Judicial Watch took Root's case and after the traditional,
illegal withholding of evidence for over a year, finally secured documentation of the audit. Stunningly,
a "random audit of small businessman" was marked "SENSITIVE CASE" with no other explanation.
I
Have the Proof That Ties Obama and the Democratic Party to the IRS Scandal. The IRS scandal just
won't go away — kind of like Watergate. The media knew about Watergate for months. It
simmered and boiled, then it turned into a bigger-than-life scandal that destroyed Richard Nixon's presidency.
Could that be how the Barack Obama IRS scandal is playing out? Up until now, no one has been able to
tie the IRS scandal to the Obama White House or the Democratic Party. That just changed.
IRS
still targeting tea party: Nine groups awaiting agency approval. Nine tea party groups
were still awaiting IRS approval for nonprofit status nearly two years after the political targeting
program was exposed, the inspector general said in a report Thursday [4/30/2015] that, despite hiccups,
claimed the tax agency has generally done a good job of cleaning up its act. IRS employees no longer
judge groups based on political leanings of their names, and has come up with an approved set of questions
that means its agents can no longer ask the types of intrusive questions that landed the agency in trouble,
the investigators said in their report, which updates their initial May 2013 finding.
John
McCain and Those Newly Released Lois Lerner Emails. [Scroll down] [R]eining in
political advocacy groups is not the same thing as targeting conservative groups. The core complaint
against the IRS is that it did not act even-handedly. Had it done so, rather than focusing its fire
on conservative groups, the IRS could be accused of incorrectly interpreting the law and/or making a bad
policy decision. But it could not be accused of using its power to tip the scales against conservatives.
It is the latter allegation that makes this story a scandal.
IRS
Documents Reveal Lerner Knew Targeting Criteria of Nonprofit Groups 'Might Raise Questions'. Judicial
Watch today [4/9/2015] released a new batch of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents, including an email from former
IRS official Lois Lerner in February 2012 asking that a program be set up to "put together some training points to help
them [IRS staffers] understand the potential pitfalls" of revealing too much information to Congress. The documents
also contain a Lerner email from 2013 in which she says she is willing to take the blame on some aspects of the scandal.
She also indicates that she "understands why the IRS criteria" leading to the targeting of Tea Party and other opponents of
the President Obama "might raise questions."
Lerner
Email Warns IRS Employees of Emails That 'Can Be Seen By Congress'. Lois Lerner,
former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), warned other
IRS officials that lower-level employees "are not as sensitive as we are to the fact that anything
we write can be public — or at least be seen by Congress," according to documents obtained
by Judicial Watch and released on Thursday [4/9/2015].
This just in: Obama stole the 2012 election. Norquist
book: IRS assault on Tea Party saved Obama's presidency. The administration-ordered
persecution of Tea Party groups shut down the movement in time to save President Obama's reelection
and starve Republican Mitt Romney of the 4,262,296 votes needed to take the White House, according
to an explosive new book from tax foe Grover Norquist. In End The IRS Before It Ends Us, a
clarion call for a new, fairer tax system, Norquist pieces together the IRS scandal and scholarly
electoral studies to show that plot worked to stifle the expanding Tea Party movement in the nick
of time to help Obama.
Judge
orders IRS to release list of tea party groups targeted for scrutiny. A federal judge
ordered the IRS this week to turn over the list of 298 groups it targeted for intrusive scrutiny as
the agency defends against a potential class-action lawsuit by tea party groups who claim their
constitutional rights were violated. The IRS had argued it shouldn't have to release the names
because doing do would violate privacy laws, but Judge Susan J. Dlott, who sits in the Southern
District of Ohio, rejected that claim and ordered the tax agency to turn over any lists or spreadsheets
detailing the groups that were targeted and when they filed their applications.
Obama
Justice Department Refuses to Seek Justice for Targeted Americans. The Obama
Administration's IRS targeted Americans for their political beliefs. Former top IRS official Lois
Lerner abused the power of her office and refused to answer any questions from congressional
oversight committees after proclaiming her own innocence. The House Oversight Committee recommended
specific action be taken to prosecute her criminally and voted her in contempt of Congress, yet the
Obama Administration's Justice Department has done nothing to pursue justice.
Politico
sat on allegations Lois Lerner had prior history of targeting conservatives. Politico
scored a journalistic coup with its exclusive 2014 profile on Lois Lerner, the former IRS official
at the center of the agency's targeting of conservative groups. But a former Illinois lawmaker
who said Politico contacted him repeatedly that year with questions regarding claims he was targeted
by Lerner in the mid-1990s has been left wondering why the news group chose to ignore his documented
dealings with the former federal official.
Elijah
Cummings is Knee Deep in IRS Scandal. Cleta Mitchell, who is representing True the
Vote, has filed an ethics probe against Elijah Cummings on February 6th (2014) with the Office of
Congressional Ethics. Last fall, True the Vote started receiving 8 and 9 page letters from
Cummings, claiming he was conducting an investigation of their organization as part of the House Oversight
Committee. One problem. The House Oversight Committee is only allowed to investigate
government agencies. Going after a private citizen is illegal. Mitchell wants to find out if
Cummings is responsible in part or completely for the harassment of Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of
True the Vote. After Cummings launched his "investigation", Engelbrecht had her business audited
twice, her personal taxes once, two visits from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, a surprise
visit from OSHA, seven visits from the FBI.
Congress
demands Obama-approved IRS emails disclosing taxpayers' info. Two top congressional
chairmen demanded Wednesday [3/4/2014] that the IRS turn over all its emails that might have given private
taxpayer information to the White House, after President Obama's lawyer last week passed the buck to
the tax agency, insisting they would be able to search for the emails. The IRS last year had
claimed it didn't have the technological ability to search for those emails, so Senate Finance Chairman
Orrin G. Hatch and House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan went to the White House for them.
Obama's Little Shop of
Horrors. The IRS has proven itself to be untrustworthy in light of the continuing
investigation into the illegal targeting of conservatives and their political views. The IRS, is
another independent government agency which our constitution demands have no ties to the White
House. Yet, once again, this administration knows no boundaries. It has also been discovered that
the agency has fraudulently spent millions and millions of taxpayer dollars for parties and trips.
Add insult to injury, the taxpayers are funding bonuses and salaries of IRS employees who have
refused to pay their own taxes for years.
White
House that promised transparency refuses to cooperate with IRS probe. The White House
told Congress last week it refused to dig into its computers for emails that could shed light on
what kinds of private taxpayer information the IRS shares with President Obama's top aides, assuring
Congress that the IRS will address the issue — eventually. The tax agency has already
said it doesn't have the capability to dig out the emails in question, but the White House's chief
counsel, W. Neil Eggleston, insisted in a letter last week to House Committee on Ways and Means
Chairman Paul Ryan that the IRS would try again once it finishes with the tea party-targeting scandal.
The Real
Dirty Dozen at the IRS. [#1] Internal emails show these groups were targeted because
IRS employees thought them "icky." [#2] Other emails showed that Lois Lerner was conspiring with
the Department of Justice to prosecute conservative groups on trumped-up charges. [#3] Lerner
herself refused to testify to investigating committees and was held in contempt. [#4] That didn't
stop her from defending herself to Politico magazine and complaining about being "harassed" for her
role. [#5] Then, the IRS claimed it had lost the most crucial batch of Lerner's emails. [#6]
Oh yeah, and her Blackberry was destroyed too. [#7] Six months later, the Tax Inspector General
may have found those lost emails. (Still no word yet on what was in them.)
Obama
administration won't release IRS targeting documents. The Obama administration is
refusing to publicly release more than 500 documents on the IRS's targeting of Tea Party groups.
Twenty months after the IRS scandal broke, there are still many unanswered questions about who was
spearheading the agency's scrutiny of conservative-leaning organizations.
Obama
administration stonewalls FOIA request on IRS targeting scandal. It has been almost
two years since the exposure of the IRS efforts to target conservative groups applying for
tax-exempt status, and their donors. In the meantime, the Obama administration has done
exactly nothing to hold IRS personnel accountable for their actions.
The
Senate is Preparing to Investigate Ties between White House and IRS. The newly minted
Republican Senate appears to be getting at least one thing right. The Republicans on the Senate
Finance Committee, led by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), have sent a letter to the White House demanding all
communications the President and his aides have had with the IRS since 2010.
Obama
Administration Refuses to Release Time Records of Key Attorney in IRS Scandal Investigation.
Judicial Watch announced today that the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) is going to extreme lengths to keep
from the public the number of hours DOJ Attorney Barbara Bosserman expended on the investigation of the Internal
Revenue Service's targeting of conservative organizations. The DOJ has claimed no less than four separate
privileges in federal court to keep secret Bosserman's hours. In doing so, the DOJ has confirmed that the
criminal investigation into the IRS' abuses is ongoing and that Bosserman, a major donor to Obama's political
campaigns and Democratic National Committee, continues to be part of the team of lawyers criminally investigating
the issue.
IRS
keeps Albuquerque Tea Party in limbo 5 years after tax-exempt status application.
Before there were the lost Lerner emails, the congressional hearings and the retaliatory budget
cuts, there was the Albuquerque Tea Party, a group of politically minded folks in New Mexico who
wanted to get together and share ideas for taking back their country. The IRS had other ideas
about them. Five years after the Albuquerque Tea Party applied for tax-exempt status under section
501(c)(4) of the tax code, they remain in limbo — their application apparently no closer
to being approved or denied than it was the day they mailed it to the IRS on Dec. 29, 2009.
Issa
Releases Report On IRS Targeting Of Tea Party Groups. The Republicans in the House
Oversight and Government Reform Committee led by Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) released a new staff
report with a very long name "The Internal Revenue Service's Targeting of Conservative Tax-Exempt
Applicants: Report of Findings for the 113th Congress." The report represents findings
from the review of over 1.3 million pages of documents and 52 transcribed interviews with IRS,
Treasury, and Justice Department employees and lays out the story of the IRS targeting of conservative
organizations.
IRS
mistakenly penalizes Christine O'Donnell a second time, placed levy on bank accounts.
Adding to the long-running saga of IRS dealings with conservatives, former Senate candidate
Christine O'Donnell says the tax agency punished her mistakenly for the second time in five years by
imposing an erroneous levy on her bank accounts. Ms. O'Donnell told The Washington Times that she
discovered the levy when she couldn't access her checking account as she was preparing to visit
relatives over Thanksgiving.
True
The Vote Appeals Dismissal of Lawsuit Against IRS. True the Vote, a Houston,
Texas-based non-profit organization focused on "voters' rights and election integrity," has appealed
a U.S. District Court's order dismissing their lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS),
Breitbart Texas has learned. The lawsuit had alleged that the IRS had improperly delayed granting
True the Vote's application for 501(c)(3) status and targeted them as a conservative organization,
but the opinion, issued by Judge Reggie B. Walton in October, found that the IRS had taken
sufficient "remedial steps to address the alleged behavior."
The
IRS Scandal Is Not Going Away. The utter contempt the Obama administration shows
toward the oversight powers of Congress, toward the millions of information technology-savvy
Americans who grasp the lying and silly explanations provided by the administration, and toward
federal judges who have ordered serious explanations for presumably "destroyed" e-mails is
breathtaking and appalling.
Thousands
of Documents: IRS Gave Taxpayer Information To White House. The IRS' improper disclosure of taxpayer
information to the White House was extensively investigated, according to thousands of documents the Department of
Justice (DOJ) is currently sitting on and could release within the next two weeks. The Daily Caller first
reported that ex-IRS official Lois Lerner and White House policy adviser Jeanne Lambrew exchanged confidential
taxpayer information about a conservative group that was suing to stop Obamacare's contraceptive mandate in
2012. Now, with 30,000 Lerner emails set to be turned over to Congress, new information is surfacing
about the White House-IRS information pipeline.
2,500
new documents ID'd in White House-IRS taxpayer harassment cases. In a shocking
revelation, the Treasury Inspector General has identified some 2,500 documents that "potentially"
show taxpayer information held by the Internal Revenue Service being shared with President Obama's
White House. The discovery was revealed to the group Cause of Action, which has sued for access to
any of the documents. It charges that the IRS and White House have harassed taxpayers.
A
Chance To Get To The Bottom Of The IRS Scandals. The Republican takeover of the Senate
is rich in potential consequences. One such consequence is the opportunity to get to the bottom of
the IRS targeting scandal. Cleta Mitchell, the attorney who has led the charge to uncover the
truth about IRS abuses, points out that Republicans now control key Senate committee's with
jurisdiction over the matter: Finance, Judiciary, and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
The new chairmen are, respectively, Orrin Hatch, Charles Grassley, and Ron Johnson. Each, says
Mitchell, has demonstrated attentiveness to the IRS targeting scandal. None is likely to shrink
from forcing the agency to respond to the many unanswered questions about its behavior.
The IRS
scandal: A refresher. The House Oversight Committee has released the video [in this
article] providing a short refresher in the IRS targeting scandal. One of the Obama administration's
greatest successes is the stonewalling, covering up and bald-faced prevaricating with which it has
kept the lid on the scandal.
Report:
Election-Eve Bombshell Memo Embroils Jeanne Shaheen in IRS Targeting Scandal.
Conservative groups here are outraged at a memo that surfaced hours before the polls
open — a memo that suggests that incumbent Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)
personally coordinated with the IRS's Lois Lerner to use the tax agency's power to target
conservative groups.
Memo:
Jeanne Shaheen Conspired With White House Insider On IRS Targeting Scandal. Democratic
New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen was principally involved in a plot with Lois Lerner and President
Barack Obama's political appointee at the IRS to lead a program of harassment against conservative
nonprofit groups during the 2012 election, according to letters exclusively obtained by The Daily
Caller. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) did not want to publicly release 2012 correspondences
exchanged between the IRS and Jeanne Shaheen at her personal Washington office: the agency delayed
releasing the information to a major conservative super PAC multiple times, even threatening to see
the super PAC in court, according to emails.
IRS
Stonewalls Cruz Investigation; Cruz Threatens Subpoena Come January. Sen. Ted Cruz
(R-TX) is ripping the Internal Revenue Service after the agency sent him a one-page, pro forma response to a
series of questions prompted by its audit of Breitbart News Network. In the Sept. 25 letter, IRS
Commissioner John Koskinen said the IRS could not answer some of Cruz's questions — including how
many other news organizations had been audited under President Obama and whether the agency had communicated
with White House officials about auditing Breitbart — because of taxpayer confidentiality rules.
Barack
Obama, bewildered bystander. Barack Obama reflexively insists on playing the shocked
outsider when something goes wrong within his own administration. The IRS? "It's inexcusable, and
Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it," he thundered in May 2013 when
the story broke of the agency targeting conservative groups. "I will not tolerate this kind of
behavior in any agency, but especially in the IRS." Except that within nine months, Obama had
grown far more tolerant, retroactively declaring this to be a phony scandal without "a smidgen of corruption."
Woodward:
Lots of Unanswered Questions on Obama's Involvement in IRS Scandal. Sunday
[10/26/2014] on Fox News Channel's "MediaBuzz," Bob Woodward said there are, "lots of unanswered
questions," about the Obama administrations involvement in the IRS scandal surrounding the targeting
conservative groups for extra scrutiny.
The
nastiest political tactic this year. Liberal groups have not been targeted for their
activities that are indistinguishable from those of their conservative counterparts. Such
misbehavior takes a toll on something that already is in short supply: belief in government's
legitimacy. The federal government's most intrusive and potentially punitive institution, the IRS,
unquestionably worked for Barack Obama's reelection by suppressing activities by conservative groups.
Would he have won if the government he heads had not impeded political participation by many opposition
groups? We will never know.
Targeting
the Constitution. It is now well known that the IRS targeted tea party organizations. What is less
well known, but perhaps even more scandalous, is that the IRS also targeted those who would educate their fellow
citizens about the United States Constitution. [...] Grass-roots organizations around the country, such as the
Linchpins of Liberty (Tennessee), the Spirit of Freedom Institute (Wyoming), and the Constitutional Organization
of Liberty (Pennsylvania), allege that they were singled out for special scrutiny at least in part for their work
in constitutional education. There may have been many more.
Federal
Judge Offers Flimsy Legal Reasoning in Dismissing IRS Scandal Lawsuit. For years, the
IRS served as a cudgel that worked to penalize and diminish the efficacy of political organizations
that objected to the Obama Administration's radical agenda. The IRS demanded information on Tea
Partiers and the organizations that applied for tax-exempt status, including records of members,
emails, lists of reading materials and other protected information. While other leftist
organizations were free to make differences in their communities and within the political process,
Tea Party organizations were harassed and delayed by the IRS until after the 2012 elections.
6 Times Obama Declared
Crisis, Then Did Nothing. In the aftermath of the IRS admitting that it had targeted
conservative non-profit applicants, President Obama said, "Americans are right to be angry about it,
and I am angry about it." He then said that there was no need for a special prosecutor —
Eric Holder would clearly clean up this mess. Today, conservatives are still being targeted, and the
Obama administration continues to obstruct any attempt to find the wrongdoers.
Inside the IRS,
part 7. According to a recent column by Jay Sekulow on the FOX News website and a statement by House Ways and Means
Committee member Charles Boustany, 10 percent of the conservative donors whose names were improperly obtained by the IRS in the
section 501(c)(4) scandal were subjected to individual audits. This is an extraordinarily high individual audit rate for any
random subset of the population.
President
Obama, Audit Threats, And Rogue IRS Employees. It is not enough for the IRS to do a
good job of enforcing the tax laws in a fair and non-discriminatory way. As important, the IRS needs
to be perceived as fair. If profiling is a dirty word, it should be equally dirty when the
IRS does it. Truly, audit targeting is scary. No matter how good your records may be,
no one wants to face an audit.
First-Time
Filmmaker Seeks to Expose IRS in Political Documentary Debuting This Week. Craig
Bergman had just hit the road to produce his first political documentary about Agenda
21 — the United Nations' controversial sustainable development plan — when
news of the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservatives broke in May 2013. "When I saw
this scandal, I said somebody has to seize this and seize it right now. [...]"
Reporter
Won't Pay Taxes Until IRS Truth Comes Out. Are you fed up with your tax money being
misspent while the government that collects them tramples on citizens' rights? When the IRS scandal
broke, one man decided enough was enough — and he hasn't paid taxes since. Daily
Caller reporter Patrick Howley has refused to pay taxes since the public learned about the IRS
targeting conservatives. On the 500th day after the news hit, he reviewed what we've learned about
what happened in the IRS (precious little) and what has happened in our country in the meantime.
Department of Injustice.
[Scroll down] It is clear, despite an administration effort to muddy the waters and strangle the congressional
investigation, that the president and his party's leaders in Congress launched a Herculean effort to
bully the IRS to silence conservative organizations critical of the administration, and that the
IRS, led by the head of the tax-exempt-organizations section, Lois Lerner, did its best to comply
with this request. The extent of the collusion has been made difficult to fix with precision because
Ms. Lerner's hard drive disappeared and she has declined to answer congressional questions, exercising her
right to avoid self-incrimination. No one believes that her e-mails vanished accidentally, but
let us note the contrast between the complacency with which the Democratic national media have
assimilated this news with the hysteria that followed the revelation that Rose Mary Woods, Richard Nixon's
assistant, had lost only 18 minutes of a Watergate tape.
Is
Another Obama Administration Scandal About to Explode? While strong cases can be made
for both Benghazi and Fast and Furious, most voters consider Barack Obama's misuse of the IRS to be
his administration's worst scandal so far. But, as we wrote last year, targeting of conservative
non-profits for harassment is not the only dimension of the IRS scandal. In addition, there is
strong reason to believe that one or more White House political appointees have illegally accessed
private taxpayer information and used it for political gain.
Obama
complains about OTHER countries for trying to silence dissent. After all that Tea
Party groups have been through because they were targeted by Obama's IRS, Obama has the audacity to
call out other countries for trying to crackdown on legitimate dissent. Talk about narcissism.
Not only that, but he decries 'endless regulations' as though his hands were clean. Hello Obamacare?
Hello EPA?
Obama's Untruth, Inc.
Little the administration has stated about the IRS scandal has proven true. It was not a slip-up in one local office; nor were
liberal groups equally targeted. There was quite a bit more than a "smidgen" of corruption. The administration's strategy
was to make so many things up that the public got confused and the matter went away. The corruption worked to defang the Tea Party
in 2012, and the cover-up — except for fall woman Lois Lerner, who took the Fifth Amendment — worked even better.
IRS E-mails: The Perfect Storm. This is a scandal ordinary Americans can
completely grasp in all its incarnations. The Obama administration picks out its political opponents for particular
persecution. The organ of federal power chosen for this persecution, the IRS, is despised and feared by millions of
Americans. [...] If the chosen agency to torment conservatives is toxic to voters, then the idiotic arrogance of the
principal IRS officials makes for breathtaking politics. They are clearly lying to Congress, lying to the American
people, and lying to federal judges. They are obviously hiding important information. Their misconduct, already,
would qualify as obstruction of justice and perjury, and the longer they stonewall, the guiltier they look.
The IRS
Scandal and Media Bias. Here's a thought experiment. Assume during the George W. Bush
administration the IRS had targeted MoveOn.org, Planned Parenthood, the Center for American Progress, and
a slew of other liberal groups. Assume, too, that no conservative groups were the subject of
harassment and intimidation. And just for the fun of it, assume that press secretary Ari Fleischer
had misled the press and the public by saying the scandal was confined to two rogue IRS agents in
Cincinnati and that President Bush had declared that there was "not even a smidgen of corruption" that
had occurred. Let's go a step further. Assume that the IRS Commissioner, in testifying before
Congress, admitted that the emails of the person at the heart of the abuse of power scandal were gone,
that the backup tapes have been erased and that her hard drive was destroyed. For good measure,
assume that the person who was intimately involved in targeting liberal groups took the Fifth Amendment.
50
Things Barack Obama Has Done Wrong: [#18] The IRS targeted Obama's political enemies including Christian
groups, pro-Israel groups, and most prominently, Tea Party groups. The Obama Administration has refused to cooperate
with the investigation or hold anyone accountable for the illegal behavior. [#19] Numerous donors to Mitt Romney
were audited by the IRS after giving him large contributions. [#20] When the EPA and IRS were asked to provide
emails requested by Congress as part of an investigation into their illegal activities, they've claimed over and over again
to have lost the information because of "hard drive crashes." Given that it's quite easy to back up a hard drive and
that they're required by law to retain that information, it seems likely that they're habitually destroying evidence to
hide their illegal activities.
Eric
Holder's DOJ Conspires with House Oversight's Elijah Cummings in Massive IRS Cover-Up.
We have commented many times of the all-too-cozy relationship between the IRS and Democratic members
of the House and Senate, with members writing to the agency demanding that specific conservative
groups and political action committees they find particularly irritating be subject to the "special
scrutiny" that the Tea Party and other conservative and religious groups were subjected to in the
ongoing scandal. Of particular interest to us has been Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., ranking
member on Rep. Darrell Issa's House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, who has made every
effort to keep the committee from finding out the true extent of IRS corruption and abuse of power
in its targeting of conservatives.
IRS
and DOJ Conducted Targeting With Illegally Obtained Conservative Donor Lists. The IRS scandal is NOT about the IRS. Yes, the IRS
did indeed target conservative groups; however, they were NOT the originating entity in the overall plan to create a list of targets. The U.S.
Department of Justice was the originating governmental agency who constructed the plan to make a target list and then weaponize various government
agencies against those on the list.
Mark
Levin: IRS Cover-up 'Most Loathsome Police Act in Modern American History'. In what many could only expect to read in a
fiction novel, it has been discovered that the emails of more IRS agents have gone missing. The IRS blamed "routinely experienced"
computer crashes for all the lost emails, and said that all the crashes happened well before Congress launched its investigations.
IRS Under Fire for
Targeting Conservatives Again ... and This Time It's a Media Outlet. The Internal Revenue Service, already
under investigation for illegally targeting conservative and tea party groups, recently audited the conservative Breitbart
News Network in a move that the company says was politically motivated. The IRS sought the company's financial records
from 2012, Fox News reported earlier today. Brietbart.com relaunched that year with a more robust reporting team.
Over the past two years, it has produced hard-hitting stories exposing scandals in the Obama administration.
Judicial
Watch and Daily Caller Are On Trail To "The Red List" — IRS/DOJ "Research Project". The
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) improperly obtained donor lists from nonprofit groups as part of a "secret research
project" being run by Lois Lerner and other officials. IRS official David Fish revealed the "secret research
project" in a June 27, 2012 email to Lerner's direct subordinate Holly Paz, according to emails released Thursday [9/4/20-14]
by the nonprofit group Judicial Watch, which obtained the emails in a pending Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Where
is IRS Scandal Figure Andrew Strelka? The IRS targeting scandal has all the intrigue of a political thriller.
First it was the missing e-mails, then destroyed hard drives and now a missing person in the form of one-time Lois Lerner underling
Andrew Strelka. On September 3, Republican Congressman Jim Jordan sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding
to know, by a Friday deadline, the information on the whereabouts of Strelka. In the letter Jordan suggested the Department of
Justice was hiding Strelka from the House Oversight Committee investigating the IRS-targeting scandal.
GOP
lawmaker accuses DOJ of hiding former employee linked to IRS scandal. A top House Republican is demanding the Department of
Justice hand over contact information on a former employee accused of having a conflict of interest in the IRS targeting scandal investigation.
In a Sept. 3 letter, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, once again asked Attorney General Eric Holder for information on Andrew Strelka's whereabouts.
Defending
the IRS. Investigations of the IRS are taking place not only in Congress but also in
court. One case, which has developed slowly since it was filed in 2010, reveals much about both the
long reach of the agency and the interwoven nature of the broader federal bureaucracy. Defending
IRS commissioner John Koskinen against the claims of the pro-Israel group Z Street is Andrew
Strelka — and before joining the Department of Justice's civil-trial section, Strelka
worked at the IRS for Lois Lerner, who was then the agency's head of exempt organizations. As it
happens, this is the very IRS division at which the mistreatment of Z Street is alleged to have
occurred — and Strelka worked there at the very time Z Street's application for
tax-exempt status was being considered.
Justice's IRS Connection.
It was fishy enough when Democratic donor Barbara Bosserman was appointed to lead the Justice
Department investigation of IRS targeting of conservative groups. Now there are new questions
about Justice's staffing choice on one of the private lawsuits brought against the IRS.
The IRS's Friend
at Justice. Congressional investigators have been finding more breadcrumbs on the
trail of Andrew Strelka, the former IRS Exempt Organizations staffer who later became the Justice
Department's attorney handling one of the viewpoint discrimination cases against the IRS. [...] Mr.
Strelka was a White House management fellow assigned to the IRS when the targeting was underway, so
at Justice he was handling a case to which he was potentially a witness. Now Mr. Strelka's
personal knowledge of policies in the Exempt Organizations unit run by Lois Lerner is turning up in
emails found by the House Oversight Committee.
A campaign to
silence conservative speech. Did IRS targeting swing the election for Mr. Obama? That's hard to prove absolutely,
but it certainly hurt the opposition. It didn't stop with holding up tax-exempt approvals. Miraculously, as though just
by mistake, the tax returns of the pro-traditional marriage group, the National Organization for Marriage, were leaked to a hostile
activist group, which then targeted donors. The ensuing lawsuit was settled by the IRS, but not before the damage was done.
Senate
panel hits auditor but clears IRS of bias in targeting scandal. A Senate investigative panel on Friday confirmed
that the Internal Revenue Service used inappropriate methods to scrutinize tax-exempt groups but said it found "no evidence of
IRS political bias" in the agency's actions. In its 228-page report, the Democrat-led Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
also criticized the IRS's independent watchdog for allegedly failing to make clear that the agency targeted more than just
conservative groups.
Another
"Smidgen of Corruption" in the IRS Scandal. Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan sent a letter to Attorney
General Eric Holder this week demanding that he hand over contact information for a former IRS attorney with ties
to Lois Lerner. Jordan, chairman of the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Economic
Growth, Job Creation and Regulatory Affairs, said in the letter he is requesting the contact information for former
Department of Justice attorney Andrew Strelka. "The department's efforts to prevent the committee from learning
Mr. Strelka's whereabouts suggest the department has cause for keeping him from speaking with the committee."
Prior to joining DOJ, Strelka worked for former IRS executive Lois Lerner. He was the recipient of an email that
directed him to "[b]e on the look out for a tea party case." The email went on to say, "If you have received or
do receive any case in the future involving an exemption for an organization having to do with tea party, let me know."
New
IRS Documents Show Lerner Did Not Need Conservative Group Donor Lists — Emails Mention "Secret Research Project" by
Top IRS Official. [Scroll down] Key parts of this email and other documents the IRS produced to Judicial Watch have been
blacked out. (Many of the documents are completely blacked out (or partially redacted) seemingly because they are allegedly
"pre-decisional" or "deliberative," information that might be exempt from disclosure under FOIA. The Obama administration's
decision to withhold this information is completely discretionary and is not required by law.) A subsequent IRS email thread
on June 27, 2012, revealed that inappropriately obtained donor lists were being used for a "secret research project" and that
a top official wanted then-Acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller to decide how to handle the issue.
Email
Reveals Lois Lerner Ignored Political Expenditures By Unions. The official at the center of the Internal Revenue
Service tea party scandal once dismissed complaints that labor unions were not reporting millions of dollars in political
activities on their tax forms, according to an email obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. In 2007, Lerner
responded directly to a complaint that some major labor unions reported completely different amounts of political expenditures
when filing with the IRS and the Department of Labor. At the time of the email, Lerner was the Director of Exempt
Organizations at the IRS.
IRS
Take Note: The Tie Goes to the Speaker. Both section 501(c)(3) public charities and
section 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations face distinct constitutional tensions between the
IRS's regulation of their tax-exempt limitations and the U.S. Supreme Court's interpretation of
their First Amendment rights. This tension is perhaps most evident for "issue advocacy," which is
the term coined for nonprofits' educational communications on public policy matters related to their
tax-exempt goals. The U.S. Supreme Court's decisions on politically related speech should provide
a critical safeguard against the IRS's current overreaching. As the Court observed in its 1986
Massachusetts Right to Life decision, "Freedom of speech plays a fundamental role in a democracy; as
this Court has said, freedom of thought and speech 'is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of
nearly every form of freedom.'"
Congressional
Report on IRS' Targeting of Conservative Groups Supported by Thomas More Society Evidence. This
week, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released a staff report
entitled "Lois Lerner's Involvement in the IRS Targeting of Tax-Exempt Organizations," verifying information
that Thomas More Society began to uncover nearly a year ago. In both May and August of 2013, the Society
presented the House Committee on Ways and Means with two memos totaling over 500 pages of evidence and
documentation of six different groups that had experienced viewpoint-biased discrimination by the IRS, dating
back to 2009.
IRS and Barack's
Half-Brother. [Scroll down] [I]n the IRS ongoing case known as True the Vote
(TTV) v. IRS the court "rejected an attempt by the conservative Tea Party group to have the court
appoint a forensics expert to find Lois Lerner's missing emails and documents." The basis for this
decision was the judge's ruling that no "irreparable harm" had occurred. But in January 2014 Walid
Shoebat unearthed the information that a jihadist was granted USA tax exempt status 26-2461343 by
Lois Lerner while conservative groups and Jewish groups were thwarted in their attempts to gain this
same status. And this is where things begin to get very interesting. Who might this jihadist be?
None other than Barack Hussein Obama's brother Malik Obama.
Conservatives
suing IRS fail to get injunction. A federal judge on Thursday [8/7/2014] declined to issue a
preliminary injunction blocking the Internal Revenue Service from destroying e-mails or other potential
evidence. [...] In asking for the injunction, True the Vote said it didn't trust the IRS to refrain from
destroying other evidence.
The
real Lois Lerner exposed in newly released emails. Until the scandal erupted last year,
Lois G. Lerner was in charge of the IRS division overseeing tax[-]exempt organizations.
Congressional investigators have spent months sifting through her emails — the ones that didn't
"go missing" — to find out why she or her superiors subjected Tea Party organizations to
intimidating questions and delays while applications from equivalent left-wing groups sailed
through without a problem. [...] Ms. Lerner's own words betray not only a lack of professionalism,
but deep partisanship. If investigators conclude that she used the resources and power of
the government to carry out a political vendetta,
Ends
up Lois Lerner was e-mailing her husband with the conservative knock. Republicans this
week released e-mails showing that former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner expressed
scorn for conservatives in an e-mail to an unidentified recipient — the name was
redacted. Lerner's remarks would be troubling if she sent them to another IRS official,
but it ends up that she was communicating with her husband, Michael Miles, according to
unredacted copies of the exchange that Democrats leaked on Friday [8/1/2014].
The Editor says...
It doesn't matter if she made her inflammatory and hyper-partisan comments to her husband
or to someone in the I.R.S. The email shows a history of prejudice against conservatives.
Lois Lerner's Vendetta.
House Republicans have released a Lois Lerner email exchange from November 2012 that "clearly demonstrates
why Ms. Lerner not only targeted conservatives, but denied such groups their rights to due process and equal
protection under the law," wrote House Ways and Means Committee Chair Dave Camp (R-MI) in a letter to U.S.
Attorney General Eric Holder. [...] Camp is using this information to make the case that Lerner's bias is
self-apparent, and that the DOJ should get more involved in reviewing her, along with the IRS. He
also reiterated his contention that Holder has yet to make a determined effort to do so. "Despite
the serious investigation and evidence this Committee has undertaken into the IRS's targeting of individuals
for their beliefs, there is no indication that DOJ is taking this matter seriously," he said in a statement.
Revealed:
IRS and State Department conspired in targeting pro-Israel group. The IRS scandal has
just gained another dimension, and it is more than a "smidgen." Emails uncovered by the House Ways
and Means Committee show that the State Department was involved in the IRS's attempt to deny
tax-exempt status to Z-Street, the pro-Israel organization founded and run by AT contributor Lori
Lowenthal Marcus, based on Z-Street's pro-Israel positions that conflicted with Obama administration
policy. This is known as "viewpoint discrimination," and is strictly illegal.
Z
Street: The Case Which Could Blow Open The IRS Scandal. In its lawsuit against the
IRS, Z Street alleges that the IRS violated the First Amendment when it implemented a policy that
subjected Israel-related organizations applying for tax-exempt status to more rigorous review
procedures than other organizations applying for that same status. They call this viewpoint
discrimination. Ironically Z Street's case received a boost last summer when Democrats
tried to defend the administration and prove the IRS was not just engaging in viewpoint discrimination
against politically conservative groups.
IRS
Ship Sinking: First Deadline Friday. The IRS is running but cannot hide due to citizens; citizens who
obtained two important victories this week. Through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, the watchdog
group Judicial Watch has taken the government to federal court seeking answers to the IRS missing emails; emails
that are important in determining the extent and guilt of the IRS targeting the political opinions of ordinary
Americans. This past week, the US Federal District Court for the District of Columbia has mandated two
important rulings taking effect on Friday July 18, and no later than August 11, forcing the "most
transparent administration in history" to put its money where its mouth is.
Noose Tightens on IRS.
Last Thursday [7/10/2014], Judge Emmet G. Sullivan gave the IRS 30 days to file a full explanation
of the dubious computer crash and infamous missing emails — under oath. Perhaps more
importantly, he assigned Magistrate Judge John Facciola to "assist the parties" in the process of
finding the emails from other sources. [...] Judge Sullivan is proceeding reasonably and cautiously,
as he should, but to those who know him, the hearing reveals his devotion to uncovering the truth.
Judge Sullivan made it perfectly clear to the IRS and its attorneys that he expects the Agency to
get its facts straight and ducks in a row.
Group
At Center Of IRS Scandal Has Never Been Interviewed By FBI Investigators. No one from
True The Vote, the highest profile organization targeted by the IRS in the scandal involving improper scrutiny
of conservative-leaning non-profits, has been interviewed by the FBI or investigators from the Department of
Justice, according to the group's President, Catherine Engelbrecht. This stunning revelation comes just
days after Attorney General Eric Holder rebuffed the suggestion that an independent investigation is needed
into the growing scandal.
Update: FBI
To Finally Meet With Target Of IRS Bullying. Just days after IJ Review revealed that
True the Vote, the non-profit organization at the center of the IRS scandal, had not even met with
FBI agents investigating the charges of illegal activity, the group's founder has announced that the
Department of Justice has finally notified them that they will be interviewed.
Is
the IRS scandal the ultimate test of the Constitution's checks and balances? Two
federal judges acting within 24 hours of each other last Thursday and Friday served notice on the
IRS that it's time to pay up. In doing so, U.S. District Court Judges Emmet G. Sullivan and Reggie
Walton have set up what may prove to be the ultimate test of the Constitution's checks and balances
system. Sullivan and Walton both serve on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Both are well-known as no-nonsense judges who are not to be trifled with.
The IRS under oath. At
a recent hearing, Rep. Paul Ryan neatly summarized the problem the IRS has when he responded to
Commissioner John Koskinen this way: "I don't believe it. That's your problem: Nobody believes you."
Now two federal judges have basically said the same thing. Last Thursday, US District Judge Emmet
Sullivan, a Bill Clinton appointee, ordered the IRS to designate an official to explain —
under oath — how it lost the Lois Lerner emails. The judge also asked a federal
magistrate to look at other ways the court might find the IRS records.
IRS
Union Boss Colleen Kelley: The Missing Link to Obama? On March 31, 2010, the day
before the Inspector General's report says the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) began its scheme to
target tea party and conservative groups, the White House Visitors Log reveals that President Barack
Obama met with IRS union boss Colleen Kelley. In a notable feat of investigative journalism,
American Spectator reporter Jeffrey Lord exposed what appears to be an unholy alliance among the
White House, Democrat members of Congress and the thousands of IRS employees, who are members of the
far-left, anti-Tea Party National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU).
The President met with anti-Tea Party IRS union chief the day before agency targeted the Tea Party. Obama And The IRS: The
Smoking Gun? In short: the very day after the president of the quite publicly anti-Tea Party
labor union — the union for IRS employees — met with President Obama, the manager of
the IRS "Determinations Unit Program agreed" to open a "Sensitive Case report on the Tea party cases."
As stated by the IG report. The NTEU is the 150,000 member union that represents IRS employees along
with 30 other separate government agencies.
Obama's
Big Brother Database Grows Scarier By Day. Known as the National Mortgage Database, it
will store vast amounts of personally identifiable information, as well as extremely sensitive
financial information that even the IRS doesn't collect, including your credit scores and
performance data on credit cards and home, auto, business and student loans. The repository will
be linked to your name, telephone numbers, Social Security number, employment records, address and
date of birth, as well as race and religion. The regime cryptically explains it's collecting the
data for "research" and "policymaking." But according to a Federal Register notice, the database
will also be used by the Federal Housing Finance Agency to prosecute financial crimes.
More Than a Smidgen.
The facts are simple. The IRS systematically targeted conservative and Tea Party groups after their activism proved
decisive in the 2010 midterm elections — Obama's famous "shellacking." The effects of this targeting were
widespread. Some Tea Party groups were neutered in the months before the 2012 presidential election.
Obama: treacherous
or incompetent? Obama's IRS targeted his perceived political enemies, conservative and
pro-Israel groups, prior to the 2012 election. Questions are being raised about why this occurred,
who ordered it, whether there was any White House involvement and whether there was an initial effort to
hide who knew about the targeting and when. Obama apparently lied when he told Fox News' Bill
O'Reilly that there was "not even a smidgen of corruption" in IRS activities.
Obama
political donor leading Justice Department's IRS investigation. Two Republican
lawmakers and a conservative legal group are crying foul over the Justice Department's selection of
a Democratic donor to lead the agency's investigation into the Internal Revenue Service's targeting
of advocacy groups during the 2010 and 2012 election cycles. House Oversight Committee Chairman
Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) issued a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric
Holder on Wednesday [7/9/2014] saying DOJ trial attorney Barbara Bosserman's involvement is "highly
inappropriate and has compromised the administration's investigation of the IRS." They asked
that the department remove her from the case.
Lois
Lerner Targeted Chuck Grassley After He Blocked Obama's DOJ Tax Nominee. Ex-Internal Revenue Service official Lois
Lerner tried to audit Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley after Grassley blocked President Obama's nominee to head the Department of
Justice (DOJ) tax division, an executive branch insider told The Daily Caller. Grassley made it more difficult for the IRS
and DOJ to work together to target conservative groups by blocking Obama's political appointee Mary L. Smith from taking
over the DOJ Tax Division, which prosecutes criminal cases for the IRS. Grassley held up the nomination in early 2010,
just as Lerner and fellow IRS officials were mapping out their targeting strategy. The White House later withdrew Smith's nomination.
IRS stare down
not going away. A top GOP investigator and former IRS official Lois Lerner's lawyer
squared off on Sunday, underscoring that the battle over the agency's improper scrutiny of Tea
Party groups isn't going anywhere this election year. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell
Issa (R-Calif.) even accused the lawyer, Bill Taylor of Zuckerman Spaeder, on CNN's "State of the
Union" of having lied several times, and of giving his client shoddy legal advice. He insisted that
Lerner had broken the law by not ensuring the safekeeping of official records.
Lois
Lerner and Fellow IRS Official Announced Targeting At 2010 Conference The Same Month Their Emails
Went Missing. Ex-Internal Revenue Service (IRS) official Lois Lerner spoke at a 2010
government conference where Lerner's underling Nikole Flax announced the new IRS program
scrutinizing groups applying for tax-exempt status. Both Lerner and Flax experienced "computer
crashes" that led to the permanent deletion of their emails, according to the IRS, which said it
cannot hand over their emails to congressional investigators on two House committees. Both Lerner
and Flax briefed fellow government bureaucrats on the new targeting at the conference, where Lerner
appeared at a workshop called "Will the IRS Come Knocking?"
Audit the IRS.
There is "no evidence of criminal wrongdoing," the Internal Revenue Service assured Americans
during an internal investigation of the agency's targeting of conservative groups. Few will find
comfort in those words, and understandably so. Last week, while seeking to reassure Americans he
has seen no evidence of a crime, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen acknowledged he had not even
bothered to review any of the applicable laws.
Smoking
Gun Trail To White House. How can the DOJ conduct an investigation into unlawful
aspects of the IRS targeting of specific 501(c)(4) groups, when the DOJ is the initiating body for
the illegality they are seeking to investigate?
Former
IRS Attorney Donated $12,831 to Democrats. Former IRS attorney Jennifer O'Connor, who
now works in the White House Counsel's office, donated a total of $12,831 to Democrat candidates
and parties between 2008 and 2012, which included donations to the Barack Obama campaign and to the
Hillary Clinton campaign, according to records from OpenSecrets.gov. O'Connor made headlines when
she evaded questions about the IRS-Tea Party scandal at a House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee hearing on Tuesday, June 24.
You've
got mail and an IRS auditor knocking on your door. What would you do if you opened a
piece of mail addressed to you, only to discover that it was clearly intended for one of your
neighbors? Most people would stop reading and simply forward it. It would seem right and
moral — if not legally required — to avoid taking advantage of or otherwise
exploiting the information in a letter intended for someone else. Evidently, such ethical
standards do not concern some politically engaged people at the IRS.
Here's
the backstory behind Chuck Grassley and Lois Lerner. By the time Lois Lerner
suggested auditing Sen. Chuck Grassley in a Dec. 4, 2012, email, the Iowa Republican had spent five
years scrutinizing Lerner's IRS division. Grassley, during his tenure as top Republican on the
Senate Finance Committee, zeroed in on abuses by charities and other nonprofit groups improperly
claiming tax-exempt status under Lerner, and he spearheaded a 2006 change in federal law making it
harder for organizations to improperly claim the credit. Grassley and Lerner were no strangers to
each other, and it's one of the reasons Republicans fear Lerner's push to audit Grassley might have
been politically motivated.
Clinton
adviser Lanny Davis: IRS scandal needs an independent prosecutor. Lanny Davis, the
former counselor to Bill Clinton and close adviser to 2016 hopeful Hillary Clinton, says that he
agrees with Republicans that the IRS scandal has gotten out of hand, and that Democrats should feel
the same. "There's no Democrat that I know of that wouldn't be asking a Republican administration
to conduct an independent investigation" if Republicans were in charge, said Mr. Davis, the New
York Post reported Friday [6/27/2014].
Crimes
of the IRS: John Eastman comments. Our friend John Eastman is the chairman of the
National Organization for Marriage. After months of evasion and denial, the IRS has now admitted
that it illegally leaked the names of NOM's donors to a third party who saw to their publication.
The IRS agreed to settle NOM's case against it on the basis of a consent judgment under which it will
receive $50,000 as actual damages. [...] Despite the relevance of this case to the current controversies
involving the IRS, and the illumination it casts on them, the coverage this case has received ranges
from pitiful to nonexistent.
The
Federal Octopus. The Internal Revenue Service has enormous carrot-and-stick power in
picking and choosing who needs a tax audit, or which group deserves tax-exempt status. Under Lois
Lerner, the IRS's tax-exemption division targeted conservative groups to defang them before the
2012 election — and then attempted to cover up that perversion of the agency. Lerner
herself pled the Fifth Amendment, and now we learn that much of her key e-mail correspondence
mysteriously disappeared from her computer. E-mail records from six other IRS officials of interest
likewise vanished. The IRS also improperly handed over tax files of particular groups to the FBI
for investigation. It is no exaggeration to state that the IRS has now surrendered its reputation
as an impartial agency and lost the public trust. It has degenerated into an extension of the
White House.
IRS
Admits Wrongdoing, to Pay $50,000 in Leaking of Marriage Group's Tax Return. Two
years after activists for same-sex marriage obtained the confidential tax return and donor list of
a national group opposed to redefining marriage, the Internal Revenue Service has admitted
wrongdoing and agreed to settle the resulting lawsuit. The Daily Signal has learned that, under a
consent judgment today, the IRS agreed to pay $50,000 in damages to the National Organization for
Marriage as a result of the unlawful release of the confidential information to a gay rights group,
the Human Rights Campaign, that is NOM's chief political rival.
Email
Shows IRS Official Was Pretty Happy About Obama Publicly Singling Out Conservative "Secret Donor"
Groups. An email recently released by the House Oversight Committee shows IRS
official Sarah Ingram was pretty excited about President Obama publicly speaking out against
conservative groups with "secret donors." The email was sent from Ingram to Lois Lerner and others
inside the tax agency after a glowing piece was published in the New York Times about the
IRS and the trouble it was having with new tax exempt applicants and groups in light of the 2010
Citizen's United ruling.
More smoke at the IRS —
and not only from the hard drives. [Scroll down] We also now know that several
Democratic senators, including Dick Durbin of Illinois, had urged the IRS to look into some of
these [conservative] groups. And we know that, in 2012, top IRS officials repeatedly misled
Congress by not disclosing — in response to highly specific questions — that
the agency was giving extraordinary attention to conservative groups. Are those data points
connected? Or are they mere coincidences? None of us yet knows the origins, motivations
and scope of the agency's actions. In May 2013 we wrote that with their stonewalling, claimed
ignorance and convenient amnesia, IRS officials were making it difficult for Americans to evaluate
the depth, but also the official awareness, of the agency's evident assault on free speech.
Why the IRS scandal
won't die. The agency, accused of harassing conservative groups, claims that emails
from individuals who are the focus of congressional investigators are gone and unrecoverable. A
dubious claim. As the partisans haggle over "recycled" hard drives and the existence of back-up
servers, though, let's not forget why we care. This isn't just an ordinary story about an
over-powerful government agency run amok. The allegations here are of political corruption in which
officials appointed by the party in power allegedly sought to impede and punish those of the opposing view
with the intent to alter the outcome of two elections. That's not just the usual stuff we read about
with regulators gone wild — consequences of an obtuse and overbroad bureaucracy that rains
misery on citizens just and unjust. This is an allegation of rigging two elections by high
officials in an agency with enormous powers to harass and intimidate.
Oversight
Report: Obama's Use of 'Bully Pulpit' Led to IRS Targeting. A House committee report
maintains that the rhetoric used by President Obama in disparaging the nation's campaign finance
system impelled the Internal Revenue Service to undertake an extensive review of the tax status of
conservative groups. The report compiled by the staff of the House Oversight & Government Reform
Committee, "How Politics Led the IRS to Target Conservative Tax-Exempt Applicants for their
Political Beliefs," claims the president's use of the "bully pulpit" led the IRS to target
conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, leading to often lengthy delays in the process.
The
dangerous Democratic assault on free speech. The spark that lit this fuse of
intimidation, coercion and abuse was struck before the 2012 elections, when the IRS began a
systematic campaign of targeting certain organizations seeking tax-exempt status, compelling
applicants to divulge the nature of their prayers and reading material, among other things. This
targeting had the effect of silencing those who wanted only to engage in constitutionally protected
speech but were prevented from doing so by the Obama administration. These actions represent the
biggest threat to free speech since the late 18th century, when Americans were arrested, fined and
thrown into prison for the crime of disagreeing with their government.
Of
the Bureaucrats, by the Bureaucrats, for the Bureaucrats. For understandable reasons,
the IRS scandal has largely focused on the political question of whether the White House deliberately
targeted its opponents. To date there's no evidence that it did. That's good for the president,
but it may not be good for the country, because if the administration didn't target opponents, that would mean
the IRS has become corrupt all on its own.
Treasury:
Lerner never talked Tea Party with us. Treasury Department officials said Friday that
there's no reason to believe that former IRS official Lois Lerner came to them with the tax
agency's improper scrutiny of Tea Party groups. To back that up, one official said the Treasury
handed over a wide range of communications between Lerner and the department's employees, as requested
by GOP investigators, according to a letter obtained by The Hill.
Judicial
Watch Smoking Gun Busts Open IRS Scandal, Again. The news just keeps going from bad
to worse for President Obama and disgraced former IRS Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner,
thanks in large part to Judicial Watch's investigative work. JW has been instrumental in
uncovering evidence of Lerner's role in the IRS "Tea Party" scandal, obtaining records even
Congress could not get — documents proving the nation's tax collecting agency attempted
to silence conservative organizations through abusive practices.
Obama's
IRS Sent The FBI 1.1 Million Pages Of Taxpayer Documents: An Update. In the Fall of 2010, as part
of its effort to stem the conservative uprising that was occurring at that time, the Internal Revenue Service,
under the direction of Lois Lerner and Sarah Ingram, sent the FBI 21 disks containing 1.1 million pages of
taxpayer filings. The IRS's purpose was to give the FBI ammunition with which to investigate and prosecute
conservatives. The IRS covered up this transaction. Over more than a year, despite three subpoenas from the
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the IRS never disclosed its transmission of documents to the FBI.
Cleta
Mitchell To The IRS: Answer This. Washington superlawyer Cleta Mitchell represents
True the Vote, one of the groups illegally targeted by the IRS in the scandals that have exposed
the agency as a partisan operation. True the Vote's Catherine Engelbrecht has been harassed by
federal law enforcement authorities representing three different federal agencies. They represent
the price of politics in the Age of Obama.
The
IRS's war on free speech. The Obama administration's IRS actively attempted to enlist
the FBI in its war against the Tea Party. [...] The sitting government, angry that dissenting
citizens are challenging its hold on power, decides to subject those citizens to a long string of
abuses, including bureaucratic delays that limit free speech rights, targeted audits designed for
intimidation, and selective leaks of private information, for the purpose of humiliation. When
those efforts fail to stem the tide of dissent, the frustrated government tries to criminalize
disagreement, handing over voluminous files on individual citizens to a powerful law enforcement
agency, all in the hopes that law enforcement will take action, possibly even imprisoning dissenters.
House Bill to Impeach
Eric Holder Now Has 26 Co-Sponsors. It might be time for Eric Holder to get his
resume ready and start looking for other employment. Holder might be on the brink of making
history, but not in a good way, as a House bill calling for his impeachment is starting to gain
massive support in Congress, which could make him the first Attorney General to be removed from
office. Many conservatives are ready to give Holder the boot for breaking the law and attempting
to violate the First Amendment of the Constitution by using information from the IRS to prosecute
people for their political beliefs.
IRS
Gave FBI 1.1 Million Pages Of Taxpayer Data To Encourage Prosecution Of Conservatives. The
perversion of law enforcement agencies for political ends is starkly revealed by the fact that in 2010, as
part of its effort to stem the Tea Party movement, the IRS gave the FBI disks containing more than 1.1 million
pages of documents on Section 501 non-profits, so that the FBI could selectively prosecute conservative
groups and donors.
After
Revelations DOJ Collaborated With IRS on Targeting, Oversight Reiterates Calls For Special
Prosecutor. Earlier we learned that in 2010, the IRS sent a massive data base full of
confidential information belonging to [conservative] tax exempt groups to the FBI just before the
2010 midterm elections. The information was sent after collaboration and agreement between former
IRS head of tax exempt groups Lois Lerner and DOJ Election Crimes Branch official Richard Pilger
that tax exempt groups needed to be investigated. Fast forward to four years later and the
Department of Justice has been tapped to "investigate" the IRS targeting of conservative groups,
even though they were involved in the targeting themselves.
Fictions as Truth.
For the IRS scandal, the Obama administration would have us believe: [#1] Some low-level
bureaucrats may have proved over-zealous in targeting some non-profit groups. [#2] There was no
real pattern in the political affiliations of those who were inordinately targeted by the IRS.
[...] [#5] The targeting of so-called Tea-party groups between late 2010 and late 2012 had no
effect on the 2012 election.
IRS
Sent Confidential Information On Nonprofit Groups To FBI Days Before 2010 Midterm
Elections. Former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner sent confidential
taxpayer information about nonprofit groups to the Federal Bureau of Investigation days before the
2010 midterm elections. New emails provided by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to the House
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform for its investigation into the IRS targeting scandal
show that the IRS sent 21 disks containing 1.1 million pages of information on groups to the FBI,
which is overseen by DOJ, in October 2010. DOJ has the authority to monitor elections
nationwide. Lerner previously coordinated with DOJ in 2013 to attempt to prosecute conservative
activist groups.
Schumer's IRS. Did Chuck Schumer
try to use the IRS to sidestep the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling — and stick a
dagger in the heart of conservative groups? [...] The Center for Competitive Politics is asking
that Schumer and nine other Democratic senators be investigated for trying to use the IRS to
suppress the free speech of political opponents. The complaint notes Schumer signed letters
asking the IRS if it was investigating "social welfare organizations" to see if they were
improperly campaigning. Turns out the IRS did investigate. And —
surprise! — almost all the groups singled out for special IRS scrutiny were
conservative.
Conservative
groups complain Whitehouse pressured IRS. Two conservative organizations in
Washington have filed complaints with the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics, charging that
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has unlawfully exerted pressure on the Internal Revenue Service to
investigate whether nonprofit conservative groups have engaged unlawfully in partisan politics.
The Center for Competitive Politics asked that the panel look into actions by Whitehouse and eight
other senators, who the group said had sought such probes and interfered with IRS adjudications of
nonprofit tax status.
The
Other Guy Blinked: IRS Backs Down — for now. The Obama administration has
definitely been on the ropes for most of his second term. This week has been no different for
Obama. His IRS agency has been forced to back down after threatening to go toe to toe with the Tea Party.
The
6 Lamest Excuses For Failure From The Obama Administration. [#4] Obama wasn't
responsible for the IRS targeting the Tea Party because he heard about it on the news: Barack
Obama apparently knows less about what's going in his administration than Colonel Wilhelm Klink knew
about what was going in his prison camp in Hogan's Heroes. If Barack Obama consistently
claims he doesn't know more about what's going on in his administration than the general public
then he's a liar, an idiot or both.
I.R.S. Delays New Rules on
Taxation for Activists. The Internal Revenue Service said Thursday [5/23/2014] that it has delayed and is revamping new rules
intended to curb political activity by tax-exempt groups and that were proposed after the agency was accused last year of targeting Tea Party
groups. The I.R.S. said it made the decision after receiving 150,000 comments — both positive and negative — about
the proposal, the biggest public response to any proposed rule in its history. The decision postpones public hearings originally
expected for this summer. The proposal is intended to clarify how the I.R.S. defines political activity and how much nonprofit
groups are allowed to spend on it.
IRS
backs off proposal critics warned would 'silence' conservative groups. The IRS has agreed to overhaul a controversial proposal
that Republican lawmakers warned would revive the agency's "harassment and intimidation" of conservative groups, after receiving a record
number of comments on the proposed regulation. The new rules have been in the works ever since the IRS came under fire for its
targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups. In the wake of that scandal, the agency said it wanted to clarify for
everybody how tax-exempt groups can engage in political activity — by reining in the political work those groups do.
Group
Offering $1M for New Info in IRS Targeting Scandal. A group that was targeted by the IRS is now offering up to $1 million
for anyone who provides information leading to the conviction of anyone involved in the scandal. Catherine Engelbrecht, True the Vote
founder and president, was among those targeted by the IRS. She was on "The Kelly File" tonight [5/21/2014] to discuss the $1 million
bounty being offered.
New Proof of Extensive
IRS Scheme. Since the founding of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), a sacrosanct
rule in American politics has been that the IRS would never be used to target political enemies.
However, we now know that this rule was violated by Democrats just a few short months after Barack
Obama assumed power. Last week, the legal advocacy organization, Judicial Watch, released
incriminating emails that prove the IRS abused its authority by singling out Tea Party
conservatives for punitive actions. The most damaging email was sent by Lois Lerner, the
now-disgraced IRS honcho who's still refusing to testify before Congress, and it revealed that raw
political motives were behind the efforts.
Issa
Subpoenas DOJ After 'Election Crimes' Director Refuses to Answer Critical Questions 34
Times. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa
(R-Calif.) subpoenaed the Department of Justice today for documents after the DOJ's Election Crimes
Branch director, Richard Pilger, refused to answer critical questions 34 times, as advised by a DOJ
lawyer, about the IRS-Tea Party scandal. "The Department's refusal to allow Mr. Pilger to testify
about matters highly relevant to the Committee's investigation unnecessarily delays and frustrates
the Committee's Constitutional oversight obligations," said Chairman Issa in a letter sent with the
subpoena. "The Department's obstruction in this regard, coupled with its failure to produce any
relevant material to date, leads the Committee to conclude the Department is not seriously
committed to cooperating with the Committee's investigation on the Committee's terms," said Issa.
Gowdy Statements on
Lerner Contempt and Special Counsel. "Lois Lerner made 17 separate factual assertions
when she came before the Oversight Committee. She testified she had broken no laws and done nothing
wrong. That is a lot of talking for someone who wants to remain silent. You don't get
to tell your side of the story and then refuse to answer the cross-examination. That is not
how our system works. And no one should be above the law. Today [5/7/2014], Congress
voted to make sure we are leveraging every possible option we have to bring accountability at the IRS."
The
IRS's Media Firewall. After the full House of Representatives cited former Internal
Revenue Service (IRS) official Lois G. Lerner for contempt of Congress on Wednesday, the Washington
Times fittingly made it the lead story. Over at the Washington Post, however, print readers had
to go 19 pages deep to "The Fed Page," a union-style newsletter for federal employees. If the Post
had buried the story any deeper, it would have been wedged into the classifieds or crumpled up in a
backyard mulch barrel.
IRS Stonewalling FOIA Request Surrounding Correspondence
With Democratic Members of Congress. On May 21, 2013 the National Republican
Senatorial Committee sent the IRS a Freedom of Information Act request asking for "any and all
documents or records, including but not limited to electronic documents, e-mails, paper documents,
photographs (electronic or hard copy), or audio files," related to correspondence from January 1,
2009 and May 21, 2013 between thirteen different Democrat members of Congress and top IRS
officials. Those officials include former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman, former Commissioner Steven
Miller, senior IRS official Joseph Grant and former head of tax exempt groups Lois Lerner.
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The
Internal Repression Service. Through months of Obama administration stonewalling, the
redoubtable Judicial Watch perseveres in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, finally uncovering
bombshell documents that have eluded several congressional investigations. For the second time in a
matter of days, we find that standing oversight committees with competing subject-matter
jurisdictions and limited attention spans are incapable of the grand-jury-style probe needed to get
to the bottom of administration lawlessness. For that, in the absence of a scrupulous special
prosecutor reasonably independent from the Obama Justice Department (not gonna happen), it becomes
clear that a select committee will be necessary.
Get
to bottom of IRS targeting of Tea Party to avoid future abuses. [Scroll down] Something else was
revealed in the latest emails that in some respects is the most worrisome aspect of the IRS
scandal. In an April 2013 email, Lerner described the four criteria for deciding whether to subject
a particular applicant to targeting and harassment. The third and fourth criteria were, Lerner
said, whether the applicant described its purpose as to educate "the public through
advocacy/legislative activities to make America a better place to live" or if statements were found
in the applicants case file "that are critical of the how the country is being run." Those two
statements are so broad and potentially inclusive that they should instantly prompt Democrats and
liberal nonprofit activists to rethink their opposition to House Republican efforts to get to the
bottom of the IRS scandal.
Can
You See the IRS Scandal Now? A year after Judicial Watch submitted its FOIA request
the IRS coughed up a stack of emails. Among them is a July 2010 exchange between IRS director Holly
Paz and a top D.C.-based IRS lawyer, Steve Grodnitzky, in which the latter explains how his Washington
office "is working the Tea Party applications in coordination with" an office in Cincinnati. Not
only was the effort being directed out of Washington, the emails reveal, but D.C. was also telling the
Cincinnati office how to handle Tea Party applications. The emails also expose intense pressure
from Sen. Carl Levin to block these groups in the run-up to the presidential election.
Krauthammer:
New Emails Proves 'Lie' in White House Claim IRS Didn't Target GOPers. The conservative watchdog
organization Judicial Watch, a group which recently forced the White House to release new email exchanges
relating to the Benghazi attack, published newly uncovered communications which shed light on the scandal
involving the IRS targeting conservative groups. Reacting to those new emails on Fox News Channel's
Special Report, columnist Charles Krauthammer said the emails prove the "lie" in the White House's
claim the targeting was not political or directed at conservatives. One email from a former IRS official
to a tax agency attorney in Washington appears to disprove the White House's claim that two "rogue" agents
in a Cincinnati office were solely responsible for the targeting of tea party groups.
New
Emails: Democratic Senator Pressured IRS To Target Groups. The IRS' Washington, D.C.
headquarters targeted conservative groups in part due to pressure from Democratic Sen. Carl Levin,
according to emails obtained by the watchdog group Judicial Watch and reviewed by The Daily Caller.
Levin, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' permanent subcommittee on
investigations, wrote a March 30, 2012 letter to then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman discussing
the "urgency" of the issue of possible political activity by nonprofit applicants. Levin asked if
the IRS was sending out additional information requests to applicant groups and citing an IRS
rejection letter to a conservative group as an example of how the IRS should be conducting its
business. A top IRS official replied that the agency could send out "individualized questions
and requests."
IRS's tea-party noose tightens: Targeting campaign was
directed by HQ in Washington, D.C.. Judicial Watch [...] said it received a cache of
papers from the IRS showing the depth of the Obama administration's involvement in what officials
have previously called the work of a few 'rogue agents' in Cincinnati, Ohio. And letters from U.S.
Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, show his involvement in pressing the IRS to target mostly
conservative organizations with cumbersome questionnaires seemingly calculated to slow down their
applications for tax-exempt status in the middle of an election year.
The
Hill Insists GOP Abandoning IRS Investigation. The Hill has a piece desperately trying
to perform damage control for the Obama Administration by somehow insisting that the GOP is
abandoning its investigation into the IRS scandal in favor of its investigation into the Benghazi
scandal. It seems The Hill wants to reduce the number of Obama Administration fronts coming under fire.
Your
Tax Dollar Collectors At Work-The IRS Targeting Scandal Deepens. New documents obtained by Judicial
Watch demonstrate conclusively that the IRS policy of targeting tea party and conservative groups came directly from
Washington D.C., not a rogue office in Cincinnati. They also show that Sen. Carl Levin was working with the
IRS to make sure tea party and conservative groups were targeted for harassment. As to the first point, a
July 2012 email from IRS Attorney Steven Grodnitzky confirms that tea party group applications for exempt status
were being handled in Washington.
Judicial
Watch Obtains New Documents Showing IRS Targeting Came Directly From Washington D.C..
New documents obtained and released through a Judicial Watch lawsuit show the targeting of tea party
and conservative groups came directly out of Washington D.C., not a rogue IRS office in Cincinnati.
On July 6, 2012, former Director of the IRS Rulings and Agreements Division and current Manager of
Exempt Organizations Guidance Holly Paz sent an email to IRS Attorney Steven Grodnitzky asking for
an explanation of how tea party group applications were being handled. Grodnitzky responded by
confirming the cases were being handled in Washington.
House Republicans
find 10% of tea party donors audited by IRS. Despite assurances to the contrary, the IRS didn't destroy all of the donor
lists scooped up in its tea party targeting — and a check of those lists reveals that the tax agency audited 10 percent
of those donors, much higher than the audit rate for average Americans, House Republicans revealed Wednesday [5/7/2014].
Republicans argue that the Internal Revenue Service still hasn't come clean about the full extent of its targeting, which swept up
dozens of conservative groups.
Voter Fraud: An Existential
Threat to America. In 2010, homemaker and small business owner, Catherine Engelbrecht, founded True the
Vote (TTV), an organization dedicated to combating vote fraud. The group's experience at the hand of government
has become emblematic of the Obama administration's despotic nature. The travails of TTV are but one example of
hundreds of conservative and tea party non-profits the IRS deliberately targeted in the run-up to the 2012 election.
For example, the Ohio Liberty Council submitted their application on June 30, 2010. They received the first IRS
answer in January 2012. It asked extensive questions about every single event they held and planned to hold, the
people in their groups, their qualifications, speakers, publications, websites, Facebook pages and more. The IRS
demanded they respond in two weeks.
Will the
House arrest Lois Lerner? The House has held Lois Lerner in contempt, but it won't
use its power to place the former IRS official under arrest, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said on
Sunday [5/11/2014]. Under a precedent affirmed by the Supreme Court, each chamber of Congress can
authorize its sergeant-at-arms to detain individuals it holds in contempt. But Boehner said on
"Fox News Sunday" that he has no interest in doing that with Lerner, whom the House last week voted
to hold in contempt over her refusal to testify about her role in the IRS's targeting of conservative
groups.
Boehner
Won't Issue an Arrest Warrant for Lerner If Holder Fails to Prosecute Her. House Speaker John Boehner
indicated on Sunday [5/11/2014] that if Attorney General Eric Holder doesn't proceed with the contempt charge against
former IRS official Lois Lerner, that will be the end of it. "The contempt charge has gone to the attorney general.
And it's up to the attorney general, Eric Holder, to prosecute this. And to assign someone to prosecute the case.
Now will they do it? We don't know. But the ball is in his court," Boehner told Fox News's Maria Bartiromo.
The Editor says...
Speaker Boehner gives up too easily. Discarding your weapons in the middle of a battle is not a winning tactic.
Arresting Lois Lerner.
Use it or lose it. That's the message for House Speaker John Boehner. If he thinks Congress
has the power to arrest Lois Lerner for contempt, now is the time. If he shrinks from sending the
sergeant at arms to bring Lerner to the Capitol jail after the full House held her in contempt, he's
weakening his own institution. And if this case is not worth a fight, what is?
Congressman calls DOJ Lois Lerner criminal investigation 'a joke' after Holder
deputy says he doesn't know who's in charge. The acting deputy U.S. attorney general in charge of overseeing
'public integrity' prosecutions testified Friday [5/9/2014] that he doesn't know who's in charge of the criminal investigation of
Lois Lerner, the former IRS official at the center of the tea-party targeting scandal. David O'Neil, whose job
atop the DOJ's criminal division puts him in charge of public corruption prosecutions, told Ohio Republican Rep. Jim
Jordan that he also doesn't know how many prosecutors are assigned to the case, or how many attorneys from his division
are working on it. Asked to identify the lead agent in the Lerner investigation, O'Neil would only answer, 'I'm
sure that we can provide that information to you.'
Eric Holder will sprout wings and fly before Lois Lerner goes to jail for contempt of
Congress. Now that the House has found Lerner in contempt and asked Attorney General Eric Holder to prosecute her,
Boehner and his fellow GOPers are headed to an embarrassing dead end. Holder will sprout wings and fly from atop the Justice
Department building before he lifts a finger to prosecute Lerner. And he will find some way — not excluding
simply ignoring it — to get around the law that says the U.S. Attorney "shall" file charges against an individual
found in contempt of Congress. At that point, Republicans will have to decide whether to blink or to do what no House has
done since 1935, which is invoke its power of inherent contempt and jail Lerner until she talks.
Why
Lois Lerner Should Be Granted Immunity. In this week's episode of the Capitol Hill soap opera, Lois Lerner,
the apparatchik at the center of the IRS jihad against conservative groups, was at long, long last held in contempt of
Congress. Amid the farce, the House's IRS probe is floundering. Ironically, this happens just as the chamber's
separate probe of the Benghazi massacre has been given a chance to succeed. That is because House speaker John Boehner,
after over a year of delay, has finally agreed to appoint a "select committee" to investigate Benghazi. Congress
has no constitutional authority to enforce the laws it writes, a power our system vests solely in the executive branch.
But a select committee, with a mission to find out what happened — as opposed to conducting oversight through the prism
of some committee's narrow subject-matter jurisdiction (judiciary, budget, education, reform, etc.) — is the closest
legislative analogue to a grand jury.
IRS finally agrees to turn over all Lois Lerner emails to House
Republicans. Less than a day after former IRS official Lois Lerner was found in criminal contempt of
Congress, her old agency has agreed to turn over copies of all her emails and other correspondence to one of the
Republican-led House committees investigating the scandal that led to her retirement. The agency's quick
concession came after Wednesday night's 231-178 contempt vote, which closely followed the passage of a second
resolution demanding the appointment of a nonpartisan 'special counsel' at the Department of Justice. Lerner has
twice refused to answer questions in congressional hearings after lawmakers issued a subpoena for her appearance.
IRS to Turn Over
All Lerner E-Mails. Less than 24 hours after the House voted to hold disgraced Internal Revenue Service official
Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress, the agency agreed to turn over all of Lerner's e-mails and correspondence to a House panel
investigating its targeting of conservative nonprofit groups. "While it is good that we are finally getting these e-mails,
it should never have taken this long," Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp said in a statement, arguing that the
information is critical to his investigation.
House votes
231-187 to hold IRS's Lerner in contempt of Congress. The House voted Wednesday to hold former IRS official
Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify about the agency's improper scrutiny of Tea Party groups.
The 231 to 187 vote, which attracted just 6 Democrats, marked the latest escalation in the nearly yearlong IRS controversy,
which broke last May when Lerner acknowledged and apologized for the agency's singling out of Tea Party groups seeking
tax-exempt status.
House finds Lois Lerner in contempt and refers prosecution to Eric Holder.
The House of Representatives voted Wednesday evening [5/7/2014] to find Lois Lerner in Contempt of Congress. The
231-187 vote fell largely along party lines, with six Democrats joining every Republican to give the former IRS official
a formal thumbs-down. The result will place Lerner's case in the hands of Attorney General Eric Holder, who was
himself found in criminal contempt in 2012 because he resisted subpoenas for documents in teh [sic] Operation Fast
and Furious firearms scandal.
Lois Lerner is about to join an exclusive club. Lawmakers are
expected to vote later Wednesday to hold former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress —
a long-anticipated vote that will come just a few days short of the one-year anniversary of Lerner's first apology for the tax
agency's decision to improperly target and investigate conservative-leaning tax-exempt political organizations.
Ten
IRS scandal Excuses That Are Now Completely Discredited. With Lois Lerner facing a contempt of Congress
vote Wednesday [5/7/2014], and coming up on the one-year anniversary of the IRS conservative-targeting scandal,
it's time to take a look at the pro-IRS case. What have we found? There isn't one. Every defense put forth
by the Obama administration and its allies in the Democratic Party and the media has now been disproved and discredited.
Ted
Cruz Demands Vote to Stop IRS Targeting. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) took bold action on the Senate floor
yesterday, requesting votes on his proposed legislation to stop the IRS's targeting of citizens based on their political
actions. Cruz said that if Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) blocks the legislation from being voted on, he will
not consent to the passage of Sen. Amy Klobuchar's (D-MN) STOP Identity Theft Act, bill S. 149. Cruz argued
that Reid continues to disallow Republican-sponsored bills to be voted on by the body of the Senate.
Report:
TV abandons IRS scandal; just 14 stories in 10 months as issue rages again. According to the conservative
media watchdog, when a Democratic report was issued in June 2013 suggesting that liberal groups were targeted equally
by the IRS, the major media gave up coverage, even though that report was widely rejected, even by Treasury's inspector
general. Since then, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform voted along party lines to recommend
that the full House hold Lerner in contempt. A Roll Call report even suggested that the House, after voting,
could imprison her.
There are plenty of smidgens in the IRS scandal. Today
[5/6/2014], the House Rules Committee is considering a resolution recommending that former IRS official Lois Lerner
be held in contempt for refusing to answer questions about her role in the IRS targeting of President Obama's political
opponents. It is likely that the resolution will pass, and then it will come to the floor for a full vote in the
House. When it does, the vote to hold Lerner in contempt should be bipartisan — if not unanimous.
Any Democrats who vote "no" should be labeled as enablers of obstruction of justice. It should be impossible for
Democrats to defend a vote that could only serve to encourage more corruption and non-cooperation in the future.
Republicans gear up for contempt vote on alleged IRS
targeting mastermind Lois Lerner. Republicans in the House of Representatives are
planning to call a vote next week on a contempt resolution against Lois Lerner, the former IRS
official at the center of an alleged plot to target conservative nonprofit groups for special
scrutiny based on their political beliefs. Lerner, who retired in late 2013 with a government
pension, led the agency's Exempt Organizations office and is accused of masterminding a scheme aimed
at hobbling tea party groups when they applied for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2010
federal elections.
House
GOP probes on Benghazi, IRS set up tough votes for Democrats. With votes looming to
create a special committee to investigate the Benghazi attacks, hold former IRS official Lois G.
Lerner in contempt of Congress and demand a special counsel to look into the IRS, House Republicans
have created a political minefield for Democrats in tough re-election races. The votes all pit
Congress against the White House and the broader Obama administration over key transparency
questions — though they also open Republicans to charges of political grandstanding.
GOP
Demands IRS Special Counsel. Not only are House Republicans forming a select committee to investigate
Benghazi, there is now a concerted push from top GOP officials for the appointment of a special counsel on the IRS
scandal. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) introduced the IRS scandal special counsel resolution on Friday
[5/2/2014]. Jordan's resolution calls on Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint an independent counsel to
investigate the IRS scandal, rather than the current Department of Justice attorney investigating. The
current DOJ investigator donated thousands of dollars to President Obama's re-election campaign and to the
Democratic National Committee.
GOP
demands Justice name special counsel to probe IRS scandal, Lois Lerner. Frustrated by the administration's
efforts to brush the IRS scandal under the rug, House Republicans on Friday turned up the heat under Attorney General Eric
Holder, demanding that his Justice Department appoint a special counsel to probe the efforts to punish conservative, anti-Obama
groups. "We must hold the IRS accountable so this powerful agency cannot be used as a tool to target and harass Americans
for their political beliefs," said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Dave Camp. Explaining the demand for a
special counsel, Camp expressed doubt that Justice will aggressively probe the IRS in its own investigation.
Lois
Lerner's Lawyer: Holding Her in Contempt Would Be 'Un-American'. Ms. Lerner has twice declined to
testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, citing her Fifth Amendment privilege against
self-incrimination. GOP lawmakers argue that she waived her privilege by making a statement at the first
hearing, professing her innocence of any wrongdoing. They were further angered when it became known that
Ms. Lerner gave a lengthy interview to the Justice Department about the matter. The committee approved a
contempt resolution concerning Ms. Lerner earlier this month.
House GOP sets May vote
on holding Lois Lerner in contempt. The House next month plans to vote to hold former IRS official Lois
Lerner in contempt for her refusal to testify before Congress about the targeting of Tea Party groups, Majority Leader
Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told his colleagues in a memo Friday [4/25/2014]. The vote on Lerner, who led the agency's
tax-exempt division, follows a party-line contempt referral by the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which
has tried for nearly a year to get Lerner to answer questions on the grounds that she waived her Fifth Amendment right
against self-incrimination.
Darrell
Issa seeks answers about Justice Department's role in IRS targeting. Rep. Darrell Issa,
chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is raising new questions about the
Justice Department's role in the IRS targeting of conservative groups. Issa wants more answers
from the administration about a previously unreleased email between a DOJ official and former IRS
official Lois Lerner about potential prosecutions of conservative groups that had applied for tax-exempt status.
IRS
revokes conservative group's tax-exempt status over anti-Clinton statements. The Internal Revenue
Service has revoked the tax-exempt status of a conservative charity for making statements critical of Hillary Rodham
Clinton and John Kerry, according to a USA Today report. The Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty, based
in Manassas, Va., "has shown a pattern of deliberate and consistent intervention in political campaigns" and made
"repeated statements supporting or opposing various candidates by expressing its opinion of the respective candidate's
character and qualifications," according to a written determination released Friday by the IRS.
Liberals Digging
Their Political Graves. I don't think that our all-American liberals have really thought through their
sophomoric ideas about striking a "balance between free speech in a democracy and protection against racial abuse in
a multicultural society" and the use of the IRS to punish their enemies. One repression leads with iron logic
to the next, and each injustice provokes its own head of rebellion. At some point, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD),
you and your fellow House Democrats may have to embarrass yourselves and walk back your partisan insouciance, and
admit that your opponents were right about the IRS and True the Vote.
Fox
News Poll: 49 percent think White House had IRS target conservatives. Nearly half of American
voters think the IRS targeted conservative groups at the request of the White House, and most want Congress
to keep investigating the matter. The latest Fox News poll also finds 69 percent don't feel
President Obama has followed through on his vow to "find out exactly what happened on this." By
a 49-41 percent margin, voters believe the Obama administration "intentionally had the IRS target
conservative political groups."
True
the Vote founder to Fox: Five separate agencies came down on me out of nowhere. Conservative activist
Catherine Engelbrecht was on "Fox and Friends" Wednesday [4/16/2014] and said she has no doubt that there was a "collaborative
effort" by a number of federal agencies to try to silence her. The founder of "True the Vote" made the assertion in the
aftermath of last week's release of emails by U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chair of the House Oversight and Government
Reform Committee, that suggest U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., may have worked with the IRS to target Engelbrecht after
her organization applied for nonprofit status.
IRS Hack Lois Lerner Plays the
Victim Card. [O]ne of the most astonishing features of this whole circus has been Lerner's alleged rationale for
refusing to cooperate the investigation and help right the wrongs of her agency. Presented with an opportunity to display
honesty and humility in order to root out political corruption, Lerner instead took refuge in cowardice. Lerner's attorney
claimed that she feared that giving an open testimony before the congressional committee would place her life in danger.
Ron
Paul's Campaign for Liberty Flouts IRS List Demand. The Internal Revenue Service is
demanding that Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty organization hand over its list of contributors, and
has fined the non-profit organization $12,900 for failing to give names on its annual IRS filing.
"There is no legitimate reason for the IRS to know who donates to Campaign for Liberty," the organization's
Communications Director Megan Stiles told the Washington Examiner in an e-mail April 15.
The
IRS Scandal's Smoking Gun? The so-called "smoking gun" proving the Internal Revenue Service played politics
with conservative groups seeking official non-profit, social welfare status over the last several years may finally have
been found. In a rash of documents provided under the Freedom of Information Act to Judicial Watch, a non-partisan public
interest law group, is an April 2013 email written by David Fish, acting manager of IRS Exempt Organizations Technical Guidance
and Quality Assurance and sent to, among others, former IRS Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner. It was part of
a thread discussing a recent U.S. Senate hearing on the potential for the abuse of the 501(c)(4) tax status by organizations
intervening inappropriately or improperly in candidate elections.
Emails
Show Corruption At [the] Heart Of [the Obama] Administration. 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.
Those 'rogue' agents. Remember when
Lois Lerner, in answering a planted question at an American Bar Association conference, admitted the IRS had targeted
conservative groups but tried to pass it off as the work of rogue agents — "our line people in Cincinnati"?
Today we know there were indeed federal agents involved. But they weren't rogue, and they weren't confined to IRS
workers in Cincinnati. Thanks to a Freedom of Information request by Judicial Watch, we now have an e-mail Lerner
sent to colleagues noting the Department of Justice was looking into criminal prosecutions of these tax-exempt groups.
Big
Three Networks Censor Huge IRS Scandal Developments. At this point it might take a
dead body to get the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks to give the IRS-Tea Party scandal any sort
of real coverage. Huge developments in the last week — like IRS official Lois Lerner receiving a
criminal referral from the House Ways and Means Committee and e-mails proving she fed tax information on a
targeted group to the staff of Rep. Elijah Cummings (D) — were completely censored by ABC and
NBC news. Only a 90 second report on Thursday's CBS This Morning kept last week's revelations
from being totally blacked out on the Big Three networks.
Obama's thug administration. The
IRS and the Department of Justice colluded to steal the 2012 presidential election by stonewalling conservative
political groups and denying them their constitutional right to participate in the democratic process. [...] When
these felonious actions came to light, the IRS initially said they were the work of a few "rogue agents."
But that explanation did not survive the light of day, as more and more information about these crimes emerged.
Today's
IRS Documents: What Do They Show? Earlier today [4/16/2014], Judicial Watch made public a batch of
documents that it received from the IRS in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. The documents
consist of a series of emails relating to the IRS's treatment of applications for 501(c)(4) status from "Tea Party" or
otherwise conservative organizations. [...] [One message] was sent by Cindy Thomas to Lerner just after Lerner
disclosed the targeting of conservative groups at an American Bar Association conference, and blamed it on "low level
workers" in the IRS's Cincinnati office. That was obviously a total lie, and Ms. Thomas, who was in charge of
exempt organizations at the Cincinnati branch at the time, rubs it in.
The
Terrifying Implications of the IRS Abuse-DOJ Connection. [Hooray] for Treasury Inspector General for Tax
Administration J. Russell George. His investigation of what turned out to be the IRS abuse scandal may well
have saved the Constitution and the nation. For his fair and impartial investigation into the Internal Revenue
Service's abuse of Americans who dissent from President Obama's agenda, Democrats have called for an investigation of
him. George should not be investigated, but perhaps the Democrats who want him investigated — Reps.
Gerry Connolly (D-VA) and Matt Cartwright (D-PA) — should be. Their call for an investigation of
the investigator might constitute interference with the ongoing investigation of the IRS abuse scandal. That would
be obstruction of justice, in what may turn out to be the most widespread and damaging scandal in American history.
A New, More Sinister
IRS Scandal. Yesterday [4/16/2014] was a significant day in the IRS abuse scandal. The scandal
evolved from being about pesky delays in IRS exemption applications to a government conniving with outside interests
to put political opponents in prison. Emails obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act
reveal Lois Lerner cooking up plans with Justice Department officials to talk about ways to criminally charge
conservative groups that are insufficiently quiet.
The IRS Scandal Blows Wide
Open. A bombshell revelation has brought the IRS scandal to a new level. Judicial
Watch has released internal IRS communications revealing that former Tax Exempt Organizations
director Lois Lerner was in contact with the Department of Justice (DOJ) regarding whether it was
possible to criminally prosecute tax-exempt groups she believed had "lied" about their political
activity. Judicial Watch obtained the documents by successfully filing a Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the IRS in October 2013, following the agency's stonewall of four FOIA
requests dating back to the previous May.
Oversight member on Lois Lerner coordination with DOJ: "Now I see why IRS is
scared to give up emails". Key members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform expressed
outrage at revelations made in newly released emails showing ex-IRS official Lois Lerner coordinating with the Department
of Justice on prosecuting nonprofit groups. One committee member said the emails prove why the IRS is "scared to
give up the rest of Lois Lerner's emails." IRS commissioner John Koskinen was recently threatened with contempt
for stonewalling the committee's investigation. Koskinen claimed in a hearing that it could take years to provide the
documents requested by Oversight. "The release of new documents underscores the political nature of IRS Tea Party
targeting and the extent to which supposed apolitical officials took direction from elected Democrats," Oversight chairman
Rep. Darrell Issa said in a statement. "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."
New Emails Show Lois Lerner Contacted DOJ About Prosecuting Tax
Exempt Groups. [Video clip]After this email exchange, Lerner handed things off
to Senior Technical Adviser and Attorney Nancy Marks, who was in charge of setting up a meeting with
DOJ. Just a few short days later on May 10, 2013, Lerner admitted and apologized for the
inappropriate targeting of conservative tea party groups during an American Bar Association
Conference after answering a planted question. Further according to Judicial Watch, "In an email to
an aide responding to a request for information from a Washington Post reporter, Lerner admits that
she "can't confirm that there was anyone on the other side of the political spectrum" who had been
targeted by the IRS. She then adds that "The one with the names used were only know [sic] because
they have been very loud in the press." In other words, only conservative groups were being looked
at for criminal prosecution.
Feds:
Philly IRS worker cheated on taxes. A Philadelphia woman is facing federal charges for
allegedly collecting five years worth of unemployment compensation and failing to report the income
on her tax return forms, all while working full time for the Internal Revenue Service. Lora Lewis,
51, also allegedly took numerous tax credits for which she was not eligible, including a first-time
homebuyers' credit, an earned income credit and an education credit, the U.S. Attorney's Office for
Eastern Pennsylvania said.
AP's
Julie Pace: Media Not Covering IRS Scandal Because 'We Don't Have A Lot To Work With'.
Last week, the House Oversight Committee asked the Justice Department to seek criminal charges
against former IRS official Lois Lerner. Despite the newest revelations in the IRS scandal, the
Associated Press' Julie Pace attempted to excuse the lack of media coverage. Appearing as a
panelist on Fox News Sunday on April 13, Pace argued, "If you are going to keep the story going and
you want to keep the investigation going, eventually there has to be some material there to work
with. And we're in this period of time where we don't have a lot to work with."
Lois Lerner sits in her lavish house on $2.4 million
property as she awaits possible contempt charge. Ex-IRS official Lois Lerner is living
the life of a private citizen at her more-than $2.4 million property in Bethesda, Md. while
Republicans consider holding a House floor vote to hold her in contempt of Congress. The House
Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted 21-12 to hold Lerner in contempt last week after she
waived her Fifth Amendment rights but continued to stonewall the committees investigation into the
IRS targeting scandal. The measure was opposed by all 12 of the committee's Democrats, including
Ranking Member Rep. Elijah Cummings, whose staff requested information from the IRS about a
conservative non-profit applicant group under agency scrutiny.
IRS villain Lois Lerner faces 11 YEARS in prison as GOP-controlled House
committee sends criminal referral to Eric Holder. Republicans on the powerful House Ways and Means
Committee won a vote Wednesday demanding the Justice Department criminally prosecute Lois Lerner, the former
Internal Revenue Service official at the center of a scheme to slow-walk tax-exempt applications from conservative
groups. They claim she committed three federal crimes punishable by a total of 11 years in prison.
The panel voted 23-14, along party lines, to approve a letter instructing Attorney General Eric Holder to charge Lerner
and prosecute her in court.
GOP claims Democratic congressman colluded with IRS's Lois Lerner to gather
information on conservatives. The Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee claimed Wednesday
that his Democratic counterpart secretly colluded with the Internal Revenue Service to bring about the targeting of
conservatives that has gripped politics-watchers for nearly a year. If true, it would mark the first involvement
of an elected politician in a nearly year-long scandal that involved the IRS breaking the law and playing political
favorites. California Rep. Darrell Issa charged in a letter that Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings put a nonprofit
tea party group called True the Vote on the IRS's radar by asking the tax agency for information about the organization's
activities and its growing corps of volunteers.
True
the Vote Witness Who Testified on IRS Scandal Pens Blazing Letter to Grandstanding Democrat. Catherine
Engelbrecht became the face of the IRS scandal with her riveting testimony before Congress on how her group True
the Vote was targeted by the IRS for selective persecution and harassment. Recently, it was discovered that
Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings had a hand in the IRS targeting True the Vote.
IRS Gave House
Oversight Democrats Info on Targeted Conservative Group. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) sent tax documents on a
targeted conservative group to Democratic staff on the House Oversight Committee, newly released emails show, despite previous
denials by ranking Oversight Democrat Elijah Cummings (D., Md.) that such contact had occurred. Emails released by the GOP-led
Oversight Committee show Democratic staff requested information from the IRS' tax-exempt division on True The Vote, a conservative
group that monitors polling places for voter fraud. Republicans and conservative activists say the IRS tax-exempt division,
led by former official Lois Lerner, targeted dozens of conservative groups because of their politics while ignoring similar
progressive organizations.
Issa:
IRS coordinated with Dems to attack tea party group. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee
Chairman Darrell E. Issa on Wednesday accused his Democratic counterpart, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, of
colluding with the IRS to attack one of the tea party groups that was targeted by the tax agency for intrusive
scrutiny and long delays. Mr. Issa and five other top Republicans said they just last week were given emails
showing Mr. Cummings sought information from the IRS about True the Vote, a conservative tax-exempt organization
that drew the ire of liberals for pushing states to eliminate potentially bogus names from their voter rolls.
Rep.
Trey Gowdy: How Does Lois Lerner Still Have The Right To Remain Silent. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) challenged the
notion that former IRS official Lois Lerner still had the right to remain silent since she had made factual assertions since
she invoked her Fifth Amendment right. Gowdy said that he counted 17 separate factual assertions by Lerner which in
his opinion was enough to force her to be cross-examined.
Networks
Ignore House GOP's Criminal Referral for Lois Lerner. In a major new development in the IRS scandal, House Republicans
voted on Wednesday to send a criminal referral to the Department of Justice for former IRS chief Lois Lerner. FNC's Special
Report with Bret Baier devoted a full story to the vote by the committee chaired by Congressman Dave Camp, but none of the three
broadcast network evening newscasts covered the vote. The letter sent to Attorney General Eric Holder stated that "findings"
from the Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Republican Camp, "suggest that Lerner may have violated multiple criminal
statutes." The letter went on to add that "the Committee asks that you pursue this evidence." The three
networks ignored this letter, however, although CBS and ABC talked about Hillary Clinton's presidential aspirations.
IRS at the Crossroads. Congress's
investigation into IRS political targeting accelerated Wednesday, with a referral for the criminal prosecution of a former
Treasury official and new evidence to back it up. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, House Ways and Means
Chairman Dave Camp recommends the Justice Department proceed on three probable criminal actions taken by former director
of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner. The letter, which was endorsed in a party-line Ways and Means vote Wednesday
morning, discloses new evidence suggesting that Ms. Lerner used her position to single out conservative groups for scrutiny
not applied to left-leaning groups. Investigators also charge that she misled investigators in her original conversations
with the Treasury Inspector General and potentially disclosed confidential taxpayer information by using her personal
email address for IRS business.
When 'No' Means 'No'. Lerner's case is by now well known. From 2006 to 2013, she was the IRS's Director of Exempt Organizations, vested
with power to decide which nonprofit organizations receive tax-exempt status, which ones do not, and which ones find
themselves subjected to painful trials in the process. That is no small matter. As Chief Justice John Marshall
warned, "the power to tax" is "the power to destroy." All the more so for nonprofit organizations, for which tax-exempt
status truly is the difference between life and death. And tax-exempt status benefits more than
just a particular organization, its donors, and its direct beneficiaries.
House
panel asks DOJ to consider criminal prosecution for Lerner. A House committee voted Wednesday [4/9/2014]
to formally ask the Justice Department to consider criminal prosecution against ex-IRS official Lois Lerner, the figure
at the center of the political targeting scandal. The House Ways and Means Committee voted 23-14 to send the
criminal referral, which accused her of "extreme bias." The vote marked an escalation in Republicans' push to confront
Lerner over her role in the agency's controversial practice of singling out conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status
for extra scrutiny.
Questions About
the IRS Targeting Scandal. A panel of House Republicans voted on Thursday to hold former IRS official Lois Lerner
in contempt of Congress, citing her refusal to answer questions about the agency's targeting of conservative organizations for
special scrutiny. The 21-12 vote by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has been probing the
alleged abuse since the scandal erupted last spring, broke along party lines: each of the panel's Republicans voted to censure
Lerner, while the Democrats on the committee opposed the resolution.
Speier: 'There Is No
Connection to the White House'. Today is not about Lois Lerner or the alleged inappropriate tactics she may
have employed," Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Thursday.
"Today is about protecting the integrity and the credibility of this committee." Speier accused committee Republicans
of fabricating a "vast conspiracy" around a "mid-level bureaucrat who may have made some poor decisions." "There is no
connection to the White House," Speier said. "What we are trying to do is hold in contempt a mid-level bureaucrat, and
the actions of this committee won't hold up to judicial scrutiny."
Darrell Issa: Emails suggest Elijah Cummings prompted IRS targeting of True
the Vote. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., has accused the
panel's top Democrat of prompting the Internal Revenue Service in 2012 to target a conservative organization applying
for non-profit status. Issa said records obtained last week from the IRS show communications from the office of
ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., about True the Vote, a Texas-based, non-profit conservative group that
aims to prevent voter fraud.
House panel
votes to hold ex-IRS official Lerner in contempt of Congress. A House committee voted Thursday [4/10/2014] to hold Lois
Lerner in contempt of Congress, as Republicans escalated their bid to "get to the bottom" of the former IRS official's role in the
political targeting scandal. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted 21-12 to hold Lerner in contempt.
The party-line vote followed hours of heated debate on the committee. The contempt measure heads next to the House floor.
The Lois Lerner files:
A partisan bureaucrat at work. The House Ways and Means Committee released a letter Wednesday detailing what it
believes to be criminal misconduct by Lois Lerner, the former IRS official at the center of the ongoing IRS Tea Party targeting
scandal. For those who want to understand how partisan bureaucrats can manipulate a powerful federal agency, the letter is
a must-read. [...] At this point, anyone — including the president of the United States — who claims there's
not a "smidgen" of corruption in the IRS targeting scandal is willfully blind to the facts and the law.
New Emails Suggest
Collusion Between IRS, Rep. Cummings in True the Vote Targeting. The U.S. House Oversight Committee today released
emails between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Democrat Minority Leader Elijah Cummings of the same committee detailing
joint attempts to collect non-public information from True the Vote. According to the release obtained by Breitbart Texas,
House Oversight offered glimpses into coordinated fishing attempts for information: [...]
Lois
Lerner 2013 e-mail: Maybe I can land an office job at Organizing For Action. Organizing For Action
is, of course, the group founded by Team Obama in 2009 after he was sworn in to push his agenda while in office.
It's the successor to Obama For America, his 2008 campaign outfit. The first OFA got him elected, the second OFA
is supposed to help get his policies through Congress. Here's who was running the scrupulously impartial IRS Exempt
Organizations Division that targeted dozens of tea-party nonprofits for extra scrutiny. [...]
IRS's
Lerner sought to deny Crossroads tax status, emails show. House Republicans on Wednesday [4/9/2014]
accused former IRS official Lois Lerner of breaking agency rules by aggressively urging denial of tax-exempt status
to Crossroads GPS, the giant political nonprofit founded by Karl Rove. The House Ways and Means Committee
released emails showing the former chief of the tax-exempt unit took a special interest in Crossroads GPS in early
2013 — inquiring with IRS officials why they hadn't been audited. Around the same time an email
suggested she might be applying for a job with a pro-President Barack Obama group, Organizing For Action, though
it is unclear if she was joking.
House
Committee Votes to Refer ex-IRS Official Lois Lerner for Criminal Charges. On Wednesday, the House
Ways and Means Committee voted to refer former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner to the Department of
Justice for criminal prosecution. By a vote of 23 to 14, a closed-door session of the House committee determined
that Lerner's role in the alleged singling out of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status for undue scrutiny
was a criminal act.
Elijah
Cummings (D) Collaborated With IRS to Target Conservatives Then Lied About It. No wonder
Cummings has been so anxious to suppress the investigation: he's been intimately involved with the scandal.
Cummings should be censured and removed from the committee. Of course, knowing the cowardly leaders of the
GOP, they'll moan "it's a sad day", and do nothing.
IRS
Political Hitman Lois Lerner: Go to jail. Go directly to jail.. A staff report by House Oversight
Committee chairman Darrell Issa reveals testimony by IRS agents that the IRS has not deliberately targeted
progressive groups. [...] That crimes have been committed and the Internal Revenue Service has become a
corrupt criminal enterprise used to bludgeon political opponents of the Obama administration is hardly in
dispute. The charge might have long ago been adjudicated had the Justice Department of Eric Holder,
rife with its own very real scandals, not been politicized beyond all recognition. According to the
report, obtained by the Daily Caller, "Only seven applications in the IRS backlog contained the word
'progressive,' all of which were then approved by the IRS, while tea party groups received unprecedented
review and experienced years-long delays."
House
Republicans won't rule out arresting Lois Lerner if Justice Department doesn't. House Ways and Means Committee
Republicans aren't ruling out the use of the chamber's "inherent contempt" authority if Attorney General Eric Holder refuses
to act on the panel's accusations against former IRS official Lois Lerner. The committee voted Wednesday to seek an
investigation of whether Lerner violated federal law by using her power to ensure Right-leaning groups were targeted for extra
scrutiny by the agency, giving misleading information during a probe of the matter by the Treasury Department's inspector
general and using her personal email to conduct official business, which could have resulted in the disclosure of confidential
taxpayer information.
The IRS Scandal Comes Into
Focus. Nearly a year into the IRS scandal, we still don't know exactly what happened — though we
are finally getting an inkling. That's thanks to the letter House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp sent this week to
the Justice Department recommending a criminal probe of Lois Lerner. The average citizen might be dizzied by the torrent
of confusing terms — BOLO lists, Tigta, 501(c)(4) — and the array of accusations that have made up this IRS
investigation. Mr. Camp's letter takes a step back to remind us why this matters, even as it provides compelling
new information that goes to motive and method — and clarifies some of the curious behavior of Democrats during
the investigation.
A Criminal
Organization Masquerading As.... In Congress, Rep. Darrell Issa of California has just leveled an explosive charge
against his Democrat counterpart on the House Oversight and Government Reform committee — to wit, that the gentleman
from Maryland colluded with the IRS to harass a conservative organization fighting for honest elections.
House Committee:
Possible Crimes by IRS Official. The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee says investigators
have uncovered evidence that a former Internal Revenue Service official may have committed crimes as part of the agency's
tea party controversy.
IRS's Lois Lerner faces criminal prosecution over targeting of Tea
Party groups. Embattled former IRS official Lois Lerner is on two different hot seats this week,
as a pair of Republican-led congressional committees aim to prosecute her for her role in a scheme to target
conservative groups in the middle of an election campaign season. The House Oversight and Government
Reform Committee will convene a hearing on Thursday to consider a motion holding Lerner in contempt of
Congress, the first step toward a possible criminal prosecution.
Sen.
Roberts: IRS Actions Set To Keep Conservative Groups on the Sidelines' This Election Year. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen's
comments make it clear that the "IRS's actions are designed to control the battle space of the election this coming fall to keep conservative
groups on the sidelines," said Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) at an Americans For Tax Reform Tax Day press conference on Thursday [4/10/2014]
at the U.S. Capitol. "This is an attack — that's just the way we have to put it," Roberts said. "It's an
attack on the First Amendment rights of our citizens just because they dare to differ from this administration and the president.
I can't think of anything more reprehensible and certainly I'm not going to stand idly by when the administration tries to dodge and
weave its way out of this."
Contempt and the IRS. The House
Oversight Committee has voted to hold former IRS subpotentate Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress, while the House Ways and Means
Committee has referred her case to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. The facts in the case suggest very strongly
that Ms. Lerner has earned the contempt of the American people as well as criminal prosecution to the full extent of the law.
The question of whether Justice will do justice now rests with the Obama administration, in service to which Ms. Lerner organized
and oversaw the repression of nonprofit activists under color of IRS authority. That a not inconsiderable portion of the moral
credibility of the United States government now rests in the hands of Eric Holder is not a comforting thought. Mr. Holder
holds the title of attorney general, but he is in effect very little more than a political enabler.
Ted Cruz: Congress Should Impeach Eric Holder If He Takes No Action on IRS Targeting
Scandal. On the day the House Oversight Committee held Lois Lerner in contempt, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said Congress
should impeach Attorney General Eric Holder if he does not indict those like Lerner for their roles in the IRS's targeting of
conservative groups. In a Thursday appearance on Sean Hannity's radio program, Cruz said Holder should be impeached for
"defying Congress and the rule of law."
Handling
of former IRS employee Lois Lerner makes lawyers cringe. Ms. Lerner faces a vote in the House
Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Thursday that could begin the process of accusing her of contempt
of Congress. The Ways and Means Committee announced that it will hold a vote Wednesday on whether to
officially accuse Ms. Lerner of breaking the law by targeting tea party groups. The congressional moves
escalate House Republicans' effort to highlight Ms. Lerner's role in the IRS targeting, which has turned
into a major legal battle on Capitol Hill.
IRS
agents' testimony: NO progressive groups were targeted by IRS. IRS agents testified before Congress that
the agency's political targeting did not apply to progressive groups as Democrats and the media have claimed, according
to a bombshell new staff report prepared by the House Oversight Committee chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa. IRS agents
testified before Oversight that ACORN groups were scrutinized because the agency thought they were old organizations
applying as new ones. Emerge America was scrutinized for potential "improper private benefit." No evidence
exists that the IRS requested additional information from any Occupy Wall Street group.
House
GOP sets first vote to hold Lois Lerner in contempt over IRS targeting. House Republicans have scheduled
a vote next week to hold Lois G. Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify about her role in the
Internal Revenue Service's tea party targeting scandal, setting up a major battle over constitutional rights versus
Congress' ability to oversee the government.
Vote
to Hold Lois Lerner in Contempt of Congress Scheduled for Next Thursday. Lerner has twice been
called before Congress to testify about her involvement in the inappropriate targeting of conservative 501(c)(4)
groups for extra scrutiny. On both occasions Lerner asserted her 5th amendment right not to testify.
Rep. Issa and other Republicans on the Committee have maintained that Lerner waived her right not to testify when,
during her first appearance before the Committee back in 2013, she made a speech proclaiming her innocence before
asserting the 5th. The Committee subsequently met (June 2013) and voted that she had in fact waived her
right not to testify.
IRS
chief: No 'targeting' of tea party groups, just 'inappropriate criteria'. House Republicans who have
investigated the IRS's handling of applications of conservative groups' seeking tax-exempt status have referred to
the practice as "targeting." So have news organizations, including The Washington Post. But the Obama
administration has preferred a more bureaucratic phrase — that "inappropriate criteria" were used
to decide which organizations needed extra scrutiny. That would be words like "tea party."
Issa
calls meeting next week to weigh contempt against ex-IRS official Lerner. A House committee will meet
next week to consider whether to hold former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress, Rep. Darrell Issa
announced Thursday. The former IRS official has twice appeared before Congress, and twice invoked her Fifth
Amendment right not to answer questions, regarding the IRS targeting scandal. But Republicans argue she waived
that right — and have scheduled a meeting of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on
April 10 to weigh contempt. They say she played a key role in the agency's practice of singling out
conservative groups seeking non-profit status for extra scrutiny.
The IRS Digs in its
Heels. It could take years for Congressional committees to get all the documents demanded
about the IRS scandal under mandatory subpoenas, IRS' new Commissioner John Koskinen testified. The
new IRS Commissioner displayed the slippery style of a snake-oil salesman while testifying March 26
before Congressman Darrell Issa's Committee on Oversight and Government. Koskinen's excuses were
especially surprising because similar demands for documents are imposed upon private companies all the
time by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission.
Republicans prepare brickbats for Obama administration with new IRS
corruption hearing. Congressional Republicans, led by House Oversight Committee chair Darrell
Issa, are planning another IRS coal-raking exercise for Wednesday, hauling the tax agency's commissioner in
for a hearing about the nearly year-old tea party targeting scandal. Committee staff say the U.S.
Department of Justice and the rest of the Obama administration haven't shown them any sign that they're
investigating corruption in the awarding of income tax exemptions to nonprofit groups. An aide to
one Republican committee member said Monday that the White House and the Treasury Department were already
dangerously close to causing a constitutional crisis.
Untruthful
and Untrustworthy Government. The Benghazi, Associated Press, and National Security Agency scandals
are scary, but not as disturbing as growing doubts about the honesty of permanent government itself.
It is no longer crackpot to doubt the once impeccable and nonpartisan IRS. When it assured the public
that it was not making decisions about tax-exempt status based on politics, it lied. One of its top
commissioners, Lois Lerner, resigned and invoked the Fifth Amendment. A system of voluntary tax reporting
rests on trust. If the IRS itself is untruthful, will it be able to expect truthful compliance from taxpayers?
Turning
over Lerner e-mails could take years, IRS says. Internal Revenue Service documents requested by
the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee could take years to produce, the IRS commissioner said.
At a hearing Wednesday [3/26/2014], Commissioner John Koskinen sparred with Republicans over the breadth of the
investigation into the agency's handling of applications for tax-exempt status of conservative groups.
Issa
to IRS Commissioner: Release Lerner's Emails or Face Contempt. Six months ago, Chairman of the House
Oversight Committee Darrell Issa subpoenaed the emails of former head of IRS Tax Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner.
Lerner was in charge during the IRS' inappropriate targeting of conservative, patriot and tea party groups.
IRS officials have failed to comply with the subpoena and today during a hearing on Capitol Hill, Issa threatened IRS
Commissioner John A. Koskinen, one of only two political appointees at the agency, with contempt.
"Unfortunately you've been more concerned with managing political fallout than complying with this Committee," Issa
said, urging Koskinen to comply or "potentially be held in contempt."
Trey
Gowdy threatens to hold IRS commissioner in contempt for withholding Lerner emails. After a
contentious Wednesday hearing with IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, South Carolina Republican congressman Trey
Gowdy threatened to hold the top tax official in contempt of Congress unless he produces disgraced IRS official
Lois Lerner's emails by the end of this week. Gowdy spoke with Fox News' Greta van Susteren about Wednesday's
hearing, where a slew of GOP congressmen tore into Koskinen's claim that responding to the Oversight committee's
subpoena for Lerner's emails could take years.
A Special Prosecutor for
the IRS. [Scroll down] When Ms. Lerner appeared before Congress in May 2013, she made this statement:
"I have done nothing wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations."
But Ms. Lerner, we discovered, forwarded confidential taxpayer information to her personal email account in early May 2013,
which is a violation of IRS rules. About the infamous "Be on the Lookout" targeting list — a document
used to identify conservative groups for additional scrutiny — she told Congress that the criteria for screening
tax-exempt groups for extra scrutiny never changed. In fact, she personally ordered it changed in July 2011 according
to documents and testimony received by the committee. Ms. Lerner was most certainly driven by politics.
Obama's IRS, cont'd. Reminder:
The charge that Richard Nixon attempted to misuse the IRS for political purposes made its way into the second of the three
articles of impeachment against him. Nixon "endeavoured" to misuse the IRS, as set forth in in article 2.
Nevertheless, Nixon's efforts to misuse the IRS were futile. They went nowhere. Nixon and his henchmen desired
the IRS to "screw" their political opponents, but their efforts were a pathetic failure. Nixon henchman Jack Caulfield
astutely complained that the IRS was a "monstrous bureaucracy... dominated and controlled by Democrats." As we have
come to see, Caulfield was on to something. By contrast with Nixon's failures to misuse the IRS, the IRS has very
effectively "screwed" Obama's political opponents, and we have yet to learn what the president knew and when he knew it.
The
Department of Justice Isn't Rushing to Investigate the Administration. The Department of Justice has been asked
by the CIA to investigate Senate staffers, by the Senate to investigate the CIA, and by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz to investigate the
IRS. The DOJ has replied "maybe," "maybe," and "no," respectively. Cruz had asked Justice to appoint a special
prosecutor to investigate whether or not the IRS had illegally targeted conservative groups when it began filtering tax-exempt
applicants by key words. The segregation of Tea Party and other conservative groups has spurred a nearly year-long
crusade by conservative politicians and activists searching for a link back to the White House.
Eric
Holder pressed for Lois Lerner interview details by Issa, Jordan. Republicans on the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee are pressing the Department of Justice for more information about contact government lawyers
reportedly made with Lois Lerner, the former IRS employee at the center of the scandal over the IRS's targeting of tea
party groups for special scrutiny. The fresh push from committee chairman Darrell Issa of California and committee
member Jim Jordan of Ohio is a signal the GOP will continue to pursue possible contempt charges against Ms. Lerner after
she invoked the fifth amendment right against self-incrimination on two occasions when called before the committee.
DOJ
Rejects Ted Cruz's Request for Special Prosecutor in IRS Scandal. The Holder Department of
Justice (DOJ) rejected a request from Texas Senator Ted Cruz to appoint a special prosecutor for the investigation
into the IRS scandal in a letter released this week. The DOJ argued that it saw no apparent conflict of
interest with its current investigator Barbara Bosserman — who has contributed thousands of dollars
to Obama and other Democrats according to recent Breitbart News reports.
Issa
pens scathing letter to Cummings as IRS feud escalates. Republican Rep. Darrell Issa has penned a personal,
scathing letter to his Democratic counterpart on the House oversight committee, escalating the public feud between the two
high-ranking lawmakers amid the committee's investigation into IRS targeting. The letter to Rep. Elijah Cummings,
D-Md., top Democrat on that committee, was obtained by Fox News. In it, Issa countered, point by point, a series of claims
that Cummings and two legal experts made earlier this week about whether former IRS official Lois Lerner could be held in
contempt for refusing to testify. Issa went further, effectively accusing Cummings of running interference on
behalf of his party and the administration.
Report:
Lerner Emails Show Partisan Concern For Democrats. Former IRS official Louis Lerner and her colleagues at the tax
agency were under a tremendous amount of pressure from President Obama and other Democrats to scrutinize a Tea Party applicant
for public disclosure, despite rules protecting the privacy of unapproved applications, according to a staff report from the
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
House
Republicans slam Lois Lerner in report on IRS targeting. A top House Republican on Tuesday released a scathing report on Lois Lerner's
involvement in the Internal Revenue Service's scrutiny of advocacy groups, accusing the former IRS official of trying to crack down on conservative
nonprofit organizations that have grown increasingly influential in recent elections. The report, released by House Oversight and Government
Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), said Lerner "led efforts to scrutinize conservative groups while working to maintain a veneer of
objective enforcement."
Oversight
report: 6 reasons Lois Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment rights. [Lois] Lerner continues to stonewall California Rep.
Darrell Issa's committee, pleading the Fifth again in a divisive Oversight hearing last Wednesday convened to get to the bottom of
the IRS' improper targeting of conservative groups between 2010 and 2012. Oversight member Rep. Jim Jordan told The Daily
Caller that the committee is "moving" toward holding Lerner in contempt of Congress to compel her to testify. "I think
that's where we're moving," Jordan said. "I think that's where this is headed." Jordan added that he feels holding
Lerner in contempt is "the right thing to do."
Issa Issues Report Ripping Lois Lerner. Darrell Issa has
apologized to Oversight and Government Reform Committee ranking Democrat Elijah E. Cummings for cutting off his mic, but the chairman
isn't changing the course of his committee. The California Republican issued a 141-page report Tuesday [3/11/2014] on the involvement of
Lois Lerner, the former director of IRS exempt organizations, in the targeting of prospective tax-exempt organizations. The report, which
did not have signoff from committee Democrats, concludes that Lerner "created unprecedented roadblocks for Tea Party organizations" and "worked
surreptitiously to advance new Obama Administration regulations that curtail the activities of existing 501(c)(4) organizations."
The
NAACP Realizes the IRS Limiting Free Speech is a Bad Thing. In response to its own inappropriate targeting of conservative, patriot
and tea party groups, the IRS has proposed a new set of rules limiting the free speech of tax exempt groups. [...] But now, liberal groups
like the NAACP are discovering new rules apply to them too and they're not happy about it.
The IRS: Deliberate and Partisan.
We now know that Obama Administration actions were intentional and partisan when the Internal Revenue Service targeted, harmed, and
intimidated conservative and tea party organizations. Keep in mind the timetable while reading this — that the plot
against conservatives inside the IRS was gearing up in March 2010 and in full force in September 2010, according to recently released
Lois Lerner emails. Also keep in mind that Lois Lerner previously worked enforcement at the Federal Election Commission.
The IRS Outrage. what did Tom Perez know and when
did he know it? That's one of the questions congressional investigators were asking as they probed what increasingly looked
like a whitewash of the Internal Revenue Service scandal. Perez, now secretary of labor, was formerly head of the Department
of Justice's Civil Rights Division, where his key aide Barbara K. Bosserman was chosen to head up the DOJ's
investigation of the IRS.
IRS
silent on nonprofit Center for American Progress' coordination with the White House. The IRS still has not responded to
allegations from a former Center for American Progress (CAP) employee that the left-wing think tank coordinates on editorial content with the
White House — revelations that could threaten the organization's nonprofit status. Former ThinkProgress reporter
Zaid Jilani wrote a piece this week detailing his experiences working for the liberal blog, which is run by CAP's 501(c)(4) nonprofit
Action Fund, the advocacy arm of White House counselor John Podesta's think tank.
Lerner
contempt charges on hold. The House Oversight Committee is unlikely to consider potential contempt charges against former IRS
official Lois Lerner this week, a GOP aide said Monday [3/10/2014]. Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) had said that he could
move on holding Lerner in contempt this week, after the former head of an IRS tax-exempt division invoked her Fifth Amendment rights for a
second time on Wednesday.
New
Emails Point to IRS Officials Targeting Political Groups. The Congressional investigation into whether the Internal Revenue
Service targeted conservative groups for persecution ended today on a controversial note after former official Lois Lerner refused to
answer questions. The rough day for the investigation followed the release of emails corroborating political targeting of groups.
Levin: IRS's Lois Lerner 'Part of a
Coverup'. Conservative talk-radio host Mark Levin said he believes Lois Lerner, the former director of IRS exempt
organizations, is "part of a coverup" concerning the IRS-Tea Party scandal. Levin made his remarks at a Citizens United-sponsored
event on Thursday [3/6/2014] in National Harbor, Md.
Lois
Lerner stays silent to protect someone outside the IRS. It isn't hard to figure out why Lerner's lips are sealed.
First, she knows the House of Representatives can cite her for contempt of Congress, but Attorney General Eric Holder would decide
whether she is prosecuted on that charge. Lerner need not worry since President Obama has already told the world there wasn't "a
smidgen of corruption" in the IRS actions, and Holder allowed a major Obama campaign contributor to have a role in Department of
Justice's faux investigation of the scandal.
The IRS's behavior taxes credulity. What's been said of confession — that
it is good for one's soul but bad for one's reputation — can also be true of testifying to Congress, so Lois Lerner has chosen to
stay silent. Hers, however, is an eloquent silence. The most intrusive and potentially most punitive federal agency has been
politicized; the IRS has become an appendage of Barack Obama's party. Furthermore, congruent with exhortations from some congressional Democrats,
it is intensifying its efforts to suffocate groups critical of progressives, by delaying what once was the swift, routine granting of tax-exempt
status.
IRS agrees to hand
over Lerner emails. The Internal Revenue Service has agreed to turn over emails and other documents from Lois Lerner, a
core player in the agency's targeting controversy, the House Ways and Means Committee said Friday [3/7/2014]. Ways and Means
Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) threatened last month to subpoena those documents after criticizing the IRS for failing to
comply with his request. "This is a significant step forward and will help us complete our investigation into the IRS's
targeting of conservative groups," Camp said in a statement.
Democrats Unleash the IRS Tyrant.
Lois Lerner did not flinch from using the IRS to persecute conservative citizens groups and corrupt the 2012 election. Once again she
has taken the Fifth rather than come clean to Congress about what the IRS did to squelch the Tea Party and others, and who ordered it.
Former IRS Official Lerner Gave
Interview to DOJ. A former Internal Revenue Service official who declined to answer questions at a congressional hearing,
citing the Fifth Amendment, gave a full interview to the Justice Department, her lawyer said. That's raising questions among
Republican lawmakers, who wonder whether her choice to talk to Justice reflects a lack of concern about the DOJ probe. They also
question the propriety of letting her avoid questions by lawmakers when she is answering DOJ's.
Lois Lerner Talks to
DOJ. There are, of course, a number of good reasons for objective observers to suspect that Lerner's motives are less than
pure: (1) The DOJ investigation is being led by an Obama donor — a highly unusual circumstance[,] (2) Attorney
General Eric Holder himself has a checkered history when it comes to favoritism among non-profits. (3) The FBI has already
signaled that it won't file charges against anyone, even though none of the victims of the harassment have been interviewed.
Lois
Lerner fears for her life if she testifies at Wednesday's oversight hearing. Lois Lerner fears for her life if she
testifies openly before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Wednesday, according to her attorney. House
oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa announced Sunday that Lerner will testify at Wednesday's hearing, but Lerner's
attorney Bill Taylor said that Lerner will seek to continue invoking her Fifth Amendment rights and will also seek a one-week
delay of her testimony.
Darrell
Issa angrily adjourns Oversight hearing after Lois Lerner pleads the Fifth. California Rep. Darrell Issa adjourned a
divisive House Oversight hearing Wednesday after IRS official Lois Lerner pleaded the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer his
questions. "Seeking the truth is the obligation of this committee," Issa said before announcing that he had no expectation
that Lerner would answer his questions and adjourning the hearing. Lerner invoked the Fifth Amendment on each question Issa asked
about the agency's targeting of conservative groups. The hearing lasted approximately fifteen minutes before Issa released Lerner.
Ex-IRS official Lerner again
invokes 5th Amendment, refuses to testify on scandal. Lerner, who last year refused to answer questions
about her role in singling out Tea Party and other conservative groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt
status, was called back before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday [3/5/2014]. Though
Republicans argue she waived her Fifth Amendment right by giving a statement during the last hearing, Lerner continued
to invoke that right on Wednesday.
Four
questions Lois Lerner must answer about IRS scandal. [Lois] Lerner, the former director of exempt organizations
at the IRS, is perhaps the key figure in the IRS scandal. Not only did she hold a crucial position, she was the official
picked to apologize to the nation on May 10, 2013, for the IRS's improper handling of Tea Part tax exemption applications.
Her first time before Congress — just days after her admission and apology — Lois Lerner asserted her Fifth Amendment
privilege against self-incrimination, but not before loudly declaring her innocence — an act that would never be permitted in
criminal court, effectively waived her Fifth Amendment rights, and was disrespectful to the American people she wronged. It's been 10 months of stonewalling. Lois Lerner has since retired from the IRS with a full taxpayer funded pension.
Lerner pleads
the Fifth — again. Lois Lerner, the former director of the IRS agency at the center of the Tea Party
targeting controversy, refused to answer questions from congressional investigators on Wednesday [3/5/2014] for a second time.
Appearing before the House Oversight Committee, Lerner rebutted Republicans by citing her Fifth Amendment rights.
The IRS Is the Problem. There are
two competing models for reforming the Internal Revenue Service's oversight of the political activities of certain nonprofit
organizations: [...] Neither program is sufficient, because neither reflects the reality behind the recent IRS scandal, which
was not the result of murky rules or bureaucratic incompetence but rather of what gives every indication of being deliberate
misuse of federal investigatory resources for partisan political ends. That there have not been criminal charges in this
matter is probably at least as much a reflection of the highly politicized Department of Justice under Eric Holder as it is of
the facts of the case.
Democrats Want to
turn 'Outrageous' IRS Abuse Into Official Policy. Among the questions that remain unanswered in the IRS scandal that the
Democrats are no longer interested in looking into: Why did so many executive branch agencies descend on Catherine Engelbrecht,
at the same time that the IRS was slow-dragging her True the Vote tax-exempt application? How did that happen? Did
anyone in the White House coordinate that assault?
Foundry
Exclusive: 8 Election Experts Slam IRS for Interfering with Campaign Finance. Eight former members of the Federal Election Commission
today [2/27/2014] accused the Internal Revenue Service of attempting to "interfere" with campaign finance regulations enacted by Congress, The
Foundry has learned. The former FEC commissioners signed a letter filed this afternoon [2/27/2014] as a public comment on the IRS's
proposed new rules on so-called "candidate-related political activity" by nonprofit advocacy organizations qualified as tax-exempt under
federal law. Midnight is the deadline for public comment on the proposed rules, which critics say the IRS developed secretly and
announced at Thanksgiving to silence some free speech — seven months after the IRS targeting scandal broke.
All the President's IRS Agents. Few
presidents understand the power of speech better than Barack Obama, and even fewer the power of denying it to others. That's the context for
understanding the White House's unprecedented co-option of the Internal Revenue Service to implement a political campaign to shut up its
critics and its opponents. Perhaps the biggest fiction of this past year was that the IRS's targeting of conservative groups has
been confronted, addressed and fixed. The opposite is true. The White House has used the scandal as an excuse to expand and
formalize the abuse.
Official's testimony
reveals IRS planned crackdown rules in 2012. The IRS's new proposal to crack down on nonprofits was in the works a year before
the tea party targeting scandal broke, according to a Treasury Department official who told congressional investigators it was spurred by
pressure from outside parties. The revelation follows earlier testimony from former IRS Commissioner Steve Miller, who told
investigators that they started "brainstorming" ways to crack down on nonprofits while under pressure from a senior Democratic senator
who was "complaining bitterly to us" about the way groups were engaging in politics while organized as social welfare nonprofits.
Establishment
Press Ignores Turley's 'Government Unto Himself' Warning on Obama's Executive Overreach. The volume of significant news going
unreported in the establishment press has gone from astonishing to surreal. The best example of that, as intrepid NewsBusters posters have
noted now for nine months, is the virtually complete blackout in the establishment press of developments in the IRS-conservative
targeting scandal.
Connecting the Dots in the IRS Scandal.
The mainstream press has justified its lack of coverage over the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups because there's been
no "smoking gun" tying President Obama to the scandal. This betrays a remarkable, if not willful, failure to understand abuse of power.
The political pressure on the IRS to delay or deny tax-exempt status for conservative groups has been obvious to anyone who cares to open
his eyes. It did not come from a direct order from the White House, but it didn't have to.
Dems say IRS vote is
about Fox News. The House voted Wednesday to delay a controversial IRS rule dealing with tax-exempt groups, an issue Democrats
charged was being used only to generate coverage on Fox News. The bill was approved in a 243-176 vote after a bitter debate in
which both parties accused each other of using tax rules to game elections. Fourteen Democrats voted with Republicans to support the
bill, titled the Stop Targeting of Political Beliefs by the IRS Act.
IRS Warns: Obamacare Tax Must Be Paid with Tax
Return. President Obama's Internal Revenue Service today quietly released a series of Obamacare "Health Care
Tax Tips" warning Americans that they must obtain "qualifying" health insurance — as defined by the federal
government — or face a "shared responsibility payment" when filing their tax returns in 2015. The term
"shared responsibility payment" refers to the Obamacare individual mandate tax, one of at least seven tax hikes in the
healthcare law that directly hit families making less than $250,000 per year.
Issa
Recalls Lerner for Further Testimony on IRS Targeting. In a move sure to reignite the IRS scandal that rocked the agency
and the Obama administration last Spring, House Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa is recalling disgraced IRS official Lois Lerner
to a March 5 hearing, demanding that she resume her testimony before his panel. In late May, Lerner delivered an opening
statement to Issa's committee before invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. The panel later voted that,
in making that statement, in which Lerner declared she had done nothing wrong, the former head of the IRS's Exempt Organizations
division had waived her Fifth Amendment rights.
Here's why Lois
Lerner could be the Webb Hubbell of the IRS scandal. Those old enough to remember when Bill Clinton was in the Oval Office will
instantly recall Hubbell as Hillary Clinton's former law partner. He went to jail after overbilling clients. But Hubbell never talked
after his conviction or while serving 21 months in a federal prison. He didn't talk after two further indictments, one that was thrown
out and another that was plea-bargained. Like the aithful "good soldier" of the Mafia inner circle who refuses to squeal because he knows
there will be a reward at the end of his sentence for his silence, Hubbell kept his mouth shut about Hillary's law firm dealings, Whitewater,
Bill Clinton's infidelity, everything.
What Happens when Lois Lerner
Returns to Testify Next Week? The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), has recalled
IRS honcho Lois Lerner to testify on the agency's abuse of Tea Party and conservative groups. [...] Last time America saw Lerner was last May, when
she raised her hand and was sworn in to testify, then declared her innocence and took the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Committee member Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) pointed out at the time that Lerner is not allowed to declare innocence and then take the Fifth.
The committee reserved the right to bring her back and compel her to testify.
Exclusive:
Lois Lerner does about-face, will give Hill testimony on IRS scandal. Former Internal
Revenue Service official Lois Lerner, a central figure in the IRS scandal, will appear before
Congress on Wednesday after refusing to testify last year on the matter, Rep. Darrell Issa,
R-Calif., said Sunday. Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,
told "Fox News Sunday" that Lerner's lawyers have indicated she will testify before his committee,
after saying last week that she would not. "It's going to be a good, fact-finding hearing," he
said. Issa said he didn't know why Lerner's lawyers changed their mind, but suggested Lerner
testifying was "in her best interest," considering the recent evidence the committee had
gathered.
7 questions for
Darrell Issa to ask Lois Lerner at Wednesday's hearing. California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa's House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee has recalled embattled former IRS exempt organizations division head Lois Lerner to testify on Capitol Hill
Wednesday [3/5/2014]. Lerner's apology for improperly scrutinizing and harassing conservative groups applying for non-profit
status kicked off the IRS targeting scandal ten months ago, and Lerner has been stonewalling ever since (famously trying to invoke the
Fifth Amendment the last time she testified but failing because she made a statement attesting to her innocence first). Her lawyer
said she intends to "continue to assert her Fifth Amendment rights." Since she already waived them, Issa better not allow that.
Lois
Lerner's Attorney Has No Idea Why Darrell Issa Is Claiming She'll Testify. House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell
Issa (R-CA) appeared on Fox News Sunday this morning with some "late breaking news": "[Lois Lerner's] attorney indicates
that she now will testify," Issa said, referring to the chief witness in his investigation of the IRS' alleged targeting of
conservative groups. Lerner, who was the Director of the IRS Exempt Organizations division during the supposed targeting,
has thus far invoked the Fifth Amendment in front of Issa's committee. "We believe the evidence we've gathered causes her,
in her best interest, to be someone who should testify," Issa said.
IRS
emails shed light on dispute between Lois Lerner, congressional investigators. The release of the emails follows a
bizarre public back-and-forth on Sunday [3/2/2014] that started when committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., told "Fox
News Sunday," that Lerner, a central figure in the targeting scandal, would testify, after pleading the Fifth Amendment last year.
Within minutes, Lerner lawyer William Taylor said he was still under the assumption his client would assert her constitutional right
not to testify — a statement followed by committee spokesman Frederick Hill saying he had written proof that Lerner would testify Wednesday.
Don't Let the IRS Silence You. There is
a new Obama IRS campaign to kill the conservative movement with proposed regulations and paperwork. You can do something about it.
Judicial Watch recently launched a new web initiative to allow conservatives and conservative organizations to voice their objections to new Obama
regulations that would prevent them from carrying out their core missions in the months leading up to federal, state, and local elections. Many
organizations are taking actions — from Judicial Watch to, believe it or not, the ACLU — to stop this assault on free speech.
White House Vows to Kill Bill That Would
Block New IRS 501(c)(4) Rules. The White House threatened to veto a House bill that would block the Internal Revenue Service from issuing
a rule that would narrow the definition of who qualifies for a 501(c)(4) exemption as a social welfare organization. Ways and Means Committee
Chairman Dave Camp's (R-Mich.) Stop Targeting of Political Beliefs by the IRS Act, which was in the Rules Committee on Tuesday evening [2/25/2014],
would freeze the finalization of the rule for one year and restore the 501(c)(4) standards and definitions that were in place before conservative
groups started to come under extra scrutiny in 2010. Shortly after the Rules Committee meeting began, the Office of Management and Budget
issued a statement warning that the administration "strongly opposes" the bill, which has 66 co-sponsors.
Republicans Recall Lois Lerner to Testify on
targeting IRS. Republicans on Capitol Hill are not giving up on getting testimony out of Lois Lerner, the disgraced IRS official at the center
of last year's scandal over the agency's targeting of conservative groups for special review. In a letter to Lerner's attorney on Tuesday [2/25/2014],
House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa said he is recalling her to testify on March 5 on her role in the scandal.
Obama's Assault on the First Amendment.
Throughout the 2012 presidential campaign, the IRS discriminated against conservative groups in investigating, delaying and denying the tax-exempt
status many had applied for in order to do what similar organizations do on the left side of the political equation. It was enough for Obama's
operatives in the IRS to detect the use of words such as "Tea Party" or "Patriot" in a group's name for it to be subjected to this discrimination. [...]
Last November, the IRS proposed a change to the tax regulations that would institutionalize this discrimination.
IRS Scandal Has Obama Fingerprints
All Over It, Experts Say. Experts agreed that the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative, pro-life, and evangelical groups
in 2012 ties directly back to President Obama's campaign style before his presidency. "The best way to look at this is as a continuum of a very
long and determined political strategy that dates back to 2008 and a man named Barack Obama," Kimberley Strassel, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal,
declared at The Heritage Foundation on Friday [2/21/2014]. Strassel argued that "this is a president and his team of political operatives who have
always understood the power of speech, but more importantly, the power of denying it to their political opponents."
Not to Impeach is Racist. The articles of impeachment in connection with
Richard Nixon included the following in Article 2: "He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavored to obtain
from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for
purposes not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations
to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner." It would be difficult to differentiate between this Nixon impeachment article from one
that could be drafted for Obama.
Unions vs. Democrats. The
Internal Revenue Service responded to the scandal over its targeting of conservative groups in 2011-12 by putting forth new rules that
would suppress even more political speech. [...] On the question of free speech, this column sides with the ACLU, the SEIU, Nan Aron and
Tom Steyer and against the Democratic politicians and the New York Times. But the pols' anxiousness for a restrictive IRS has an
additional troubling implication. If Chuck Schumer and his colleagues think the IRS can help them win elections, as they seem to
be implying, then it's reasonable to wonder how much the abuses of 2011-12 affected the outcome of the 2012 election.
Washington's Pack of Pretenders. The charlatans at the Internal Revenue
Service claim to be about helping Americans "understand and meet their tax responsibilities" and to "enforce the law with integrity and fairness to all."
Four decades ago, the agency's head directly refused to honor President Richard Nixon's request to audit 200 of his political enemies. Barely a year after
Obama's first inauguration, it became a political tool of his administration dedicated to stonewalling, harassing, and auditing liberty movement, voter integrity
and social conservative organizations and their leaders. Holder's FBI, after conducting a months-long non-investigation of the agency during which it
apparently spoke with no targeted organizations, implausibly decided that no criminal activity had taken place.
IRS scandal merely tip of iceberg of agency's
problems. The Internal Revenue Service has been in some hot water lately for allegedly targeting political enemies. In 2013, it was revealed
that the federal tax agency systematically hassled and unfairly scrutinized nonprofit organizations applying for tax-exempt status, simply on the basis of their
names or assumed political leanings. The fact that most victims were organizations that had Tea Party- or conservative-sounding names was a big red flag of
government-backed political harassment.
The IRS targets
political speech again. The Internal Revenue Service is used to being universally disliked every April 15. But this year, the widespread
denunciations have started early, and for good reason. In November, the agency issued proposed new rules that are supposed to keep social welfare
organizations from abusing their legal privileges by engaging in excessive electioneering. The effort came in response to complaints from Democrats
about a 2012 surge in political spending by such tax-exempt groups, by the conservative Koch brothers and others to influence elections. The IRS wants
to curb such efforts, and it doesn't display much concern about the likely effect on free speech.
Calling Lois Lerner. The American people still need to hear from Lois Lerner.
That's a point that can't be made often enough. Remember her? She's the IRS official who gave a statement before Congress declaring herself innocent of
any wrongdoing — and then promptly took the Fifth.
The IRS, the Democrats' cat's
paw. Lois Lerner, the government official at the center of the IRS scandal, took the fifth amendment in a high-profile congressional hearing,
then quietly retired from the agency with a taxpayer-funded pension. She hasn't been heard from since. The Obama administration has gone into
overdrive since the scandal broke to avoid any accountability, with the president famously telling Bill O'Reilly of Fox News only a few weeks ago that there
was "not even a smidgen of corruption" in the IRS targeting of conservative groups.
IRS scandal — time for a special counsel.
It's now clear that new, speech-restricting regulations proposed by the IRS are not separate from the larger targeting scheme — where the IRS singled out
conservative groups for unconstitutional scrutiny — but instead were long contemplated as a permanent answer to conservative nonprofit's political
activity. Last week, we learned the IRS was planning new rules to restrict free speech even as the targeting scheme was in full-swing. Recently-disclosed
emails reveal that key IRS officials were drafting new rules "off-plan" so that they wouldn't be initially publicly-disclosed.
Rep. Dave Camp: 100 Percent of Groups
Audited by IRS Were Conservative. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R., Mich.) said Tuesday that the committee's
investigation of the Internal Revenue Service found that 100 percent of the tax-exempt groups that were flagged and targeted with an audit were
right-leaning.
Poof: A Scandal Disappears. It requires
terrific confidence in the passivity of the press to float the discredited "Cincinnati did it all" dodge since we know that IRS employees
in that office were taking direction from Washington. We further know that IRS offices in California, Oklahoma, Washington, D.C.
and other places have been identified as singling out groups with "Tea Party" or "Patriot" in their names. Obama's confidence in
the press is not misplaced. Despite juicy opportunities to delve into the story of government abusing its power, reporters have
let the matter drop.
Dr. Ben Carson Blasts 'Gestapo' IRS
Tactics. Dr. Benjamin Carson, the former director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital who is considered
a possible GOP contender for the 2016 GOP nomination, told Newsmax TV on Monday that he and his family have been personally targeted
by the IRS in retribution for his frank critique of President Obama's policies at the February 2013 National Prayer Breakfast.
IRS Scandal Continues With More Lies. President Obama
is not the kind of President who takes responsibility for his failures. Neither does he allow his people to take such responsibility.
If he did, Eric Holder and Kathleen Sebelius would have both been fired long ago. Even with the distrust many of us feel toward the Obama
administration, the IRS scandal goes deeper than we first believed.
America's Latest Heroine Fights Back.
We wrote here about the then-upcoming hearing on the Obama administration's IRS scandal before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
One of the witnesses at that hearing was Catherine Engelbrecht; she was a sensation.
IRS abuse target files formal ethics complaint against Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD). Catherine Engelbrecht of
Houston, Texas, founded election integrity movement True the Vote. She testified Thursday in the House Oversight and Government Reform Commitee's hearing
into the IRS abuse of conservative and Tea Party groups. The IRS denied True the Vote its tax-exempt status for about three years, only offering that
status belatedly, after the 2012 election, and in exchange for Engelbrecht dropping her lawsuit against the agengy [sic].
IRS hearings: "This scandal
is not over. The lying has not stopped.". leta Mitchell, attorney for an assortment of Tea Party groups that received very special
attention from Barack Obama's politicized Internal Revenue Service, lowered the boom on what she described as a "sham, non-existent" Justice
Department investigation of the scandal during House Ways and Means Committee hearings on Thursday [2/6/2014].
Testifying Attorney Blasts
Obama's Claim There Was No Corruption at IRS. During a congressional hearing into the Internal Revenue Services' admitted targeting
of conservative groups prior to the 2012 election cycle, an attorney representing some of those groups severely chastised President Barack Obama
for asserting during an interview with Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly that there was not a "smidgen" of corruption at that agency.
After citing a number of items of evidence which support the claim that the IRS unfairly targeted conservative groups, attorney Jay Sekulow said
that the IRS scandal goes "as high as it gets."
Not a smidgeon of
credibility in Obama's IRS claim. According to the president of the United States, the IRS scandal over agents targeting conservative
groups is merely the result of "bone-headed decisions" by a few confused employees. [...] Remember when this scandal broke last May, a president
looking much like Barack Obama was so totally publicly outraged over this violation of government trust that he fired the IRS' acting commissioner?
Yet now, it's all simply an unfortunate few instances of bone-headeded-ness that just happened to prevent dozens of groups opposed to Obama from
participating in the 2012 election campaign.
ACLJ
Head: Newly Discovered IRS Emails a "Smoking Gun" — Warrant Special Prosecutor. Jay Sekulow, chief counsel at the American
Center for Law and Justice, is representing 41 conservative groups that say they were illegally targeted by the IRS. After testifying on the
scandal before the House Oversight committee yesterday [2/6/2014], he appeared on Fox News' America's Newsroom to talk about the latest. During
his testimony, he pointed to what he called "smoking gun" emails sent by former IRS official Lois Lerner that directly contradict the Regime's claims
that there wasn't a "smidgen of corruption."
Dems declare war on
Inspector General uncovering IRS scandal. The IRS scandal is so bad that Democrats are unleashing total war in an attempt to beat back
a full airing of the abuse. [...] President Obama's absurd contention to Bill O'Reilly that there was "not a smidgen" of corruption despite his initial
expression of "outrage" over the IRS's behavior is part of this strategy. But another part consists of an attempt to discredit anyone who threatens
to come up with genuine investigatory pay dirt. Such a man is Treasury Inspector General Russell George.
Dems Trying to Blame IRS IG for Targeting
Scandal. This is really quite the novel approach to the IRS targeting scandal by congressional Democrats. Seeking to change the
narrative in order to get on top of scandal, Democrats have hit upon the idea to blame the IRS Inspector General, Russell George, for the scandal
getting out of hand. How do they figure that? It appears that many Democrats were unhappy with Mr. George's initial report on the scandal,
believing it to be "misleading."
Barack Obama: The George Wallace
of Free Speech. The Democrats are using the levers of the executive branch, particularly the I.R.S., to deter Americans from exercising
the First Amendment rights that were guaranteed them by the Supreme Court.
Targeting the IRS. What should conservatives do next
about the Orwellian intimidation of political opponents using the IRS? [...] Lawyers for targeted tea party groups are hurling marshmallows at one
of the most shocking abuses of power in our nation's entire history. Conservative groups and their lawyers are only stating the obvious in
bland, vanilla talking points.
IRS targeting of political speech is no
accident. The latest round of the IRS scandal, in which Tea Party and conservative groups have been selectively targeted for harassment
by our tax collection agency, is now unfolding. [...] The IRS would like us to believe they are just trying to clear up some rules that are too
vague regarding how these organizations are permitted to operate. But can it be an accident that these new rules come in the midst of the current
scandal in which a now-retired IRS official, Lois Lerner, admitted that Tea Party groups were being targeted for harassment?
Cleta
Mitchell Rattles Off A Litany Of IRS Criminal Offenses. As I was watching the explosive IRS targeting hearing, this morning, I was
reminded of Speaker Boehner's words from eight and a half months ago. "My question isn't about who is going to resign. My question
is who's going to jail over this scandal?" Since then, the Obama administration has gone from an initial "outrage" phase to a "phony
scandal" phase, to the current old news/"what difference does it make" phase [...]
Conservative
activist claims Rep. Cummings tried to 'intimidate' her, files complaint. A conservative activist targeted by the IRS and other
agencies claimed Thursday [2/6/2014] that Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings also tried to intimidate her, filing a formal complaint with the Office
of Congressional Ethics alleging an "abuse of power." Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote and the King Street Patriots, aired
the allegations during a hearing hosted by the committee on which Cummings sits. An attorney working with her also questioned whether Cummings
might have encouraged the IRS and other agencies to target her groups.
A Smoking Gun Memo And
One Sorry Apology From The IRS. As a new IRS boss vows that targeting the right will never happen again, a new memo shows the agency knew
its acts were illegal but proceeded anyway. Seems there's more than a "smidgen" of corruption here.
More than a smidgen:
IRS whistleblower's terrifying charges. These charges deserve official investigation, and because the Eric Holder Department of
Justice cannot be trusted to appoint someone with an interest in getting at the truth, the charges ought to be part of a special prosecutor's
mandate. Of all government agencies, the IRS has the most arbitrary and easily-abused power. Corruption within its ranks cannot be
tolerated, for it has the potential to metastasize rapidly into banana republic tyranny
The most dangerous woman in America.
Cleta Mitchell [...] is the prominent Washington attorney who represents several clients victimized by the criminal misconduct of the IRS over the
past four years. She speaks with authority when she asserts [...] that the Obama administration is responsible for "lies upon lies" covering up
the multifarious, politically inspired wrongdoing of the IRS.
New
IRS chief apologizes to targeted conservative groups after House hearing. The new head of the IRS has apologized to those who
suffered because of the agency's targeting of conservative groups, after he testified before a House subcommittee for the first time.
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told reporters after the hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee that the singling out of such
organizations for special scrutiny would be "intolerable," and vowed the IRS is not doing so now.
The Editor says...
Apologies are easy; resignations are not.
Republicans say new proposed IRS rules
attack conservatives. The IRS' proposed changes to requirements for tax-exempt "social welfare" organizations, which would put new
limits on their political activity, are the latest attempt by the federal agency to target conservative groups, Republican lawmakers said
Tuesday [2/4/2014]. The regulations, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., said in a hearing, were "drafted in
a manner, in my view, to shut down tea party groups."
IRS
planned secret new rules to justify targeting tea party groups two years ago, reveals bombshell email. Republicans clashed
with the Internal Revenue Service's new commissioner Wednesday in a Capitol Hill hearing that featured the unveiling a document indicating
that the agency planned as early as 2012 to change its rules in a way that justified singling out tea party groups for special scrutiny.
The document, an email from Treasury Department tax policy attorney Ruth Madrigal to a group of IRS officials including the disgraced Lois Lerner.
Obama's IRS 'Confusion'. House
committees are still digging into the IRS political targeting scandal, and based on a hearing Wednesday there's more to learn. The day
produced more evidence blowing apart President Obama's claims that there was "not even a smidgen of corruption" or political motivation in the
IRS handling of groups applying for tax-exempt status.
George Will: IRS
Scandal [is] as Big as Watergate and Iran-Contra; So Where's the Media? Appearing on Fox News Channel's Special Report on
Wednesday [2/5/2014], conservative columnist George Will said the scandal involving the Internal Revenue Services' targeting of conservative
groups is as serious as Watergate or Iran-Contra. The distinction between those scandals and the one involving the IRS, he said, was
that the press covered those earlier controversies heavily while they have largely dismissed the latest.
Trey Gowdy: Why would Obama
prejudge the IRS investigation? Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C. blasted President Obama for "pre-judging" the outcome of the IRS investigation
for targeting Tea Party groups who applied for tax-exempt status. Gowdy referred to Obama's assertion in a Fox News interview that there was
"not even a smidgen of corruption" in the IRS case. "How can he possibly draw that conclusion?" Gowdy asked, pointing out that former IRS
official Lois Lerner invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify.
A
Smidgen Of Baloney. President Obama told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly that the IRS targeting of dissidents had not a "smidgen of corruption."
In light of rafts of evidence it happened, his dismissal of such an abuse of power is disingenuous at best.
Obama's intervention in FBI
investigation is fine, says Carney. White House spokesman Jay Carney Monday [2/3/2014] waved off concerns over the president's
prime-time public interference in the FBI investigation of the Internal Revenue Service. "Obviously we do not interfere with Justice
Department investigations," Carney said when he was asked about President Barack Obama's statement just before the Super Bowl that there was
"not even a smidgen of corruption" in his IRS' decision to deny routine fundraising rights and legal protections to tea party political groups
during the 2012 campaign.
Obama
Doubles Down on IRS targeting denial. President Barack Obama again denied any wrongdoing by the IRS over their targeting of
conservative tea party groups, telling Fox News' Bill O'Reilly there was "not even a smidgen of corruption" in the way the tax enforcer
processed tea partiers' 501(c)4 paperwork.
Can Mitch
McConnell stop President Obama's political abuse of the IRS? Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell fought the good fight on
campaign finance reform and freedom of political speech under the First Amendment. Now he's taking up the good fight on the IRS and
freedom of political speech under the First Amendment. The IRS targeted for special consideration — i.e. bureaucratic
harassment — more than 200 conservative, Tea Party and evangelical groups seeking non-profit tax exemption during the 2010
and 2012 election campaigns.
Obama's Weaponization of Government.
For all the folks — primarily on the left — who screamed and yelled that the Patriot Act was shredding the Constitution, far more
intrusive tactics that have nothing to do with the NSA or Homeland Security are being deployed right under our noses during this Administration.
Those tactics reduce every Americans' personal and economic freedom. There is a dangerous arrogance of power among the President and senior-level
Democrats that should concern every American. Last week a senior United States Senator gave a speech stating that the IRS should be used to target
and punish groups that disagree with the Democratic Party's political agenda.
IRS
chief should drop new rule that would silence non-profits. John Koskinen, the new IRS commissioner, is on the hot seat and would do well
to follow the example of Johnnie Mac Walters, who held the same post when President Nixon occupied the Oval Office. [...] Nixon wasn't the first
president to try to use the federal tax agency as a political weapon, and President Obama surely won't be the last chief executive to do so.
That is why what Koskinen does in coming months is crucial to restoring the agency's credibility as an uncompromisingly nonpartisan arm of the federal
government.
Justice
bars lawyer from testifying before House panel in IRS probe. The Justice Department said Thursday it is refusing
to let a key lawyer testify to the House oversight committee on the criminal investigation into the IRS, saying that to let
her brief Congress could potentially skew its probe. But oversight committee Republicans said blocking lawyer Barbara
Bosserman from testifying only makes the Justice's investigation look more partisan.
Silencing the Opposition. As described
in the Federal Register for November 29, 2013, the purpose of the new rule is to clarify the standards, thus enabling the IRS to grant 501(c)(4)
status more rapidly and fairly. In typical Obama fashion, that is a lie. The real purpose of the rule change is exactly the opposite,
to silence opposition to candidates, appointees, or specific partisan issues that can be identified with either a candidate or a political party.
GOP wants key Justice Dept. lawyer
to testify in IRS scandal probe. The House oversight committee has asked a lawyer who's helping run the criminal investigation into IRS
targeting of tea party groups to testify to Congress next week, seeking to find out where the investigation stands and whether her political leanings
have undermined the probe. Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of a key oversight subcommittee, sent a letter Tuesday to the lawyer, Barbara Bosserman,
requesting her appearance at a Feb. 6 hearing. He gave her until Thursday to decide whether she would voluntarily comply.
IRS, The Emblem Of Big
Dirty Government, Gets Dirtier. The IRS is stonewalling two congressional committees over new evidence it illegally targeted dissidents,
this time citing employee confidentiality. If this means zero accountability for abuse of power, it's time for new laws.
Silencing the political opposition.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate's No. 3 Democrat, thinks the Internal Revenue Service hasn't done enough to silence the Tea Party. He wants
the White House and the IRS to "immediately redouble" efforts to shut down conservative political-action groups through tougher government oversight
and enforcement. The Tea Party opposes much of President Obama's agenda, and to Mr. Schumer, that's both a sin and a crime.
Obama Uses Government
To Harass, Intimidate Foes. The Obama administration has turned the executive branch loose on its enemies — part of a disturbing
and unprecedented trend toward delegitimizing political differences and marginalizing conservatives. Behind the special status of his presidency,
President Obama has used the machinery of government to harass and intimidate political opponents — to an extent greater even than former
Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, both threatened with impeachment.
Chuck Schumer Calls For The IRS To Stop
The Tea Party. The IRS scandal is not only not over but is getting worse, with a call by New York's senior senator for the
already-politicized agency to use its power to tax to destroy the conservative grass-roots movement.
Liberals Who Love Obama,
a 501(c)(4) for the Age Of Gangsterism. It is no longer debatable: While quickly approving leftwing and Obama-supporting outfits,
the IRS targeted the right and precluded most of the conservative applicants from taking advantage of the rules the Supreme Court set in Citizens
United. If you recall, Citizens United was a decision that so riled Obama he used it in an unprecedented attack on the Court in a
State of the Union address.
Schumer Calls for Using IRS to Curtail
Tea Party Activities. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) proposed using the Internal Revenue Service to curtail Tea Party group
funding during a speech on how to "exploit" and "weaken" the movement at the Center for American Progress on Thursday [1/23/2014].
Arguing that Tea Party groups have a financial advantage after the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, Schumer said the Obama
administration should bypass Congress and institute new campaign finance rules through the IRS.
Cruz
to Holder: Appoint an Independent Prosecutor in IRS Scandal. Senator Ted Cruz has written a letter to Attorney General Eric
Holder calling for the Obama administration to stop stonewalling and for the attorney general to appoint an independent prosecutor to probe
the IRS scandal. [...] The IRS harassment of the president's political adversaries and the agency's role in obstructing the participation of
tea-party groups in the 2012 campaign are among the most egregious episodes of Obama administration malfeasance — and that's
saying something with this crowd.
Government conspiracy
theories aren't crazy. I suspect that, over time, this loss of moral legitimacy will cause many to base their tax strategies on
what they think they can get away with, not on what they're entitled to. And when they hear of someone being audited, many Americans will
ask not "what did he do wrong?" but "who in government did he offend?" This is particularly true since the Obama administration is currently
changing IRS rules to muzzle Tea Partiers.
Should Americans believe anything
Obama says? When Americans first learned last year that the IRS had illegally targeted Tea Party, conservative and evangelical nonprofits for harassment
during the 2010 and 2012 campaigns, Obama said such activities were unacceptable and he promised to get to the bottom of the scandal. But not long afterwards,
he began dismissing the IRS matter as a "phony scandal" concocted by Republicans unhappy that he had won re-election. Then, Attorney General Eric Holder, or
somebody reporting to him, appointed Barbara Bosserman, a long-time Obama campaign donor, to head the investigation. So it came as no surprise last week when
it was reported that the FBI expects no criminal charges to be filed in the IRS scandal. Politicized justice is no justice at all.
It's time to investigate the
bogus IRS 'investigation'. Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the FBI did not expect to file any
criminal charges in connection with the IRS's admitted, systemic, multi-year targeting of conservative nonprofits for improper scrutiny.
To be clear, the FBI made this decision without interviewing even a single one of the American Center for Law and Justics's 41 targeted
clients. And we're not alone. Other Tea Party attorneys report their clients weren't interviewed either. Put simply, the
FBI leaked its conclusions in a criminal investigation without even interviewing the victims of the potential crime.
Tearing
away Obama's veil of secrecy surrounding the IRS scandal. Slowly but surely the truth is becoming known about President
Obama's blatant use of the Internal Revenue Service to suppress the First Amendment political free speech rights of Tea Party,
conservative and evangelical non-profits during the 2010, 2012 — and now — the 2014 campaigns.
What were once vices are
now Dem priority. Kimberly Strassel's weekly Wall Street Journal column "IRS targeting and 2014" is something of a bombshell.
As Mark Tapscott explains, Strassel reports that keeping the IRS "muzzle in place" for 2014 was Obama's top priority during negotiations
with House Republicans on the just-passed omnibus spending bill.
IRS Targeting and 2014. As one
of the only bills destined to pass this year, the omnibus was — behind the scenes — a flurry of horse trading. One
of the biggest fights was over GOP efforts to include language to stop the IRS from instituting a new round of 501(c)(4) targeting. The
White House is so counting on the tax agency to muzzle its political opponents that it willingly sacrificed any manner of its own priorities
to keep the muzzle in place.
CBS Ends
6-Month Censorship of IRS Scandal to Tell Viewers FBI Won't File Charges. CBS finally ended its almost six-month
long ban on the IRS-Tea Party investigation to announce to its viewers, on Tuesday's [1/14/2014] CBS This Morning, that
the FBI is not expected to "file criminal charges" and has yet to find "proof of political bias." However in the time
since CBS last reported on the scandal on July 24, they have censored bombshells in the investigation like: Rep.
Darrell Issa accusing the FBI of stonewalling; the discovery of e-mails by IRS officials sent both to the FEC and the White
House; and most recently the announcement of an Obama donor being named in charge of the Justice Department investigation.
US government finds no evidence to accuse itself of a crime. Instead,
the FBI — through a leak — has let it be known that confusion about rules and bureaucratic incompetence, and not
intentional or particularly targeted malfeasance within the IRS, were to blame for the completely one-sided targeting of TEA Party
groups in the run-up to the 2012 elections. Or, to put it another way, the government has decided, after what it will call careful
examination, not to charge itself for its own internal lawlessness and vindictiveness.
The Fix is In In the IRS Abuse
Scandal. President Obama himself at least set the tone that led to the abuse of conservative, Christian and Tea
Party groups by calling for them to be investigated in several of his public comments. He may have done a whole lot more
than just set the tone. Obama placed William Wilkins into the IRS counsel's office, and that office was responsible for
developing the IRS guidelines that led to the targeting of the president's opponents. IRS chief counsel Wilkins met with
President Obama just two days before his office handed out the guidelines that agents used to target the president's opponents.
A day after that, the head of the IRS workers union also met with President Obama. Either of these meetings looks bad, but
both together look terrible.
Emergency
House move to block IRS war on Tea Party political activities. Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., took the emergency action
after the House failed to include the provision in a new spending bill that only warned the Internal Revenue Service not to use
its $11 billion budget to target conservative groups. His committee has spent nearly eight months investigating the IRS
targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups opposed to the president's re-election and fears that the administration is moving
prematurely to muzzle the groups already hounded by the administration in the scandal.
What FBI 'investigation'
of the IRS scandal? Let's all be very clear: The FBI did not conduct an "investigation" into the IRS scandal. [...] Last
week, we learned that the head of the "probe," Barbara Bosserman, is a donor to Obama campaigns and the Democratic National Committee.
This is someone who could hardly be trusted to understand what all the fuss is about. Now we learn that the FBI has "concluded"
that there was no actual illegal activity involved in the IRS scandal, conclusions reached without ever speaking to a single conservative
or Tea Party organization leader or attorney to learn what actually happened these past four years.
Proposed
IRS Regs Would Immediately, Unlawfully and Permanently Muzzle Conservatives. In 2010, millions of American tea-party
constitutionalists, to include the GOP's Christian base, united in a remarkable grass-roots effort to rein in our unbridled federal
government and return it to its expressly limited constitutional confines. As a result, an unprecedented number of
counter-constitutionalist lawmakers (read: liberal Democrats) were swept from office. The Obama administration wasn't going to
take this lying down. Whether it was by tacit approval or via direct order remains largely immaterial. The president
quickly and unlawfully politicized the Internal Revenue Service, using it as a weapon against his political enemies.
FBI Feeds Cynicism About IRS Scandal.
After several months of virtual radio silence in the mainstream press about the IRS scandal, [...] the IRS affair got back into the news in its own right
today [1/14/2014] as the Wall Street Journal reported that the FBI is unlikely to prosecute anyone for the practice in which organizations affiliated
with the Tea Party and other conservatives causes were specifically targeted for discriminatory treatment.
The 'crime' of the IRS. Only days after we learned the
Obama administration had appointed an Obama donor to head investigations into the IRS targeting of conservative organizations, we now
have a leak from law enforcement saying the FBI doesn't expect to file criminal charges. That's the gist of a late-breaking story
Monday evening [1/13/2014] in The Wall Street Journal.
FBI not expected
to file charges in IRS targeting of tea party groups: report. The Federal Bureau of Investigation didn't find the kind
of political bias needed to file criminal charges over the Internal Revenue Service's heightened scrutiny of tea party groups, law
enforcement officials told the Wall Street Journal. "Instead, what emerged during the probe was evidence of a mismanaged bureaucracy
enforcing rules about tax-exemption applications it didn't understand, according to the law-enforcement officials," the newspaper said.
The case is still being investigated, but officials familiar with the case said it is increasingly unlikely any criminal charges will
result.
Wouldn't you know, FBI says
it can't find anything illegal in all that IRS intimidation. First, you'll remember the national shock that a once-trusted if not
revered federal institution had been turned into a mere enforcement arm of Chicago-style politicians using its powers to intimidate and harass
political groups, most of which seemed to oppose the Chicago politician in the White House. And all this during the two-year lead-up to his
reelection bid. As usual when faced with scandals, President Obama went into his full Sgt. Schultz-mode, claiming to know nothing, nothing
at all about his administration's employees following the demands of Democrat legislators to investigate dark groups with suspicious names like
"tea party," "9/12" and "patriots."
The FBI's IRS Outrage. The [Wall
Street] Journal reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is unlikely to file any criminal charges in the targeting of conservative political
organizations by the Internal Revenue Service. Yet Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who represents many of the targets, says that the FBI has never
contacted any of her clients to discuss their treatment at the hands of the IRS. "Shouldn't law enforcement talk to the victims in an
investigation?," she asks in an email. "That's like investigating a burglary without interviewing the burgled," notes a Journal editorial.
Is
Obama Trying To Whitewash The IRS Investigation? Barbara Bosserman is not a household name. But she's an important
figure. According to Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the trial
lawyer in the IRS' Civil Rights Division is leading the internal probe into the IRS treatment of conservative groups. She also
happens to be a "significant" contributor to Obama and the Democratic Party.
Feds pick Obama supporter to
lead probe of IRS tea party targeting. The Justice Department selected an avowed political supporter of President Obama to lead
the criminal probe into the IRS targeting of tea party groups, according to top Republicans who said Wednesday that the move has ruined the
entire investigation. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, California Republican, and
regulatory affairs subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, said they have discovered that the head of the investigation is
Barbara Kay Bosserman, a trial lawyer in the Justice Department who donated more than $6,000 to Mr. Obama's 2008 and 2012 campaigns, as
well as several hundred dollars to the national Democratic Party.
Obama
Donor Picked to Head IRS Scandal Investigation, Big Three Networks Censor. After months of stonewalling the Justice Department finally
named someone to head the investigation into the IRS-Tea Party scandal — and it's an Obama donor. So far ABC, CBS and NBC have
yet to mention what Darrell Issa called "a startling conflict of interest." In fact the Big Three networks have almost completely stopped
covering the IRS scandal investigation altogether. Since July 1, ABC, CBS and NBC have devoted a total of just 2 minutes and
8 seconds to the IRS imbroglio.
FBI, dragging feet on IRS
probe, finally contacts tea party groups. The FBI finally has begun to contact some of the tea party groups targeted by the
Internal Revenue Service for inappropriate scrutiny in the first public signs that the administration's criminal investigation is
progressing. A lawyer representing some of the tea party groups that battled the IRS for tax-exempt status told The Washington
Times that a "small number" of his clients were recently contacted, seven months after the investigation was supposed to have begun.
IRS
to get 'license to kill' groups that oppose Obama agenda. The power to tax is the power to destroy. Its new powers
will let the IRS destroy certain groups, especially those connected to the Tea Party, by imposing a tax on their work and messages during
campaign seasons. Even the value of volunteer work could be taxed. Suspicion traces the plan directly to President Barack Obama,
since he personally met with IRS chief counsel William Wilkins — an Obama political appointee and long-time supporter —
in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on April 23, 2012, two days before the IRS issued its key internal directives to target
Tea Party and other conservative groups.
Late to the party: FBI
finally contacts some targets of IRS. The FBI finally has begun to contact some of the tea party groups targeted by the
Internal Revenue Service for inappropriate scrutiny in the first public signs that the administration's criminal investigation is
progressing. A lawyer representing some of the tea party groups that battled the IRS for tax-exempt status told The Washington
Times that a "small number" of his clients were recently contacted, seven months after the investigation was supposed to have begun.
Obama's
attorney general appoints Obama donor to investigate Obama's IRS. President Barack Obama's deputies have picked one of his political
donors to investigate the IRS' attack on independent political groups during the 2012 election, according to California Republican Rep. Darrell
Issa, chairman of the House investigations committee. "We request you immediately remove Ms. [Barbara] Bosserman from the ongoing
investigation," said a Jan. 8 letter from Issa to Attorney General Eric Holder. The secret selection of Barbara Bosserman, a lawyer
in the Department of Justice's civil rights division, was revealed by a committee investigation after the DOJ stonewalled the legislators.
Republicans call for
removal of Obama supporter leading IRS targeting probe. Republicans claim the Justice Department's investigation of the IRS
targeting scandal is "compromised," after revealing that it's being led by one of President Obama's political supporters. In a
letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, the lawmakers said they've learned trial attorney Barbara Kay Bosserman is leading the probe.
They detailed federal campaign finance records showing she's given more than $6,000 to Obama's two presidential campaigns — and
urged Holder to remove her from the case.
Judicial
Watch Announces List of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians" for 2013. [Scroll down] Steve Miller,
then head of the IRS, resigned in May 2013, after admitting to the targeting of anti-Obama Tea Party groups during the 2012 presidential
election, which he offhandedly tossed off as "horrible customer service." Under Miller, the IRS purposely stonewalled the approval
of nonprofit applications from "Tea Party" and other conservative groups that were seeking tax exempt status. According to a report
by the agency's inspector general released in May 2013, for more than 18 months beginning in early 2010: "The IRS used
inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their
names or policy positions instead of indications of potential political campaign intervention."
Obama assures
Americans that new IRS commissioner won't target conservatives. Incoming Internal Revenue Service commissioner John Koskinen won't target
conservative groups for inappropriate review: That's the subtext of a statement from President Obama assuring Americans that the new head of the
agency is an honest broker.
Obama IRS Tightening Noose on Tea Party
Groups. Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberly Strassel noted on Friday [12/13/2013] that Barack Obama and the IRS have a new plan to target
Tea Party groups in advance of the 2014 elections. During Thanksgiving week, the Treasury Department announced a proposal to limit the political activity
of 501(c)(4) groups. The Obama Administration claimed that the plan was necessary to clarify confusing tax laws.
IRS Targeting: Round Two. President
Obama keeps claiming that he had no knowledge of the Internal Revenue Service's abusive muzzling of conservative groups. That line is hard to
swallow given that his Treasury and IRS are back at it — this time in broad daylight. In the media blackout of Thanksgiving week,
the Treasury Department dumped a new proposal to govern the political activity of 501(c)(4) groups. The administration claims this rule is
needed to clarify confusing tax laws. Hardly. The rule is the IRS's new targeting program — only this time systematic, more
effective, and with the force of law.
Obama tells a whopper on IRS
scandal. Fact: The IRS targeted conservative and tea party groups requesting tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012
presidential election. That's a fact. Congress held hearings — embarrassing hearings. Three top Internal
Revenue Service officials resigned. No heads rolled, but for the Obama administration, and the lawless Attorney General Eric H.
Holder Jr., that amounted to a major scandal. Even White House spokesman Jay "Circus" Carney called the IRS' actions "inappropriate."
Fact. But President Obama, in an interview last week with sycophant Chris Matthews, now says the entire scandal was made up by the media.
POTUS Subverted
DOJ Investigation During Chris Matthews Interview. In his attempt to downplay the IRS scandal during his soft-ball interview with
Chris Matthews, Thursday, the President of the United States subverted the ongoing DOJ investigation of the scandal. Obama declared that
the IRS office in Cincinnati was merely trying to "streamline the system" for "bureaucratic reasons" and that agents weren't intentionally
singling out "Tea Party folks."
IRS
Floats Strict Rules for Political Groups Before 2014 Midterm Elections. The Internal Revenue Service quietly proposed new regulations
aimed at 501(c)(4) organizations during the Thanksgiving recess that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, called "a
crass political effort by the Administration to get what political advantage they can, when they can." Tea Party groups and other conservative
organizations were apparently singled out by the IRS starting in 2010, and the heavy hand of government suppression of these groups may have greatly
attributed to Obama's re-election, an American Enterprise Institute study revealed in October.
Obama
dismisses IRS targeting of conservatives. President Obama rejected the notion that the IRS' targeting of Tea Party groups was
illegal — or even improper — during his interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Thursday [12/5/2013]. Obama was at
American University to sell his flailing health care law to the young people upon which the insurance exchanges heavily rely. As promised,
Matthews allowed him to make his pitch with no tough questions or pushback.
IRS
lawyer at the center of tea-party targeting scandal told Congress 'I don't recall' — a whopping 80 times? A top
lawyer at the Internal Revenue Service told congressmen quizzing him over the tea party targeting scandal 'I don't recall' a 'staggering 80 times
in fill or partial response to the committees questions', a letter revealed today [12/4/2013]. The letter was sent to Chief counsel William
Wilkins by two powerful House Republicans who gave him until December 10 to 'amend' his statements.
Issa: FBI impeding inquiry into
IRS targeting of conservative groups. The House's chief investigator says the FBI is stonewalling his inquiry into whether the agency
and the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative group True the Vote for special scrutiny, and Rep. Darrell E. Issa is now threatening
subpoenas to pry loose the information from FBI Director James B. Comey Jr. Mr. Issa, California Republican, and Rep. Jim Jordan,
Ohio Republican, are leading the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's IRS inquiry. They also said the FBI is refusing to turn
over any documents related to its own investigation into the IRS, which began in the days after an auditor's report revealed the tax agency had
improperly targeted tea party groups for special scrutiny.
Demnesia strikes IRS political
appointee. One of only two political appointees at the IRS, a generous Democrat donor, at the IRS is relying on purported
memory failure to evade testifying on embarrassing and potentially incriminating activities related to the targeting of Tea Party groups. [...] The
media are cooperating in ignoring the heinous abuse of the IRS by the Obama administration. One of the articles of impeachment of
Richard Nixon that Hillary Clinton helped draft was his purported use of the IRS against his political opponents.
Obama
Prepares To Use The IRS to Crack Down On His Political Enemies. Of course, Obama claims that he knew nothing about the IRS
targeting his political enemies in the Tea Party during the 2012 elections. Of course, rather than backing off after being caught,
Obama is actually preparing to ramp up the attacks on his political adversaries.
IRS moves to curb
tax-exempt groups' political activity. The Obama administration is moving to clamp down on the growing political activity
of "social welfare" tax-exempt groups, six months after controversy erupted over the IRS scrutiny of conservative groups. The
Treasury Department's proposed rules, released Tuesday, would restrict the ability of those groups to conduct a wide range of activities,
from running ads to distributing mailers that target specific candidates to get-out-the-vote drives.
IRS moves to clean up
scandal of tea party targeting. Months after it acknowledged improperly targeting conservative political groups for
scrutiny, the Internal Revenue Service on Tuesday [11/26/2013] released new guidelines it said will clean up what sorts of activities
count as political — but which critics said could end up stifling free speech even more. The agency is trying to
clean up after its own auditor said it asked intrusive questions and improperly delayed applications from tea party and conservative
groups seeking tax-exempt status in the past three years.
Why Obama can't wave away this scandal.
The IRS's own acknowledgement that it had targeted conservative groups with anti-liberal agendas has led to shamed retirements, hasty
changes at the top of the agency and officials pleading the Fifth Amendment. These efforts were clearly undertaken to find means by
which to aid Democratic efforts in the 2010 and 2012 election. One can only wonder at what would have been done to George W.
Bush by the media had similar outrages been perpetated on leftist groups in 2003 and 2004.
Emails: IRS
official said Lerner threw Cincinnati office under the bus. An IRS official blasted Lois Lerner for her attempt to blame the
agency's targeting scandal on low-level employees in Cincinnati, according to newly released emails. "Cincinnati wasn't publicly
'thrown under the bus' (but) instead was hit by a convoy of Mack trucks," wrote Cindy Thomas, former director of the IRS exempt
organizations office in Cincinnati, in a May 10, 2013 email to Lerner obtained by the House Ways and Means Committee.
IRS Training Manual:
Pay 'Special Attention' to Groups Involved in 'Sensitive Political Issues'. A training manual used by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
to help senior level screeners determine whether non-profit groups were entitled to tax-exempt status instructed them to pay "special attention" to
"applications from organizations involved in sensitive political issues such as voter registration, voter guides, voter education, and voter
polling — regardless of whether it appears the application is suitable for merit closure in screening." The September 2009 version
of the IRS' "Exempt Organizations Determinations Unit 2" instructed employees that "such cases must be given special attention and must be treated
consistently, as they tend to be high-profile cases subject to media attention, especially during election years."
Study: IRS suppression of Tea Party swung 2012 election. A new study by the
American Enterprise Institute — "Do Political Protests Matter? Evidence From The Tea Party Movement" — finds that the movement
boosted Republican turnout by three to six million votes in the 2010 election. This effect was blunted in the 2012 election, though, because
growth in the movement stalled. That slowdown happened, co-author and AEI economist Stan Veuger notes, at the same time that the IRS began coming
down hard on these groups. He argues in a RealClearMarkets.com article that this most likely had a major impact in the 2012 election.
Yes, IRS Harassment
Blunted The Tea Party Ground Game. The controversy over the IRS's harassment of conservative groups continues. President Obama's team
continues to blame low-level bureaucrats. Some conservatives suspect a more sinister explanation: that the levers of government were used to
attack an existential threat to the president's 2012 reelection. The president and his party dismiss this as a paranoid fantasy. The evidence,
however, is enough to make one believe that targeting Tea Party groups would have been an effective campaign strategy going into the 2012 election cycle.
Rep. Issa jolts probe
of IRS targeting with new subpoena. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is giving a jolt to the congressional probe
of the IRS's targeting of Tea Party groups with a new subpoena that was issued late Thursday night. Issa and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) have for
months sought documents from the Treasury Department that they say could detail a wide range of interactions with the IRS well before the public learned
that conservative groups were singled out for extra scrutiny.
ObamaCare,
Other Scandals, Virtually Ignored By Big Media. [Scroll down] In August, NPR's website posted a House Oversight and Government
Reform Committee chart that revealed there were only seven "progressive" groups targeted and all seven were approved for tax-exempt status. By
contrast, the IRS targeted 104 anti-Obama groups, and 56 of them were still waiting for approval (or stopped trying to gain it). The seven
left-wing groups were asked 33 questions by the IRS. The 104 anti-Obama groups were asked 1,552 questions. So there's no reason,
none whatsoever, for the "news" media to drop coverage of a scandal involving the Obama administration using the most feared arm of the federal
government to persecute its critics.
Obama's 1984. In early May 2013, the Treasury Inspector
General released an audit report confirming that, from April 2010 to April 2012, the IRS stalled the processing of applications for tax-exempt
status received from organizations with such presumably conservative indicators as "Tea Party," "patriots," or "9/12" in their names, approving
only four while over the same period green-lighting applications from several dozen organizations whose names included the likely left-leaning
terms "progressive," "progress," "liberal," or "equality." The Washington Examiner reported that, according to the inspector general,
only six progressive groups were targeted compared to 292 conservative groups. [...] Washington-based IRS supervisor Holly Paz acknowledged
that she was personally involved in reviewing Tea Party applications for tax-exempt status as far back as 2010, which contradicted the IRS'
initial claim that the practice was limited to a handful of employees in Ohio.
IRS Scandal Deepens as Leaks Identified.
Two new developments have severe implications for the IRS scandal. The watchdog group Judicial Watch announced Thursday [10/31/2013] that it had obtained
emails showing that former IRS official Lois Lerner gave protected information to the Federal Elections Commission. Meanwhile, the House Ways and Means
Committee said it had identified the IRS agent who leaked National Organization for Marriage donors to gay rights activists.
Judicial Watch: Obama Henchwoman
Lerner Illegally Gave Taxpayer Info to FEC. Let's face it, we all know Obama was the mastermind behind this and it's just a matter of time
until it's proven. It may take until he's out of office, but we will find out. We basically have a lawless administration running roughshod
of [sic] the country.
The Obama Facade Cracks at Last. Bob
Woodward, one of the journalists famed for breaking the Watergate story, called the Obama Administration a "rat's nest of concealment and
lies" and described it as a "secret government." That secret activity includes using the Internal Revenue Service to spy on and intimidate
opponents. After he spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast, including critical remarks about President Obama's leadership, the famous
Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Benjamin Carson joined a long line of conservative who have been audited by the IRS.
Report: IRS provided
conservative groups' confidential tax information to FEC. A conservative government watchdog says it has obtained emails revealing
that the Internal Revenue Service sent conservative groups' private tax exemption application and tax return information to the Federal Elections
Commission, in violation of federal law. According to Judicial Watch, the emails from Jan. 2009 to the present, provided by the FEC in response
to an August 2013 Freedom of Information Act request, yielded a "revealing email chain" between former Internal Revenue Services (IRS) Director of
Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner and enforcement attorneys at the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
IRS'
Lois Lerner gave confidential Tea Party tax info to FEC, violating law. The Internal Revenue Service shared highly confidential tax
information of several Tea Party groups in the IRS scandal with the Federal Election Commission, a clear violation of federal law, according to
newly obtained emails. The public watchdog group Judicial Watch told [the Washington Examiner] Thursday [10/31/2013] that it was former
scandal boss Lois Lerner who shared the information on groups including the American Future Fund and the American Issues Project.
IRS Leaker Is Known And Should Be
Prosecuted. The person who leaked the confidential data of a conservative group to its political foes has been identified by
investigators. But he's protected by the very law he broke and an attorney general who doesn't care.
Obama's fingerprints all over IRS Tea Party scandal.
It's past time for the media to begin asking President Obama tough questions about the IRS conservative targeting scandal. After all he was involved, publicly, from the
beginning. Last Friday, the American Center for Law and Justice (where I serve as Chief Counsel) filed its Second
Amended Complaint against the United States, the IRS,
and a legion of IRS officials. This Complaint, in which we represent 41 organizations in 22 states, presents perhaps the
most complete story yet of the IRS conservative targeting scandal. And it is an ugly story indeed.
Obama's Tax Thugs. Like the Kennedy team, Obama's people were
more interested in the political allegiances of the bureaucracy under their control than its competence and in an administration where even the National
Park Service has been politicized, the use of the IRS as a political weapon of terror was inescapable. IRS scandal figures like Lois Lerner and
Sarah Hall Ingram embody the Obama ethos by hiding their political partisanship within a façade of incompetence. But like [Mortimer] Caplin
they were performing political duties, rather than governmental ones. Their allegiance was not to the law, but to Obama.
Questions into IRS scandal still get no answers.
First came Lois Lerner, who planted a question at an American Bar Association conference to get ahead of an inspector general finding that the IRS had
unfairly targeted conservative organizations. Then it was former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman. When he was asked during an appearance before
the House Oversight Committee to explain why he had visited the White House 118 times, he cited "Easter Egg Roll with my kids" as one of his reasons.
Now comes Sarah Hall Ingram, who formerly headed the IRS division that targeted conservative groups for mistreatment. Recently disclosed e-mails
show that in that position Ingram shared personal IRS taxpayer information with people at the White House.
America's New Obstruction Of Justice Crisis.
The Congressional probe to determine who was responsible for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) policy of discriminatory audits and/or retaliatory
examinations of conservative organizations applying for tax-exempt status just became a criminal obstruction of justice matter.
I'm Sure It
was a Different Sarah Hall Ingram Who Visited the White House 155 Times. Ingram headed the office that abused Tea Party, conservative, some
Jewish, and evangelical groups. But I'm sure that wasn't really her visiting the White House all those times. Can't be. The Obama
White House's logs have captured numerous doppelgangers over the years. The New Black Panther racist radical Malik Shabazz wasn't the Malik Shabazz
who visited the Obama White House in 2009. So the IRS' Sarah Hall Ingram probably isn't the Sarah Hall Ingram who spent hundreds of hours at the
White House during the period that the IRS was subjecting thousands of Americans to political abuse as an election drew near.
Study finds IRS suppression of
Tea Party swung 2012 election. A new study by the American Enterprise Institute — "Do Political Protests Matter? Evidence From
The Tea Party Movement" — finds that the movement boosted Republican turnout by three to six million votes in the 2010 election. This
effect was blunted in the 2012 election, though, because growth in the movement stalled. That slowdown happened, co-author and AEI economist Stan
Veuger notes, at the same time that the IRS began coming down hard on these groups. He argues in a RealClearMarkets.com article that this most
likely had a major impact in the 2012 election.
IRS, White House officials that shared
confidential taxpayer info had 155 White House meetings. Embattled IRS official Sarah Hall Ingram made 155 visits to the White House to meet with a top Obama White House
official with whom she exchanged confidential taxpayer information over email. Of Ingram's 165 White House meetings with White House staff, a staggering 155 of them were hosted
by deputy assistant to the president for health policy Jeanne Lambrew, according to a June Watchdog.Org analysis of White House visitor records.
To break the IRS's wall of silence. The National Organization for Marriage's lawsuit against
the IRS may be the case that finally breaks the IRS's "omerta" code. In the spring of 2012, NOM's private tax-return data turned up splashed on the Web site of its chief political
opponent, the Human Rights Campaign. The leak plainly came from the IRS, because the tax return published on the site was stamped with special codes the IRS uses on electronically
filed returns. The leaked, confidential information included a list of NOM donors. Making their names virtually invited harassment of these people. Incidentally, the
chairman of the Human Rights Campaign, Joe Solomonese, happened to be a co-chair of President Obama's re-election campaign.
IRS Official: Not 'Consorting With Devil' on Obamacare.
Sarah Hall Ingram, who oversees the Internal Revenue Service role in the health-care overhaul, hasn't been "consorting with the Devil," she testified at a hearing on Wednesday
[10/9/2013] But Republicans suggested she has been doing a few other bad things, notably discussing taxpayer information in emails with the White House, contrary to IRS
rules. That's clear from the fact that the IRS itself redacted the taxpayer identities before turning over the email conversations, citing confidentiality rules, lawmakers
said. "You shared, at least by someone's definition ... personal IRS taxpayer information with the White House," said Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio).
Obama Incites
Federal Workers to Target Conservatives. How concerned would you be if President Obama were promoting revenge — using government
resources — against conservative thought and activism? [...] If you think the IRS scandal was intimidating, imagine what it will be like when
all federal employees view conservatism as an enemy.
White House, IRS exchanged confidential taxpayer info.
Top Internal Revenue Service Obamacare official Sarah Hall Ingram discussed confidential taxpayer information with senior Obama White House officials, according to 2012
emails obtained by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and provided to The Daily Caller. Lois Lerner, then head of the IRS Tax Exempt Organizations
division, also received an email alongside White House officials that contained confidential information.
Issa
Committee uncovers IRS providing confidential taxpayer information to White House. Rep. Darrell Issa must be at the top of the White House's
enemies list. His House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has released copies of emails from former IRS official Sarah Hall Ingram indicating
exchange of information with White House officials that is by law confidential.
Is This How IRS Cover-up Works? Darrell Issa, the chairman
of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, says he is confident the story behind the IRS's targeting of tea-party and conservative groups applying for
tax-exempt status will eventually come out. But patience will have to be a virtue. Issa's staff acknowledged late last month that the IRS had handed
over to the committee a little more than 10 percent of the documents the IRS itself has admitted are relevant to the committee's investigation.
Marriage group
files laws suit accusing IRS of leaking its private donor list. The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) announced Thursday they will
file suit against the IRS, accusing the agency of violating federal law by leaking the organization's private donor list in 2012. NOM, an advocacy
group opposing same-sex marriage, has claimed for months that its private donor list was illegally disclosed to the Huffington Post, and the Human Rights
Campaign — a top advocate for gay rights and gay marriage, whose former president served as a co-chairman of President Obama's re-election campaign.
The long line of conservatives
targeted by the IRS. The list of conservatives targeted by the Internal Revenue Service for audits, tax-exempt reviews or tax privacy
breaches keeps growing, raising fresh questions in Washington about whether a scandal the Obama administration has blamed on bureaucratic incompetence
and coincidence may in fact involve something more nefarious. The latest revelation came Thursday from Dr. Carson, the renowned neurosurgeon who
told The Washington Times that he was targeted for an audit just months after he gave a speech in front of President Obama that challenged America's
leadership. The agency requested to review his real estate holdings and then conducted a full audit. In the end, the IRS found no wrongdoing,
Dr. Carson said, but it raised his suspicions about being singled out for his speech.
Americans deserve answers on IRS scandal.
This week, Ben Carson said that shortly after he gave a much-publicized speech criticizing ObamaCare at the National Prayer Breakfast, he found himself
audited by the Internal Revenue Service. It makes him suspicious. There was a day when we might have written off a claim like this.
But given what we've learned about the IRS and its targeting of right-of-center organizations, the burden of proof has shifted. Though the scandal
is no longer making headlines, the questions about what was going on with IRS official Lois Lerner and her pals have never been answered.
Meanwhile, the storyline fed keeps changing.
IRS targeted Dr. Ben Carson after
Prayer Breakfast speech. Tea party groups, Franklin Graham, Christine O'Donnell, a pro-marriage group. And now Dr. Ben Carson.
The list of conservatives targeted by the Internal Revenue Service for audits, tax-exempt reviews or tax privacy breaches keeps growing, raising
fresh questions in Washington about whether a scandal the Obama administration has blamed on bureaucratic incompetence and coincidence may in fact
involve something more nefarious.
Ben Carson: 'I had my
first encounter with the IRS' after challenging Obama. At an event in Birmingham, Ala. Monday night [9/30/2013], former Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon
Ben Carson revealed that he had received a visit from the Internal Revenue Service following his much-noted remarks at a National Prayer Breakfast earlier this
year. [...] Carson's February speech February made him a conservative darling for criticizing President Barack Obama's 2010 health-care reform law, while Obama
was sitting just a few feet away.
Lerner's Pension Could Be as Much as
$102,600/Year, $3.96 Million Lifetime. Even before she retired last week, scandalized IRS official Lois Lerner's compensation was already
attracting attention. While on administrative leave, federal rules allowed her to keep collecting a salary, one that reportedly totaled $177,000.
So it was no surprise when speculation arose over how much Lerner could collect in federal pension benefits. Unfortunately, that speculation, which
initially projected a benefit of over $50,000, might be off by about half ... and in the wrong direction.
IRS scandal means bad news for Obama.
According to Rasmussen's survey, most Americans think the IRS broke the law by targeting Tea Party groups for harassment, but few expect it to be
punished. Fifty-three percent think the IRS broke the law by targeting the Tea Party and other conservative groups like the voter-integrity outfit
True The Vote; only 24% disagreed. But only 17% think it is even somewhat likely that anyone will be charged, while 74% think that criminal
charges are unlikely.
Camp presses IRS over donor lists.
House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) is pressing the IRS over whether conservative donors have been singled out for extra scrutiny.
The IRS acknowledged months ago that it had inappropriately asked for donor lists from some of the conservative organizations that it targeted.
But Steven Miller, the former acting IRS commissioner, also said those lists had been destroyed, and that the agency hadn't used them to scrutinize
Tea Party groups. Camp said Wednesday [9/25/2013] that the IRS had handed over donor lists as part of the congressional investigation into the
agency's targeting, including as recently as last week.
Uncle Sam Sucker Punched By Lois
Lerner. Had Lerner embezzled IRS funds, or committed other manner of financial crimes while in office, she might very well right now be
facing federal indictment. In many respects, however, what Lerner did was even more insidious than stealing money. She stole liberty.
By her actions, she denied to numerous lawful organizations, their employees, and potential donors their constitutionally guaranteed rights to political
association and redress, and to have the laws of the land applied fairly and equally to them. And for this, Lois Lerner escapes unscathed.
Who will recompense those victims for the harm done them?
Is Lois Lerner cutting a deal?
The intriguing possibility that Lois Lerner might turn John Dean is on the table. [...] Because it appears she was less than truthful in her
testimony, Lerner has a lot to lose. She just retired and now reportedly is getting paid $50 large a year until she dies as a
parting gift from the taxpayers, and would like to enjoy that largesse outside of prison. The big question is how much will she be
willing to give up in order to get immunity?
Obama IRS Thug Lois Lerner to
Receive $50K a Year Salary in Retirement. With our civil liberties continually under threat from this Administration, I offer to
the American people a good news/bad news combo that is sure to serve as a bittersweet victory for those who have opposed the IRS' campaign of
harassment against political dissidents.
GOP Shouldn't Let IRS
Scandal Retire With Lois Lerner. Lois Lerner, the IRS official responsible for harassing Tea Party and other conservative groups,
is retiring. Democrats are hoping this is the end of the scandal. In fact, the investigation is only beginning.
Lois Lerner retires —
courtesy of the American taxpayer. Top IRS official Lois Lerner has now "retired." Lerner, under fire since she confessed
on May 10, 2013, that the IRS had singled out Tea Party and other conservative groups for extra scrutiny, had been on paid leave while
revelation after revelation demonstrated that she was not only instrumental in targeting Tea Party groups, but she also misled the American
public when the agency "confessed" to IRS wrongdoing. In fact, nothing about her original story has proven true. In May, she
claimed that low-level officials applied extra scrutiny to conservative groups, that this scrutiny was "wrong," and that the IRS put a stop
to it when it learned of the abuse. All these assertions were wrong.
Obama the Storyteller.
Americans have finally seen the scandals emerge from the cocoon the media has wrapped around the White House. And
his defenses are failing him. [...] The IRS scandal was not the work of a few wayward Cincinnati employees but extends
far higher and deeper than Obama would have us believe. The IRS may be the most reviled part of the government and
impacts many peoples' lives. The abuse of its powers to punish people who oppose Obama or desire reform in government
strikes almost all Americans as just wrong and unfair in the most elemental sense.
Lois Lerner, IRS official at
heart of tea party scandal, retires. Lois G. Lerner, the woman at the center of the IRS tea party targeting scandal, retired
from the agency Monday morning after an internal investigation found she was guilty of "neglect of duties" and was going to call for her ouster,
according to congressional staff. Her departure marks the first government official to pay a significant price in the scandal, though
Republicans were quick to say her decision doesn't put the matter to rest and pointed out that she still can be called before Congress to testify.
IRS Firing Squad. Since announcing in
May that the IRS had singled out conservative groups applying for tax exempt status for additional scrutiny during an election season, Ms. Lerner
has been on paid administrative leave. Not a bad deal, getting paid not to work — so why resign now? One answer is that this
gets ahead of a recently completed but still not released IRS personnel review that we hear criticizes her job performance and recommends she be
fired. By resigning now, she will collect her full pension and benefits, though she still refuses to answer questions from Congress.
Obama Administration
Quietly Caves on True the Vote Case. Is this related to the retirement of Lois Lerner? I don't know, but it seems that the
Obama administration has decided to cut its losses on the IRS. The Department of Justice told a federal court on Friday [9/20/2013]
that it is conceding in the lawsuit brought by True the Vote, Inc., and will grant True the Vote 501(c)(3) status.
Lois Lerner retires from IRS.
She's still a central figure in three congressional investigations into the political targeting scandal that embroiled the IRS — and
the Obama administration — in May. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has an outstanding
subpoena to compel her testimony before his panel. And as a 30-year veteran of the civil service, Lerner is still eligible for a
pension — something that is sure to further anger critics in Congress.
IRS official at heart of tea
party scandal retires. Facing a possible firing, the Internal Revenue Service official at the center of the agency's tea party
scandal retired Monday [9/23/2013], ending one chapter in a ruckus that has engulfed the tax-collection agency since spring.
Did IRS
bureaucrats, liberal media help Obama win in 2012? [W]hat has become clear to many conservatives is that federal agencies
going back to 2010 appeared to openly champion liberal causes by, for example, putting on special conferences to show black churches how to
express political opinions without losing their tax-exempt status, all the while stonewalling tea party groups with questions ranging from
queries about religion to personal relationships. At the very least, writes the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto this week, "Barack
Obama's reelection deserves to be listed with an asterisk in the record books. We know only that he did win with the help of a corrupt
IRS. And if indeed the election was stolen, many in the media were complicit in its theft."
Four Washington Scandals That Still Matter Despite the Distractions.
When news about the NSA's domestic surveillance efforts first broke, the White House was already embroiled in a scandal involving the IRS targeting Tea Party groups.
Here, too, President Obama addressed the scandal based on news reports, saying he only learned about the "alleged" improprieties when the rest of America did.
And here, too, the president's words are revealed to be less than true as more information comes out. A recent report by the House Oversight & Government
Reform Committee, which continues to investigate the scandal, quotes two IRS officials who described a climate at the bureau in 2010 as one where employees were
"acutely" aware that the president wanted a crackdown on Tea Party groups.
Issa: Obama's SOTU Attack on Supremes Began Tea Party Targeting Process. [Scroll down] Issa also
reiterated his intention to have Lois Lerner back "to follow up on her assertions during earlier testimony" because she waived her 5th Amendment rights.
But "she wasn't alone", Issa made sure to add. "One of the challenges we're going to have is to get each of the individuals in — all of whom
appear to be in Washington — and find out who they talked to outside of the IRS, and it's more and more clear that they received information both
publicly and privately into Washington IRS, and they acted on it."
The Press and the IRS. A staff memo released earlier
this week by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee provides an "interim update" on the investigation of the IRS scandal. A central finding:
"Media attention caused the IRS to treat conservative-oriented tax-exempt applications differently" from liberal or progressive ones. The memo presents no
evidence that the White House directly ordered the IRS to crack down on political opponents. Instead, it is consistent with the theory, described here in
May, that IRS personnel responded to "dog whistles" (in Peggy Noonan's metaphor) in public statements from the president and his supporters.
'Fake Scandal' Update: IRS Targeted
'Anti-Obama Rhetoric'. Of course, this has always been a very real scandal, with a preponderance of evidence proving it to be so.
What is so disturbing is how quickly so many people believe it to be otherwise simply because The Idiot King said so. I am often asked how we
are supposed to combat a presidency that lies with such abandon and gets backed up by most in an unquestioning press. A good start would be
to take the Senate away from him next year.
Growing IRS Scandal Requires A Special
Prosecutor. As the layers on the IRS scandal are peeled back, it's become increasingly clear the law has been broken and the White House may
have been far more deeply involved than claimed. Time for a special prosecutor.
IRS officials thought Obama wanted crackdown
on tea party groups, worried about negative press. In the report, the investigators do not find evidence that IRS employees received orders from
politicians to target the tea party, and agency officials deny overt bias or political motives. But the report says the IRS was at least taking cues from
political leaders and designed special policies to review tea party applications, including dispatching some of them to Washington to be vetted by headquarters.
IRS spied on tea party after granting
tax-exempt status. Republicans investigating the IRS targeting scandal said Wednesday [9/18/2013] that the agency continued to conduct secret
surveillance on tea party groups even after approving them for tax-exempt status. Acting Commissioner Danny Werfel said he shut down the monitoring
program after he found out about it, and said he has halted all audits of tax-exempt organizations based on political activity as he tries to get a handle
on the embattled agency.
The Editor says...
Foot-dragging and extra scrutiny for one group, while giving another group speedy service and sure approval, is one thing. Spying on people
is an entirely different matter. It's bad enough that the IRS is being used as a weapon for political purposes, but now it appears it is
just another domestic surveillance agency — motivated by left-wing politics,
and lacking the usual "national security" candy coating.
House
Oversight memo: Washington Post's tea party coverage inspired IRS to target conservatives. The Washington Post's anti-tea party coverage
inspired IRS officials to improperly target conservative groups, according to a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee memo. [...] While the memo
acknowledged that President Obama's and the White House's anti-Citizens United, campaign finance reform-related rhetoric in early 2010 was not lost on IRS
officials, the memo makes clear that the Washington Post's heavy anti-tea party coverage directly inspired improper IRS targeting.
IRS Targeted Groups
Based on Views. Recently-obtained IRS documents highlight how the IRS targeted aspiring 501(c)(4)'s for extra scrutiny in 2011 based on the
content of their literature, noting "anti-Obama rhetoric" and (irrelevantly) characterizing some speech as "propaganda." It will surprise no one
that fully 80% of the groups targeted in 2011 were conservative. The very existence of such a list has significant probative value: It highlights
the already-obvious fact that there was a coordinated effort by the IRS to target Tea Party groups.
IRS list reveals concerns over Tea Party
'propaganda'. Newly uncovered IRS documents show the agency flagged political groups based on the content of their literature, raising concerns
specifically about "anti-Obama rhetoric," inflammatory language and "emotional" statements made by non-profits seeking tax-exempt status. The internal
2011 documents, obtained by USA TODAY, list 162 groups by name, with comments by Internal Revenue Service lawyers in Washington raising issues about their
political, lobbying and advocacy activities. In 21 cases, those activities were characterized as "propaganda."
IRS workers turn to elite D.C. lawyers for
defense. Even as the tea party-targeting scandal dies down, the staffers at the center of the mess are turning to some of the city's top lawyers
to defend themselves against ongoing investigations and congressional inquiries.
Holder,
IRS officials spoke at political training session for black ministers that detailed 'right-wing conspiracy'. The meeting was attended by
Attorney General Eric Holder, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, and IRS official Peter Lorenzetti, all of whom spoke at the event. The
meeting, which was held during the presidential campaign and at a time when the IRS was targeting conservative non-profits for abusive audits, aimed to
coach black ministers in how to engage in political activity without violating the law.
Emails Show Liar Lerner
Targeted 'Dangerous' Tea Party. New emails show that the woman at the center of the IRS scandal over special scrutiny of conservative
groups' applications for tax-exempt status targeted tea party applications specifically and directed they be held up.
Eric
Holder, IRS officials coached tax-exempt black ministers on how to engage in political activity. Attorney General Eric Holder and
IRS officials advised black ministers on how to engage in political activity during the 2012 election without violating their tax-exempt status.
Holder, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, and Peter Lorenzetti, a senior official in the scandal-plagued agency's exempt organizations
division, participated in a May 2012 training session for black ministers from the Conference of National Black Churches at the U.S. Capitol
hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). Holder spoke at the event.
Republicans
say IRS e-mails from Lois Lerner show 'abuse of power'. House Republicans on Thursday [9/12/2013] rekindled a months-old controversy
by releasing what they described as new evidence that the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups for political reasons.
Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, revealed e-mails that he said show "high-level IRS employees in
Washington were abusing their power to prevent conservative groups from organizing and carrying out their missions."
Emails show IRS' Lois Lerner
specifically targeted tea party. Lois G. Lerner, the woman at the center of the Internal Revenue Service scandal over special
scrutiny of conservative groups, specifically targeted tea party applications and directed that they be held up in 2011 in order to come up
with an agency policy, according to several of Ms. Lerner's emails released by a House committee Thursday [9/12/2013]. In one 2011 email,
Ms. Lerner specifically calls the tea party applications for tax-exempt status problematic, which seems to counter Democrats' arguments that
tea party groups weren't targeted.
Lois Lerner's Own Words. Emails unearthed by the House
Ways and Means Committee between former Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner and her staff raise doubts about IRS claims that the targeting wasn't politically
motivated and that low-level employees in Cincinnati masterminded the operation. [...] Democrats want to pretend the IRS scandal is over, but Ms. Lerner's role
deserves much more exposure.
The president thinks you're stupid.
But just so you know, Mr. President, Americans are not stupid. They see through your ham-handed attempt to politicize war (he clearly hoped to use a Republican
rejection in the 2014 mid-term campaigns: "Look, the GOP wouldn't even support me to stop the killing of children!"). And Americans know they aren't getting
the truth on U.S. surveillance, IRS targeting of conservatives, Fast and Furious — and especially Benghazi.
IRS Gave Black Nonprofits
Preferential Treatment. At the same time the IRS harassed Republican nonprofit groups during the 2012 political campaign, it selectively
advised black churches and other Democrat nonprofits on how far they can go in campaigning for President Obama and other Democrats. This raw
exercise in political favoritism has not been reported in the context of the still-smoldering IRS scandal, in which the agency in 2012 audited big
GOP donors and blocked Tea Party groups trying to obtain tax-exempt status as part of what House investigators suspect was an effort to re-elect the
president.
IRS scandal: America needs the truth.
America can handle the truth. Even if that truth could include a coverup at the powerful IRS. The IRS mission statement pledges to
"enforce the law with integrity and fairness to all." But public scrutiny has revealed details indicating a level of politicization
totally at odds with that.
IRS continues to hound Tea Party
Patriots, demands more data for tax-exempt status. The initial firestorm surrounding the Internal Revenue Service's targeting
of conservative groups may have subsided, but tea party leaders say the situation has only become worse and may lead to more lawsuits against
the embattled agency. New documents show the depth of information the IRS is seeking from Tea Party Patriots, a leading conservative
group that first applied for 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status in late 2010 and one of many organizations singled out for extra scrutiny by the
Obama administration.
Scandals costing us American exceptionalism.
Over the weekend, the IRS scandal hit the 100th day since the IRS admitted targeting conservative groups during the 2012 election year. Yet the IRS is still
being charged with stonewalling Congressional investigators. IRS official Lois Lerner, of course, has already taken the Fifth rather than testify about what
went on.
The Mother of Scandals Is Always Pregnant.
Benghazi is an event, a terrible event, but the systematic use of the IRS as an instrument of oppression, the omnipresent long arm of the state-to-be, is even
worse. It's a crucial instrument for redistributing wealth, for intimidating critics, and for preventing political opponents from amassing the wherewithal to
challenge the would-be tyrants. Moreover, it serves as cover for collecting sensitive information about us.
The Narrative Implodes. Mark Steyn argues that two things
have happened simultaneously. America has "imploded on the world stage" while its current leaders have increased their power at home. [...] Steyn was
referring to the NSA. But speaking of instruments of control, Michael Ledeen reminds us not to forget the Big Lever: the IRS.
IRS drumbeat continues with
Congress on break. House Republicans opened a new front Tuesday [8/13/2013] in their examination of the IRS targeting issue, demanding work-related
e-mails from the personal account of agency official Lois Lerner. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Rep. Jim Jordan
(R-Ohio) requested the communications in a letter to Lerner, who was placed on administrative leave in May after an inspector general's report revealed
that the agency had screened groups for extra scrutiny based on their political ideology.
Lerner Covers Her Tracks. We learned
Tuesday [8/13/2013] that [Lois] Lerner used a personal e-mail account to conduct official business, an act that has the potential to frustrate both
Congress's requests for documents and the public's freedom-of-information requests. That disclosure came on the heels of revelations that Lerner
shared the tax information of at least one conservative group with an FEC investigator, perhaps in violation of federal law. Her misdeeds are
likely more extensive.
Were conservative filmmakers also targeted by the IRS?
Tea Party. Patriot. Conservative. We the People. Freedom. Constitution. Second Amendment. Gun Rights. Pro-Life. Christian.
These were some of the keywords used by the IRS to screen individuals and groups seeking tax exempt status and then delay them because they were identified as conservative.
IRS's Lerner Used Personal E-mail to
Conduct Official Business, Investigators Say. Embattled Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner sent official documents from her government e-mail address to
a personal account, according to House Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa and his colleague, Ohio congressman Jim Jordan. "This raises some serious questions
concerning your use of a non-official e-mail account to conduct official business," the GOP lawmakers wrote in a letter to Lerner demanding all documents from her non-official
account for the period between January 2008 and the present.
The IRS Caresses the Left, Hammers the Right.
According to Team Obama's "phony scandal" narrative, when the IRS processed 501(c)(3) tax-exemption applications, it equally tormented liberals and conservatives.
No big deal, the argument goes. The IRS suffers from even-handed inefficiency rather than an un-American habit of slamming critics of the president of the United
States. Unfortunately for the Obamites, actual facts annihilate their institutional-incompetence defense. New data deepen the suspicion that the IRS is
the latest and most worrisome weapon in the Left's arsenal.
Lerner's FEC Problem. E-mail correspondence unearthed by the House Ways
and Means Committee reveals that Lois Lerner, the figure at the center of the scandal, may have committed a felony by divulging information about a conservative group to the
Federal Election Commission, in an incident that dates back at least to 2008, before President Obama took office. Though some conservatives have eagerly sought evidence
that Obama's White House instigated the IRS's targeting of tea-party groups, the latest evidence suggests that an anti-conservative bias may instead be an endemic feature of
the federal bureaucracy.
IRS agent: Tax agency is still targeting Tea Party
groups. In a remarkable admission that is likely to rock the Internal Revenue Service again, testimony released Thursday [8/8/2013] by House Ways and Means
Committee Chairman Dave Camp reveals that an agent involved in reviewing tax exempt applications from conservative groups told a committee investigator that the agency is
still targeting Tea Party groups, three months after the IRS scandal erupted.
The Mother of All Scandals. A system of voluntary tax compliance
cannot survive a dishonest IRS. Lois Lerner and company have virtually ruined the agency. For the foreseeable future, each time an American receives
a tax query, he will wonder to what degree his politics ensures enhanced or reduced scrutiny — or whether his name as a donor, activist, or partisan
has put him on a watch list. Worse still, when a high commissioner of the IRS takes the 5th Amendment, it sends a frightening message: those audited
go to jail when they refuse to testify; those who audit them who do the same do not.
IRS official who
oversaw Cincinnati exempt operations office during scandal gets promotion. The IRS official in charge of the exempt organizations office
in the Cincinnati branch at the time conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status were unfairly targeted just got a promotion. Cindy Thomas
has been appointed to the senior technical adviser team for the Director of Exempt Organizations. Thomas, a 35-year IRS veteran, will fill the
spot vacated by Sharon Light. Light, a one-time close adviser to Lois Lerner, is the sixth senior IRS official to leave the agency.
The IRS Attack on Political Speech.
The Internal Revenue Service's scandalous targeting of tea party and conservative groups refuses to die, as one by one the administration's
explanations prove untrue. We were told that the White House, like the rest of the country, learned about the program on May 10
through a planted question asked of then IRS official Lois Lerner at an American Bar Association conference. Turns out the White House
knew earlier. We were told the targeting was the work of a few rogue IRS employees in Cincinnati. Then those employees insisted
that they were being managed from Washington.
Darrell Issa subpoenas Treasury Department in
IRS probe. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman and California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa has subpoenaed the U.S.
Treasury Department for documents related to the IRS targeting scandal. The Treasury Department, headed by Obama appointee and former Obama White
House Chief of Staff Jack Lew, said that it is cooperating with the subpoena.
A Slo-Mo IRS Cover-Up? Back on May 13, President Obama
reacted heatedly to news that the IRS had delayed and harassed conservative groups applying for nonprofit status. "I have got no patience with it, I
will not tolerate it, and we will make sure that we find out exactly what happened on this," he told reporters[.] How is the president living up to
that pledge? At best, meh. At worst, we are seeing a slow-motion cover-up.
House subpoenas Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew
for IRS documents. House Republicans on Friday accused Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew of obstructing their investigation into the IRS's targeting of
tea party and conservative groups, and issued subpoenas for more agency documents. Oversight committee chairman Darrell Issa, California Republican, sent
a scathing latter to Mr. Lew blasting him and President Obama for dismissing the GOP's claims about IRS targeting as a "phony" scandal, saying that Mr. Lew
has "attempted to thwart" his investigation.
Media Can't Ignore New Developments In
IRS Scandal. From stonewalling Congress to Federal Election Commission collusion to harassment of already-tax-exempt conservative groups, the IRS
scandal metastasizes. Someone high-up was clearly giving orders.
The IRS Paints it Black. If the IRS scandal is "phony" as
President Obama claims it is, then why is the agency redacting the documents that it is sending to Congress like this? That's among the questions
that Rep. Jim Jordan is asking. Jordan sits on the House Oversight Committee, which is investigating the IRS' abuse of conservative groups —
abuse to which it confessed on May 10. Jordan says that many of the 13,000 pages that the IRS sent the committee look like the ones
above. Which are totally blacked out.
Stopping Government Abuse.
We still have not gotten to the bottom of the IRS scandal, as even White House press secretary Jay Carney admitted on Wednesday [7/24/2013].
House Republicans must continue to follow the evidence where it leads, and overcome the obstruction of House Democrats. What we already know
about the scandal, though, is that we have given the IRS and the federal government generally too much power over citizens.
Lois Lerner's Ace in the Hole. [Scroll down] Yet even as
individuals higher and higher up the political food chain are implicated, the name of Ms. Lois Lerner continues to loom large. For
example, former IRS lawyer Carter Hull has now revealed that he attended a meeting in August 2011 at which Lerner, her senior advisor Judith
Kindell, and lawyers from Mr. Wilkins' office discussed plans for handling the tea party cases. The testimony reported this past week
confirms that Lerner was one of a number of senior IRS officials in Washington involved in decisions about the processing of applications
for 501(c)(4) status by tea party and other conservative organizations.
Insulating Obama From His
Corrupt IRS. The media elite are still colluding with Obama to spread the bizarre fiction that there are no "Obama scandals."
Inside the Obama-media bubble, Obama alone defines authenticity, honesty, and problem-solving panache. Outside that bubble, in the world of
reality, the Obama administration is making Richard Nixon's IRS manipulations look like child's play. Last week, House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee hearings uncovered infuriating new scoops on the scandal of Obama's IRS targeting Tea Party conservative groups
and denying them tax-exempt status.
Who Is the Savvy William Wilkins?
True the Vote, "the nation's leading voters' rights and election integrity organization," is announcing today [7/23/2013] that it is adding
Wilkins — one of only two Obama political appointees to the IRS — to its federal lawsuit against the IRS. The
group is also adding five other ranking IRS officials to the lawsuit as well. "This lawsuit is the only way to get all of the answers
involving this national scandal," said True the Vote's President Catherine Engelbrecht.
Meet William Wilkins. Have you noticed
that the Internal Revenue Service scandal seems to be getting ever closer to the White House? The IRS originally tried to set up "rogue employees
in Cincinnati" as fall guys. But in congressional testimony, they revealed that the targeting of dissenting groups was directed from Washington.
As Peggy Noonan noted, the Washington supervisor, Carter Hull, last week implicated the IRS's office of chief counsel: "The IRS chief counsel is
named William Wilkins. And ... he is one of only two Obama political appointees in the IRS."
IRS Scandal: One Step Removed From the White House.
Last week, while much of the nation's attention was turned toward the Zimmerman verdict and the antics of the racial grievance industry,
the IRS scandal got far more intense. According to top IRS lawyer Carter Hull, the Chief Counsel's office of the IRS, headed by
Obama appointee William Wilkins, was instrumental in the agency's campaign of harassment and discrimination against conservative and
certain pro-Israel groups.
The IRS Intervened in Tea Party
Elections. Did the IRS intervene in Federal election campaigns for Congress? According to the Washington Times, U.S.
Treasury investigative special agent Dennis Martel has uncovered a new example of political abuse. On March 9, 2010,
Christine O'Donnell's personal income tax records were illegally accessed by a Delaware public official. Sen. Charles Grassley
(R-IA) reports that a previously-undisclosed "back door" to the IRS computer system was used to invade the privacy of Christine
O'Donnell's tax records.
Embattled
IRS chief counsel met with Obama 2 days before writing new targeting criteria. The Obama appointee implicated in congressional
testimony in the IRS targeting scandal met with President Obama in the White House two days before offering his colleagues a new set of advice
on how to scrutinize tea party and conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. IRS chief counsel William Wilkins, who was named
in House Oversight testimony by retiring IRS agent Carter Hull as one of his supervisors in the improper targeting of conservative groups, met
with Obama in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on April 23, 2012.
Putin and Obama: Brothers in Tyranny.
[It is] increasingly obvious that Obama's 2012 re-election was facilitated by widespread unlawful harassment of his opposition by the Internal
Revenue Service. The increasing evidence of this flagrant misuse of the IRS was highlighted in this week's House Oversight Committee where
Congressman Elijah Cummings, ranking Democrat redoubled his efforts to deflect the testimony and cut off the hearing is proof that the
hearings, despite the often pathetic performance by many of its members, are hitting pay dirt.
Journalist calls
out his newspaper's coverage of IRS scandals. We live in a time of extraordinary media corruption when testimony late last week
tying a presidential political appointee to the IRS' suppression of the president's political opposition was widely ignored, except for Fox News
and the conservative talk radio and internet ghetto. But at least one brave journalist in the MSM is speaking up about the disgraceful
suppression of an important story of political corruption of the highest order. Mike Hashimoto, an editorial writer of the Dallas News,
is bothered by this media corruption. He posted a blog Friday, calling out his employer and AP.
IRS scandal
creeps closer to White House. You remember the IRS scandal, right? If [Carter] Hull did testify, and I have no reason to
think he didn't, isn't that news? Hasn't one of the big questions of the improper, if not illegal, IRS scrutiny been whether this program
was designed and directed from someplace other than the much-maligned Cincinnati office?
Will IRS scandal lead all the way to
Obama? According to [Lois] Lerner's account, "line people" in Cincinnati decided on their own to target Tea Party groups and to
send them inappropriate and intrusive questions. When senior IRS officials found out, they imposed rationality on the process and stopped
the abuses. This week, on July 18, the IRS's own employees demonstrated that this story was utterly, completely false.
IRS Lawyer
Admits Tea Party Targeting Run By D.C.. A retiring IRS lawyer implicates the IRS chief counsel's office, headed by an Obama
appointee, as well as the head of the IRS' exempt organizations office. The targeting included a Tea Party Senate candidate.
IRS Scandal Circles Back to Lerner.
The investigation into the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of tea-party groups is likely to circle around Lois Lerner once again. Testimony
from key witnesses indicates that the embattled former head of the IRS's Exempt Organizations division and her senior adviser, Judith Kindell,
involved the chief counsel's office in the processing of tea-party applications.
IRS official
testifies that political appointee's office involved in Tea Party screening. A veteran IRS worker testified on Thursday [7/18/2013]
that officials from a Washington office led by a political appointee intervened in the screening of Tea Party applications, saying publicly for
the first time the IRS chief counsel's office was involved in the controversial program. Carter Hull, a recently retired tax law specialist,
gave his first-hand account during testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
A Bombshell in the IRS Scandal.
The IRS scandal was connected this week not just to the Washington office — that had been established — but to the office of the chief
counsel. That is a bombshell — such a big one that it managed to emerge in spite of an unfocused, frequently off-point
congressional hearing in which some members seemed to have accidentally woken up in the middle of a committee room, some seemed
unaware of the implications of what their investigators had uncovered [...]
IRS
Hearings: Republicans Ask Questions, Democrats Attack Issa. Right out of the gate, Democrats' top priority was attacking Chairman
Issa — accusing him of overreaching and conducting committee business in an overly partisan manner. Ranking Democrat Elijah
Cummings also asserted his desire to "get to the bottom" of the IRS scandal, intoning that he's seeking, "the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth." But just last month, he called the IRS affair "solved." Rep. Gerry Connolly, a liberal from Virginia,
spent his entire question period upbraiding Issa and launching pre-emptive strikes against the Inspector General, who will testify later.
He did not ask a single question of the witnesses.
IRS scandal is unraveling. Jay
Carney's assurances that two rogue agents in a back office in the 27th most populous metropolis of America were the problem has been
exposed as a blatant, outrageous lie. Now we know that Obama's hand-picked agent was leading the initiative, as far as the people below
him in the federal apparatus knew. Now we begin to prepare the vice to squeeze the Obama political appointee, perhaps making an
immunity grant to Lois Lerner a possibility. Keep in mind, it is not an offer, it is an involuntary grant she cannot refuse.
Whatever happened to the IRS scandal?
As recently as a month ago, the CW was that the Obama administration was in danger of being buried under a heaping pile of scandals.
There was Benghazi. There was the snooping on journalists to catch national security leakers. And there was the IRS flagging Tea Party
groups for extra scrutiny. The IRS scandal, which drew bipartisan outrage, had the potential to be the most damaging, not least because
nobody likes paying taxes.
IRS chief counsel's
office involved in targeting controversy. Previous accounts from IRS employees had shown that Washington IRS officials were involved in
the controversy, but Hull's comments represent the closest connection to the White House to date. No evidence so far has definitively linked the
White House to the agency's actions.
President Barack Obama's Six Months of Blunders.
[Scroll down] Then there is the IRS scandal. Quite obviously the IRS was politicized to such an extent that its investigators prevented
Tea Party groups and other conservatives from participating in the 2012 election. One defense offered by the IRS was that the agency is too vast
to be held accountable. Congress should continue its probe and hold the IRS accountable.
Former GOP Senate candidate
Christine O'Donnell told her tax records were breached. More than two years after her upstart Senate campaign rocked the Delaware
political world, Christine O'Donnell got an unexpected contact from a U.S. Treasury Department agent warning that her private tax records may have
been breached. The phone message earlier this year shocked the battled-scarred candidate, a tea party favorite who knocked off Republican
mainstay Michael Castle in the primary before losing in a bid to win Vice President Joseph R. Biden's former seat.
IRS says tax snooper was no agency
worker. Responding to a report in The Washington Times on unauthorized snooping into federal tax records of political candidates and
donors, the IRS said Tuesday [7/16/2013] that a case involving a deliberate breach of privacy was not committed by anyone working for the agency. "The
IRS understands that the willful violation was not by an IRS employee," the agency said in a statement to The Times, responding to a report that
the agency's inspector general had uncovered an instance of a "willful" attempt by a government official to improperly access federal tax records.
Dems set sights on IRS watchdog.
House Democrats are setting their sights on the Treasury watchdog who investigated the IRS, questioning whether his work left gaps that helped
Republicans attack the White House. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) released a new memo on Tuesday asserting that — despite GOP
suggestions to the contrary — 15 interviews with IRS staffers and thousands of pages of documents did not show any evidence that the
agency's targeting was politically motivated or that the White House was involved.
Justice Department in hot
seat after declining to prosecute alleged IRS abuse. A top Republican senator is pressing Attorney General Eric Holder for answers
following allegations by a government watchdog that the IRS may have improperly accessed the tax records of a political donor or candidate — but
the Justice Department declined to prosecute the case. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, questioned whether that DOJ decision was "politically
motivated."
When a scandal erupts, blame the whistleblower. Top Dem Targets
Inspector General Who Uncovered IRS Scandal. The top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep.
Elijah Cummings, sent a letter to the top Republican on that committee, Darrell Issa, targeting the man who uncovered the IRS scandal,
Inspector General Russell George. Cummings wants to bring George back to testify in front of the committee because he has "serious
questions" about previous statements he made about the IRS scandal.
Why Lois Lerner Took the Fifth.
This particular investigation is far afield from the Tea Party scandal; in fact, it is one with which I have considerable sympathy. But
the salient point is the bullying attitude: never mind the merits, a "thick questionnaire from the IRS is a behavior changer."
And that was in a magazine interview!
Lois Lerner's big mouth. Lois Lerner is a nasty
piece of work, and one aspect of her arrogance could well be her undoing. She enjoyed wielding her power so much that she boasted about it, and
in doing so in a 2011 interview with Business Week, she conceded a point that could be used to prove criminal culpability.
IRS supporters 0-for-3 on putting scandal to
rest. Since it was revealed in May that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) improperly targeted the tax-exempt nonprofit status of
conservative groups between 2010 and 2012, defenders of the beleaguered agency have offered three broad attempts to suppress the growing IRS
scandal and put the matter to rest. However, each of these three attempts failed outright, and the scandal continues, with tenacious
investigations underway by the House Oversight Committee and House Ways and Means Committee.
Victims furious FBI
won't investigate IRS targeting. On Wednesday's [7/3/2013] edition of Fox News' "Special Report," the lack of progress being made
in the Federal Bureau of Investigation investigation into the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups took center
stage. It has been nearly two months since the investigation was announced, but the FBI has not contacted a single victim,
Fox News reports.
Potentially
explosive development in IRS scandals. One of the most important and so-far least noted threads in the IRS sandal
cloth is the inexplicable remark made by Austan Goolsbee, at the time the Chairman of the White Council of Economic Advisors
about the taxes paid by the Koch brothers — arch villains in the Manichean delusions of the American left —
that would require his knowledge of their confidential tax returns. Did the White House senior staff illegally browse
through the tax records of their political enemies?
Liberal
nonprofit that pressed Shulman to target conservatives houses his wife's group. The progressive nonprofit organization Common Cause
urged then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman to investigate activities of conservative donors despite housing the campaign-reform group that employs
Shulman's wife. In 2012, Common Cause urged Shulman and fellow embattled IRS official Lois Lerner, director of the agency's tax-exempt organizations
division, to investigate the Koch Brothers' attempted takeover of the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute.
Treasury Department IG Refused FOIA on
Austan Goolsbee Investigation. The Treasury Department on Wednesday refused to confirm or deny the existence of an inspector general
report investigating whether or not former White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee illegally accessed tax information on the Koch brothers.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Washington Free
Beacon, declined to acknowledge the existence of the report.
I.R.S. Scrutiny Went Beyond the Political.
According to the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, the I.R.S. received 199,689 applications for tax-exempt status between 2010 and 2012.
In 2012 alone, the agency received 73,319, of which about 22,000 were not approved in the initial review process. The inspector general looked at
296 applications flagged as potentially being from political groups.
Bias alert!
The New York Times is trying to ameliorate a very serious scandal by pointing out that all kinds of groups have applied for tax-exempt status.
But the central issue is that tea party groups were stonewalled while left-wing groups were whisked through the system.
FBI Has Yet To Contact IRS-Targeted Tea Party
Groups. On May 14, the FBI claimed they launched an investigation into the IRS fiasco. FBI Director Robert Mueller was [sic]
famously told Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio on June 13 that he didn't know the name of the lead investigator at the Bureau spearheading the effort.
That's almost a month into the alleged investigation. This is a national story. It's a major scandal — and you don't know who the point
guy, or gal, that's tasked with getting to the bottom of this debacle? [...] In fact, the FBI has yet to contact any of the groups targeted by the IRS.
FBI Still Hasn't
Contacted IRS-Targeted Tea Party Groups About Investigation. More than a month and a half after it was announced that the Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI) would launch an investigation into the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) targeting of conservative groups, the groups and their
legal representatives are still waiting to hear from the FBI. Cleta Mitchell, an attorney representing nine tea party groups who were targeted
by the IRS, told CNSNews.com that she has not heard from the FBI regarding the case and questions whether an investigation is actually underway.
Lois Lerner's price for testimony: Immunity.
Embattled IRS official Lois Lerner will not testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee unless she's given immunity from prosecution,
her lawyer told POLITICO Tuesday. "They can obtain her testimony tomorrow by doing it the easy way ... immunity," William W. Taylor III
said in a phone interview. "That's the way to resolve all of this."
Citizens United: The IRS Scandal's
Smoking Gun? In early 2010 the Supreme Court infuriated Obama by declaring the McCain-Feingold ban on independent corporate campaign
spending unconstitutional, effectively disarming the Federal Election Commission as a potential political weapon. [...] And unfortunately for Obama
and the Democrats, the IRS targeting is exactly the kind of abuse Citizens United warned against: a politicized regulatory bureaucracy using
selective enforcement and the threat of litigation to advance the partisan agenda of a corrupt, irresponsible, or overreaching administration.
IRS scandal
could further chill chances of gun control in Senate. The Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups may have
chilled the chances of Congress passing stricter gun laws because it further undermined the public's trust in government to protect
confidential personal information. The Obama administration and gun-control advocates are pushing the Senate to re-introduce
bipartisan legislation that would expand the kinds of gun purchases subject to federal criminal background checks after similar
legislation failed earlier this year. But opponents of the law claimed that giving the government information about gun owners
could lead to abuses.
Will
Obama Follow Richard Nixon As An Asterisk President? Voters understand abuse of power — especially using the
IRS — when they see it. News of IRS harassment would have demolished Obama's carefully cultivated image of moderation
and tolerance. Older voters also would remember Nixon's attempt to sic the IRS on political enemies and know that, in those
good old days, the IRS refused to play ball, but, sadly, not today's IRS. No wonder the IRS targeting of conservative groups
had to be concealed at all costs in the months leading up to the election.
The 'progressive' IRS.
When Michigan Rep. Sander Levin released information this week showing the IRS had included groups with the word "progressive" in their "be on
the lookout lists," Democrats chortled. It proved, they said, the IRS was an equal-opportunity offender. That would fit the preferred
Democratic narrative that the IRS scandal is one of incompetence, not partisan targeting of conservatives. Unfortunately for that argument,
the inspector general for the Treasury Department has issued a clarification. In a letter to Levin on Wednesday, J. Russell George
disclosed that of 298 applicants the IRS flagged as potential political cases, only 20 were progressive — and only six of
these, or 30 percent, were referred for additional attention.
How Crazy Are Democrats? This Crazy.
No Tea Party group has ever been implicated in a terrorist attack or even, as far as I can recall, an isolated act of violence. Attenders of Tea
Party events are notorious for cleaning up after themselves like Boy Scouts. But this survey suggests that partisan Democrats are living in a
parallel universe. [...] No wonder IRS employees, nearly all if whom are likely Obama supporters, thought it was only natural to try to block any
organization with Tea Party in its name!
Where's the special prosecutor?
The IRS was overwhelmingly one-sided in scrutinizing applications. And the agency evidently was completely one-sided in subjecting only conservative
groups to long processing delays and lengthy, often peculiar requests. Example: The IRS asked an Iowa anti-abortion group "how all of your
activities, including the prayer meetings held outside of Planned Parenthood, are considered educational as defined under 501(c)(3) ...."
So that's where things stand — until fresh reporting, a document leak or perhaps a confession sends the story in some new direction.
But seven weeks into this scandal, the fact most Americans know best is that they still don't know much that's definitive.
Cover the IRS, Don't Cover for It.
On Wednesday Russell George, the Treasury inspector general whose original audit broke open the scandal, answered Rep. Sander Levin's charge that the
audit had ignored the targeting of progressives. In a letter released Thursday, Mr. George couldn't have been clearer: The evidence showed
conservative groups were singled out for abuse by the IRS, not liberal groups. While some liberal groups might have wound up on a BOLO list, the
IRS did not target them. "We did not find evidence that the criteria you identified, labeled 'Progressives,' were used by the IRS to select
potential political cases during the 2010 to 2012 timeframe we audited." One hundred percent of the groups with "Tea Party," "Patriot" or
"9/12" in their names were given extra scrutiny.
GOP congressman crumples redacted IRS
report during hearing. During a tense hearing Thursday on the Internal Revenue Service scandal, Illinois Republican Rep. Peter Roskam
crumpled a heavily-redacted IRS report, shouting "This is junk!" and vowing to end the agency's "Kafka-esque" stonewalling. Acting IRS chief Daniel
Werfel tried to explain to the House Ways and Means Committee that the agency released redacted documents to protect taxpayer information, an argument
that appeared to only incense Roskam further.
House committee votes to hold
IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt. An IRS official effectively waived her right not to testify about the tax agency's targeting of
conservative groups, a Republican-led congressional committee concluded on Friday in a vote that cleared the way for Congress to hold her in contempt.
IRS auditor reaffirms that
conservatives, not liberals, were targeted. The IRS inspector general said this week that while some liberal groups were given
extra scrutiny by the tax agency, they were not subjected to the same invasive queries as tea party groups — a finding that seems to
confirm a political bias was at play. In a letter sent late Wednesday and released Thursday, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration
J. Russell George said that just 30 percent of groups with the word "progressive" in their name were put through special scrutiny for
tax-exempt applications, but 100 percent of groups with "tea party," "patriot" or "9/12" in their name were subjected to invasive questioning.
Oversight
Committee Votes: IRS' Lerner Waved [sic] Fifth Amendment Rights With Opening Statement. The House Oversight and Government Reform committee
voted Friday and determined that Lois Lerner, the head of tax exempt groups at the IRS, waved her Fifth Amendment rights during testimony over a month ago
after she voluntarily made an opening statement. In that statement, Lerner said she had done nothing wrong. She was called to testify in front of
the Committee after admitting at a conference that the IRS had inappropriately targeted conservative tea party groups.
House panel finds
IRS official waived Fifth Amendment right, can be forced to testify in targeting probe. A House Republican-led committee approved a
resolution Friday declaring that high-ranking IRS official Lois Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination by delivering a
statement before the committee in May. Lerner used to oversee the IRS division that targeted groups for additional scrutiny when they applied
for tax-exempt status. At a May 22 hearing, she invoked her right not to answer lawmakers' questions after declaring in an opening statement
that she had done nothing wrong.
Issa's panel votes to bring Lerner back
to Hill. Darrell Issa's committee says Lois Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment rights — but her attorney says she isn't going down
without a fight. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted 22-17 on Friday that the embattled IRS official voluntarily waived her
rights by reading an opening statement during a hearing last month on the agency's tea party targeting scandal.
Treasury: IRS targeted
292 Tea Party groups, just 6 progressive groups. Refuting Democratic suggestions that progressive groups were also swept up in the IRS probe
of the tax status of Tea Party organizations, the Treasury Department's inspector general has revealed that just six progressive groups were targeted
compared to 292 conservative groups. In a letter to congressional Democrats, the inspector general also said that 100 percent of Tea Party
groups seeking special tax status were put under IRS review, while only 30 percent of the progressive groups felt the same pressure.
IRS auditor reaffirms that
conservatives, not liberals, were targeted. The IRS inspector general said this week that while some liberal groups were given
extra scrutiny by the tax agency, they were not subjected to the same invasive queries as tea party groups — a finding that seems to
confirm a political bias was at play. In a letter sent late Wednesday and released Thursday [6/27/2013], Treasury Inspector General for
Tax Administration J. Russell George said that just 30 percent of groups with the word "progressive" in their name were put through
special scrutiny for tax-exempt applications, but 100 percent of groups with "tea party," "patriot" or "9/12" in their name were
subjected to invasive questioning.
Treasury IG: Liberal groups
weren't targeted by IRS like Tea Party. Liberal groups seeking tax-exempt status faced less IRS scrutiny than Tea Party groups, according
to the Treasury Department's inspector general. J. Russell George, Treasury's inspector general for tax administration, told Rep. Sandy
Levin (D-Mich.) in a letter dated Wednesday that the IRS did not use inappropriate criteria to scrutinize groups with "progressives" in their name
seeking tax-exempt status.
Dem Congressman Calls for Continued
IRS Use of 'BOLO Lists'. Democrat Rep. Jim McDermott says the IRS should continue to use "BOLO lists," the Be On the Look Out lists that
had agency officials targeting conservatives: "I'm going to stop what I was going to say, except to say one thing," said Rep. McDermott.
"I don't think BOLO lists should be thrown out. Every time I get on a United Airlines flight to go home Seattle, before it leaves the ground,
the first officer leaves the cockpit and goes down with a BOLO list. He is on the lookout for a lot of things on that plane. [... "]
The Editor says...
This is a disingenuous mischaracterization of the commercial pilots' pre-flight checklist, which is required by law. To compare such a safety
measure with an IRS witch hunt is a pernicious canard.
Second IRS staffer pleads the Fifth.
A second IRS employee summoned to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee invoked the Fifth Amendment on Wednesday and refused to answer
questions — a flashback to Lois Lerner, who did the same during a hearing on the agency's scandal last month. Gregory Roseman, who
worked as a deputy director of acquisitions at the IRS, exercised his constitutional rights when Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) started
interrogating him about panel findings that he helped a friend procure potentially $500 million worth of IRS contracts.
IRS official refuses to testify before Congress.
An Internal Revenue Service official on Wednesday invoked his right not to answer questions at a congressional hearing, a day after a Republican report
accused the official of inappropriately awarding federal contracts worth millions of dollars.
New
Developments in House Oversight Investigations of IRS, Benghazi. Rep. Darrell Issa confirmed on On the Record Tuesday evening [6/25/2013]
that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will decide on Friday whether Lois Lerner's Fifth Amendment plea is valid. "You don't
get to pick and choose" what you say and then refuse to answer questions, the Oversight Committee chairman argued. He expects that the committee
will work to get Lerner's "full testimony" in the coming weeks. Issa also provided details on the questionable IRS contracts that surfaced
recently. The granting of these types of contracts to companies like Strong Castle Inc. "looks wrong" and will be investigated by Congress, he
explained.
Neither Democratic or Republican cherry-picked findings will restore the public's trust. Why the IRS Scandal Needs a Special Prosecutor.
Nearly six weeks ago, President Obama responded to an inspector general's report detailing the targeting, which had been long denied by the IRS. [...] The
IG report was based on a cursory audit. It was not a full-fledged investigation. And yet Democrats disingenuously claimed that
it exonerated the Obama administration and the president's re-election campaign from any involvement in IRS targeting.
Werfel's chaff obscures tea party
targeting. The IRS wants the public to think that they also targeted progressives. It's just chaff. When the
Luftwaffe lost so many aircraft to British-developed radar, they developed the countermeasure of spreading clouds of aluminum strips that
offered multiple targets or obscured the area. An analogous countermeasure has just been deployed.
'Lookout
List' Not Much Broader Than Originally Thought, Contrary to Reports. Acting IRS commissioner Danny Werfel on Monday [6/24/2013]
told reporters that the now-infamous "Be On The Lookout" list was far broader than was originally disclosed in the Treasury Department inspector
general's report. [...] A November 2010 version of the list obtained by National Review Online, however, suggests that while the list did
contain the word "progressive," screeners were in fact instructed to treat "progressive" groups differently from "tea party" groups.
IRS cases were referred to 'Group 7822'.
The Internal Revenue Service diverted applications for tax-exempt status from tea party and like-minded organizations to a special track known
as Group 7822 for special scrutiny, according to transcripts of an interview by congressional interrogators with a key IRS official.
The Obama White House Tapes. [Scroll down] But
a detailed examination of the videos reveals [IRS Union Chief Maureen] Kelley's eye-opening description of how the federal bureaucracy really works. A
statement that was echoed separately by [ABC senior correspondent Claire] Shipman in her "Breakout Session 2." Unwittingly, they confirm exactly
the charge made by an anonymous IRS official in Cincinnati that "everything comes from the top." A close look also reveals a stunning admission
from [Cokie] Roberts of her own influence in the Obama White House as she openly boasts about directly influencing policy through Valerie Jarrett.
The IRS, the NSA, and Obama's Dirty Tricks.
The IRS scandal proved that Federal agents refused 501(c)3 and (c)4 status to conservative political groups. That tax-exempt status was needed for
political groups to receive donations. The Supreme Court has ruled that campaign donations — to any political group or party —
are free speech. The IRS then, by denying tax exempt status only to applicants who had the words 'Tea Party" or "Patriot" in their names —
denied those groups their First Amendment right to free speech. Furthermore, these IRS officials also violated the rights of these conservative groups
to protection under the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment states that all persons in the United States are guaranteed equal treatment under
the law. What is particularly disturbing is that IRS employees gave 95% of their campaign donations to Democrats.
Government gone wild. With each passing week comes more proof
that President Obama's government is out of control. The past couple of months alone have produced a long list of scandals: The Internal Revenue Service
spent taxpayer dollars to target groups Mr. Obama considered his opponents. [...] In response to the IRS scandal, the president announced that the acting director
of the IRS would resign. This also didn't hold anyone accountable: The director was scheduled to leave his post this month anyway — even
before the scandal broke. Announcing his departure was nothing more than a distraction and a poor attempt to make him a scapegoat.
IRS probe finds more screening lists. The Internal Revenue Service
used multiple lists of inappropriate criteria in reviewing applications for tax-exempt status up until this month, the temporary head of the tax agency said
Monday [6/24/2013] in his first report on the targeting of conservative groups.
IRS chief:
Agency improperly screened groups until last month. The acting head of the IRS said Monday that the agency was still giving improper scrutiny to
groups seeking tax-exempt status when he arrived in May, suggesting that the probe into the IRS's treatment of conservative groups could widen. Danny
Werfel, the acting chief, said that the IRS division overseeing tax-exempt applications used other "be on the lookout" lists as they tried to flag cases that
needed more attention.
Have you noticed growing assaults on free
speech? In one case, an IRS agent allegedly demanded that the board members of an Iowa pro-life group sign a declaration that they wouldn't picket
Planned Parenthood. Several pro-Israel groups have said that they were singled out by the IRS for audits after clashing with the administration over its
policy on settlements. Then there's the story of Catherine Engelbrecht. Catherine says that after applying for tax-exempt status for a voter-integrity
group called True the Vote, she and her husband were visited by the FBI, the ATF, OSHA, and an affiliate of the EPA. When all was said and done, OSHA told the
Engelbrecht's they had to cough up $25,000 in fines. The EPA affiliate demanded they spend $42,000 on new sheds. And three years after applying for
tax-exempt status, True the Vote is still awaiting approval. The list of stories like these goes on and on.
Yes, IRS harassment blunted the Tea Party ground game.
The controversy over the IRS's harassment of conservative groups continues. President Obama's team continues to blame low-level bureaucrats. Some conservatives
suspect a more sinister explanation: that the levers of government were used to attack an existential threat to the president's 2012 reelection. The
president and his party dismiss this as a paranoid fantasy. The evidence, however, is enough to make one believe that targeting Tea Party groups would have
been an effective campaign strategy going into the 2012 election cycle.
When Untruth Undermines Democracy.
Truth is the lifeblood of democracy. Without honesty, the foundations of consensual government crumble. If the Internal Revenue Service acts unlawfully,
our voluntary system of citizens computing their own taxes implodes. Yet Lois Lerner, one of the IRS's top officials, would not answer simple questions about
her agency's conduct during congressional testimony, instead pleading the Fifth Amendment. Any taxpayer who tried that with an IRS auditor would end up
fined and in court.
IRS Scandal's Origins Become Clearer Amid Other
Questions. The origin of the U.S. tax agency's scrutiny of small-government groups is becoming clearer as lawmakers release transcribed interviews
with IRS workers. The latest came yesterday, when Democrats posted the text of congressional investigators' meeting with John Shafer, a screening manager
based in Cincinnati. What's less clear is exactly why the groups' applications were delayed for so long, why the IRS couldn't come up with clear rules and
why senior executives didn't tell interested lawmakers about concerns earlier.
Exit the IRS Stage Left. [Scroll down] All these named
and unnamed IRS officers have one thing in common. They were dealing almost exclusively with conservatives' applications for tax-exempt status from
2010 to 2012, which they insist is purely coincidental. That is what we are told. Oh, and a few more things we do know about Holly Paz.
Roel Campos, her lawyer, has notified us that she is "the hero" in this IRS smog. Moreover, she has been placed on administrative leave. And
finally she is a good citizen. She contributed $4,000 to President Barack Obama's election campaign 2008. Her lawyer assures us that "her
political preferences have absolutely no impact on the discharge of her duties." Her donations were just another coincidence.
Distrust
Growing: 70% Believe IRS Decision to Target Conservatives Was Made in DC. While the controversy over the National Security Agency
surveillance program has dominated the news recently, concern about the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of Tea Party groups and other conservative
organizations remains high and is inching up. Despite the large number of controversies engulfing official Washington, the number of people
following the IRS scandal has actually increased in recent weeks.
IRS Tea Party Targeting Was Directed
From D.C.. A D.C.-based supervisor in the IRS's tax-exempt status division has indicated during interviews with congressional investigators
that the targeting was deliberate and not run by rogue agents in Cincinnati.
What the IRS Has Become. The IRS has hypocritically ignored the
Constitution, having targeted groups whose names included what America once stood for: patriotism, freedom, and the Constitution. This will be emphasized on
June 20, when Judicial Watch, the people's watchdog over the government, holds a public panel discussion with some of those who were victimized.
Whistle-blower says he was targeted by IRS. P. Jeffrey Black
bumped up against his bosses in the Federal Air Marshal Service, eventually becoming a whistle-blower and testifying to a closed-door congressional hearing before
his retirement in 2010. He had taken a long list of complaints to lawmakers about how the air marshals service was run, ranging from problems keeping marshals
on flights to allegations of ineptitude and favoritism by managers.
Witch
Hunting, 2013: NSA, IRS, Justice. What happens when the government engages in a secret witch hunt, a hunt which can easily
be used for political purposes (and therefore probably is)? "If you have nothing to hide," says the NSA, "you have nothing to fear."
That's a direct quote. The answer may come from examination of the tactics and practices of another secret government terrorist group,
the IRS, which collects financial data, and apparently much more, from citizens and citizen groups. The people have plenty to fear, as
it turns out.
The left's outrage over the IRS turns to a plea to 'move on' Moving a Washington scandal
out of town. It's amazing that there are those — including The New York Times — that continue to
prop up the flawed finger-pointing of the Internal Revenue Service, blaming a couple of rogue agents out of its Cincinnati office
for the unlawful targeting of conservative groups. The New York Times — along with the IRS — is simply
wrong in their assertion that this scandal is based in, and limited to, Cincinnati and not Washington, D.C. We know Washington
was deeply involved. We have letters from Lois Lerner, director of exempt organizations, and IRS attorney Carter Hull, and
Cincinnati officials have said they were micromanaged by D.C. officials.
IRS official in D.C.
reviewed tea party applications. An Internal Revenue Service supervisor in Washington says she was personally involved in
scrutinizing some of the earliest applications from tea party groups seeking tax-exempt status, including some requests that languished for
more than a year without action.
No, the FBI isn't
investigating the IRS. They're on the same team. FBI Director Robert Mueller seems to have quite the talent for
forgetting when it comes to the various scandals that his law enforcement organization is supposed to be investigating. For
example, when he was question by Congress yesterday [6/13/2013], he knew nothing about the alleged investigation into the IRS's abuse
of power.
IRS supervisor in D.C.
admits to overseeing tea party targeting. An IRS supervisor working in Washington told congressional investigators that she
personally reviewed applications from groups for tax-exempt status, in testimony that appears to show the agency's scrutiny of conservative
groups extended beyond the confines of the office in Cincinnati. Holly Paz, who was a supervisor in the Internal Revenue Service's
tax-exempt status division, indicated during an interview with congressional investigators that she did review such applications, but
indicated that she believed "tea party" meant political advocacy in general — not necessarily conservative groups.
Report:
Accounts of Lerner, Paz Disabled at Request of IRS Chief Counsel's Office. The IRS has disabled the computer accounts of Lois
Lerner, the director of exempt organizations who's been put on administrative leave, and Holly Paz, the former director of the Office of
Rulings and Agreements, according to an IRS source familiar with the situation. The source says that their accounts were shut down
shortly after 10:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 13, at the request of Glenn Melcher, who identifies himself as a lawyer with the
office of the IRS's chief counsel.
IRS: We Investigate
Pro-Israel Groups for Terrorism Ties. Eliana Johnson of National Review Online reports that Cincinnati-based IRS agent Gary
Muthert told the House Oversight Committee that the IRS does, in fact, subject pro-Israel tax-exempt groups to higher scrutiny — by
sending their applications to a special IRS unit that investigates them for ties to terrorism.
The IRS vs. Pro-Israel Groups.
Applications of pro-Israel groups for tax-exempt status are routinely routed to an antiterrorism unit within the Internal Revenue Service for
additional screening, according to the testimony of a Cincinnati-based IRS agent. Asked whether Jewish or pro-Israel applications are
treated differently from other applications, Gary Muthert told House Oversight Committee investigators that they are considered "specialty
cases" and that "probably" all are sent to an IRS unit that examines groups for potential terrorist ties.
Obama's Loss of Trust and Credibility.
[Scroll down] Nowhere is this a more pressing problem than in the Internal Revenue Service scandal; the president added the newly
minted responsibility to administer parts of the Affordable Care Act to the IRS's responsibility for collecting tax revenues. The
idea that the public will trust the IRS after what has been revealed about ideology contaminating the processing of applications for
tax-exempt status has dealt it a body blow from which it will be difficult if not impossible to recover.
The Cincinnati Lie. The IRS hadn't
spoken four sentences about its targeting of conservative groups before it blamed "our line people in Cincinnati." Those were the
words of Lois Lerner on May 10, when she acknowledged the misconduct in an answer to a question planted at an American Bar
Association conference. In a phone session with reporters later that day, she famously admitted that she is not good at math.
It turns out that she is not good at geography, either.
Why the IRS IG Stopped with an Audit.
Among all the unanswered questions about the IRS's illegal targeting of conservative organizations, one is most crucial: Who
ordered this extreme scrutiny? Amazingly, IRS inspector general J. Russell George, responsible for the investigation asking
those questions about the IRS, has testified that he did not obtain that information. Details of that testimony are interesting.
Representative Tom Graves (R., Ga.) asked, "Have you asked the individuals who ordered them to use this extra scrutiny to punish, or
penalize, or postpone, or deny?" George turns around to confer with his assistant. Just the fact that the inspector general had
to confer to know the answer to this crucial question is amazing.
IRS Targeting Coincided With
Obama's Bashing of Groups. As [a recent] report by Jim Angle of Fox News makes sterling clear, the IRS targeting of
conservative groups was done amidst a climate in which the president of the United States was bashing those very organizations as a
threat to the nation. Obama set the tone, and IRS officials got the message. Who doesn't want to please the boss,
especially — you think there are lots of Republicans working at senior levels of the IRS? — when you agree with him?
Whether the order for this came out of the White House or not, those running this operation believed that had a bright green
light to do what they did.
Why Hasn't IRS Director
Lois Lerner Been Fired? Amidst the firestorm of scandals swirling around the Obama administration, the IRS' coordinated
targeting of conservative groups has perhaps been the most frightening. The use of the IRS — arguably one of the most apolitical
branches of government — as a strategic political weapon is a betrayal of Americans' trust in the most basic functions of government.
Did the IRS Fire Holly Paz?
An IRS source says that the Internal Revenue Service has fired Holly Paz, the director of the agency's Rulings and Agreements office.
The source says Paz was fired last Friday, and a second IRS source tells National Review Online that Paz "dropped off the edge of the
world" that day, and that her agency-issued computer, phone, and Blackberry show no activity since then. The IRS would not confirm
or deny reports of Paz's firing, citing her right to privacy as protected by federal law.
Yet
another arrest-ridden liberal protest gets the atta-boy from national press. The coverage of the Tea Party, especially
racism charges, is meant to discourage home-schooling moms and flat-tax dads from getting involved and to put off possible newcomers.
The press largely finds it distasteful when conservatives voice their beliefs in public and would like them to keep it as quiet as
possible if they feel the need to talk at all. The persecution of Tea Party groups at the hands of the IRS institutionalized
this message. One method was unfair and unethical; its ensconcing in the halls of government power was unconstitutional.
But make no mistake about it. Neither is merely a mistake.
Is the FBI Really
Investigating the IRS Abuse Scandal? The IRS abuse of hundreds of conservative groups has gripped the nation
since it broke on May 10. President Obama declared that he was outraged by it, and fake-fired the acting IRS
commissioner to show his rage. Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress on May 15 "I can assure you and the American
people that we will take a dispassionate view of this." He has evidently made good on the dispassionate part, if not
the view. Because to date, there is no evidence that the Federal Bureau of Investigations is even investigating the
abuse. At all.
FBI hasn't
contacted a single tea party group in IRS probe, groups say. There is no evidence that the FBI has contacted a single
tea party group in its criminal investigation of the Internal Revenue Service, according to the groups the IRS abused. "We have
not been contacted by any federal investigative agency and, to date, none of our clients have been contacted or interviewed by the FBI,"
Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice told The Daily Caller on Thursday [6/13/2013].
Poof! Media drop coverage of IRS
scandal. That was fast — but not unexpected. The media frenzy over the IRS scandal, which dominated
the Big Three networks for two weeks, has practically disappeared from the news, according to a new report. The dominant story
in May when ABC, CBS and NBC crawled over each other for new details and provided 96 stories on morning and evening broadcasts has
fallen to just one this week on ABC's Good Morning America, according to the Media Research Center. In some cases, it was
replaced by the National Security Agency snooping scandal.
Cincy
Democrats boiling mad at Obama for IRS scapegoating. Democrats in Cincinnati are outraged at the Obama administration
for the negative portrayal of their city in light of the recent IRS scandal, according to Cinncinnati.com. Former Cincinnati
mayor and Rep. Tom Luken and Hamilton County auditor Dusty Rhodes are quoted at length in a statement that calls the IRS actions an
"outright assault" on free speech and religious freedoms, and describes the Obama administration's attempts to blame the targeting
on low-level employees as "offensive and beyond reason."
Blaming
Cincinnati. A Cincinnati-based Internal Revenue Service employee is pushing back against claims by Lois Lerner and other top
IRS officials that the agency's Cincinnati office was responsible for the the targeting of tea-party groups and the botched processing of
their applications for tax exemption. Elizabeth Hofacre, who coordinated "emerging issues" cases for the IRS and handled all
tea-party applications between April and August 2010, called Lerner's May 10 disclosure of the scandal at a tax-law conference "a
nuclear strike" on Cincinnati employees.
The Era of Contempt. It is a dazzling
tapestry of mismanagement at best. But there is one theme that connects it all: contempt. First, we have a rogue agency
named the Internal Revenue Service interfering in the lives of ordinary folks with views that are conservative or at odds with the
Administration. This contemptuous act against Americans who have committed no apparent wrongdoing or financial legerdemain is
heavy-handedness reminiscent of banana republics or authoritarian regimes of yesteryear. [...] Indeed, the IRS has shown itself to be
unworthy in its principal role as the instrument of revenue collection from American people and companies.
The Sum of All Fears.
Herewith a partial list of political groups that said they were subjected to over-the-top audits by the Internal Revenue Service:
Greenwich Tea Party Patriots, Greater Phoenix Tea Party Patriots, Laurens County Tea Party, Northeast Tarrant Tea Party, Myrtle Beach
Tea Party, Albuquerque Tea Party, San Antonio Tea Party, Richmond Tea Party, Manassas Tea Party, Honolulu Tea Party, Waco Tea Party,
Chattanooga Tea Party and American Patriots Against Government Excess. What that target list shows is there was never one "tea
party." It was collections of citizens spontaneously gathering all over the country under one easy-to-remember name.
Their purpose was to do politics. For that, their government hit them hard.
IRS Agent Sherry
Wan Caught on Tape Policing Political Speech. If every group that applied to the IRS for tax-exempt status were
subjected to the kind of scrutiny that LifeNews reports one pro-life group was subjected to, we wouldn't have a scandal.
But Media Matters is out there waging its political war on Fox and attacking conservatives without interference or lectures
from any IRS agents. So, we have a scandal.
Barack Obama: 'We'll Hold
Somebody Accountable!'. Sarah Hall Ingram was commissioner of the embattled IRS office from 2009 to 2012, roughly
the period that the agency is accused of singling out Tea Party and conservative groups for extra scrutiny, based on nothing but
their political bent. As a firestorm grows around the IRS, Ms. Ingram quietly left the tax-exempt office and was made director
of the IRS division Affordable Care Act division, largely responsible for implementing "ObamaCare" and handling the wealth of health
information that will pour into the federal government. She should have been fired.
Fifth Washington-Based IRS
Worker Goes. The Internal Revenue Service has replaced the agency's director of Rulings and Agreements, Holly Paz, who served
in that position while her division singled out conesrvative [sic] groups for inappropriate scrutiny.
Boehner Doesn't Buy White House Timetable On
IRS. House Speaker John Boehner says it is "inconceivable" that top White House officials didn't tell President Barack Obama
once they learned the Internal Revenue Service had been targeting conservative political groups for extra scrutiny when they applied
for tax-exempt status.
We can't trust Obama.
The IRS scandal is a cancer because if you can't trust Obama to keep that agency from being politicized, you can't trust him to keep anything
immune from politics — including healthcare and, more relevant, the National Security Agency.
The Information-Revealing Service.
You do not have to believe in the Templar treasure, chemtrails, or a second shooter on the grassy knoll to believe that what John Eastman is
describing is rife with the ingredients of a government intrigue. Eastman is Henry Salvatori Professor of Law and Community Service at
Chapman University, in Orange, Calif. Since September 2011 he has also been chairman of the board of the National Organization for
Marriage, a group that advocates for traditional marriage.
I hope she has "read only" permission. Computer
Access Not Restricted, Lerner Continues to Log In to IRS System. Lois Lerner, the Internal Revenue Service's director of Exempt
Organizations currently on paid leave, has not had any of her computer access restricted since she abdicated her responsibilities, according
to an IRS source with knowledge of the situation.
The Totalitarianism
at the Heart of the Obama Scandals. Let's begin with the Internal Revenue Service's thuggish targeting of conservative
groups. From April 2010 to April 2012, the IRS placed on hold the processing of applications for tax-exempt status received from
organizations with such presumably conservative indicators as "Tea Party," "patriots," or "9/12" in their names, approving only four
while green-lighting applications from several dozen organizations whose names included the likely left-leaning terms "progressive,"
"progress," "liberal," or "equality."
Independents blame White House for IRS
scandal. A clear majority of independents, and even a plurality of Democrats, believe high-ranking IRS officials were aware
of the agency's harassment of conservatives' political organizing, according to a new Gallup poll. [...] Sixty-two percent of adults
disapprove of his handling of the IRS scandal, said the Gallup poll. Only 32 percent of adults approve of his reaction to
the scandal.
How to Investigate the IRS.
The woman who helped expose IRS abuse of conservative activists has more news to share: The abuse continues, and she sees no evidence
that the White House, the IRS or the Justice Department is doing anything to end it. "This is not in the past tense. This is
still going on," says Cleta Mitchell, perhaps the country's pre-eminent expert on campaign-finance and political tax law.
Scandalzapoppin. Here are just two examples of the seemingly
inexhaustible mound of evidence of pervasive administration lawlessness that are turning up daily. The first involves the almost daily
revelations that the IRS officials' Congressional testimony was utterly false.
An IRS Political Timeline. Perhaps the only
useful part of the inspector general's audit of the IRS was its timeline. We know that it was August 2010 when the IRS issued its first "Be On the
Lookout" list, flagging applications containing key conservative words and issues. The criteria would expand in the months to come. What else
was happening in the summer and fall of 2010?
Report:
IRS Lawyer Who Oversaw Tea-Party Targeting Said to Be Retiring. A tax law specialist and attorney who processed tea-party cases in the
Internal Revenue Service's Exempt Organization's Technical Office is retiring, according to an IRS source. Reached over the phone, the lawyer,
Carter Hull, would not confirm or deny the report, saying only, "I cannot verify anything about this entire matter." Hull's retirement comes
after years of service in the Exempt Organization, where he has served "for decades," the source tells National Review Online.
IRS Reviewing
64,600,000 Pages of Documents for Info 'Potentially Relevant' to Tea Party Targeting. In a belated and incomplete response to the
House Ways and Means Committee's request for Internal Revenue Service documents relating to the agency's targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups
for heightened scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status, Acting IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel has informed the committee that the agency is in
the process of reviewing approximately 64,600,000 pages of documents from IRS officials "who may have potentially relevant information" about the targeting.
The IRS Can't Plead Incompetence.
Some ask, "Don't conservatives know they have to be questioned like anyone else?" Yes, they do. Their grievance centers on the fact they
have not been. They were targeted, and their rights violated. The most compelling evidence of that is what happened to the National
Organization for Marriage. Its chairman, John Eastman, testified before the House Ways and Means Committee, and the tale he told was different
from the now-familiar stories of harassment and abuse.
Public Is Skeptical of Obama on IRS Scandal.
The latest poll, conducted by the New York Times and CBS, shows not only that a majority thinks the IRS was wrong to target conservatives but that nearly
seven in 10 believe it was driven by political motivations. Additionally, 44 percent think the Obama administration was involved. Only a quarter
of respondents think the IRS acted appropriately, which is still too high for comfort but not nearly high enough to make the story go away.
Obama's Ethical Gymnastics.
Presidential ethics are now situational. [...] The president is outraged that the IRS went after those deemed politically suspicious. So he sacked
the acting head of the IRS, Steven Miller, who was scheduled to step down soon anyway. The administration remains opposed to any partisanship of
the sort that might deny tax-exempt status to the Barack H. Obama Foundation, founded by the president's half-brother Malik, but would indefinitely
delay almost all the applications from those suspected of tea-party sympathies. Consequently, Lois Lerner granted the former's request in 30 days,
but took the Fifth Amendment when asked the reasons for obstructing the applications of the latter.
Rubio Fronts for Schumer, Durbin.
Screened from view by the dust-up over IRS and other recent scandals, an amazing left-wing power grab is being guided through the U.S.
Senate. This remarkable measure is the mirror-image of the IRS affair, the evident goal of which was to suppress Republican/tea
party votes in the 2012 election.
IRS Staff Cite Washington Link.
Two Internal Revenue Service employees in the agency's Cincinnati office told congressional investigators that IRS officials in Washington
helped direct the probe of tea-party groups that began in 2010. Transcripts of the interviews, viewed Wednesday [6/5/2013] by The
Wall Street Journal, appear to contradict earlier statements by top IRS officials, who have blamed lower-level workers in Cincinnati.
Tips For Right-Wingers On The
IRS Scandal. At Tuesday's congressional hearings on the IRS, witnesses provided shocking details about the agency's
abuse of conservative groups. The IRS leaked the donor list of The National Organization for Marriage to their political
opponents, the pro-gay-marriage Human Rights Campaign. This is not idle speculation: The documents had an internal IRS
stamp on them. The list of names was then published on a number of liberal websites and NOM's donors were harassed.
The IRS demanded that all members of the Coalition for Life of Iowa swear under penalty of perjury that they wouldn't pray,
picket or protest outside of Planned Parenthood. They were also asked to provide details of their prayer meetings.
IRS
employees: Washington IRS official Carter Hull oversaw targeting of conservative groups. A Washington IRS attorney named
Carter Hull closely oversaw the targeting of conservative nonprofit groups and suggested questions that IRS employees could ask of
conservative and Tea Party groups applying for tax-exempt nonprofit status, according to interviews that two IRS employees gave with
congressional investigators. "I was essentially a front person, because I had no autonomy or no authority to act on [applications]
without Carter Hull's influence or input," said Elizabeth Hofacre, an employee of the Cincinnati IRS office, according to a new report
in the Wall Street Journal.
Misfired
email tipped off DC officials to IRS scandal in 2010, earlier than previously known. A misfired email from an Internal
Revenue Service employee in Ohio alerted officials in Washington that conservative groups were being targeted a full year earlier than
previously acknowledged, Fox News confirms. Transcripts from interviews held with IRS employees in Cincinnati show that managers
in Washington knew about the heightened scrutiny put on Tea Party groups applying for tax-exempt status in July 2010.
IRS digging through
64 million pages relevant to tea party targeting. It may take Congress considerable time to comb through the paper trail
of the IRS' targeting of conservative groups — the records stretch at least 64 million pages long. CNS News
reports that Acting IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel has informed Congress that the IRS is currently reviewing well over 64 million
documents connected with officials "who may have potentially relevant information" about the targeting."
IRS workers say supervisors directed
targeting. Two Internal Revenue Service agents working in the agency's Cincinnati office say higher-ups in Washington
directed the targeting of conservative political groups when they applied for tax-exempt status, a contention that directly contradicts
claims made by the agency since the scandal erupted last month.
Why
is Obama's OFA group seeking exemption? Via Liberty News, why Issa and company haven't been hammering this point since
the first hearing on the IRS scandal, I'll never understand. One of the left's most persistent defenses of the agency over the
past month, long before the memo came down about "GOP overreach," is that the IRS was simply overzealous in a good cause. Too many
groups are abusing tax exemption under section 501(c)(4), a provision designed for "social welfare" groups, by engaging in electoral
activities while keeping their donors hush-hush.
What
were IRS biggies really doing at the White House? Among the frequently heard memes on the IRS scandal is the absence of hard
proof linking the illegal harassment of conservative, evangelical and pro-Israel groups to the Obama White House. A typical example
came Tuesday during the House Ways and Means Committee hearing, when Rep. Joseph Crowley, D-N.Y., mocked Republicans on the panel by saying
that "there is no smoking gun." The fact that the proverbial smoking gun has yet to be found, however, isn't proof that it doesn't
exist.
Democrat Defends IRS
Targeting of Traditional Marriage Group. Calling the tax-exempt status of the National Organization for Marriage
(NOM) a "charade," Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) said it should not qualify for 501(c)(4) status with the Internal Revenue
Service, because it is not a social welfare group but political in nature.
IRS Agent to
Pro-Life Group: 'Please Explain in Detail the Activities at [Your] Prayer Meetings'. ["]Please explain in detail
the activities at the prayer meetings. Also, please provide the percentage of time your organization spends on prayer groups
as compared with the other activities of the organization. Please explain in detail the signs that are being held up
outside of Planned Parenthood and explain how they are considered educational.["]
Congressman:
Pro-Life Group's IRS Story Not Necessarily Credible. Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) criticized six witnesses who were
targeted for their conservative political beliefs by the IRS at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on Tuesday. McDermott
called the Committee's IRS investigation "political theater," saying, "The mistake here was that the staff organizing the organizations
used the names of the organizations rather than the work they do and asked improper questions to figure that out."
Democrats
unable to produce witness from targeted liberal group for IRS hearing. During a House Ways and Means Committee
hearing Tuesday, six witnesses were called to testify about their groups being targeted by the Internal Revenue Service.
The witnesses were from various conservative, Tea Party, pro-life, pro-marriage, and other patriotic groups. Although the
Democrats on the committee were given the opportunity to call up a witness from a liberal group targeted by the IRS, they
declined, according to Ways and Means Chairman David Camp, R-Mich.
The Exploding IRS Scandal.
Yesterday's congressional hearings turned out to be a disaster for the IRS and, more broadly, for the Obama administration.
We're now hearing from real people who are telling real stories about real harassment. It's all quite chilling, from efforts
to intimidate donors and illegally releasing tax returns, to pressuring pro-life groups not to protest outside of Planned Parenthood
organizations, to demanding to know about the prayer activities of citizens. This kind of abuse of power, used in this manner,
is something I can't recall having seen in my three decades in politics.
IRS
targeting of Tea Party is no mere political scandal. Alabama Tea Party leader Becky Gerritson was roundly applauded
yesterday when her voice cracked as she concluded her testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee about the illegal harassment
of an estimated 500 conservative, religious and pro-Israel groups by the IRS during the 2010 and 2012 campaigns: "This was a
willful act of intimidation to discourage a point of view. What the government did to our little group in Wetumka, Ala., was
un-American. It isn't a matter of firing or arresting individuals. The individuals who sought to intimidate us were
acting as they thought they should in a government culture that has little respect for its citizens.
White House Counsel
Robert Bauer: Architect of IRS Abuse? When the FBI finally fires up its criminal investigation of the IRS targeting of Tea
Party groups, there is one person the special agent in charge better be sure to interview — former White House Counsel Robert
Bauer. The FBI may discover the whole IRS mess leads through the land of campaign finance "reform" and an obsession with speech
regulation, an obsession shared by Bauer. Any criminal investigation identifies for further scrutiny those with motive, opportunity,
and means, and Bauer deserves no quarter from FBI investigators on those three counts.
The GOP and the IRS. The hearings on the
IRS fiasco are good theatre and admittedly necessary; but where were the Republicans, not only over the past three years that the IRS
was targeting conservative groups, but over the past three decades as the more and more power was granted to this same agency —
an agency with the potential to be transformed into a de facto secret police. The Republicans were, by consistently agreeing to
more complexities in the tax code and the need for stringent tax enforcement due to ever expanding government expenditures, complicit
in the creation of a bureaucracy now out of control.
'What did he know, and when
did he know it?' [Scroll down] For example, someone in the IRS leaked confidential tax returns of a group that
exercised its free-speech rights to support traditional marriage. The leaked tax returns contained the names and addresses of
major donors to the National Organization for Marriage, thus allowing opponents to harass them. We know that someone at the
IRS leaked the documents (a felony) because they contained internal IRS coding added after the organization submitted the returns.
The administration claimed only lower-level IRS employees were involved, but lower-level employees say the directives came from
Washington.
IRS refuses to
turn over documents on targeting to Senate. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Sen. Orrin Hatch
of Utah, the panel's top Republican, gave the IRS a May 31 deadline to answer dozens of questions related to the special scrutiny
the agency was giving to right-leaning groups seeking tax-exempt status. But the troubled IRS let the deadline go by.
Politico
Attacks Victims of IRS Scandal. When the trifecta of scandals first broke over the White House a few weeks ago, the media
(who were literally blocking the truth from getting out about the IRS and Benghazi) were so caught off guard that for a couple of weeks
they accidentally acted like real media and just reported the facts. Over Memorial Day weekend that all changed.
Soros Groups
Dodged Scrutiny, Pushed Tea Party Profiling. IRS profiling of Tea Party groups was endorsed by Democrats who ignored
tax-exempt groups funded by billionaire backer George Soros and others who encouraged this assault on democracy and the Constitution.
The Growing Stench of
Corruption. Nearly half of those surveyed — 47 percent — believe the president
isn't telling the truth when he says he didn't know the IRS was giving extra scrutiny to the applications of conservative
groups seeking tax-exempt status. More than half — 55 percent — say the IRS actions raise
questions about the administration's "overall honesty and integrity."
Paul
Ryan Blasts Dem Rep. For Claiming IRS Investigation Just 'Political Theater'. During a congressional hearing into
the scandal surrounding the IRS's targeting of conservative groups, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) claimed that the actions of some
mid-level staffers in the revenue service was "stupid" but was not a conspiracy against conservatives. He implied that the
groups seeking tax-exempt status should have rethought applying for that status in the first place. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)
blasted his Democratic colleague for suggesting that the groups that were targeted by the IRS invited that scrutiny.
Conservative
groups testify about targeted treatment from IRS. In often emotional testimony on Tuesday [6/4/2013] before a House
panel, Tea Party and conservative activists said the IRS had stonewalled tax-exempt applications and chilled their First Amendment
rights. Representatives from groups singled out by the IRS, in their first appearance before a congressional panel, said that
they received a string of intrusive questions from the agency as it considered their applications, and that the IRS targeting had
been a significant burden on their organization.
White House
Spokesman vs. IRS Whistleblowers: Who's Telling the Truth? White House Press Secretary Jay Carney's assertions
that "line IRS employees in Cincinnati" were responsible for the Internal Revenue Service scandal directly contradicts testimony
from two unnamed IRS whistleblowers who told congressional investigators the targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups was
coordinated from the Washington headquarters.
Inside IRS Unit Under Fire.
The Internal Revenue Service unit under fire for its reviews of conservative organizations has a long history of targeting groups with
extra scrutiny, including foreclosure-assistance charities, credit-counseling services and New York Jewish charities, interviews with
current and former employees show. The scrutiny has included such tactics as listening to telephone calls between groups and their
clients, according to one group's lawyer. In the case of tea-party organizations, IRS officials studied social-media postings to
gauge political activity.
What Enron and the IRS Have
in Common. IRS senior managers like acting Commissioner Steven Miller insist that the illicit behavior was the
work of a handful of rogue employees. The trouble is that even though we are starting to learn who those employees are
and who supervised them, we still don't know what orders they were acting on, why no one stopped them and why they thought
it was appropriate to selectively harass private citizens on the basis of their using such dangerous labels as "Tea Party,"
"liberty" and "patriot."
Leftist
Groups Enjoy IRS Tax-Exempt Status While Tea Party Suffers. Campaign finance zealots and free speech regulators
have sought to stifle the freedom of conservative organizations, such as the Tea Party, by falsely claiming they are "political"
while giving a pass to leftist groups that still enjoy unimpaired 501(c) IRS tax-exempt status. As the IRS attacked Tea Party
groups, it left hundreds of leftist activist groups alone. A quick review of just eight of those leftist, tax-exempt activist
groups demonstrates the IRS's hypocrisy.
Dem.
Rep. Lashes Out at Targeted Witnesses: You Asked For It. Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) not only blamed the victims of
the IRS's targeting on Tuesday — he also implied the IRS would have been justified targeting conservative and Tea Party
groups if the agency did so based on what the groups stood for instead of on the words in their names.
At IRS Hearing:
Talk Of 'Jackboot Of Tyranny'. We now have faces and emotional words to attach to the scandal surrounding the Internal
Revenue Service and its targeting of conservative "tea party" and "patriot" groups during the 2012 campaign cycle. At a House
Ways and Means Committee hearing Tuesday, representatives of six organizations described the long delays they have experienced when
trying to get the IRS to rule on applications for tax-exempt status.
Listen to Grassroots Voices of
IRS Victims. Democratic Representative Jim McDermott told representatives of the groups that were singled out for unfair
treatment by the IRS at a hearing this morning that they were to blame for what happened since their political motivations should have
rendered them ineligible for nonprofit status in the first place. This is all part of a counter-narrative that the left has been
working hard to establish in the last month in order to divert the public from the misbehavior of the IRS.
Megyn
Kelly Blows Up Over Dem Rep's Grilling Of Tea Party Leader. If you thought Rep. Paul Ryan's take down of Democratic
colleague Rep. Jim McDermott's "political theater" comments at today's House hearing on the IRS targeting conservatives was harsh,
wait until you see Megyn Kelly's reaction. [...] Radio host Chris Plante also had some tough words for Congressman McDermott, who he
said was "unencumbered by any quaint, old-fashioned notions of decency, honesty and integrity."
IRS
Victims Testify as New Agency Scandal Emerges. Already heavily criticized for targeting conservative groups, the
Internal Revenue Service absorbed another blow Tuesday as new details emerged about senior officials enjoying luxury hotel rooms,
free drinks and free food at a $4.1 million training conference.
Stephanie
Cutter Attended WH Meetings with IRS. An interesting fact emerges from a look at a transcript of last Friday's edition of
"The Lead With Jake Tapper" — Stephanie Cutter was in on the White House meetings that IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman
attended. Cutter insists that Shulman was simply meeting about implementation of ObamaCare — and in fairness, one of her
responsibilities was managing communications strategy for the unpopular law. But as everyone knows, Stephanie Cutter's expertise
is not primarily in the policy area; it is in the realm of politics: Political strategy and communications.
Obama Attack Dog
Cutter Met With IRS Chief at the White House. The curious case of former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman's 157 meetings
at the White House is now more curious with the revelation that he attended meetings with Stephanie Cutter, Deputy Campaign Manager for
President Obama's 2012 reelection campaign. While she technically served a stint as a White House advisor to the President, her
role has always been that of an aggressive political operator. That their meetings coincided with the IRS targeting of conservative
and Tea Party organizations raises many questions.
Stephanie
Cutter Attended WH Meetings With IRS Chief. The president's deputy campaign manager attended the "nonpolitical"
ObamaCare implementation meetings with the former IRS commissioner at the White House. She wasn't there to discuss the
Easter Egg Roll.
Obama's
Campaign Team Comes Out to Defend the IRS. Last week on CNN's The Lead with Jake Tapper, former Deputy Campaign Manager
for Barack Obama, Stephanie Cutter, openly admitted she was in on meetings with former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman at the White
House. Cutter argued that because she was in those meetings, then of course nothing discriminatory or illegal was
happening and offered a full defense of Shulman, who has been accused of lying to Congress over the improper targeting of
conservative groups.
Here Are Some of the Questions the IRS
Asked Conservative Groups. It's been two and a half years since Kevin Kookogey first asked the Internal Revenue Service
to grant nonprofit status to Linchpins of Liberty, his group aimed at teaching children conservative political principles and American
history. He's still waiting. Linchpins, he argues, was swept up in what the IRS admitted last month was inappropriate
scrutiny of conservative groups. He and two dozen others sued the government last week over what they say were unconstitutional
requests.
IRS audits moderate group with
GOP ties; Issa says scrutiny known in D.C.. Two weeks before news broke that the IRS had targeted conservative groups
for special scrutiny of their tax-exempt applications, a moderate GOP organization received word it was being audited —
a move its organizers said suggests the tax agency's scrutiny included non-tea party political groups. Meanwhile the House's
top investigator, Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, released partial transcripts Sunday of
interviews with IRS employees that the congressman said show officials in Washington were aware of the scrutiny.
IRS controversy turns personal,
nasty. An unusually harsh and personal war of words erupted on Sunday, even for the current hyper-partisan atmosphere
in Washington, DC, with one of President Obama's top advisers bringing up the 40-year-old criminal record of the Republican congressman
leading the investigation into alleged IRS abuses.
The IRS scandal: It just gets
worse and worse. Consider the Barack H. Obama Foundation, a 501(c)(3) entity founded in 2011 and presided over by
Malik Obama. Never heard of it? I hadn't either until a friend pointed out the curious connection between Lois "Fifth
Amendment" Lerner, one of the IRS officials at the center of the widening scandal engulfing that federal agency, and the Barack H.
Obama Foundation. It turns out that these last several years the IRS has not only been harassing groups whose descriptions include
phrases like "tea party" and "patriot." It has also been bending over backwards to give preferential service to certain groups
with a different political complexion. Groups, that is, like the Barack H. Obama Foundation.
Lois
Lerner Targeted Dick Durbin Senate Opponent. Before his 2010 letter urging the IRS to target conservatives, the
Senate majority whip's 1996 campaign benefited from the targeting of his opponent by a Federal Election Commission official
with a familiar name.
Fear Begets Anger on IRS Scandal.
Fear is the father of rage, and the rage against [Darrell] Issa suggests there is fear aplenty when it comes to the IRS scandal.
Watchdog:
IRS agents would not say who ordered targeting program. Conservative groups who claim they were targeted by the Internal
Revenue Service are getting their say on Capitol Hill as hearings on the growing agency scandals continue Tuesday. The hearing
before the House Ways and Means Committee will feature leaders of groups allegedly targeted by the IRS, including several Tea Party
groups and an anti-gay marriage organization that has claimed its donor details were inappropriately released.
Testimony:
IRS Targeting Program Driven By Washington, Explicitly Political. Let's begin with a dose of common sense:
Credible accusations of perjury compromise the authority of law enforcement officers, regardless of their rank. Even at the
lowest level, law enforcement officials exercise enormous power — holding liberty in their hands as they exercise the
discretion of their office, deciding whom to investigate and to prosecute.
GOP
threatens IRS purse strings. GOP appropriators on Monday said they would use the IRS's purse strings to get answers
about how and why it targeted conservative groups. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said his panel
may impose conditions on IRS funding, calling the targeting tantamount to a political enemies list that harkens back to "a dark
page in our past."
Conservative
sites tie IRS controversy to liberal group. The controversy over IRS targeting of conservative groups took a new turn
this weekend when right-leaning websites drew a connection between the agency's former head and his wife's employment at a liberal
group. The conservative website Breitbart posted that "the goal of Public Campaign is to target political groups like the
conservative non-profits at issue in the IRS scandal," naming the campaign finance reform group where Doug Shulman's wife, Susan
Anderson, is the senior program adviser.
Conservative
group claims it has proof IRS leaked donor list. The chairman of an anti-gay marriage group testified Tuesday [6/4/2013]
that his organization has proof that the IRS leaked confidential donor details last year, calling for prosecution into what he described
as a "felony." "This just smells and I hope this committee gets to the bottom of it," John Eastman, chairman of the National
Organization for Marriage, said at a hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee.
Bipartisan Tango and Lawless
Justice. Much is made of the fact that former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, now at Brookings, a Democratic think
tank, was also a Bush appointment and therefore, it is supposed, readers should ignore the outrageous partisan activities of the
agency instituted under his watch. Shulman not only had been a Democratic political contributor, but his wife is a senior
program advisor for Public Campaign, which describes itself as an "organization dedicated to sweeping campaign reform that aims to
reduce the role of big special interest money in American politics."
The "reckoning"
arrives for Obama's conservative political opponents. Earlier today, John [Hinderaker] noted that "everywhere we look, our friends on
the right are under attack." In nearly all cases, the Obama administration is doing the attacking, be it through ridiculous criminal prosecution
or harassment via the IRS, the FBI, the EPA, and even OSHA. We shouldn't be surprised. Obama has been attacking his political opponents
through trumped up charges of unlawful activity since he first ran for president. Hillary Clinton's backers were Obama's first victims.
EPA accused of
singling out conservative groups, amid IRS scandal. It's not just the IRS. A second federal agency is facing a probe
and accusations of political bias over its alleged targeting of conservative groups. The allegations concern the Environmental
Protection Agency, which is being accused of trying to charge conservative groups fees while largely exempting liberal groups.
The fees applied to Freedom of Information Act requests — allegedly, the EPA waived them for liberal groups far more often
than it did for conservative ones.
More information — none of it favorable — about
the EPA.
IRS
Employee: D.C. Told Us To Target Tea Party. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA)
revealed new testimony from IRS employees on CNN's State of The Union on Sunday [6/2/2013]. According to transcribed excerpts
released by the Committee, a Cincinnati IRS employee made it clear they were told by Washington, D.C. personnel to give extra scrutiny to
Tea Party groups.
Issa: Carney Is A 'Paid Liar'.
Representative Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, called White House press secretary Jay Carney a "paid liar" in an
interview today [6/2/2013]. Issa, who is involved in the investigation of the IRS's decision to target tea-party groups, was blunt
about his belief that most likely the employees in the Cincinnati IRS offices were acting on orders from Washington, D.C.
Interviews
with IRS agent suggest Tea Party targeting came from Washington. Interviews with an IRS field agent involved in the
agency targeting Tea Party groups for additional vetting appear to contradict the White House assertion that rogue agents, not the
administration, were behind the effort, according to partial transcripts released Sunday by the House Oversight and Government Affairs
Committee. The agent in the Cincinnati office, in which the targeting took place, told congressional investigators that he or she
was told in March 2010 by a supervisor to search for Tea Party groups applying for tax-exempt status and that "Washington, D.C., wanted
some cases."
IRS misconduct
prompted by tainted White House 'culture', Republicans say. GOP leaders took to the airwaves to spread their message
that the Obama administration and its 'paid liar' Jay Carney have created a culture of labeling Tea Party activists and conservatives
as terrorists, thus leading to the IRS scrutiny.
Exclusive:
IRS Ignores Senate Deadline to Answer Questions About Scandal. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) declined Friday
afternoon [5/31/2013] to meet a Senate Finance Committee deadline for answering detailed questions about the origins of the IRS
scandal. The questions had been submitted jointly nearly two weeks ago by Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and Ranking Member Orrin
Hatch (R-UT).
IRS Has Documents from 88 Employees in Investigation.
While the White House has maintained that low-level employees are to blame for the IRS targeting of conservative non-profits, CNN now
reports that the IRS has told House Republicans that no less than 88 employees of the IRS may have documents useful to an
investigation. The IRS has already missed a deadline to turn over its documents on May 21 to the House Ways and Means Committee.
Report:
IRS sought gift tax on conservative group's donors. The IRS tried to impose a gift tax on donors to a conservative group
formed to support former President George W. Bush's 2007 troop surge in Iraq, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday [5/1/2013].
The timing of the effort coincided with the timeframe of the IRS's scrutiny of Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status, and it began
under the unit led by Lois Lerner, who is the subject of a congressional investigation into the Tea Party targeting.
Cruz is
right: Scandals show Obama & Holder's Constitutional contempt. Sen. Cruz emphasized that it is not just a few unrelated
incidents, but a disturbing pattern: "Over and over again the pattern we have seen is an unfortunate willingness to use the
machinery of the federal government as a tool and a partisan tool to punish those perceived as your political enemies."
DOJ: Watch
what you say about Muslims on social media. How many civil-rights prosecutions are currently in progress against Muslims
who say inflammatory things on social media? [...] This is also the same government that flagrantly abused the power of the Internal
Revenue Service, and other agencies, to oppress political dissidents. There are a lot of Tea Party groups who wish the only thing
they had to fear from Democrat politicians is offensive Facebook chatter. No one in this government seems terribly concerned
about protecting their hurt feelings, or encouraging the rest of the American public to treat them with dignity and respect.
IRS idea of "a few" turns out
to be ... 88. How many IRS employees were involved in targeting conservative groups for "extra scrutiny," delays,
and harassment? The IRS insisted that the issue was limited to "a few low-level employees" in one office. When it came
time to secure computers and lock down files for investigators, though, the IRS concept of "few" seems a little ... bloated.
Why This Scandal Is Different.
In previous IRS scandals it was the powerful abusing the powerful — a White House moving against prominent financial or
journalistic figures who, because of their own particular status or the machineries at their disposal, could pretty much take care
of themselves. A scandal erupts, there are headlines, and then people go on their way. The dreadful thing about this
scandal, what makes it ominous, is that this is the elites versus regular citizens. It's the mighty versus normal people. It's
the all-powerful directors of the administrative state training their eyes and moving on uppity and relatively undefended Americans.
IRS Abuse Included Lois Lerner,
Other Higher-Ups. This story actually could have two headlines. One is the one I used, in which the IRS abuse went
much higher up in the chain than the agency or administration has admitted. The other is the source: NBC reported this.
Cincinnati
IRS: DC made decisions about Tea Party applications. I'm betting this Cincinnati agent also knows names since he dealt directly
with these people. Let's hope it doesn't take Issa long to follow this lead because I'm betting this one's gonna make some people in
the White House a little nervous.
Criticism of
IRS grows amid allegations of targeting beyond Tea Party. What started as a scandal over the IRS's targeting of
conservative groups has broadened, with lawmakers and other critics now questioning whether other kinds of organizations were
unfairly flagged for additional scrutiny. Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., chairman of the House Small Business Committee, wrote a
letter to Acting IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel on Friday [5/31/2013] asking a series of questions about the agency's audit
practices for small businesses.
Full Dimensions of IRS Scandal
Emerge. The incredible frequency of the visits — essentially weekly — indicate that President Obama must have been
deeply involved with the inner workings of the audits and harassment of conservative groups. If [Douglas] Schulman was in the White House every
week, what was he there to talk about? Not Obamacare. Not without having Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in attendance,
you wouldn't. About Treasury issues? Deficit reduction? Not without Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. The obvious reason is that
Obama was following the IRS audits with an obsessive, personal involvement.
Dick Durbin, the IRS, and Me.
Say this much for Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin: He's got chutzpah. Most congressional Democrats who wrote letters
asking the IRS to investigate tea party and other 501(c)(4) conservative groups have fallen silent or are expressing feigned outrage that
the IRS would do what they asked. But not Mr. Durbin.
157 Shulman WH
Visits: IRS Fish Rots From The Head. If the IRS vendetta against Tea Party and conservative political and religious groups were the act
of rogue agents in a single office — a discredited alibi some administration defenders cling to — perhaps they can explain what
happened to Catherine Engelbrecht. Shortly after Engelbrecht founded True the Vote, which trains election volunteers to help root out voter
fraud, and King Street Patriots, a group with ideals similar to the Tea Party, and sought tax-exempt status from the IRS in July 2010 for both
groups, she was hit by an onslaught of federal harassment.
Ted
Cruz To Megyn Kelly: Eric Holder Should Resign For 'Unprecedented' 'Willingness To Disregard The Law'. Appearing on Fox News' America
Live this afternoon [5/30/2013], Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) blasted the Department of Justice, the Internal Revenue Service, and leaders from both parties
for "not respecting the Bill of Rights" through a variety of recent scandals including the snooping on journalism outlets and the purposeful targeting of
conservative groups for additional tax scrutiny.
Total
White House Visits By Former IRS Head Shulman Now at 157 and Climbing. On Wednesday [5/30/2013] the Daily Caller reported that former
IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the Obama White House a total of 157 times in the three years and four months beginning September 16,
2009 and ending on January 31, 2013. This represents an increase in the number of reported Shulman visits to the White House by 39 from
the 118 visits he made in the two year period beginning in January 2010 and ending in December 2011.
The Other IRS Scandal. It wasn't just the Tea
Party: it has been widely reported that the IRS also has harassed and discriminated against pro-Israel charities, in particular those that
support settlements in Judea and Samaria.
IRS may have targeted conservatives more
broadly. A group of anti-abortion activists in Iowa had to promise the Internal Revenue Service it wouldn't picket in front of Planned
Parenthood. Catherine Engelbrecht's family and business in Texas were audited by the government after her voting-rights group sought tax-exempt
status from the IRS.
A Double-Trouble Scandal for Obama.
The IRS is an agency that touches nearly every American, and both the IRS and Benghazi scandals revolve around the sort of big, breathless
questions — Did the White House lie? Was the administration targeting enemies? — that rivet public attention.
Most Americans don't much care what happens to the press, and if anything wouldn't mind seeing it get some grief.
No
limits on 'right to gripe' for people who buy ink by the barrel. At first, it was all the fault of a couple of rogue IRS employees
in distant Cincinnati. Then it was clear that there were people involved in other cities, and at this point it appears the whole thing was
cooked up in Washington. Before you know it, it looks like top officials deceived Congress, and someone has even taken the Fifth to avoid
testifying, after issuing an "I am not a crook" opening statement.
Former
IRS chief Shulman reportedly visited White House at least 157 times. The former head of the IRS visited the White House more
times than any Cabinet member, according to an analysis by The Daily Caller, raising questions about the nature of those visits —
particularly around the time the agency was targeting conservative groups. The Caller analysis of White House visitor logs showed
former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House at least 157 times under the Obama administration.
The Editor says...
No matter what the reasons for those 157 visits, this shows that the IRS is more important to the Obama White House than any
other facet of the government. That can't be good.
'Rogue' IRS agent who wrote
threatening letters gets promotion. President Obama may have promised "to hold the responsible parties accountable" for the Internal
Revenue Service targeting of conservative non-profit groups, but one of the agents at the center of the scandal was recently promoted, an IRS source
tells The Washington Examiner. Through 2012, then-Exempt Organization Specialist Stephen Seok signed many of the intimidating letters sent
to conservative nonprofits. For example, this January 2012 letter sent to the Richmond Tea Party demanded the date, time and location of all group
events, as well as copies of all handouts provided at the events, and the names and credentials of all organizers. Seok also demanded the names of
all speakers and the contents of the speeches they made.
The Lois Lerner State. It is appropriate that
the worst scandal of the Obama administration — the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservatives — is a scandal of
administrators and bureaucrats, of otherwise faceless people endowed with immense power over their fellow citizens and running free of serious oversight
from elected officials. They are the shock troops of the vast bureaucratic apparatus of the federal government.
An Antidote to Cynicism Poisoning.
The Benghazi scandal was and is shocking, and the Justice Department assault on the free press, in which dogged reporters are tailed like enemy
spies, is shocking. Benghazi is still under investigation and someday someone will write a great book about it. As for the press,
Attorney General Eric Holder is on the run, and rightly so. They called it the First Amendment for a reason. But nothing can damage
us more as a nation than what is happening at the Internal Revenue Service.
The Obama Scandals Are Very Far From
Fizzling Out. Extolling the fire-extinguishing skills of White House staff, MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Tuesday [5/28/2013] said IRS
administrator Lois Lerner's orchestrated revelation two weeks earlier of slanted, abusive scrutinizing of conservative groups now "seems like a million
years ago." The president's men may be getting smoother at keeping their stories straight, but sending Lerner on administrative leave and making
her out as a bumbling bureaucrat run amok may not sell well — especially with her continuing to receive close to $180,000 in full-time pay on
the taxpayer's dime without doing any work.
25 tea party groups sue Obama administration, IRS.
A conservative watchdog group filed a lawsuit Wednesday [5/29/2013] on behalf of 25 tea party groups against the Internal Revenue Service
and Obama administration officials. The complaint, filed by the American Center for Law and Justice, alleges that the Obama administration
overstepped its authority and violated the First and Fifth amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Tea Party groups that
were targeted by IRS are called to testify. The House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday will hear testimony from some of the
conservative groups that received extra scrutiny from the IRS. The hearing is the first scheduled with Tea Party groups, and the fifth
in general focusing on the IRS's targeting of groups seeking tax-exempt status. Ways and Means held the first hearing on the issue on
May 17 and is now scheduled to be the first to hold multiple hearings on the matter.
IRS's Shulman had
more public White House visits than any cabinet member. Publicly released records show that embattled former IRS Commissioner
Douglas Shulman visited the White House at least 157 times during the Obama administration, more recorded visits than even the most
trusted members of the president's Cabinet.
IRS
higher-ups requested info on conservative groups, letters show. Additional scrutiny of conservative organizations' activities by
the IRS did not solely originate in the agency's Cincinnati office, with requests for information coming from other offices and often bearing the
signatures of higher-ups at the agency, according to attorneys representing some of the targeted groups. At least one letter requesting
information about one of the groups bears the signature of Lois Lerner, the suspended director of the IRS Exempt Organizations department in Washington.
IRS
to be hit by new law suit claiming tea party groups got intimidating letters from the agency just four weeks ago. The
Internal Revenue Service will face a new lawsuit Wednesday [5/29/2013] over its admitted pattern of targeting tea party groups and
other conservative nonprofits for especially invasive questioning when they applied for tax exempt status between 2010 and 2012.
Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Tuesday night that he would
soon be 'taking a lot of depositions in a very big lawsuit' against the IRS on behalf of 25 right-wing groups.
Priebus: Obama lying or incompetent
on scandals. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said President Obama's denial that he was involved directly with
the IRS's targeting of conservative groups and other ongoing Washington scandals shows he is either lying or incompetent. "One of two things
are [sic] going on: ... If the president actually knew something, well then clearly he's not being truthful, and no one around him is," Mr. Priebus
told Fox News' "Fox and Friends" program Tuesday [5/28/2013]. "If he didn't know anything, then I think it suggests a level of aloofness
or perhaps even incompetence that I think it pretty disturbing in its own right."
Boiling Tea Partier: Former NY honcho sues IRS,
FBI. A prominent former state Tea Party organizer insists that he's being targeted by the IRS for his political activities —
and is now firing back with a $20 million lawsuit. Sam Zherka, a Westchester newspaper owner and city strip-club mogul, is suing the FBI
and the IRS in Manhattan federal court, saying that the only reason he is under scrutiny in a tax investigation is his prominent Tea Party activities
from 2009-10.
IRS
to Tea Party: 'State the Reasons You Did Not Have a Candidate Rally for Lone Democratic Candidate'. For [Rick] Harbaugh's
group, it took 6 to 7 weeks to gather the necessary information for the IRS. When one organization after another said
that they had undergone the same experience, they collectively asked, "What's going on here," French said. The ACLJ is now
representing 27 tea party groups that plan to sue the IRS. Ten of those groups, including Harbaugh's, are still waiting for
the IRS to make a decision on granting tax-exempt status. Harbaugh said his group has been waiting around 1,200 days since filing
its application.
IRS Chief's 118 White
House Visits Must Be Explained. One IRS commissioner visited Obama's White House 118 times in 2010 and 2011.
His successor also dropped in often. But under George W. Bush, the tax chief visited once in four years. Time for an audit.
What Did Nixon Do? [Scroll down] Obama may not stand
accused of breaking into his enemies' offices to gain an unfair electoral advantage, but he has engaged in tactics aimed at unfairly suppressing the
Republican vote. Under Obama, the Department of Justice gave free rein to ACORN and similar left-wing voter fraud factories, refusing to
investigate their many wrongdoings. DoJ let the New Black Panther Party off scot-free for physically intimidating Philadelphia voters. [...] Obama's
IRS targeted conservative "social welfare" nonprofits seeking tax-exempt status under section 501c4 of the Internal Revenue Code. Evidence
establishes that hundreds of groups affiliated with the Tea Party movement were bullied and intimidated from engaging in constitutionally
protected political activism.
Washington launches four different
investigations into IRS scandal. Capitol Hill aides spent their Memorial Day weekend scanning hundreds of pages of documents related to the
IRS scandal in order to prepare their bosses for what will inevitably be a frantic month of June involving multiple simultaneous investigations into
government wrongdoing. By the time lawmakers return to session next week, at least four different investigations will be underway.
Obama's Dangerous Contempt for the Rule of
Law. Whatever the investigation into misconduct at the Internal Revenue Service reveals, we already have all the evidence we need to
understand President Barack Obama's fundamental attitude toward the rule of law. That evidence is right there in the public record, and what
it shows is indifference and contempt.
Producing 'Scandal Exhaustion'. [Scroll down] Then there's
the Internal Revenue Service's behavior during the past several years, starting with its deliberate singling out of applications for tax-exempt status
by Tea Party, conservative, and religious groups for overbearing and harassing scrutiny, unconscionable invasions of privacy, and indefensible delays,
while applications from leftist and shady groups sailed through without a hitch. One outfit definitely in the shady category was the Barack H.
Obama Foundation, headed by the president's half-brother. Despite the fact that it had "operated illegally for years," Lois Lerner, the director of
the IRS's Exempt Organizations office, approved the charity's application in June 2011 — retroactive to December 2008.
Dem Rep. Johnson to PJM: Obama
Wouldn't 'Use a Federal Agency for Political Purposes'. Georgia Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson told PJ Media that he has "confidence" the
Obama administration would not use a federal agency for "political purposes." PJ Media asked Johnson for his reaction to former IRS commissioner
Doug Shulman telling Congress that he never discussed the IRS singling out conservative organizations seeking tax-exempt status during his 118 visits
to the White House in 2010 and 2011.
The Bully Pulpit. The government's power to bully people who have
broken no law is dangerous to all of us. [...] When the Internal Revenue Service started demanding to know who was donating to conservative organizations
that had applied for tax-exempt status, what purpose could that have other than intimidating people who might otherwise donate to organizations that
oppose this administration's political agenda?
Analysis: IRS political suppression cost
Romney the 2012 election. Three Tea Party groups have been shut down in Pennsylvania as a result of the IRS harassing and delaying or denying
their applications for tax-exempt status. Tea Party activist Jenifer Stefano, of Philadelphia, organized a group called The Loyal Opposition and
filed an application for tax-exempt status with the IRS. It is one of three organizations in the state to be shut down as a result of the
IRS targeting of such groups.
The VanderSlooting of America. [Scroll down] But
what the massive abuse of the IRS illustrates is a tyranny of a different sort. A bloodless yet still quite decided tyranny. A tyranny of the
American Left designed not just to chill free speech — although that is a primary goal. What has evidenced itself in the Obama era is a tyranny
designed not just to silence dissent, but to deliberately, willfully damage if not ruin outright the reputations and businesses of Americans across
the land.
What the GOP must do to save the country
from leftist fascism. [Scroll down] The investigation should be in-depth, televised, and last as long as is needed to find out
anything and everything needed to completely get to the truth about all that was done related to IRS-gate and the related government abuse of power for
politics scandals. If done right, there is no way the investigation can't completely get to the bottom of these scandals and expose for everyone
to see, exactly what kind of character Barack Hussein Obama is, and upon realizing that, there should be vast majorities of the public demanding his
impeachment in the House and Removal in the Senate.
Keyword: cahoots. A
Frequent Visitor to the White House. The Washington Examiner reported on Monday [5/27/2013] that Mark Everson,
Commissioner of Internal Revenue from 2003 to 2007, during the Bush administration, visited the White House exactly once
while in office. Indeed he felt like he'd "moved to Siberia" so out of the ordinary political loop was he. But
Douglas Shulman, Commissioner from 2008 to 2012, during the Obama administration, visited the White House 118 times
just in 2010 and 2011. His successor, Steven Miller, also visited "numerous" times.
Lerner
Signed IRS Demands Months After She Said Practice Stopped. In this Fox News report, Saturday [5/25/2013], Jordan Sekulow told the host
that the ACLJ has been hearing from clients who have been getting letters from the IRS as late as May 6th 2013 (!) still with the list
of "inappropriate" intrusive questions.
Richard Milhaus Obama. The cover-up is worse than the crime.
The crime is so heinous it requires a cover-up. Now, heads are rolling as President Obama throws more supporters under a bus convoy. The
first was a fake, as Obama grandly displayed the "forced resignation" of acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller. Since he was already going to retire,
the timing worked well, unless any reporters found out. They did.
Tea Party gets a bump after being targeted by
IRS. The Tea Party movement is showing signs of a resurgence following the revelation that the IRS targeted groups and other politically
conservative organizations for the past several years. A recent poll shows Americans have a more favorable opinion of the less-government, anti-tax
groups. And one of the biggest groups in the grassroots movement told FoxNews.com this weekend that fundraising and donations have increased since
news of the IRS targeting broke earlier this month.
EPA Out of Control. Christopher
Horner of CEI used a Freedom of Information Act request to examine document requests over about 15 months. His own requests for waivers
were denied 14 out of 15 times; requests from environmental groups were granted 75 of 82 times. Every time Horner
appealed (he didn't say how many times that was) his request was granted. EPA's inspector general says he will look into the accusation; [...]
Lawmakers zero in on IRS meetings at White
House. Top IRS officials, whose agency was under investigation for targeting conservative groups, visited the Obama White House more than
100 times over two years while the probe was going on, far more often than in previous administrations and frequently enough that Republicans
suspect White House officials knew about the targeting.
White House Feeds IRS Frenzy by
Revising Accounts. Over the past week, President Barack Obama's aides have been amending and revising and offering sometimes conflicting
accounts of how the administration learned that an audit found Internal Revenue Service employees improperly selecting "Tea Party" or other
small-government groups for extra scrutiny.
IRS
Abuse Involved at Least Six Agents. Cincinnati's Fox 19 TV has identified six IRS workers that worked on the stymied Tea Party group
applications. According to the report, as the tax-exempt cases were delayed, they would have generated thousands of red flags within the system.
Why
a Level Playing Field Matters in U.S. Politics — and How the IRS Helped One Side. One thing that puts "progressives" at a
disadvantage in these ongoing Obama scandals is that many of them admit they want the American federal government favoring the Left.
Some of the more honest among them have said they have no real problem with the power of the federal government being used to suppress
Conservatives since it tilts the political field in the correct direction.
They hate First and Second Amendments, but will take the Fifth.
The past two weeks have seen an avalanche of evidence of the administration's assault on the First Amendment freedom of speech, with every day bringing
new reports of harassment and intimidation of groups and individuals who oppose the President's policies. This "silence the opposition" program
has been systematically carried out by the IRS, and often in clear coordination with other agencies.
Confirmed: Lois Lerner
participated in persecution of Tea Party groups. It seems like only yesterday that IRS Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner
was claiming she knew nothing about the dastardly work of those shadowy "low-level employees in the Cincinnati office" — who somehow
remain shadowy to this day, despite having been blamed for the worst abuse-of-power scandal in living memory. The Incompetence Defense
beloved of this Administration, and so effective with a media that would never accept it from a Republican official, was deployed with gusto.
Gohmert's Scandal Fix: 'Special Counsel and
Dismantle the IRS'. Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert told PJ Media that Congress should begin "dismantling the IRS" in response
to the agency targeting conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status with additional requirements. Gohmert, a member of the House Judiciary
Committee, also said a "special counsel" is needed to investigate the situation. "We need a special counsel to get to the bottom of it but
I also think we need to be dismantling the IRS," Gohmert told PJ Media on Capitol Hill. [...] When asked for his plan to "dismantle" the IRS,
Gohmert said, "just start the process, for sure."
Coburn:
Oklahoma constituents suggesting that IRS audited major Romney donors. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said Thursday [5/23/2013] his
constituents have suggested they were audited by the Internal Revenue Service because they donated to Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign.
Coburn made the charge during an interview on MSNBC.
Uncle Sam Wants You... Under His Thumb!
One has to admire the president's reprise of the role of Captain Renault from the film Casablanca when he said that he was "shocked" to find
that the IRS had acted improperly in delaying the approval of the 501(c)(4) non-profit status of Tea Party organizations nationwide. The fact
that these same individuals had been acting this way for at least two and possibly as much as three years, to the utter obliviousness of any senior
member of the administration, has resulted in a bipartisan cry that Congress is also "shocked."
Team Obama's dirty war against conservatives.
Kimberley Strassel makes in important point today at The Wall Street Journal, taking apart the defense that the IRS was warranted in targeting
conservative groups seeking 501(c)(4) status because of the Citizens United decision. Strassel documents how people close to and involved
in the Obama campaign sought to pressure the government to target conservatives years before the Citizens United decision.
Did
The President Have Knowledge Of IRS Targeting During The Campaign? [Quoting Ron Fournier:] I'm really not as interested in what the
president knew two weeks ago. I'm more interested in whether or not the president or anybody working on his behalf in the White House or at the
campaign had knowledge of or directed the targeting during the campaign, months ago.
The Dots
Already Lead To Obama In The IRS Scandal. Barack Obama is not foolish enough to have a tape recording system
hidden in his desk. And his administration staff are not careless enough to send one another incriminating e-mails.
If the president was behind the IRS unlawfully harassing conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, we can be sure the
communications were all sotto voce and in persona, like any good Chicago political operator.
JournoList's IRS Angle Begins to Gel.
The synchronicity is striking. It's also an indication of just how worried the White House is, and how it intends to contain the scandal.
First, get reliably friendly bloggers and columnists on board with a story that focuses attention away from the White House. Then, isolate
and target someone who has already become a central figure in the scandal and, more importantly, who does not work directly for the White House.
Lois Lerner Directly Involved in IRS Targeting, Letters Show.
A series of letters suggests that senior IRS official Lois Lerner was directly involved in the agency's targeting of conservative groups as recently as
April 2012, more than nine months after she first learned of the activity. Lerner, the director of the IRS exempt organizations office in
Washington, D.C., signed cover letters to 15 conservative organizations currently represented by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) between
in March and April of 2012.
Evidence Suggests
White House Knew Far Earlier than It Admits. If you believe the Washington Post's account, White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler first
learned of the IRS abuse scandal in April 2013. According to the Post, Ruemmler shared the information with White House Chief of Staff Denis
McDonough and others, while intentionally keeping President Obama in the dark until the report actually hit the streets.
IRS official on leave
refused to resign, says GOP senator. First she refused to testify. Now Lois Lerner, the IRS official at the center of the tax agency
scandal, is refusing to resign, according to a top Republican senator. Sources confirmed to Fox News earlier Thursday [5/23/2013] that Lerner,
the head of the IRS division that oversaw the unit targeting conservative groups, had been placed on administrative leave, with pay. But
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, claimed she was only put in that status after refusing to step down.
Now The Gibson Guitar Raids Make
Sense. The inexplicable raid nearly two years ago on a guitar maker for using allegedly illegal wood that its competitors also used was
another targeting by this administration of its political enemies.
Answers on IRS only raise more
questions and calls for a special investigation. Three days of hearings have shown that IRS scrutiny of conservative organizations
extended beyond a few rogue employees in Cincinnati, that the agency staged its announcement of the bad news to try to limit the damage, and that the
White House knew more, and knew it earlier, than it first admitted. Republicans argue that they also uncovered evidence that the auditor's report
could have been completed months ago — even before the November elections. They also said an internal IRS investigation confirmed the
untoward behavior as early as July 2012.
A Toxic Combination. Of all the scandals in his
administration that President Obama knows nothing about, the one Americans find most appalling is the decision by the Internal Revenue Service to
target the president's political adversaries. What's more, as subsequent congressional testimony has made clear, the IRS isn't particularly
repentant about its actions.
There's
a fly in my soup. "Horrible customer service." That's what the newly fired IRS commissioner averred was the agency's only sin in
singling out conservative political groups for discriminatory treatment. In such grim proceedings one should be grateful for unintended humor.
Horrible customer service is when every patron in a restaurant finds a fly in his soup. But when the maitre d' screens patrons for their
politics and only conservatives find flies paddlewheeling through their consomme, the problem is not poor service. It is harassment and
invidious discrimination.
A Battering Ram Becomes a Stonewall.
"I don't know." "I don't remember." "I'm not familiar with that detail." "It's not my precise area." "I'm not familiar
with that letter." These are quotes from the Internal Revenue Service officials who testified this week before the House and Senate.
That is the authentic sound of stonewalling, and from the kind of people who run Washington in the modern age — smooth, highly
credentialed and unaccountable.
I.R.S. Suspends Official at
Center of Storm. Lois Lerner, the head of the Internal Revenue Service's division on tax-exempt organizations, was put on administrative
leave Thursday [5/23/2013], a day after she invoked the Fifth Amendment and declined to testify before a House committee investigating her division's
targeting of conservative groups. Lawmakers from both parties said Thursday that senior I.R.S. officials had requested Ms. Lerner's resignation but
that she refused, forcing them to put her on leave instead.
Mark
Levin Tears Into Obama: 'Flat-Out, Bald-Faced Lie' That He Knew Nothing About IRS Targeting. Conservative radio host Mark Levin is
very skeptical of the idea that President Obama had absolutely no idea about the IRS tea party targeting before the story broke in the news mere weeks
ago. Levin declared adamantly that it is a "flat-out, bald-faced lie" that Obama didn't know beforehand, citing prior reports by a few
conservative news outlets picking up on the news well before the 2012 presidential election.
Criminality Appears To Lie at the
Heart of the IRS Scandal. When you get right down to it, the political targeting and stalling of tax-exempt applications
by the IRS was an effort to defund the Tea Party. Rick Santelli, one of the Tea Party founders and my CNBC colleague, was the
first to make this point. I've taken it a step further: The IRS was taking the Tea Party out of play for the 2012 election,
as it looked to avoid a repeat of 2010 and another Tea Party landslide.
The IRS admits to systematically identifying and harassing
political dissidents who dare to disagree with the political bosses. Tyranny in our time. Mr.
Obama did not build the IRS, nor did Richard Nixon, but both wielded it as a weapon. Now the IRS is poised to become the
hammer of even our health care. Democrats are furiously converting the welfare state into an authoritarian state right
before our eyes, and most in the GOP establishment are too seduced or intimidated to stop them. America's Founders had
a dream of freedom, and this is not it.
Democrats defend IRS official's
Constitutional rights to stay mum. Key Democrats say Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner didn't give up her Fifth Amendment rights
against self-incrimination by giving an opening statement at a House hearing on Wednesday [5/22/2013]. Democrats on the Oversight panel said they
want Lerner to testify about the IRS's targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, and are not defending her decision to invoke the
Fifth Amendment.
Revealed:
Obama Donor Sat in on IG Interviews with IRS Employees. On Wednesday [5/22/2013], House hearings on the Internal Revenue
Service's (IRS) political targeting of conservative groups uncovered a startling revelation about the interview process used to construct
the Inspector General's report: Obama donor-turned-IRS director of tax exempt organizations Holly Paz sat in on 36 of 41
interviews with IRS employees.
Documents:
Lois Lerner Was Directly Involved in Targeting Program. Not to fear, America — she's been placed on
"administrative leave," a terribly severe form of discipline that's effectively tantamount to paid vacation. At this week's
House Oversight Committee hearing, Lerner (sort of) invoked her fifth amendment rights and refused to answer any questions.
She claimed she's done "nothing wrong," which explains why she's reportedly refusing to resign.
Conservative group's law suit targets IRS
employees personally. True the Vote is not only suing the IRS, but also taking action against the IRS employees who participated in the
harassment of the voter education and election monitoring organization. Those employees could personally be held liable to pay damages that would
be established in litigation. True the Votes' lead counsel, Cleta Mitchell, explained in an email to The Daily Caller that she does not know whether
the employees, if found to be liable in the lawsuit True the Vote filed against the IRS and its employees Tuesday [5/21/2013], would pay out of pocket or
take other avenues such as accessing union funds or homeowners insurance. Either way, she noted, the group will pursue its action.
House committee wants to hear from anyone targeted by the IRS.
Claims of political targeting by the Internal Revenue Service are flooding into the House Ways and Means Committee, bolstered by evidence
that includes secretly recorded conversations with IRS officials. Ways and Means has created a website inviting Americans who believe
they were targeted to share their stories, and among the information being forwarded to committee investigators are surreptitious
recordings of interviews with the IRS.
Why
the IRS Went After the Tea Party Instead of Establishment Republicans. [Scroll down] The unspoken 600-pound gorilla
in the room is that the IRS did not go after Republican Party groups. There has been some noise made in that direction, but it is
just that — noise. The real IRS vendetta was aimed at the Tea Party movement and not at the myriad GOP inside-the-beltway groups
like American Crossroads or Americans for Job Security or any of the other interlocking GOP seen as front groups for corporate America.
Cracks Widen In The IRS
Scandal Stonewall. New evidence makes it clear that the Internal Revenue Service campaign against conservatives wasn't the
result of two "rogue" agents, but was directed from higher up. The question is, how high up?
Key IRS Exec Takes The
Fifth, But Tea Party Couldn't. The rest of us must answer IRS questions under threat of perjury, but the agency's execs can
take the Fifth. A Tea Party targeted by the IRS — and the FBI and OSHA and the ATF — thinks that's unfair.
We do too.
Politico
Reporter: IRS Targeting of Tea Party 'Easily Influenced' 2012 Election. The signs keep accumulating that the IRS scandal is
worse than liberals are willing to concede. On Bill Press's radio show yesterday, a reporter with left-leaning Politico told Press
that the Internal Revenue Service dragging its feet on applications for tax-exempt status from tea party groups probably affected the
outcome of last year's election.
Emails
show how Treasury delayed alerting Congress to Tea Party targeting. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee
Chairman Darrell Issa on Wednesday displayed a string of emails showing his failed efforts to get an update from the Treasury
Department inspector general's office about its investigation into the IRS practice of targeting conservative groups who sought
tax-exempt status. Emails seeking the information date back to September 2012, six weeks before the November election.
Shulman
never looked into IRS targeting, though 132 congressmen contacted him. Even though 132 members of Congress sent former
Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman letters about the IRS targeting of conservative groups, Shulman reiterated
Wednesday [5/22/2013] that he did not have the full story until the inspector general's report came out.
Was
the IRS Obama's Electoral Performance-Enhancing Agency? In the very month that ObamaCare passed, March 2010, the groups of
Americans that were organizing to fight against ObamaCare were targeted by the agency that will implement ObamaCare. That's the
essence of the scandal. But it is not the full extent of it.
House
Oversight e-mails: IRS IG report was originally supposed to be released last September? Issa's committee was told
last year that the report would be ready in September, two months before the election. Eight months later, the bomb finally
dropped. Why? Did the IG initially underestimate the volume of malfeasance and how long it would take to dig it up?
Or are there other, more cynical reasons? Even if the report wasn't ready, Issa claims the IG had a statutory obligation to keep
Congress updated on its findings as they were made. He didn't. Why not?
IRS figure who
invoked 5th Amendment may be compelled to testify. The woman at the center of the IRS scandal refused to testify to
Congress on Wednesday, but House Republicans said Lois Lerner botched her attempt to invoke her right against self-incrimination and
said they likely will force her to come back and explain why the agency targeted conservative political groups. Ms. Lerner's
refusal to testify shifted attention to her onetime boss, former Commissioner Douglas H. Shulman, who apologized to the House
Oversight and Government Reform Committee but refused to take responsibility, leaving furious lawmakers warning that the Internal
Revenue Service could end up facing a special prosecutor.
The
IRS scandal and Obama's culture of intimidation. For years, administration officials have used the power of the federal
government to isolate their opponents. Meanwhile, the unionized employees who populate the IRS and other agencies across the
country routinely take their cues from union bosses, whose political donations and speeches show their support for the White House.
When it comes to rewarding friends and punishing enemies, the IRS is not alone.
Lois
Lerner's Brief And Awful Day On Capitol Hill. The public got its first look Thursday at Lois Lerner, who has gone from
faceless IRS bureaucrat to the face that launched what feels like 1,000 congressional hearings and conspiracy theories. But it
was only a brief sighting since she didn't stay long at a House hearing to further probe her role in how some IRS workers came to
target conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.
IRS
official who refused to testify, resign signed Tea Party letters in 2012. The IRS official who refused to testify this
week — while claiming she had done nothing wrong — signed letters to Tea Party groups a year ago that asked
them to turn over everything from printouts of their Facebook pages to the credentials of speakers who participated in their events.
Voter ID didn't reduce turnout, but the IRS may have. The Real Voter Suppression
of 2012. The 2012 election season was filled with angry cries of "voter suppression," almost all of them regarding
attempts by states to require voter ID and otherwise improve ballot integrity. [...] But it now turns out there may have suppression
of the vote after all. "It looks like a lot of tea-party groups were less active or never got off the ground because of the IRS
actions," Wisconsin governor Scott Walker told me. "Sure seems like people were discouraged by it."
Holding AWOL Obama Accountable.
At a May 16 press conference, the president sidestepped a question about whether anyone in the White House knew about the IRS's
harassment. He also failed to mention his political alliance with the National Treasury Employees Union, to which IRS employees
belong. The union's PAC gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2010 and 2012 to anti-Tea Party groups, and the union president
is a frequent visitor at the White House.
Government Gone Wild.
Of all the excuses, explanations and alibis pouring forth in the saga of the IRS kneecapping of conservative groups during the
victorious Obama 2012 campaign, the one that deserves attention is this from David Axelrod: "Part of being president is
that there's so much beneath you that you can't know, because the government is so vast."
The Editor says...
If the government is too big to measure or too big to fully comprehend, it is out of control.
RNC
files FOIA with IRS, organizes petition against "rogue" administration. "As each day passes, Americans find ourselves
with more questions about the IRS targeting of conservative groups and donors — and what the White House and Treasury Department
knew and when," says Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, who has asked in-house attorney Jonathan Waclawski to
file a Freedom of Information Act request with the IRS to get to the bottom of things. The request has been sent, asking for
correspondence between IRS employees and officials, dating from Jan. 1, 2010, through Monday [5/20/2013].
John Boehner: 'Really
is inconceivable' Obama wouldn't have known about IRS woes. House Speaker John A. Boehner says it "really is
inconceivable" that President Obama wouldn't have known about the unfolding IRS scandal before learning about it from reporters,
as the White House has claimed. "It's pretty inconceivable to me that the president wouldn't know," he said on Greta van
Susteren's Fox News program that aired late Wednesday [5/22/2013]. "I just put myself in his shoes: I deal with my
senior staff every day, and if the White House had known about this, which now it appears they've known about it for about a year,
it's hard to imagine it wouldn't have come up in some conversation."
All
of Obama's Scandals Are Ultimately About Information Control. There's really no reason for the press to suggest that the
recent slew of scandals involving the Obama administration — Benghazi, the AP phone-record seizure, the snooping in James
Rosen's e-mail, the IRS's targeting of conservative groups, and so on — are a confusing jumble. There is a very clear
thread running through all of the administration's actions.
Lanny Davis:
IRS scandal threatens to kill Hillary's 2016 bid. If investigators show that the White House was involved in the growing
IRS-Tea Party scandal, which has robbed Democrats of the so-called "trust edge" they held over Republicans, it could jeopardize the
Democratic majority in the Senate and even the hopes of Democrats like that Hillary Clinton should she run for president in 2016.
A White House link "hurts the Democratic Party and will hurt anybody who runs for president in 2016," said former Clinton White House
counsel Lanny Davis, a major supporter of Hillary Clinton.
IRS emails: Who knew what, and when?
New emails between Internal Revenue Service officials released Wednesday as part of congressional testimony give a better view of who knew
of the screening of conservative tea party groups and the search terms being used, and when they knew it. The documents also
show a bit of the process the IRS used in such situations, but do not answer the question at the heart of the controversy —
who made the decision to search for such groups and why.
The Unaccountable Executive: If the
President doesn't run the government, then who does? There's a certain infantilization of the federal government
here that should be especially alarming to taxpayers who have ever crossed paths with the IRS. The agency has the power to
make citizens lives miserable, ruin their businesses and garnish their wages. Anyone facing an audit is unlikely to get
away with the evasions now in display in the federal bureaucracy. If the scandal is showing anything, it is that the
White House has a bizarre notion of accountability in the federal government.
"Administrative leave" = paid vacation. Republican Issa to call IRS's
Lerner back in Tea Party probe. Lois Lerner, an Internal Revenue Service official at the center of the scandal over the
agency's extra scrutiny of conservative groups, was put on administrative leave on Thursday after she refused to resign, a senator said.
IRS
official who refused to testify placed on administrative leave. First she refused to testify. Now Lois Lerner, the
IRS official at the center of the tax agency scandal, is refusing to resign, according to a top Republican senator. Sources
confirmed to Fox News earlier Thursday that Lerner, the head of the IRS division that oversaw the unit targeting conservative groups,
had been placed on administrative leave, with pay.
A Crack in the IRS Dam.
The dam protecting the IRS scandal began to crack today when Lois Lerner, the IRS official who announced, and apologized for,
the improper singling out of conservative-leaning organizations by IRS employees under her command, announced through her criminal
defense lawyer that she will not testify as scheduled tomorrow before the House Oversight Committee. Rather, she will assert
her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. This marks a milestone in the IRS investigation. It can now be taken
as more or less established that crimes were committed by Obama administration employees.
Feds
don't look good draped in the Fifth. [Scroll down] By asserting her right, Lerner further undermined the credibility
of her employer, the Internal Revenue Service, an agency whose reputation has been beaten bloody by the scandal over the targeting of
conservative organizations. It's not fair, but it is inevitable — and understandable — that Lerner's refusal
to answer questions gives the impression that she has something to hide about her involvement in the targeting.
Issa looks to
call back IRS official who refused to testify, says she voided 5th Amendment right. Republican Rep. Darrell Issa declared
Thursday [5/23/2013] that the embattled IRS official who refused to testify Wednesday had no right to do so, and is now looking to haul
her back before his committee. The chairman of the House oversight committee made the call after consulting with attorneys about
IRS official Lois Lerner's bizarre appearance before the panel on Wednesday. Lerner, the head of the exempt organizations division
which oversaw the controversial targeting of conservative groups, caused confusion Wednesday morning when she pleaded the Fifth and
refused to answer questions — but also delivered an opening statement in which she asserted her innocence.
IRS Abuse, the Guide. The
latest narrative from the speech regulators is that these election-integrity groups didn't deserve status because they were
political. Of course that crowd considers folks who disagree with them to be political merely because of the disagreement.
Groups like Democracy 21 always proclaim apolitical and mainstream status when the truth is anything but. To
Democracy 21, anyone who seeks to help the election process with whom they disagree must be political.
IRS stonewalling makes the case
for a special prosecutor. With their stonewalling, claimed ignorance and convenient amnesia, Internal Revenue Service
officials make it difficult for Americans to comprehend the depth, but also the official awareness, of their agency's evident assault on
free speech. IRS targeting of conservative groups for extraordinary scrutiny, intrusive demands for information from them, and long
delays in processing their paperwork, served two ends, unwittingly or by intent: to thwart the groups' fundraising by delaying their
tax-exempt status, and to intimidate them from exercising their First Amendment rights.
The
IRS scandal smoking gun? In the Internal Revenue Service targeting scandal and others, Washington and the media are obsessed
with the question: What did the president know and when did he know it?
Outgoing IRS
Chief: IRS Targeted Conservatives to 'Be More Efficient'. Outgoing IRS Commissioner Steven Miller told a Senate
committee Tuesday that the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups was not partisan, but merely "foolish
mistakes" made by employees trying to be "more efficient." "I do not believe that partisanship motivated the people who
engaged in the practices described in the Treasury Inspector General's report," Miller said in his opening statement before
the Senate Finance Committee. "I reviewed the Treasury Inspector General's report and I believe its conclusions are
consistent with that."
IRS' last two
commissioners deny lying; official to take the 5th. Lois Lerner, director of exempt organizations for the IRS,
will assert her right against self-incrimination during her scheduled appearance Wednesday before the House oversight panel.
The news about Lerner is yet another low point for the IRS and the Obama administration in their struggles to explain how IRS employees
in a field office in Cincinnati targeted some groups that had applied for tax-exempt status.
Fox
Gives 15 Minutes to Latest IRS Scandals Details; ABC, NBC, and CBS Ignore [it]. There have been a number of
new revelations this week in the ever expanding scope of the IRS scandal. However, even with so many developments in
the investigation of this egregious scandal, there was extremely limited coverage of the unfolding of this affair in the
morning news of many more liberal stations like ABC, NBC, and CBS. In contrast, Fox News devoted almost 15 minutes
in their programming on Thursday morning's [5/23/2013] Fox & Friends show to enlighten the public of all of the new
information in the scandal.
With
more clarity, White House adds to confusion on IRS. In trying to contain the controversy and protect President Obama,
White House officials have only added to questions about what happened. Until this week, the story of how White House officials
learned that the Internal Revenue Service was targeting conservative groups was fairly straightforward.
IRS
Offices Closed in Northern Arizona on Day of Tea Party Protests. IRS offices in Flagstaff and Prescott, Ariz. were temporarily closed
Tuesday [5/21/2013] as protests of IRS offices around the country were planned by Tea Party activists. "They have a notice up that says 'temporarily
closed," said Tom Case, a Lake Havasu resident.
White House meltdown:
A truth deficit. There seems to be bipartisan consensus that whatever the White House is doing to fend off scandal is
making things worse. [...] The constantly shifting stories from Jay Carney and the IRS dissembling and pleas of ignorance only heighten
concern that there has been serious wrongdoing. Former IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman doesn't know how the targeting started and
doesn't think he owes anyone an apology.
GOP governors want
special prosecutor in IRS case. Two Republican governors are urging President Barack Obama to appoint a special
prosecutor to investigate the Internal Revenue Service's admission that it targeted conservative political groups.
Heads won't roll at the IRS.
Lawmakers pressing for more heads to roll at the Internal Revenue Service are going to be disappointed. "Why weren't more people
fired?" Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) demanded at a hearing Tuesday on the IRS's targeting of conservative
groups, channeling the frustration of his colleagues. Turns out it's not so easy.
IRS Misses Deadline
to Turn over Targeting Documents. On May 14, the House Ways and Means Committee demanded the IRS turn over documents and
answer questions related to the targeting of conservative groups. The letter was signed by the Chairman David Camp and ranking
member Sander Levin of the Committee. The deadline for compliance was May 21. According to House Ways and Means
Spokeswoman Sarah Swinehart, "The Committee has not received a response to the Camp-Levin letter."
Report: 'Rogue' IRS Agent
Claim Unraveling. An investigation by Cincinnati Fox 19 reporter Ben Swann finds that Obama Administration claims
that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) targeting of conservative groups was the work of two "rogue" low-level employees in Cincinnati,
Ohio, strain credulity and are "falling apart."
IRS
Misses Filing Deadline. What did the White House know about the IRS targeting conservative groups and when did it
know it? Crucial evidence needed to develop an accurate answer to that question would include the records of any
communications that went back and forth between the IRS and the White House on the topic. In a May 14 letter signed by
Chairman Dave Camp and Ranking Member Sander Levin, the House Ways and Means Committee demanded precisely those records from the IRS.
No Special Counsel for the
IRS Scandal. In the unfolding IRS scandal, we already know President Obama's conservative political opponents were targeted
for the revenue agency's version of waterboarding. On cue, prominent Republicans and conservatives are starting to call for a
special counsel — clearly under the misimpression that a "special counsel" would mean a prosecutor "independent" of the
Obama Justice Department.
Cincinnati
agent giving orders in IRS scandal? The claim that the ongoing IRS scandal is limited to low level employees is falling
apart. The six Cincinnati workers we have identified, who sent scrutinizing letters to conservative groups with words including
"patriot, liberty, tea party or 9-12" in their names are Mitchel Steele, Carly Young, Joseph Herr, Stephen Seok, Liz Hofacre and a woman
identified only as Ms. Richards. But was all of this done at the hands of a small group of Cincinnati employees working together?
During Friday's congressional hearing, that appeared to be the theme. Now, that explanation just became less likely.
Lois Lerner invokes Fifth Amendment in House hearing on IRS targeting of conservatives. The
official who disclosed that the Internal Revenue Service had used inappropriate criteria to examine groups seeking tax-exempt status
insisted Wednesday [5/22/2013] that she did nothing wrong but also declined to answer questions from lawmakers, saying she did not
want to incriminate herself in any future criminal proceedings.
Top IRS
official refuses to testify at hearing, invokes 5th Amendment. It started with a warning, proceeded to a walkout and drew
to a close with IRS officials walling off the agency from congressional interrogators whose patience appears to be wearing thin.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers were visibly frustrated Wednesday [5/21/2013] at the third congressional hearing on the IRS' practice of singling
out conservative groups. Members of Congress asked, again and again, how the program started and why nobody in the agency's upper
echelons notified Congress despite knowing about it at least a year ago.
IRS
Chain of Command Suggests Scandal Not Limited to 'Low-Level Employees'. After the IRS revealed it had wrongly targeted
hundreds of conservative and Tea Party groups, the agency claimed that the misconduct was limited to "low-level employees" in its
Cincinnati office. Yesterday, the attorney for Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS's tax-exempt organizations division, told the
House Oversight Committee she would invoke her Fifth Amendment rights, making that explanation much less credible.
IRS Scandal Reaches the White House. As more
details come to light, responsibility for the IRS actions keeps moving up the ladder and has landed, at least in part, at the
White House. Top-level White House staffers knew about the scandal before a manufactured apology was made to the public
on May 10.
The Smoking Gun in the IRS Scandal, Part One.
Jeffrey Lord's story in the American Spectator about a "smoking gun" in the IRS scandal has backfired. He implied that
the head of the IRS union had personally met with President Obama to plot against the Tea Party when there is no evidence of
such a meeting or such plotting.
'That's
Not How It Works!': Rep. Gowdy Objects to Top IRS Official Taking the Fifth. Lois Lerner, director of the IRS division
that singled out conservative groups, invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to testify at a House
oversight hearing on the scandal. Before she was dismissed from the hearing by committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Rep.
Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) objected, saying since Lerner testified by making an opening statement, she would have to stay and answer the
lawmakers' questions.
Carney: White
House, Treasury strategized how to tell public. The White House said Tuesday [5/21/2013] that senior officials took part in discussions
over how the IRS would disclose its targeting of conservative groups, marking the latest shift in the White House's official line on the matter.
Press secretary Jay Carney told reporters that Mark Childress, deputy chief of staff, spoke twice with Treasury Department officials about the IRS's
public relations strategy.
Former
IRS Commissioner Visited White House 118 Times During Tea Party Targeting. According to Republican Rep. Jim Jordan
and White House visitor logs, former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House 118 times in 2010 and 2011. This is
the same time period when Tea Party groups were inappropriately targeted and intimidated by the IRS. Testifying in front of
lawmakers on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Shulman admitted that many of the meetings with the White House were to discuss how to implement
ObamaCare. "The IRS has a major roll in the money flow," Shulman said.
Axed
IRS chief Steven Miller is the poster child for bad government. If one person could embody all that is rotten with the IRS,
from its unfair targeting of those with particular political beliefs to the nonchalant manner of dealing with serious problems, it is
Steven Miller. Seemingly inoffensive, mild mannered, and as thoroughly boring as one would expect from someone with the title
"acting IRS commissioner," Miller revealed himself last week to be a villainous wretch, a bully bureaucrat of the lowest order.
Darrell Issa: Lois Lerner lost her
rights. Lois Lerner might win the legal battle but she's prolonging the political war. Instead of simply taking
the scorn of lawmakers for a day, repeatedly invoking the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination, and then moving on, she chose
defiance.
The
Insiders: A special prosecutor in the IRS matter is inevitable. This administration's management of the Obama Internal
Revenue Service scandal so far consists of a slow-walking, rolling disclosure of facts; equal parts equivocation, amnesia and indignation
from IRS witnesses; deer-in-the-headlights non-responses by the White House press secretary; parsed, lawyerly statements from the
president himself; and now one of the central key players is taking the Fifth. And all this comes from what the president
claimed would be the "most transparent administration ever..."
Lois Lerner thrown under the
bus. Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS operation that targeted Tea Party groups is being thrown under the bus by Obama.
As both John McCormack of The Weekly Standard and Bryan Preston of the PJ Tatler noticed, in the wake of her taking of the Fifth Amendment
before the Issa Committee today [5/22/2013], two Obama media operatives, both veterans of Journolist who were called into the White House yesterday
for consultations, both called for her firing.
Gowdy Pursues
Shulman's Evasions in IRS Scandal. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) honed in on evasive answers by former IRS Commissioner
Douglas Shulman at the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing into the IRS scandal Wednesday. Shulman refused
to answer "yes" or "no" when Gowdy asked him whether he had taken any action to investigate or stop the targeting of conservative
groups when he was made aware of it in May 2012.
Obama's Federal Gestapo is Going Down.
The current story involving Obama's use of the IRS to target political opposition via going after more than 500 patriotic action groups,
their donors and their volunteers, is but one piece of a much larger conspiracy to destroy the United States beginning with all who would
stand in the way of that agenda. Yes, the administration has been using the IRS to target all political opposition since taking
office in 2009. They went after Tea Party, 912, Patriot, Liberty, Christian, conservative, republican, constitutional, pro-life
and anti-global governance organizations.
Sen.
Wyden: If You Don't Want IRS Hassles, Don't Apply for Tax Exempt Status. During Tuesday's Senate hearings into the widening
IRS scandal, Senator Ron Wyden (OR-D) suggested that the conservative groups, targeted for paralyzing IRS harassment and leaks to the
left-wing media, had it coming. Wyden said that if political groups don't want hassles from the government, they shouldn't go to
government for tax exempt status.
IRS Scandal:
Hatch Accuses Commissioner of 'Lie by Omission'. Acting Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman, who led the
agency when it targeted Tea Party and conservative groups, testified before the Senate Finance Committee today, under oath, about when he
knew about the conduct of officials in the tax exempt organizations division. He was joined by his successor, Steven Miller, and
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russel George.
White House IRS timeline shifts again.
The White House's explanation of what it knew about the investigation into the IRS's scrutiny of conservative political groups and how it
planned for the eventual release of that information shifted once again Tuesday [5/21/2013].
Top IRS official
will invoke Fifth Amendment. A top IRS official in the division that reviews nonprofit groups will invoke the Fifth
Amendment and refuse to answer questions before a House committee investigating the agency's improper screening of conservative
nonprofit groups.
IRS targeted conservative college
interns. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) demanded information about conservative groups' college-aged interns,
prompting outrage from one of the country's top conservative activist organizations and leading one former intern to wonder
whether his family's pizza parlor would be endangered. The IRS requested, in an audit, the names of the conservative
Leadership Institute's 2008 interns, as well as specific information about their internship work and where the interns were
employed in 2012, according to a document request the IRS sent to the Leadership Institute, dated February 14, 2012.
IRS 'Blemish' Prompts
Scorn From Unappeased Senators. Douglas Shulman, the former commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, said today he
was "dismayed and saddened" that his agency had improperly targeting conservative groups, but declined to offer a direct apology and
dismissed suggestions that he mislead Congress.
IRS Inspector General's Report is
Small Comfort for Tea Party Groups. "We made some mistakes. We apologize," said [Lois] Lerner. "Mistakes?
Writing a wrong number or name on a tax form is a mistake. Sending agents with the power to violate a person's or group's privacy
is harassment at best, out-and-out criminal use of intimidation at worst," said political strategist Mike Bakker on Friday [5/17/2013].
The Editor says...
I have been unable to determine if the man's name is Baker or Bakker. Maybe they're two different people!
IRS Scandal Increases Concerns Over
Obamacare Management, Says Senator. "President Obama and his minions may believe the Benghazi hearings are a 'sideshow,'
but the real sideshow in the IRS scandal is the prospect of having thousands of agents controlling America's health care system.
How can they be trusted? Should they be trusted?" asked attorney and political consultant Mike Baker.
The cracks in Obama's story on the IRS
scandal are adding up. [Scroll down] Now Democrats are making the only defense that they can for Obama —
that his closest aides never told him about the IRS scandal. Obama feints great anger about this scandal, but it apparently never
dawned on his closest aides that he would care enough about the IRS scandal. If they so let him down, why aren't these people being
fired?
Obama IRS Scandal Will Go
Down in Infamy. [Scroll down] And how bad was the stonewalling? Epic. Over the course of 27 months,
not a single Tea Party type organization received tax exempt status. This was no political witch hunt, says the IRS. So
why is it that liberal groups had their applications approved in as little as nine months?
15 People Who Wrote Out Big Checks To Mitt Romney
And Within 90 Days Got IRS Audited. Wayne Allyn Root, classmate of Obama at Columbia talks to Bill Cunningham on his Sunday
Night national program. He tells the story of how he was recently audited twice and gives details of how he believes it came
directly from the top, the WH. Root, like a lot of others who have been critical of Obama, especially on a national level, have
been targeted no doubt deliberately for political reasons by this administration.
Anti-Fraud Group
'True the Vote' Harassed NOT JUST by IRS, but FBI, OSHA... then ATF? Houston-based True the Vote is an organization
dedicated to preserving the integrity of the voting process. They're a outfit any normal, good-faith American ought to be glad
exists, what with 160 U.S. counties showing more people registered than the actual number of live, eligible voters in existence.
Alas, the compulsively-crooked Obama White House despises them. True the Vote IS NOT a Republican outfit, and promotes
no candidates nor political issues- they're merely focused on ensuring legal/fair/inclusive voting.
The Editor says...
Obama's rabid opposition to non-partisan groups who try to prevent voter fraud can be interpreted as evidence of the intent
to stuff ballot boxes and steal elections.
EPA
Gives Info For Free to Big Green Groups 92% of Time. Public records produced by EPA in response to a lawsuit filed by CEI
under the Freedom of Information Act illustrate a pattern of making it far more difficult for limited-government groups — in
particular those who argue for more freedom and less EPA — to access public records. Such groups are precisely those
Congress and courts made clear FOIA was intended to protect from fees being used as a hurdle to obtaining information, without prejudice
as to their perspective.
Tax-exempt Obama
Foundation doesn't exist at listed addresses. The "charity" run by President Barack Obama's half-brother that was
fast-tracked for IRS tax-exempt status is based at a Virginia UPS store, according to its website. The organization's IRS filings
list another Virginia address that is actually a drug rehab center where the foundation does not appear ever to have been based.
IRS union denies 'smoking gun' meeting with Obama. The National Treasury
Employees Union is denying claims that the union's president was in contact with President Obama shortly before Internal Revenue
Service employees began targeting conservative groups. In a statement emailed to The Daily Caller, the NTEU explained just
what NTEU president Colleen Kelley was doing at the White House on March 31, 2010 — shortly before the IRS
Determinations Unit began targeting tea party groups.
IRS went after 83-year-old
Tea Party granny. Internal Revenue Service officials not only wanted a wide variety of information from the Albuquerque
Tea Party's application for non-profit status, it also wanted to know what contacts it had with people from other political organizations
too. That included an 83-year-old great-grandmother who was once held in a World War II internment camp, New Mexico Watchdog
has discovered.
McCaskill:
Fire Everyone Involved in Obama's IRS Scandal. Let's be honest: There's not a single Democrat in Congress who cares
if the Obama Administration uses the IRS to target its political enemies. We're the bad guys to them and they're willing to do
anything they can get away with to stick it to us. That's why nobody at the IRS had been punished for this scandal before
it went public and blew up like a nuclear bomb. However, the situation has now changed because the scandal is getting traction
with the public.
There's
no way Obama is telling the truth about when he learned of the IRS scandal. Obama knew. He didn't just "read
about it in the newspaper," or whatever [nonsense] he said last week. He knew it was going on, and he was okay with it.
Just like he knew Benghazi wasn't a spontaneous protest triggered by a dumb YouTube video. Just like he knows Eric Holder is a
lying thug. It's his administration, and he's well aware of the example he's set. The only alternative is that he's
utterly, criminally incompetent. Either way, he's unfit for office.
The IRS and the Drive to Stop Free
Speech. Beginning in March 2010, the IRS engaged in an unprecedented campaign of harassment against conservative groups,
either through denials or delays in approving their tax-exempt-status applications, or through endless and burdensome audits.
In notable contrast, liberal and "progressive" organizations got approvals with remarkable speed. The most conspicuous example
involves the Barack H. Obama Foundation, which was approved as tax exempt within a month by the then-head of the IRS tax-exempt
branch, Lois Lerner.
The White House's shifting IRS
account. The White House on Monday once again added to the list of people who knew about the IRS investigation into its
targeting of conservative groups — saying White House chief of staff Denis McDonough had been informed about a month ago.
Press secretary Jay Carney said again that no one had told President Barack Obama ahead of the first news reports: not his top
aide McDonough, nor his chief counsel Kathy Ruemmler, nor anyone from the Treasury Department. Monday's revelation amounts to
the fifth iteration of the Obama administration's account of events, after initially saying that the White House had first learned of
the controversy from the press.
White
House senior aides knew details of IRS probe but didn't tell Obama, spokesman says. Senior White House officials,
including Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, learned last month about a review by the Treasury Department's inspector general into
whether the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, but they did not inform President Obama,
the White House said Monday [5/20/2013].
5
Troubling Questions About The IRS Scandal. Despite White House attempts to brush the IRS scandal aside as "irrelevant" or
the work of rogue miscreants, huge questions remain about who ordered IRS agents to harass Tea Party groups, and why. Every day,
in fact, raises new and more disturbing questions that congressional investigators must get answers to.
IRS's
Lerner Had History of Harassment, Inappropriate Religious Inquiries at FEC. Perhaps no other IRS official is more intimately
associated with the tax agency's growing scandal than Lois Lerner, director of the IRS's Exempt Organizations Division. Since
admitting the IRS harassed hundreds of conservative and Tea Party groups for over two years, Lerner has been criticized for a number of
untruths — including the revelation that she apparently lied about planting a question at an American Bar Association
conference where she first publicly acknowledged IRS misconduct.
Tea
Party Protests Planned At IRS Offices Nationwide Tuesday. A major tea party group is planning protests at Internal Revenue
Services nationwide Tuesday [5/21/2013] following revelations earlier this month that the tax agency had flagged organizations with the
words "tea party" or "patriot" for additional scrutiny.
Rep.
Sheila Jackson Lee Urged Feds to 'Investigate True the Vote' in 2010. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) asked
Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate election integrity org True the Vote and its associated Tea Party group, King Street
Patriots, immediately before the IRS and DOJ began targeting the group in June 2010.
Ron Paul: Fix IRS by shutting
it 'once and for all'. Former Rep. Ron Paul of Texas called the recent IRS fiasco troubling — but writes that
the only way Congress can protect the freedoms of Americans from a long pattern of suspected IRS abuse is to "shutter the doors" of the
agency "once and for all." The longtime GOP congressman writes that IRS agents in the 1930s were essentially "hit squads" against
opponents of the New Deal, and that allegations of IRS abuse spanned the administrations of Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, Clinton and
George W. Bush.
Senate
Finance Committee issues request for detailed information on IRS targeting scandal by May 31st. The House has already
begun its investigation of the IRS scandal, with Friday's hearing in the House Ways and Means Committee. The Senate Finance
Committee will follow in short order, and it has already issued a "request" for detailed information from the agency about its
targeting of conservative groups over the last three years. Ironically, it looks a lot like the kind of request that the
agency sent out to those groups, with 41 demands and just 11 days to respond.
How Obama Told the IRS to
Target Conservatives. Imagine if secret tapes surfaced of conversations within his Administration in which President Obama
told them that conservative non-profits working in the political arena were illegitimate, because the Supreme Court ruling "reversed a
century of law to open the floodgates for special interests."
Squelching the Tea Party
Gave Obama the Election. Remember all the headlines during the election, wondering what happened to the Tea Party, the
liberal crowing that it had gone silent? [...] Now we know the answer to all those questions about what happened to the Tea Party.
It was busy being abused and silenced by the Obama Administration IRS. You think it coulda had an effect on the election results?
A tea-party group targeted by Democrats gets attention from the
IRS — and the FBI, OSHA, and the ATF. True Scandal. Catherine
Engelbrecht's tale has all the markings of a classic conspiracy theory: She says she thinks that because of her peaceful
political activity, she and her family was targeted for scrutiny by hostile federal agencies. Yet as news emerges that the
Internal Revenue Service wielded its power to obstruct conservative groups, Catherine's story becomes credible — and
chilling. It also raises questions about whether other federal agencies have used their executive powers to target those
deemed political enemies.
A smoking gun in IRS scandal?
Via Ed Morrissey, Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator has tracked down either a fascinating coincidence or a smoking gun that puts
Obama right in the middle of the IRS scandal.
IRS Was Afraid of the Constitution,
the Obama Scandal Suggests. Of all the discouraging news in the scandal involving President Obama's Internal Revenue
Service, the most illuminating is that one of the things that triggered additional scrutiny from the IRS for groups applying for
tax-exempt status was any plan for "educating on the constitution and bill of rights." As the details of the situation have
emerged, various explanations have arisen for the behavior of the IRS officials involved.
IRS targeted and
leaked info about a group I am affiliated with. As Congress and the public struggle to comprehend the scandals rocking
the Obama administration, it is important not to overlook a common thread linking all of the misconduct: the administration's paranoia
that voters would see it as weak on national defense. For having the temerity to raise questions about U.S. policy toward
terrorists and Iran, Israel and North Korea, the Obama IRS targeted a non-partisan group with which I am affiliated and
illegally leaked its confidential information. The White House's paranoia about public perceptions of foreign threats
also drove its scandalous surveillance of Associated Press (AP) reporters.
IRS
To Pro-Life Groups:You Know You're Gonna Have To Give Up This Whole Protest Thing, Right? We already have seen that the
Obama administration doesn't think much of the freedom of religion clause when it interferes with the HHS regulations. We've been
shamed into giving up the 2nd Amendment, for the children. We've seen the freedom of the press isn't really freedom anymore if
the Justice Department doesn't like what you're writing about. But with the testimony Friday of Steven Miller to the House Ways And
Means Committee, we see now that what you pray about is a legitimate tax question.
Malkin
To Kelly: IRS Not Just Scandal Because Of 'Ideology,' But Because Of Obama's 'Brass-Knuckled Intimidation'. Michelle Malkin
joined Megyn Kelly on Fox News Monday afternoon [5/20/2013] to discuss the latest developments in the investigation into the IRS targeting
conservatives for audits. Malkin insisted it was not merely her "ideology" that has led to critique the Obama administration on their
handling of the IRS issue and others, but rather the evidence she's seen of their "bully brigade tactics" to "intimidate and criminalize
their political opponents."
Obama
Met With IRS Union Boss Day Before Tea Party Targeting Began. The White House Visitors Log reveals that President Barack
Obama met with Internal Revenue Service (IRS) union boss Colleen Kelley on March 31, 2010 — the day before the Inspector
General's report says the IRS began its scheme to target tea party and conservative groups.
Outside the Gates. [Scroll down] We do know that
Obama's IRS unleashed the full force of its wrath on Americans applying for non profit status who used subversive terms like "patriot".
The deeper the investigation goes, the worse it gets. Individuals who were guilty of absolutely nothing were terrorized by the IRS
in an effort to prevent the formation of groups that might oppose Obama in the 2012 election. In other words, the IRS dedicated
itself to voter suppression.
White House Chief of Staff
knew about damaging IRS audit, kept Obama in the dark. The Internal Revenue Serviced scandal today [5/20/2013] spread further within
the White House and closer to President Obama. White House spokesman Jay Carney today disclosed that Obama's chief of staff, Dennis
McDonough, and other top White House officials had advance warning that the IRS was targeting conservative groups. But he insisted
McDonough and the other White House officials purposely kept Obama out of the loop.
Carney: Senior White House staff knew of IRS
probe. The White House says White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler was first informed about an audit of the IRS' inappropriate
targeting of conservative groups on April 24 and that she notified senior staff, including Denis McDonough, the chief of staff to
President Barack Obama.
Jay
Carney catches spears and defends Obama for not knowing about IRS abuses. Amid the political boiling oil of three
simultaneous scandals, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney continued Monday [5/20/2013] to defend the Obama administration's handling of
troubles involving the Departments of Justice, Treasury and State. But reporters' eyebrows raised when he said that White House
Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough knew about abuses taking place in the IRS and decided not to tell the president.
Flatten the IRS. To recap very briefly: In addressing
pervasive IRS targeting of conservative organizations and their supporters, the Obama administration has paid lip service to the notion of "fixing"
the problem, promising action "if" any misconduct occurred. The President has denied he knew the practice existed, despite widespread reports
and allegations over a two year period. For his part, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew insisted that the targeting of conservative groups was
"inadvertent." Marching in step, assorted administration minions (most recently the loyal former Acting IRS Commissioner Steven T. Miller)
have denied that the systematic harassment of conservative groups was "partisan" or that the IRS engaged in "targeting" despite the use of that term
no fewer than 16 times in the IRS Inspector General's Report.
Obama's
Chief Lawyer Knew About IRS Targeting Weeks Ago. The IRS scandal keeps getting closer and closer to the top of the
White House food chain as Obama officials desperately try to spin their way out of mounting evidence and foul play. The Wall
Street Journal is reporting President Obama's top attorney knew about the IRS targeting weeks ago before news broke, but of course,
Obama still didn't know about it until he learned about it "from the news."
Obama and the IRS: The Smoking Gun?
Is President Obama directly implicated in the IRS scandal? Is the White House Visitors Log the trail to the smoking gun?
Tea
Party Patriots plan nationwide protests at IRS buildings. The organizers of the Tea Party Patriots have called for a nationwide protest
against the Internal Revenue Service to challenge the government agency's abuse of power while targeting Tea Party groups. The planned protests
will take place at IRS offices around the country at noon Tuesday. The Tea Party Patriots website highlights more than 100 IRS offices
where protests are planned.
IRS Audited Conservative
Women's Group. The IRS audited a conservative women's group in 2011, and ultimately found no wrongdoing, in what appears to
be another example of the scandal plaguing the tax agency.
Americans beware — ObamaCare
expands how the IRS can hurt you. Most of us interact with the Internal Revenue Service once a year at tax time. But President
Obama's Affordable Care Act health law puts us under the IRS's thumb all the time. The IRS has a history of using leaks and delays to punish
people based on their politics. The latest is news that the IRS delayed processing requests for tax exempt status from the Obama administration's
conservative critics, and even leaked information about them to the press. It's frightening, because starting in January 2014, the
Obama health care law vastly expands how the IRS can hurt you.
Watergate 2.0 — why the IRS scandal is far
worse. In the wake of one of the worst abuses of government power in recent history, many are rushing to frame the Internal Revenue Service
scandal as simply an attack on conservative activists. That view risks creating a partisan political football and misses a fundamentally scarier
abuse that exceeds the scandals of Watergate or any other prior government abuse.
If Government Were a Business,
Obama Would Already Be Fired. The IRS, an agency under the control of this government that Obama assures youngsters is no threat to
liberty whatsoever, has done exactly that. They have apologized for selectively harassing, excessively scrutinizing, and denying benefits to
conservative groups these last years. Of particular note, the Treasury Department's inspector general J. Russell George disclosed on
Friday that the Obama administration officials were well aware of his auditing the IRS for its political screening policies in June 2012.
Convenient as the IRS's targeting of Democrats' enemies was, the Obama administration chose not to reveal any of this knowledge to the public
in the 2012 election year, yet it now feigns shock and indignation at the prospect that the IRS could have acted irresponsibly and illegally.
How the IRS seeded the clouds in 2010 for a political deluge three years later.
In early 2010, an Internal Revenue Service team in Cincinnati began noticing a stream of applications from groups with political-sounding
names, setting in motion a dragnet aimed at separating legitimate tax-exempt groups from those working to get candidates elected.
The IRS officials decided to single out one type of political group for particular scrutiny. "These cases involve various local
organizations in the Tea Party movement," read one internal IRS e-mail sent at the time. A few hours north in Fremont, Ohio, the
owners of a drainage supply shop, Tom and Marion Bower, were wondering why it was taking so long to get a tax exemption for their new
tea party group.
Obama's Counsel Told of IRS Audit Findings Weeks
Ago. The White House's chief lawyer learned weeks ago that an audit of the Internal Revenue Service likely would show that agency
employees inappropriately targeted conservative groups, a senior White House official said Sunday. That disclosure has prompted a debate
over whether the president should have been notified at that time.
Big Government Loses Control.
Consider how the news broke that the Internal Revenue Service has been targeting conservative groups. The admission by IRS official
Lois Lerner came in response to a question from the audience at a low-profile meeting of the tax section of the American Bar Association.
For a week, perplexed reporters quoted her supporters saying she was apolitical and must not have meant to make news this way. Then
reports online cited lawyers who had been at the ABA event saying they saw her consult prepared remarks as she answered the supposedly
impromptu question. On Friday, the acting IRS commissioner confessed to Congress that the question was planted.
Abolish the IRS (and the Income Tax With It).
The Internal Revenue Service has been caught engaging in political profiling while processing applications for tax-exempt status. In this case it
was against organizations with "tea-party" or "patriot" in their names and other right-wing groups. Next time it could be libertarian or left-wing
antiwar and pro-civil-liberties groups. No dissenter can ever rest assured he is safe from the arbitrary power of the IRS.
Anonymous Cincinnati
IRS official: "Everything comes from the top.". A story in the Washington Post yesterday [5/18/2013] about the Internal Revenue Service's
Cincinnati office, which does most of the agency's nonprofit auditing, clearly contradicted earlier reports that the agency's targeting of Tea Party
groups was the result of rogue agents. The Post story anonymously quoted a staffer in Cincinnati as saying they only operate on directives from
headquarters.
Congressman:
IRS asked pro-life group about 'the content of their prayers'. During a House Ways and Means Committee hearing today, Rep. Aaron
Schock, R-Ill., grilled outgoing IRS commissioner Steven Miller about the IRS targeting a pro-life group in Iowa. "Their question, specifically
asked from the IRS to the Coalition for Life of Iowa: 'Please detail the content of the members of your organization's prayers,'" Schock
declared. "Would that be an inappropriate question to a 501 c3 applicant?" asked Schock. "The content of one's prayers?"
Three Signs There's a Cover-Up.
The late columnist William Safire once said that a good clue that someone in Washington was engaged in "an artful dodge," i.e., a cover-up, was
that they used the phrase "mistakes were made." [...] The phrase became infamous when both Richard Nixon and Ron Ziegler, his press secretary,
deployed it to explain away Watergate without explaining who did what and when or whether any ill motive was involved. Astonishingly, the
Internal Revenue Service resurrected the Nixonian expression within hours of its clumsy revelation that it had targeted tea-party groups and
other organizations with "patriot" or "9/12" in their names.
Higher-Ups Knew of IRS Case. The
Internal Revenue Service's watchdog told top Treasury officials around June 2012 he was investigating allegations the tax agency had targeted
conservative groups, for the first time indicating that Obama administration officials were aware of the explosive matter in the midst of the
president's re-election campaign.
'We could lose everything': Tea
Party groups prepare to sue IRS. Jay Devereaux hadn't paid much attention to the daily drumbeat of partisan politics in D.C. He
wasn't a Washington nerd, and didn't know who said what during congressional hearings — nor did he care. But when news broke that the
government was using taxpayer money to bail out Wall Street banks, he started paying attention and didn't like what he was hearing.
IRS sued for seizing 60 million
medical records. A healthcare provider has sued the Internal Revenue Service and 15 of its agents, charging they wrongfully
seized 60 million medical records from 10 million Americans. The name of the provider is not yet known, United Press International
said. But Courthouse News Service said the suit claims the agency violated the Fourth Amendment in 2011, when agents executed a search
warrant for financial data on one employee — and that led to the seizure of information on 10 million, including state judges.
IRS Actions Show High-Level, Political
Coordination. In today's hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee, outgoing not-really-fired commissioner Steven Miller
admitted that a high-ranking member of the Internal Revenue Service planted the question that led to the agency's apology for targeting conservatives.
[...] Prior to the hearings, Lisa Myers reported that the IRS deliberately delayed acknowledging the abuse until after the 2012 election.
A
bushel of Pinocchios for IRS's Lois Lerner. In the days since the Internal Revenue Service first disclosed that it had targeted
conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, new information has emerged from both the Treasury Inspector General's report and congressional
testimony Friday that calls into question key statements made by Lois G. Lerner, the IRS's director of the exempt organizations division.
Obama's Real Legacy. The current abusive conduct by the
IRS is breathtaking in its audacity. When you look at last Friday's testimony Acting Commisioner Steven Miller there is a clear
disconnect — [he] doesn't think anyone did anything illegal, unconstitutional, or even wrong. Apart from a stark posture of
arrogance and negative body language, he represents a very large group of people we need to worry about. This guy is beyond zealotry —
he has gone straight to certainty that he is right, his actions are justified and he can't be touched.
Evidence
emerges that Obama administration official knew of IRS targeting during 2012 campaign. There were new questions Saturday night
concerning if anyone in the White House was aware of the IRS' targeting of conservative groups. Inspector General Russell George said
he informed a deputy at the Treasury Department in June of 2012 about the probe into the IRS. The Treasury Department confirmed the
timeline but said they did not know the details of the investigation until last week.
A Breach of Trust.
Tax collectors have had a rotten reputation since biblical times. For all the services and all the people that depend on it, our work has to
be viewed as fair and even-handed. It's a basic bond of trust, and once that trust is lost, it's hard to get back. Our entire nation was born
when the colonists decided Britain's taxes were unfair. That's why it's so infuriating to learn that this administration has breached that
trust so profoundly, by persecuting groups explicitly for their politics.
Treasury
Sec: I Knew About IRS Scandal Last Week — And Also Last Fall. In an interview with Bloomberg TV, former Obama chief of
staff-turned-Treasury Secretary Jack Lew offered two conflicting yet carefully worded answers as to when he first learned that the Internal Revenue
Service (IRS) had targeted Tea Party and conservative groups: he learned last week — and possibly before the 2012 election.
Disturbing
abuses of power. [Scroll down] Meanwhile, back in the bureaucracy, Internal Revenue Service workers were having a high old time
putting conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status through hoops. IRS employees were instructed to be on the "lookout" for groups with "tea
party" and "patriot" in their names, according to the report of the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration. The acting IRS
commissioner has already been forced to walk the plank, and more heads may roll. The IRS has a steep hill to climb to gain the public's trust.
Noted
Catholic Scholar Claims IRS Audit Triggered by Criticism of Obama. Anne Hendershott, an eloquent opponent of the Obama administration,
states that she has reason to believe she was targeted by the IRS for an audit following publications that were critical of President Obama and
Catholics who supported him.
Merely a Tax Misunderstanding.
Taxpayers tuning in to Friday's House Ways and Means hearing on IRS targeting of conservative groups may have expected to hear some hangdog
apologies from senior members of the agency. If so, they were disappointed. Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, who was fired
by President Obama this week but is sticking around to help with the transition, was almost casual about the pattern of biased enforcement
that cost him his job.
Planted question gambit backfires on IRS
officials. It was an unusual way to deliver bad news, even in a town known for its selective leaks, Friday-night news dumps and wag-the-dog
distractions. The Internal Revenue Service, apparently determined to get out ahead of an inspector general report critical of its handling of tax
exemptions for Tea Party groups, came up with a plan: Lois Lerner, the official responsible for the tax-exempt division, would publicly apologize in
response to a question at the American Bar Association conference in Washington. Details of the now-infamous planted question emerged Friday
[...]
WH: Legality of IRS Action Against Conservatives
'Irrelevant'. Appearing on Sunday morning on ABC News' This Week, White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer told a credulous
George Stephanopoulos that the IRS' targeting of conservative groups was "inexcusable," and that the law with regard to the activity was "irrelevant."
"I can't speak to the law here," he said. "The law is irrelevant. The activity was outrageous and inexcusable, and it was stopped and
it needs to be fixed so we ensure it never happens again."
Connect dots to Obama. The standard
police warning about con men applies to politicians, as well: When they tell you something that sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
So it goes with the White House claim that it knew nothing — nothing! — about the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal
Revenue Service. Of course the White House knew. And we already have the first piece of evidence.
Congresman Rangel sides with the IRS, not you. Rangel
worries honest IRS agents are now 'getting a bad shake'. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) on Sunday [5/19/2013] said that he feared the
Internal Revenue Service scandal over political targeting of Tea Party groups would unfairly stigmatize other workers at the agency. "The
biggest problem is that tens of thousands of IRS workers that work hard with all of this stigma being tax collectors, are getting a bad shake
out of this," said Rangel during a panel discussion on ABC's "This Week."
IRS breaks the rules. It
eventually comes down to who — who at the IRS was responsible for targeting conservative and Tea Party groups for special scrutiny.
Because, after all, you can't put a "system" in jail. You can't put a report in prison. You can't indict a department for corruption.
[Ultimately] it's people who are responsible for using the enormous powers of the Internal Revenue Service to go after other people and groups
because of their political beliefs.
Impermissible cliché removed by The Editor.
Ideological Revenue Service.
Some 471 conservative groups seeking 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status were harassed by the IRS over a period of years, and our self-styled watchdog
media played no role in bringing this injustice to light. It only became a scandal after the IRS publicly admitted its wrongdoing.
Governor Bobby Jindal calls for IRS
officials to be jailed. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has delivered some harsh criticisms to President Barack Obama over recent
controversies surrounding his administration in a speech. Speaking to Virginia Republicans the Republican governor continued his push for
punishments to be handed out to Internal Revenue Service officials that targeted conservative groups in the lead-up to the 2012 election.
The Biggest Obama
Scandals Are Proven and Ignored. The IRS scandal and Department of Justice leak-investigation excesses are worrisome, but the biggest
scandals definitely go all the way to the top, and are still largely ignored even by commentators who have acknowledged that they're happening.
The Stasi IRS? It's often been said the Internal Revenue
Service is the most feared bureaucracy in the United States. Little wonder. [...] Deep in the subterranean bowels of the IRS, there are
electronic folders full of deeply personal, private information about nearly every American and every tax exempt organization. We now
know this treasure trove of information is exponentially expanding and has been put to the use for the aims of a corrupt administration
interested in crippling political opposition such as the Tea Party movement. The harassment of the Richmond Tea Party group, which
applied for tax exempt status, exemplifies the badgering many conservative groups have received over the last few years.
Making a List, Checking It Twice.
[Scroll down] The IRS maintains that lower-level employees at a Cincinnati, Ohio office were responsible. "Do
you believe it is illegal for employees of the IRS to create lists to target individual groups and citizens in this
country?" asked Rep. Tom Price (R., Ga.). "I don't believe it is [illegal]," [Steven] Miller said. "I don't
believe it should happen. Please don't get me wrong, it should not happen." Miller said the IRS actions were
an example of "horrible customer service" and called a list of criteria that employees used to identify conservative groups
"obnoxious."
The
Treasury connection: Not merely an IRS scandal. The Internal Revenue Service scandal may be the worst of all the
current Obama administration fiascoes. It is an easily understood gross misuse of the powers of government to target opponents
of the president. What is more, the administration's supplicants in the lefty punditocracy can no longer claim this is
just an IRS scandal.
Obama's Secret to Corruption: Never Appoint a Special Counsel.
Did you scratch your head when not a single Justice Department or ATF official went to jail for sending hundreds of guns over the border
to Mexican drug lords with the expressed purpose of fomenting violent crime? Do you really think high ranking government officials
are going to be held accountable for the now blazing IRS and Benghazi scandals?
The IRS Scandal Started at the Top.
Was the White House involved in the IRS's targeting of conservatives? No investigation needed to answer that one. Of course it was.
President Obama and Co. are in full deniability mode, noting that the IRS is an "independent" agency and that they knew nothing about its
abuse. The media and Congress are sleuthing for some hint that Mr. Obama picked up the phone and sicced the tax dogs on his enemies.
IRS Grilled
Tea Party Groups on Relationship to True the Vote. At least two Texas Tea Party groups have reported that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
questioned them on their relationship to the election integrity organization True the Vote and its parent group, the King Street Patriots Tea Party.
What Did the President Know About the
IRS Scandal and When Did He Know It? "What did the president know and when did he know it" is a question asked by both parties through the
years of Washington scandal and administration wrongdoing. It may seem trite, even tiresome. But the purpose behind the question is deadly
serious. The answer is measured against previous statements by the president to determine if he has been lying about the extent of his involvement
in whatever scandal has rocked his administration. In this case, everyone wants to know when President Obama found out about conservative groups
being targeted by the IRS.
IRS
stalled conservative groups, but gave speedy approval to Obama foundation. When the Barack H. Obama Foundation sought tax-exempt
status to raise money for good works in Kenya, the Internal Revenue Service provided quick help. The IRS approved charitable status for the
foundation, which was run by President Obama's brother and named after his father, in about a month's time. The IRS also agreed to give the
group this important financial status retroactively, back to 2009, when it had begun its fundraising. The 34 days the IRS's Cincinnati
office took to process the foundation's application stands in contrast to the waits of several months — and sometimes longer than a
year — that several conservative groups say they experienced with the same office.
This Is No Ordinary Scandal.
We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate. The reputation of the Obama White House has, among conservatives,
gone from sketchy to sinister, and, among liberals, from unsatisfying to dangerous. No one likes what they're seeing. The
Justice Department assault on the Associated Press and the ugly politicization of the Internal Revenue Service have left the
administration's credibility deeply, probably irretrievably damaged.
Has IRS Probe Re-Energized the Tea
Party? [I]n the wake of revelations that tea party groups seeking tax-exempt status were among those targeted by the IRS for
extra scrutiny, things are starting to look up for the national coalition of lawmakers, political operatives and concerned citizens who
preach for smaller government, advocate lower taxes and fight against infringements on civil liberties. For perhaps the first time in
three years, tea party leaders are seeing a renewed recognition of their relevance, which they anticipate will bring back old supporters,
enlist new allies and perhaps even broaden the political base.
Flashback: Schumer, Franken urged IRS
to target tea party in 2012. Long before the Internal Revenue Service revealed it had improperly targeted conservative 501(c)(4) groups, a
group of Democratic senators led by New York Sen. Chuck Schumer urged the IRS to do just that. The IRS's admission last Friday that it had singled
out tea party and other groups for extra audits and delays has raised concerns that President Barack Obama's administration quietly attempted to stymy
opponents through intimidation.
Jay Carney: I dismiss the idea that
these are scandals. [Scroll down] Carney asserted that in his opinion, the three scandals within the Obama administration were not
scandals. "I dismiss the premise, the idea that these are scandals," Carney said flatly, calling the controversy over Benghazi a "total concoction
by Republicans," and the IRS scandal merely "inappropriate behavior" by the IRS.
Baucus on IRS: 'I have a hunch that a lot more is
going to come out'. Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the Senate Finance Committee Chairman, predicted in an interview airing Sunday that
the scandal surrounding the Internal Revenue Service selectively targeting conservative political groups will grow. "I have a hunch that a
lot more is going to come out, frankly," Baucus told Bloomberg News. "It's broader than the current focus."
News Anchor Who Complained of IRS
Harassment 'Off the Air'. Longtime KMOV (Channel 4) anchorman Larry Conners is "off the air" until further notice. The station
is examining Conners' recent allegations that he was targeted by the Internal Revenue Service after interviewing President Barack Obama. "He's
not suspended. We just all thought it made sense (for him) to take a few days off," news director Sean McLaughlin said Thursday.
Rep. Dave Camp accuses
White House of 'cover-up' in IRS scandal. The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday said the IRS scandal
shows a "culture of cover-ups" and "political intimidation" within the Obama administration. Rep. Dave Camp, Michigan Republican,
while speaking at a hearing his panel held regarding the IRS's improper targeting of tea party and other conservative groups applying
for tax-exempt status, suggested the White House hid the scandal until after the 2012 elections. "This appears to be just the
latest example of a culture of cover-ups and political intimidation in this administration," said Mr. Camp at the nearly four-hour
hearing, the first of several that will take place on Capitol Hill on the matter.
Past presidents have sent
IRS after critics. The Internal Revenue Service controversy dogging President Barack Obama is hardly the first time a
White House and the tax agency have been accused of political meddling and bias.
IRS
scandal reveals Obama's fake accountability. Accountability is the watchword of President Obama, who loves to talk about it
but seems confused about its meaning. Regarding the developing IRS scandal, in which the federal taxing agency improperly targeted
conservative groups for extra scrutiny, Obama expressed "outrage" several times. He added that those responsible "have to be held
fully accountable."
Democrat Baucus warns: More to come out on IRS scandal.
Senior Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, who recently slapped Obamacare as a "train wreck," believes that the IRS scandal is just beginning
and that "a lot more" damaging information will be revealed, likely at congressional hearings.
IG On IRS Scandal: 'Clear Evidence' of
Wrongdoing. In his prepared opening statement as a House hearing on Friday, J. Russell George, Treasury Inspector
General for the Tax Administration, said his audit found "clear evidence" that the allegations of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
targeting conservative groups seeking tax exempt status are true.
If
White House counsel knew about IRS abuses she must resign. I have been told today by several reporters that President Obama's
White House Counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, knew for several days, perhaps weeks, about the IRS story, i.e., that some IRS officials engaged in
political targeting of conservative groups; and that she did not tell the president as soon as she knew, even partial reports, about the
story. With all due respect to someone who has impeccable legal credentials, if she did have such fore-knowledge and didn't inform
the president immediately, I respectfully suggest Ms. Ruemmler is in the wrong job and she should resign.
IRS official won't say who
is responsible for scandal: 'I don't have names for you'. The outgoing leader of the Internal Revenue Service testified
Friday [5/17/2013] that he could not specifically finger the person responsible for the agency's targeting of tea party groups.
"I don't have names for you," Steve Miller, the acting commissioner of the IRS who resigned this week because of the scandal, said during
testimony during a hearing before the House Ways and Means committee.
Lerner's admission of IRS's
inappropriate behavior was pre-planned public disclosure. The revelation came seemingly out of the blue, in response
to a question during a panel at an American Bar Association conference, leaving the audience baffled, according to reports.
As it turns out, it was not a spontaneous revelation. The question, said outgoing IRS Commissioner Steven Miller in testimony
before the House Ways and Means Committee Friday, was planted, as part of a prepared strategy for the IRS to release this information
to the public.
IRS Targeted
Conservative Hispanic Outreach Group. The IRS's targeting of Tea Party groups went even further than has been revealed.
A conservative Hispanic outreach group that educates Spanish-speaking and English-speaking Hispanic communities on the US Constitution was
also targeted after applying for 501(c3) status, according to the group's founder and president, Adryana Boyne.
IRS
Official On Targeting Of Conservative Groups: 'It Is Not Illegal, But It Was Inappropriate'. During a hearing before the
House Ways and Means Committee on Friday [5/17/2013] regarding the news that the Internal Revenue Service had singled out conservative
groups for undue scrutiny, one official with the Treasury Department clarified whether the IRS views that behavior as being illegal.
During the hearing, Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George said that the IRS regards that
behavior as "inappropriate," but "it is not illegal."
IRS Attack Against
Tea Party Assaulted Civility. As an agency that favored expanding its own power, the IRS and its political masters
naturally felt threatened by Tea Party success, seen in the rallies of millions in February and then April 2009, as well as the
proliferation of groups across the country. But they weren't threats to anyone except tyrants, because they were civil
society groups with deep roots in the American experience.
Barack Obama [is] Not Outraged; He Adores the
IRS. So, we are to believe that it is just a coincidence that tea party groups oppose the Obama administration and for
27 months, beginning in March 2010, the Internal Revenue Service didn't approve even one tea party application for tax-exempt
status? Is it also a coincidence that during the same time period, dozens of liberal organizations involved in political advocacy
practically saw their applications fast-tracked?
Official
in charge of corrupt IRS department promoted — to top ObamaCare enforcer. If you haven't tuned President Empty
Chair out completely, you may recall him making some absurdly tough noises about cleaning house at the IRS and firing some top officials.
It has now been confirmed by multiple sources, including ABC News, that one of those officials — Acting IRS Commissioner
Steven Miller — was due to leave in June anyway. He's not being "fired" at all; he's leaving on schedule. But
Obama looked America right in the eye and lied through his teeth about demanding Miller's resignation.
The Obama media blackout. [Scroll down] "I first
learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this," the President claimed. "I think it was on Friday."
Aren't there people who are supposed to brief the President on important events? Do those people still have their jobs today? If so,
why? [...] [W]ouldn't a truly concerned President demand the resignation of the staffers who failed him so utterly that he had to learn about the worst
scandal of his Presidency by watching TV or reading a newspaper?
Soros
Gave $6M to Groups Pressuring IRS to Target GOP. Several Soros-funded groups including the Campaign Legal Center, Democracy 21,
the Center for Public Integrity, Mother Jones and Alternet have worked to pressure the IRS to target conservative nonprofit groups.
The subsequent IRS investigation flagged more than 100 tea party-related applications for higher scrutiny, including applications that
included the words "Tea Party" and "patriot."
When
it rains, it pours: Ten press conference take aways. [#2] He's going to get the Internal Revenue Service in tip-top
shape. Still, it's an independent agency and all. (The willingness to show he is in charge is undercut by his insistence he
had no idea what was going on there.) [...] [#8] He said he won't relent and appoint an independent prosecutor on the IRS scandal.
The Big Question: Is the White
House Linked to IRS Abuses? Congressional investigators are working to determine if other parts of the Obama administration
were involved in the abusive and potentially illegal IRS targeting of conservative organizations, a probe that could cause problems
dwarfing anything else the White House is facing. Any knowledge, approval or direction of IRS abuses at senior levels of the
administration would turn the rumblings of scandal into an earthquake. Any link to the president could be grounds for impeachment.
The IRS Wants to Know If You're
a "Patriot". Across this great land, patriotic Americans are behaving subversively. We're quoting from our pocket
Constitutions, starting reading groups to discuss our founding documents, even gathering together to "petition the government for a
redress of grievances." Uncle Sam is not amused. As leaders of tea party groups have been painfully aware for years, the
Internal Revenue Service has given "special" attention to conservative groups.
Cincinnati
IRS workers: we were just doing what the bosses ordered. Fox 19 is reporting that they have learned exclusively that
there are four employees who have each worked at the Cincinnati IRS office in the Exempt Organization department who are saying they
were just doing what their bosses told them to do.
10 of 12 IRS
offices implicated in scandal are in Washington. The Treasury Inspector General's damaging report on the IRS-Tea Party
scandal has destroyed the administration's claim that low-level workers in a Cincinnati, Ohio office are to blame, revealing that
10 of 12 agency offices referenced in the affair are in Washington. The report repeatedly references actions taken by
the Washington-based Exempt Organizations unit and guidance specialists also in Washington. What's more, the report was researched
in the Exempt Organizations offices and the Cincinnati-based Determinations Units, which has received the blame for targeting Tea Party groups.
The Multiple Facets of the IRS
Scandal. Conservatives, especially high-profile donors to conservative causes, have long believed that they are likely to be
singled out for harassment by the IRS. Anecdotally, it seems that there is considerable evidence to support this belief.
IRS Told
Pro-Life Group Not to Picket Planned Parenthood. The Internal Revenue Service allegedly told an Iowa pro-life group they
had to sign documents promising not to protest or picket Planned Parenthood and they told a Texas pro-life organization they had to
promote abortion, according to documents obtained by Fox News. "The IRS was concerned about advocacy," said Sally Wagenmaker,
special counsel to the Thomas More Society. "The (agent) said picketing and protesting is not allowed." She said the IRS's
role "should only be to determine whether organizations fit the section 501(c)(3) test for 'charitable, religious, or educational'
qualification, not to inquire about the content of prayers, protests, and petitions."
Groups
that sought tax-exempt status say IRS dealings were a nightmare. [Scroll down] Not only did IRS employees
improperly target groups based on politics, but they also improperly demanded a host of details about the groups' activities,
according to a report on the abuses by a Treasury Department inspector general. Some groups, including several interviewed
by The Washington Post, were asked to provide names of donors or membership lists, which experts say the IRS cannot legally do.
The agency also demanded names of board members, copies of meeting minutes and résumés, details of community
organizing efforts and numerous other details, according to questionnaires obtained by The Post.
The
IRS is deeply political — and very Democratic. If you needed another reason to distrust your government
and oppose its expansion, the IRS just gave it to you. Judging by available evidence and an inspector general's report
released this week, the story here is not a Nixonian White House using all of government's tools to punish critics. The
story is instead one of government power so great that, even in the hands of nonpolitical career civil servants, politically
motivated abuse is inevitable. And the ultimate problem is that our tax code and campaign finance laws put the IRS in
the business of policing political speech. Politics inevitably comes into play.
Acting Chief of
I.R.S. Forced Out Over Tea Party Targeting. President Obama announced Wednesday night that the acting commissioner of
the Internal Revenue Service had been ousted after disclosures that the agency gave special scrutiny to conservative groups.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., meanwhile, warned top I.R.S. officials that a Justice Department inquiry would examine
any false statements to see if they constituted a crime.
A Degree of Malevolence. The most
striking characteristic emerging from accounts of the IRS audits of the administration's political enemies is the sheer, unbridled
malevolence of them.
A Brief History of IRS Political
Targeting. President Franklin Roosevelt used the IRS to harass newspaper publishers who were opposed to the New Deal,
including William Randolph Hearst and Moses Annenberg, publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer. [...] Perhaps Roosevelt's most
pernicious tax skulduggery occurred in 1944. He spiked an IRS audit of illegal campaign contributions made by a government
contractor to Congressman Lyndon Johnson, whose career might have been derailed if Texans had learned of the scandal.
Lawless in office. During the 2012 election cycle, the
IRS — under the direction of its Washington office — became an arm of the Obama regime to persecute its political opponents.
The agency abrogated personal freedoms and violated numerous laws. Agents requested that anti-Obama groups hand over Facebook posts and Twitter
messages. The IRS insisted on obtaining the resumes of board members and names of confidential donors. The agency demanded to know the
groups' reading lists. Prominent businessmen, such as Frank L. VanderSloot, who donated to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, were
aggressively audited. Even a Catholic professor critical of Mr. Obama's policies was allegedly targeted. In short, the IRS was transformed
into a political battering ram to smash Mr. Obama's critics.
Obama's IRS Scandal comes from the Clinton Playbook.
Knock me over with a whisper. The mainstream press and politicians are outraged to discover that the Obama administration has
been misusing the Internal Revenue Services (IRS) for political gain by deliberately targeting and harassing Conservative and Tea Party
groups who applied for tax-exempt status. These same people are also shocked that a government agency would illegally leak out
confidential information to the media. Where have you been all these years? Did you not think it wouldn't happen to you or
anyone else?
Government's
heavy hand felt in IRS, AP scandals. If there is any thread that unites these scandals, it is government heavy-handedness.
Seizing the phone records of, say, three editors and reporters would constitute a leak investigation. Seizing the phone records of
perhaps 100 is a fishing expedition and a form of intimidation. "They're sending a clear message to our sources," says National
Journal's Ron Fournier. "'Don't embarrass the administration or we're coming after you.'"
Ministries founded by Billy Graham,
Franklin Graham audited by IRS, letter to Obama says. The ministries founded by Evangelist Billy Graham and his son,
Franklin Graham, were audited recently by the Internal Revenue Service, said the son, who believes they were targeted for their
conservative stance against gay marriage. Franklin Graham wrote a letter to President Barack Obama that complained about IRS
targeting of conservative groups and alleged that the audits of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan's Purse were
politically motivated.
Obama's
attempt at damage control laughable. There was a certain panicky look about the way the president quickly delivered a rare
evening White House statement to try to quell the growing outrage over the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups. The move showed how
damaging the scandal has become to Obama's second term and maybe even his presidency.
Director
of IRS Tax-Exempt Determinations Office Is Obama Donor. The director of the Office of Rulings and Agreements, which
oversees the determinatons of tax-exempt organizations, is a donor to Barack Obama. Holly Paz donated $2,000 to Obama's 2008
campaign, according to Open Secrets, which maintains a database of individual political donations. An inspector general's report
released yesterday concluded that the IRS improperly targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups for undue scrutiny, and Paz
heads the office in which the wrongdoing is said to have occurred.
In wake of scandal,
Obama ousts IRS chief — who was planning to resign anyway. President Obama insisted Thursday [5/16/2013] that
he knew nothing about the internal investigation into the IRS' practice of singling out conservative groups for special scrutiny before
it was made public, as he moved to name a new director for the embattled agency. [...] The president, though, did not say whether he was
previously aware of the IRS' actions, which allegedly started as early as 2010, well before the inspector general's office began to
investigate.
Nothing to see here. I'll take care of it, don't you worry. Obama: No Special Counsel Needed on
IRS. A special prosecutor is not necessary to investigate the IRS's targeting of conservative groups, President Obama
said this afternoon. His announcement comes despite calls from a number of conservative lawmakers urging the Justice Department
to assign a special counsel to lead an investigation into the matter.
Tea party groups plan to
sue IRS. The Ohio Liberty Coalition and 16 other tea party groups could file a civil suit against the Internal Revenue
Service as soon as next week, according to an attorney representing 27 tea party organizations from around the nation. Jordan
Sekulow, executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice, is representing the organizations on a pro bono basis.
He said it's unclear if the organizations will file as a class action or individually in the 17 different states they encompass.
Top Tea Party
official: IRS tactics nearly bankrupt movement. Top representatives of the nation's Tea Party movement on Thursday lashed
out at President Obama for using the IRS to shut down free speech and harass his enemies, claiming that the cost of fighting back hurt the
movement. "The damage the IRS caused may be immeasurable. There are concrete monetary damages," charged Jenny Beth Martin,
co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. "There are groups of volunteers who gave up on collectively petitioning their government and
others who never attempted to apply to tax exempt status because they saw what other citizens endured. There are groups like Tea
Party Patriots who to this day the IRS is still stringing along."
Speaker
Boehner Says IRS Scandal Will Get Bigger. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) took questions from the press on Thursday [5/16/2013]
relating to his call for prison time for those individuals found culpable in the decision by the Internal Revenue Service to target
conservative groups with undue scrutiny. Boehner said that what happened was a criminal offense and he doubts that "low-level
employees" in a Midwestern field office were the only individuals responsible.
Watchdog
report describes massive delays as IRS slow-walked Tea Party groups. A newly obtained watchdog report described how the
"inappropriate" IRS program that flagged conservative groups for extra scrutiny led to massive delays, with some organizations stuck
waiting years to find out about their applications. The findings were contained in a highly anticipated and highly critical
inspector general's report, obtained by Fox News, on a practice that IRS officials first acknowledged on Friday [5/17/2013].
Your Next IRS Political Audit.
Even as the politicized tax enforcement scandal expands, the Internal Revenue Service continues to expand its political powers thanks to
the Affordable Care Act. A larger government always creates more openings for abuse, as Americans will learn when the IRS starts
auditing their health care in addition to their 1040 next year.
The 'Independent' Revenue Service.
One notable aspect of the Internal Revenue Service scandal is President Obama's strange view of accountability within the executive branch.
In his Monday [5/13/2013] remarks addressing the targeting of conservative groups for tax-exempt scrutiny, Mr. Obama declared that the IRS is "an independent
agency." [...] The IRS is many things, but "independent" isn't one of them. It is formally part of the Treasury Department and is headed
by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, who is appointed by the President. The Commissioner is accountable to the President reporting
through the Treasury Secretary.
Clueless or truthless?
On Friday, the IRS conceded its appalling targeting of Tea Party groups — though it initially said the misconduct occurred
only in 2012. Subsequent evidence shows that the IRS also acted in this chilling manner in 2011 — and perhaps even 2010.
And though the president said he didn't know about this blatant violation of the IRS' proper function until Friday, The Associated Press
reported Saturday that IRS Commissioner Steven Miller was informed of the targeting of Tea Party organizations seeking tax-exempt status
on May 3, 2012.
Targeted by
feds? Join the club. These so-called "journalists" in D.C. must have led very sheltered lives if they've never had
the feds looking for their sources and/or auditing them.
The Party Line on the IRS Scandal:
Justifiable Harassment. Just because the IRS has no friends doesn't mean that the administration's most reliable
allies in the media can't engage in some pushback against the narrative emerging about harassment and bullying of conservative
groups by the tax agency. And leading the media charge is the president's most ardent supporter, the New York Times.
Lawmakers
say IRS targeted dozens more conservative groups than initially believed. The IRS targeting of conservative groups
is far broader than first reported, with nearly 500 organizations singled out for additional scrutiny, according to two lawmakers
briefed by the agency. IRS officials claimed on Friday that roughly 300 groups received additional scrutiny. Reps.
Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said Tuesday that the number has actually risen to 471. Further, they said
it is "unclear" whether Tea Party and other conservative groups are being targeted to this day.
Frank
VanderSloot: 'I'm not the only' major Mitt Romney donor audited. Billionaire businessman Frank VanderSloot,
a major Mitt Romney super PAC donor who was subjected to three federal agency audits after being slimed by the Obama
campaign, says he isn't the only one of his peers who was audited after donating to Romney. VanderSloot, who was
also national co-chair of the Romney campaign's finance committee, was described in an April 2012 Obama campaign Web
posting as one of eight "wealthy individuals with less-than-reputable records."
The IRS wants YOU — to
share everything. The Internal Revenue Service asked tea party groups to see donor rolls. It asked for printouts of
Facebook posts. And it asked what books people were reading. A Politico review of documents from 11 tea party and
conservative groups that the IRS scrutinized in 2012 shows the agency wanted to know everything — in some cases, it even seemed
curious what members were thinking.
Where the Scandal Points.
It looks like one of the things that will be inflicted on New Yorkers as a result of the scandal at the Internal Revenue
Service is a whole new round of tirades from the New York Times calling for state-funded electioneering. This is what
we take from the editorial in the Times this morning arguing that the scandal was not that the IRS was looking into tax abuses
by social welfare groups allied with the Tea Party but that it wasn't also looking at social welfare groups allied with the Left.
Claim:
Obama Campaign Co-Chair Attacked Romney with Leaked IRS Docs. One of President Barack Obama's re-election campaign
co-chairmen used a leaked document from the IRS to attack GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney during the 2012 election, according
to the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). NOM, a pro-traditional marriage organization, claims the IRS leaked their
2008 confidential financial documents to the rival Human Rights Campaign.
ACLJ Calls on IRS to Approve
Tax-Exempt Status for 10 Tea Party Groups. The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which first accused the Internal
Revenue Service (IRS) of seeking to intimidate Tea Party groups 14 months ago, legally represents 27 such groups and is now
demanding that the IRS approve the tax-exempt status of 10 of the groups or face possible legal action.
Senate
Dems Have as Much to Explain as the IRS. With Washington gripped by a trio of exploding scandals this week — from
Benghazi to government spying on news outlets to thug tactics by the Internal Revenue Service — Senate Democrats seem to be
hoping that if they just yell loud enough then voters will overlook a key role they played in at least one of them.
IRS
employees gave more than $110,000 to Obama's campaigns. President Obama received more than $110,000 from IRS employees
for his 2008 and 2012 campaigns, topping all rival candidates, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis. Federal
Election Commission records show that IRS employees gave Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney about $25,000 — less
than half the amount received by Mr. Obama. The GOP's 2008 presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, collected only about
$6,000 from IRS employees, the center found.
Boehner Says Prison Time
Possible in IRS Scandal. "My question isn't about who's going to resign; my question is who's going to jail over this
scandal?" Mr. Boehner said at a press conference Wednesday [5/15/2013]. Lawmakers in both parties have pushed for more information
after the IRS apologized last week for what it said was inappropriate scrutiny of tax-exemption requests by conservative groups with "Tea
Party" or "patriot" in their names.
IRS exec got $42K in bonuses in three years. Lois Lerner, the
senior executive in charge of the IRS tax exemption department and the federal employee at the center of the exploding scandal over the
IRS targeting of conservative, evangelical and pro-Israel non-profits, was given $42,531 in bonuses between 2009 and 2011.
Boehner on IRS
Targeting Conservatives: 'Who's Going to Jail Over this Scandal?'. "My question isn't about who's going to resign,"
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told the press on Wednesday [5/15/2013], "My question is, who's going to jail over this scandal?" Boehner
was joined at the Capitol by other GOP House leaders in discussing the admitted IRS targeting of conservative groups applying for tax
exempt status.
News Anchor Fears IRS Targeted Him Following
Obama Interview. Larry Connors, a veteran local news anchor at KMOV Channel 4 in St. Louis, says that the Internal Revenue
Service has been targeting him since an April 2012 interview he conducted with President Obama — a fact that he dismissed as
coincidence until the recent reports about the IRS targeting conservative groups.
Obama: IRS acting commissioner has resigned. President Barack
Obama on Wednesday [5/15/2013] announced the ouster of the top official at the Internal Revenue Service following disclosures that
the agency targeted conservative political groups.
Dem leaders:
IRS controversy won't undermine ObamaCare implementation. A growing chorus of Democratic leaders says the current controversy
surrounding the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) should have no effect on the agency's work implementing President Obama's healthcare reform
law. A number of Republicans have said the recent revelation that IRS officials had targeted conservative groups leaves the agency
with no credibility as it prepares to implement those parts of the reform law under its watch.
Senate Dems Block Paul's
Resolution Condemning IRS. Senate Democrats today blocked Sen. Rand Paul's (R-Ky.) resolution condemning the IRS and
advocating an investigation reaching deep into the Obama administration. "The president has deemed this inexcusable, yet
actions speak louder than words. It is time for President Obama and his Administration to act and it is our duty as Americans
to hold them accountable," he added.
IRS
sent unpublished info on conservative groups to investigative news outfit. ProPublica, a left-leaning nonprofit
organization that does investigative journalism, often sharing it with outlets like the Washington Post, offers its own revelation
on the news that the Internal Revenue Service was targeting Tea Party groups. It was the recipient of some of the IRS documents.
These were documents that even ProPublica admits the IRS should not have been giving out according to the agency's own rules.
I am the face of Team Obama's IRS attacks.
We are dealing with a modern-day Nixon. The IRS admitted Friday to targeting and intimidating conservative and Tea Party groups.
But why? The answer: the IRS thought a quick apology and throwing a few "low level employees" under the bus could nip it in
the bud and make it all go away. They're wrong. This will be one of the biggest scandals in U.S. political history —
if the media does their job.
McConnell: IRS Revelations 'Just The
Beginning'. On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) fired back on assertions by the IRS that its efforts
to target conservative groups were relegated to low-level employees. "Of course not," he told Breitbart News. McConnell noted that
he had raised the issue of IRS targeting of conservatives in 2012, and further noted that the Washington Post "dismissed it as a bunch
of red herrings." The scandal, McConnell said, extends up the chain.
White House
Counsel Knew in April of IRS's Targeting of Conservatives. I do not believe that Barack Obama first learned of the IRS's
targeting of conservatives "from news reports" on Friday. That doesn't pass the smell test, especially since a close aide was told of the
program three weeks ago.
The
IRS's turn to answer questions. Washington is now sinking its teeth into a real scandal: the Internal Revenue
Service (IRS) using ideological criteria to choose the targets of its attention. What we already know is bad enough. Given the
seriousness of the charges and the unreliability of IRS disclosures so far, purposeful, sober investigation is exactly what is needed.
IRS Lies About Tax Scandal
Continue To Mount. Lois Lerner, who runs the office overseeing tax exempt organizations, said last Friday that:
"We saw a big increase in these kinds of applications." So, too, did Joseph Grant, a top IRS official who said in response to
the inspector general report that the agency experienced a "significant increase ... starting in 2010." Given the flood of new
applications, these officials claim, the IRS simply tried to improve "efficiency and consistency" by automatically screening some for
extra review, and in doing so, they inadvertently targeted conservative groups. There's just one problem with this excuse.
It's not true.
An Agency after
Obama's Own Heart. Of course the president deserves some of the blame. Yes, it's extremely unlikely he ordered the
IRS to discriminate against tea-party, pro-life, or Jewish groups opposed to his agenda (though why anyone should take his word for it is
beyond me). And his outrage now — however convenient — is appreciated. But when people he views as his
"enemies" complained about a politicized IRS, what did he do? Nothing.
What has the IRS been leaking
on conservative groups? In the flood of stories popping up in the wake of the Obama administration's IRS scandal, a couple
suggest the IRS has been leaking information about conservatives and conservative groups in addition to putting them through the wringer
for tax-exempt status.
IRS Scandal About to Blow Wide
Open? To no one's surprise, it is already evident that the Obama administration has been lying about the scope of the
IRS's harassment of conservative-leaning non-profits. The Washington Post has obtained documents that show the anti-conservative
effort was directed from Washington, D.C., and was not a rogue operation out of the agency's Cincinnati office, as the administration
has claimed.
Obama
knee-deep in Nixon-esque scandal. President Obama's second-term campaign slogan was "Forward," but instead we've got
cover-ups, congressional investigations and the government persecution of political opponents and reporters. That sounds like
"backward" to me. All the way to, say, 1972.
The IRS
and AP controversies spell trouble for Obama and Democrats. The Justice Department has "secretly obtained" two months of
conversations between Associated Press (AP) officials in a move called "unprecedented". The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Cincinnati
office singled out new conservative groups for extra scrutiny over the past couple of years. One of these controversies alone
would have caused a headache for the Obama administration, but the two of them together could spell big trouble for the Democrats
in the 2014 midterm elections.
Lawmakers ramp up scandal
scrutiny, Boehner wants 'jail' for IRS offenders. Congressional Republicans — as well as some
Democrats — are putting the screws to the Obama administration as they investigate a rash of potential scandals,
lining up hearings and inquiries as top leaders suggest jail time for the worst offenders. "My question isn't about who's going
to resign — my question is who is going to jail over this scandal?" House Speaker John Boehner said Wednesday [5/15/2013].
The speaker was referring to the IRS practice of singling out Tea Party and other conservative organizations for extra
scrutiny — a practice confirmed in a watchdog's official report this week.
Rep.
Issa Rips Obama Over IRS Scandal. [Scroll down] From there, the hosts moved on to the IRS admitting to targeting
politically conservative groups. "How dare the administration imply that they're going to get to the bottom of it," Issa charged.
"This was targeting of the president's political enemies, effectively, and lies about it during the election year so that it wasn't
discovered until afterwards. ... This process was deliberate, and it was repeated."
Deja
Vu: IRS boss of Tea Party probes targeted anti-Clinton group in 1990s. Steven T. Miller, the acting IRS commissioner who
managed the division that has admitted targeting anti-Obama Tea Party groups, was one of several agents who investigated anti-Clinton
organizations including Judicial Watch during that Democrat's administration, according to court documents and interviews. Miller,
who headed the IRS Services and Enforcement Division from 2009 until the end of last year, is named in court documents as part of a trio of
Internal Revenue Service officials who allegedly characterized the 1998-2001 investigation of Judicial Watch as politically motivated.
Turmoil
toughens IRS job on healthcare. The nonpartisan IRS is charged with some of the law's most important functions, such as
distributing tax credits and enforcing the individual mandate to buy health insurance. IRS duties on healthcare were bound to be
politically charged given the controversy surrounding the law, which remains divisive with the public. Now the IRS's job has become
even more difficult given the certainty of an investigation into the agency's scrutiny of conservative groups.
Franklin Graham: IRS
targeted our evangelical groups, too. Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham and the president of the family's evangelical
association, said in a letter to President Obama that the Internal Revenue Service targeted them, too. In September, the IRS advised
of a "review" of the activities of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and of the family-run Samaritan's Purse, an international
humanitarian group, Mr. Graham said, Politico reported. The review was for the 2010 tax year.
IRS Admission Fans Flames
of Anti-'Obamacare' Push. The admission by the Internal Revenue Service that it singled out conservative advocacy groups
for intense scrutiny provides conservatives with what one Hill aide described as "fresh ammunition" to attack the 2010 health care
law — especially given the critical role the IRS is expected to play in implementing and regulating the law. The timing of the
IRS admission, coming just days before the House will vote on the full repeal of a polarizing law the IRS will have a major role in
enforcing, has conservative lawmakers and outside groups eager to talk.
Obama finds his legacy.
[Scroll down] "Previous presidents," writes Joe Klein in Time magazine, "including great ones like Roosevelt, have used the IRS
against their enemies. But I don't think Obama ever wanted to be on the same page as Richard Nixon. In this specific case,
he now is."
Rubio:
Obama Administration's "Culture of Intimidation" Led to IRS Scandal. Senator Marco Rubio railed against the Obama
administration's "culture of intimidation" today during a speech on the Senate floor. "In the span of four days, three
major revelations have been made regarding the use of government power to intimidate those who are doing things the government
doesn't like," Rubio said regarding news of Benghazi whistleblowers being threatened, the IRS targeting conservative groups and the
DOJ secretly monitoring personal and work phone lines of AP reporters. "These are the tactics of the third world.
These are the tactics of places that don't have the freedoms and the independence that we have here in this country."
The
Internal IRS Whitewash of the Great Tea Party Purge: We Need A Special Prosecutor. On Tuesday night [5/14/2013] the
report of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration on the great Tea Party purge was released. This is a terrible
report. Just begin reading it and you will quickly realize that you are in the the swamp of obfuscation and CYA.
Now we know what kind of country this guy would like to live in. Julian Bond backs IRS tea party
targeting. Civil rights icon Julian Bond defended the IRS for targeting tea party groups, on Tuesday, labeling them "the
Taliban wing of American politics." "I think it's entirely legitimate to look at the tea party," Bond said on MSNBC.
"Here are [sic] a group of people who are admittedly racist, who are overtly political, who've tried as best they can to harm President
Obama in every way they can."
Paul Resolution
Condemns IRS, Seeks Investigation. As fallout from the IRS scandal rippled through Washington, Sen. Rand Paul introduced
a resolution Tuesday [5/14/2013] condemning the IRS actions and calling for an independent investigation. The resolution also
instructs that the investigation should examine whether criminal charges should be brought against individuals who knowingly targeted
organizations because of their political views.
IRS sent
confidential info on conservatives to liberal nonprofit ProPublica. The division of the Internal Revenue Service that
improperly scrutinized the tax-exempt status of conservative groups sent confidential information on 31 conservative groups to
the well-funded liberal nonprofit journalism organization ProPublica, according to a revelation made by ProPublica Monday [5/13/2013].
"The same IRS office that deliberately targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 election
released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year," according to the ProPublica report.
Spokesman
rules out any White House role in IRS political targeting. White House press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday [5/14/2013]
that he could rule out any involvement by President Obama or West Wing staff in the IRS decision to target conservative organizations.
Pressed during his daily press briefing if he could be certain, Carney replied "yes," and added that White House lawyers were first
"notified about this activity, very broadly, just a few weeks ago."
Holder orders probe of IRS targeting conservative groups.
Lax oversight at the Internal Revenue Service allowed for the singling out of some conservative groups, resulting in lengthy delays in the
processing of their applications for federal tax-exempt status, according to a report by the agency's inspector general released Tuesday [5/14/2013].
The report found that for more than 18 months beginning in early 2010 the IRS developed and followed a faulty policy to determine whether
the applicants were engaged in political activities, which would disqualify the groups from receiving tax-exempt status.
Jay
Carney: Comparisons Between Obama and Nixon Result Of 'The Rapid Politicization Of Everything'. White House Press Secretary
Jay Carney was peppered with questions at Tuesday's press briefing over scandals relating to the Department of Justice's obtainment of
phone records from the Associated Press, the scrubbing of talking points on Benghazi, and news that the Internal Revenue Service targeted
conservative groups.
Is
the IRS hassling Larry Conners? Much news is being generated by allegations that the Internal Revenue Service recently
has targeted conservative groups. Now KMOV-TV (Channel 4) anchorman Larry Conners wonders if he is being targeted by the IRS
because of tough questions he asked President Barack Obama during an interview in April 2012.
KMOV anchor: The IRS is
targeting me. Larry Conners, a veteran local news anchor at KMOV Channel 4 in St. Louis, says that the Internal
Revenue Service has been targeting him since an April 2012 interview he conducted with President Obama — a fact that he
dismissed as coincidence until the recent reports about the IRS targeting conservative groups.
The IRS's Nonprofit Helper.
The Internal Revenue Service last year supplied a left-leaning nonprofit charity with confidential information about conservative
organizations, which the charity disseminated to the public, ProPublica reported yesterday [5/13/2013]. The charity in question
was ProPublica itself.
And Then There Were Five Obama
Scandals? The Environmental Protection Agency stands accused today of showing favoritism toward liberal groups
over conservative groups. [...] It's time to ask a serious question. In light of the IRS targeting conservatives and the
EPA denying conservatives at the same time, do liberals even believe that conservatives are due fair treatment under the law?
IRS
Won't Say If It Will Comply With Congressional Demand. The Internal Revenue Service has given no indication to the House
Ways and Means Committee about whether it will respond to the committee's demand, delivered in writing last Friday, that the agency
hand over copies of all internal communications containing the words "tea party," "patriot," or "conservative" and the names and
titles of all IRS officials involved in discriminating against tea party and conservative groups when they submitted applications
for tax-exempt status.
NAACP
Chair Emeritus: 'Legitimate' For IRS To Target 'Admittedly Racist' Tea Party. Julian Bond, chairman emeritus of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, joined anchor Thomas Roberts on MSNBC on Tuesday [5/14/2013] where he said that
he did not believe the federal government was complicit in any wrongdoing given the news that the Internal Revenue Service singled out
conservative groups for added scrutiny. He said that it is right of the government to look into the Tea Party, which he
called "overtly racist" and the "Taliban wing of American politics." Bond made these comments after noting that his group
was illegitimately targeted by the IRS in 2004.
Progressive
Group: IRS Gave Us Conservative Groups' Confidential Docs. The progressive-leaning investigative journalism group
ProPublica says the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) office that targeted and harassed conservative tax-exempt groups during the
2012 election cycle gave the progressive group nine confidential applications of conservative groups whose tax-exempt status
was pending.
This is a Scandal We Must Not Let Slide.
Welcome to 1984. The government that is supposed to govern by the consent of the people is now attacking those who seek to preserve the
Constitution. Even as a number of non-profit organizations that aid and abet illegal aliens or Islamic terrorists are able to operate without
any fear of investigation, we now know that tea party patriot organizations have been singled out for audits by high level officials at the IRS.
On Friday, it was all about "low-level employees" and was not "politically motivated." It must have been a random glitch in the system that forced
these officials to target limited government educational groups. Now the AP is reporting that this witch hunt was approved at the highest levels
and was going on for 2 years.
Internal IRS
Mandate: 'Be on the Lookout' for 'Organizations Involved In ... Educating on Constitution and Bill of Rights'. A timeline of Internal
Revenue Service activities that was developed by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration and provided to congressional staff indicates
that early last year — as the nation was headed toward a presidential election — the IRS issued a "be on the lookout order"
(BOLO) for officials in its "Determinations Unit" to ferret out for heightened scrutiny organizations applying for tax exempt status that were involved
in educating Americans "on the Constitution and Bill of Rights." The inspector general's timeline indicates that as early as March 2010 the
IRS's "Determinations Unit" had begun targeting for special scrutiny organizations that used in their tax-exempt applications the words "Tea Party"
or "Patriots."
IRS IG Report: Targeting Conservatives Began In
2010. The targeting of conservatives by the IRS started earlier and was more extensive than the IRS acknowledged last week, according to a
draft IRS inspector general report obtained by ABC News. As we reported on "Good Morning America" this morning, the IRS began targeting "Tea Party
or similar organizations" in March 2010.
IF? Obama on IRS Scandal: I've
Got No Patience With It. Speaking to reporters at a joint press conference Monday, President Obama said if the targeting of
conservative groups by the IRS is true, it is "contrary to our traditions" and that "people have to be held accountable." Obama said he would
not comment on specific findings by the IRS inspector general about specific targeting. "If in fact IRS personnel engaged in the practices being
reported on then... that's outrageous," President Obama said.
Tea Party group
might demand reimbursement from IRS for costly review. A leading Tea Party organization says it will consider demanding the IRS repay the
group for expenses associated with answering the agency's "intrusive" questions, in the latest fallout from what the IRS now admits was an inappropriate
campaign to scrutinize conservative groups. Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, said her group and its affiliates were
among those hassled by the IRS as they applied for tax-exempt status.
Scarborough,
Willie Geist Tear Into Obama Admin Over 'Unspeakable' IRS Scandal: 'This Is Tyranny ... It's Real'. Morning Joe started the week
with a segment about the "mind-boggling" IRS scandal, regarding the agency's admitting to targeting politically conservative groups. The
roundtable was unanimously outraged, with references to Richard Nixon and Willie Geist even stating it's "tyranny." "Do these people not
remember the Nixon administration?" Lisa Myers asked. "One of the abuses of power was his use of the IRS against his political enemies."
Rubio demands resignation of IRS
chief. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Monday called for the resignation of the Internal Revenue Service commissioner after the agency admitted
targeting conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. "It is clear the IRS cannot operate with even a shred of the American people's confidence
under the current leadership," Rubio wrote in a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. "Therefore, I strongly urge that you and President Obama
demand the IRS Commissioner's resignation, effectively [sic] immediately.["]
Flashback: Romney donor
vilified by Obama campaign, then subjected to 2 audits. Just months after being slimed by President Barack Obama's re-election campaign,
Mitt Romney supporter and businessman Frank VanderSloot was informed that he was going to be audited not only by the Internal Revenue Service, but by
the Labor Department as well. VanderSloot's saga was told by columnist Kimberley Strassel in the Wall Street Journal last July.
IRS scrutiny went beyond
Tea Party, targeting of conservative groups broader than thought. An IRS campaign to apply additional scrutiny to conservative groups
went beyond targeting "Tea Party" and "patriot" groups to include those focused on government spending, the Constitution and several other broad areas.
The additional guidelines created by the agency were part of a timeline, obtained by Fox News, from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration,
which is looking into the controversial IRS practice. IRS officials apologized Friday for the scrutiny, but new information suggests senior leaders
were apprised of the effort as early as 2011 despite public denials from the top.
IRS wrongdoing
threatens to become a major issue for Democrats. The situation surrounding the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups
worsened over the weekend with a series of revelations that suggest it could grow into a major political problem for Democrats over the coming months.
Obama Is Every Bit as Bad as We Warned You.
The common thread in each of these scandals is corruption and a willingness to abuse the expanded powers of big government — while
failing to carry out the most basic responsibilities of any government. [...] In the IRS scandal, the taxman targeted Tea Party and conservative
groups — including, apparently, at least one pro-Israel group. It happened on Obama's watch; we may yet learn that it happened with
his approval.
Lou Dobbs
Rips 'Nixonian' Obama For Lying 'Through His Teeth' About IRS. Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs stopped by Megyn Kelly's show on Monday
afternoon [5/13/2013] to offer his reaction to President Obama's press conference — during which he responded to the IRS scandal involving the
agency's targeting politically conservative groups. Dobbs didn't take well to Obama's reaction and went after him for flat-out lying.
"What is outrageous is that the president of the United States this morning stands before the American people and lies through his teeth," Dobbs
charged. "That is what is outrageous."
Hearings Set for IRS 'Patriot'
Scrutiny; Timeline Shows Shifting Standards. The momentum for review by the House panels increased with disclosures over the weekend that a
Treasury Department inspector general's report found that top IRS officials knew of the targeting of the groups as early as June 2011, nine months before
the agency's head told lawmakers that it wasn't occurring. The extra IRS scrutiny was given to organizations seeking tax exempt status if they had
"tea party" or "patriot" in their name.
Reid promises Senate
action on IRS scandal. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Monday said the Senate would act if a report suggests more
investigation is needed of the Internal Revenue Service targeting conservative groups for scrutiny. "These allegations of course are very
troubling," Reid said on the Senate floor Monday [5/13/2013]. "As soon as we have the inspector general's report, the Senate will swiftly
take appropriate action."
White House: Too early to talk
about firing IRS employees. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on Monday [5/13/2013] said it is too early to think about firing
Internal Revenue Service employees, even though agency officials acknowledged that it targeted tax exempt conservative groups. "You're
getting ahead of it," Carney said of the potential firings. And like President Obama, Carney continued to use the word "if" when describing
the IRS' apparent targeting of the conservative groups' tax-exempt status.
The IRS admits
to 'targeting' conservative groups, but were they also 'leaking'? A little over a year ago, I reported that, "It is likely that
someone at the Internal Revenue Service illegally leaked confidential donor information showing a contribution from Mitt Romney's political
action committee to the National Organization for Marriage, says the group." Now — on the heels of news the IRS's apology for
having targeted conservative groups — NOM is renewing their demand that the Internal Revenue Service reveal the identity of the
people responsible.
Obama's IRS. Under President Obama the Internal Revenue Service has repeatedly been accused of
using its enforcement powers to punish the White House's political opponents. Here are six of the most egregious examples.
Five questions on the IRS debacle.
A classic Washington scandal is unfolding — complete with accusations of lies, abuse of power and questions about coverups.
To add to the intrigue, it involves one of the most hated government agencies: the Internal Revenue Service.
House committee outlines
questions for IRS at planned hearing on targeting Tea Party. The House Ways and Means Committee this weekend released a timeline of interactions with
the IRS and a list of 10 questions it will likely ask agency officials in an upcoming hearing — following the agency acknowledging Friday that it
targeted conservative political groups during the 2012 election season. "The IRS absolutely must be non-partisan in its enforcement of our tax laws," committee
Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., said late Saturday. "The committee ... will hold the IRS accountable for its actions."
Wider Problems Found at IRS.
The Internal Revenue Service's scrutiny of conservative groups went beyond those with "tea party" or "patriot" in their names — as
the agency admitted Friday — to also include ones worried about government spending, debt or taxes, and even ones that lobbied to
"make America a better place to live," according to new details of a government probe. The investigation also revealed that a high-ranking
IRS official knew as early as mid-2011 that conservative groups were being inappropriately targeted — nearly a year before
then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told a congressional committee the agency wasn't targeting conservative groups.
An Outlaw Tax Collector. On March 22, 2012, IRS commissioner
Douglas Shulman testified under oath before the House Oversight Committee, which was inquiring as to whether the agency was targeting tea-party groups and other
conservative organizations filing for tax-exempt status. He firmly and repeatedly denied that any such thing was happening. "There's absolutely no
targeting," he said. A little over a year later, the IRS confirmed that it was in fact improperly targeting not only tea-party groups but also Jewish
religious nonprofits and organizations inspired by Glenn Beck's 9/12 Project.
Dennis Kucinich Slams IRS's Tea Party 'Political
Targeting'. Former Democratic Congressman and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich slammed the unethical targeting of conservative Tea Party groups by
the IRS on Fox News Sunday's panel, unequivocally suggesting that this was political targeting at its worst. After dropping the disclaimer that he is a "liberal
Democrat" and does not celebrate Tea Party politics, Kucinich firmly claimed politics has no place with the IRS: "We can not have a condition in America where
peoples politics are the basis for IRS attacks."
Benghazi, IRS
Create Perfect Storm Threatening Obama's Credibility. Internal Revenue Service officials denied for months the targeting of conservative
political groups for reviews of their tax exempt status. With investigators poised to expose the chilling operation, a high-ranking IRS official
acknowledged it late last week and apologized for it. The agency blamed low-level employees, saying no high-level officials were aware.
That appears to be untrue. The Associated Press reported Saturday [5/11/2013] that senior IRS officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups as
early as 2011, according to a draft of an inspector general's report. Politicizing the IRS threatens the integrity of an agency entrusted
with Americans' secrets and the taxes that fund government.
IRS Warned Employees Not to Target 501(c)4
Donors in 2011. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) admitted on May 10 that "low level" staff in its Cincinnati office, supposedly "not motivated by
political bias," targeted 75 conservative tax-exempt organizations, including many Tea Party organizations applying for exemption under Section 501(c)4 of the tax
code. The groups were singled out for audit and investigation because they used the names "Tea Party" and "Patriot." Yet in July 2011, the IRS had
warned employees to drop audits of donors to similar 501(c)4 organizations.
The IRS and Big
Government. The expanding Internal Revenue Service scandal could hardly be any more Drudgeriffic. Well, maybe if in addition to singling out
groups with "tea party" or "patriot" in their names, the agency had purchased a few billions rounds of hollow-point ammo. Maybe then. But even as is,
the scandal is looking pretty bad and getting worse.
What About Clinton's IRS? I always thought the number of Bill Clinton
enemies audited by his Internal Revenue Service was a bit high to be coincidental. When Clinton accuser Paula Jones was audited in 1997, Clinton's press
secretary Mike McCurry denied White House involvement. [...] We now know, of course, that you don't need direct White House involvement to politicize the IRS,
at least for Democrats. The underlings know what to do! The idea that they are apolitical professionals was always a myth.
IRS
targeted groups critical of government, documents from agency probe show. At various points over the past two years, Internal Revenue Service officials
singled out for scrutiny not only groups with "tea party" or "patriot" in their names but also nonprofit groups that criticized the government and sought to educate
Americans about the U.S. Constitution, according to documents in an audit conducted by the agency's inspector general.
IRS Scrutiny Was Deeper Than Thought. Government
investigators have found that the Internal Revenue Service scrutinized conservative groups for raising political concerns over government spending, debt and
taxes or even for advocating making America a better place to live, according to new details likely to inflame a widening IRS controversy.
GOP Senator: Obama Must Apologize For 'Absolutely Chilling' IRS
Targeting Of Tea Party Groups. U.S. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said Sunday that the IRS' admission of targeting various conservative groups for extra
scrutiny was "absolutely chilling," and she called on President Barack Obama to apologize. "This is truly outrageous and it contributes to the profound distrust
that the American people have in government," Collins said on CNN's "State of the Union."
Report:
Top IRS officials knew in 2011 that conservative groups were targeted. An inspector general's report due for release this week says senior
Internal Revenue Service officials knew that agents were targeting conservative groups for special scrutiny as early as 2011, nine months before the IRS
commissioner assured Congress the targeting was not happening. The report is certain to raise questions about the timing of the IRS's disclosure of
the targeting on Friday, how high up were the officials who knew about the practice, and whether anyone outside the agency was aware of it.
Carl Bernstein: IRS targeting not Watergate.
Journalist Carl Bernstein said President Barack Obama is no Richard Nixon on Monday [5/13/2013], and he would know. "It's terrible," Bernstein
said of the IRS's targeting of conservative groups in an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "Outrageous. Heads ought to roll. Simple
as that. ... From what we know so far, some high-up heads." But Bernstein said that conservatives who are eager to equate the IRS scandal to
Watergate should hold their horses.
IRS Inquisition Update. Along with targeting tea-party groups,
the IRS may also have given extra-special attention to the tax-exempt status of some Jewish groups for political reasons.
Mark Levin Asks IG to Probe
Possible IRS Misconduct in Dealing with Tea Party. Landmark Legal Foundation sent a letter on Friday [3/23/2012]
to the Treasury Department's Inspector General for Tax Administration requesting an investigation to determine whether officials
with the Internal Revenue Service have engaged in misconduct in dealing with applications from Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt
status under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Senators worry
IRS targets Tea Party groups. Is the IRS purposely targeting Tea Party groups? That's the
question two Tennessee senators are asking. Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker are among 12 senators
raising the question. They're worried the Obama administration is using the IRS to take aim at Tea Party
related non-profit organizations.
GOP Rips IRS for Donor Request. As
evidence mounts that the IRS is more closely scrutinizing politically active nonprofit groups, Republicans on Capitol Hill have lashed out with
assaults on the tax agency and fresh demands for an explanation.
Obama unleashes the IRS on the Tea Party: Congressional
investigations sought over IRS 'assault' on tea party groups. The federal government's latest requirements include
copies of "all the [web] pages that are accessible only to your members," along with an accounting of all "donations, contributions,
and grant income for each year," including "names" and "amounts" of every contributor. "How did you use these donations,
contributions, and grants?" the IRS asks. "Provide the details." The agency also asked for "the time, location, and
detailed description" of every event and program the Richmond tea Party has conducted since October 22, 2010, along with
"copies of handouts"; "the names and credentials of the organizers"; "detailed contents of ... speeches or forums, names of the
speakers or panels, and their credentials"; "the amount ... each person" was paid; and "the names of persons from your
organization and the amount of time they spent on the event or program."
A
Broad-Based IRS Assault on the Tea Party? In the last 24 hours, my colleagues at the
American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) have been in contact with literally dozens of tea-party
organizations that have received intrusive information demands from the IRS, demands that seriously implicate
their First Amendment rights. These information demands follow tea-party requests for 501(c)(3) or
501(c)(4) status and include questions like the following: ["]Do you directly or indirectly communicate
with members of legislative bodies? If so, provide copies of the written communications and contents
of other forms of communications.["] And ["]Please describe the associate group members and
their role with your organization in further detail.["]
IRS Accused of
'Intimidation Campaign' Against Tea Party Groups. A conservative civil liberties group accuses the Internal
Revenue Service of attempting to "intimidate and silence" a number of tea party groups that have applied for tax-exempt
status. The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) says IRS requests for information about the groups included
"probing questions" that violate the free speech and freedom of association rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Why
the TEA Party is Under Attack by the IRS, and What to Do About It. A substantial number of
Tea Party organizations have come under attack by the IRS, which seeks to hinder the issuance of a tax-exempt
status by making such an application, for all intents and purposes, impossible. Many Tea Party groups
seek to take advantage of tax-exempt status under Internal Revenue Code §501(c)(3), and §501(c)(4); and
while these impose specific responsibilities, the IRS is clearly abusing its discretionary power, by asking
for information that is impossible to provide, or is unconstitutional to ask for.
IRS admits targeting conservatives for tax scrutiny in 2012 election. The
Internal Revenue Service on Friday [5/10/2013] acknowledged that it flagged political groups with "tea party" or "patriot" in their
names for special scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status, an admission that is fueling long-held suspicions among conservatives
that the agency has been singling them out for unfair treatment. The IRS official who oversees tax-exempt groups, Lois Lerner, said
the actions, although not motivated by partisan concerns, were wrong, and she apologized twice on Friday [5/10/2013].
Nope,
no reason to fear tyranny — oh, wait, the IRS just admitted to targeting dissidents. How dare those crazy voices
warn that Big Government could abuse its power to punish dissent! Why, the next thing you know, they'll be accusing the IRS of
slapping conservative and Tea Party groups with inappropriate tax audits! Except they'll be too late, because as the Associated
Press reports, the IRS just apologized for doing exactly that.
IRS Apologizes for Targeting Conservative
Groups. The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the
2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday.
Republicans Promise Response to IRS Targeting.
Top Republicans vowed to investigate the Internal Revenue Service following an acknowledgment by an IRS official Friday [5/10/2013] that
the agency specifically targeted Tea Party organizations in 2012. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said the IRS'
acknowledgement was "not enough" and called on the White House to conduct a government-wide review "aimed at assuring the American people that
these thuggish practices are not underway at the IRS or elsewhere in the administration against anyone, regardless of their political views."
IRS Official: 'I'm Not Good at Math'. The
statement was in response to a question about what one-quarter of 300 is. The IRS flagged approximately 75 conservative
groups that included the words "tea party" or patriot" in their applications for tax-exempt status for further review. The
official is a lawyer.
IRS Vs. Conservatives:
Corruption Or Incompetence. We're supposed to believe "low-level workers" are behind IRS abuse of conservatives.
But this White House has used the IRS against political enemies before.
The IRS Targets Conservatives.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean the IRS isn't out to get you. We only wish that were a joke. On Friday, an
Internal Revenue Service official disclosed for the first time, and by way of apologizing, that the agency that wields the taxing
power of the federal government had targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny during the 2012 election season. Apology
or not, that can't be the end of the matter.
Mark Levin may have
prompted IRS-conservative group revelations. Conservative radio talker Mark Levin appears to have touched off the
investigation into Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative political groups back in March 2012. In a letter last
year on behalf of the Landmark Legal Foundation, an organization he heads, Levin requested an investigation into what he called
"misconduct." On Friday, the Internal Revenue Service revealed that it had improperly targeted conservative groups for audits
during the 2012 election.
The New Nixon. [Scroll
down] But the IRS now acknowledges that Tea Party people were right: The agency was investigating them because of their
political profile. Viewpoint-based selective enforcement of IRS regulations would be a First Amendment violation even if the
regulations themselves are constitutional. It is difficult to credit Lois Lerner's claim that this was merely an error and not
politically motivated. Imagine if the NAACP and the United Negro College Fund got hit with this sort of treatment and the IRS
denied a racial motive while acknowledging it had deliberately chosen groups whose names contained synonyms for "black."
Carney
Distances White House From 'Independent Agency' IRS's Targeting Of Conservative Groups. The first question aimed at Press
Secretary Jay Carney during today's White House press briefing was about the Internal Revenue Service's confirmation and apology for
targeting conservative political groups for additional tax scrutiny during the 2012 election cycle. In his response, Carney
made an effort to distance the Obama White House from the IRS, calling it an "independent enforcement agency."
Flashback 2009: Obama Jokes
About IRS Auditing Political Enemies. Back in May 2009, Professor Glenn Reynolds, better known to his followers as
Instapundit, penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he discussed some odd rhetoric from President Obama.
Obama had been refused an honorary doctorate by Arizona State University, and Obama remarked, "President [Michael] Crowe and the
Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS."
Flashback:
Mark Levin Asks IG to Probe Possible IRS Misconduct in Dealing with Tea Party. Landmark Legal Foundation sent a letter on
Friday [3/2/2012] to the Treasury Department's Inspector General for Tax Administration requesting an investigation to determine whether
officials with the Internal Revenue Service have engaged in misconduct in dealing with applications from Tea Party groups seeking
tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Tea Party Rejects IRS Apology,
Republicans Vow Investigation. Conservative groups have rejected an Internal Revenue Service apology for unjustifiably
scrutinizing tax-exempt conservative groups during the 2012 election cycle. The IRS apology has seemingly validated conservatives'
fears of politically motivated regulation. House Republican leaders, meanwhile, have vowed to investigate.
'Mistakes Were Made'. I kid you not:
The IRS just released a statement on its improper harassment of conservative groups in the run-up to the 2012 election including the
words: "mistakes were made."
The Editor says...
Here are some ofthe words they didn't use: "Everybody involved in this abuse of power has been fired." Nor
will the IRS ever make such a statement, because government jobs are apparently permanent jobs, regardless of individual performance issues.
IRS
official apologizes to tea party groups for "incorrect" scrutiny during 2012 election. An IRS official apologized on Friday [5/10/2013]
to tea party organizations and other conservative groups for inappropriately targeting them during the 2012 election, the Associated Press reports.
The groups, which enjoyed tax-exempt status under the internal revenue code, were singled out for additional scrutiny of their tax exemption if their
names included the words "tea party" or "patriot." In several cases, the groups were asked to provide a list of donors for review, usually a
violation of IRS policy.
[This
is] Not the First Time Non-Liberal Groups [have been] Targeted by [the] IRS. The late Robert Novak, writing in 2002, pointed
out another IRS admission that it harassed conservative organizations during the Clinton administration. From this, two observations
can be drawn: First, the IRS absues occurred during Democrat presidencies. [...] Second, the quiescence of the press may also explain
why it's been Democrat presidencies featuring these abuses in recent years.
Is the I.R.S. the Gestapo of today? How many of you noticed the rash of
advertisers advertising I.R.S. relief help? An entire industry has risen from the demand to be protected from the I.R.S. And most recently the use of government
agencies to at very least harass groups they don't agree with like the tea party groups.
Sarah
Palin: 'Same Corrupt IRS' That Targeted Conservatives 'Will Be In Charge Of Enforcing Obamacare'. Former vice
presidential candidate Sarah Palin blasted President Barack Obama and the federal government on her Facebook page on Friday [5/10/2013]
over the acknowledgement by the Internal Revenue Service that they had intentionally singled out conservative groups for added scrutiny
during the 2012 election cycle. "I'm sure President Obama is grateful for all the help the IRS gave his reelection campaign, but,
still, you have to wonder how the bureaucrats who tried to pull this off can sleep at night," Palin wrote.
10 crazy things the IRS asked Tea Party
groups. [#1] We're gonna need all your direct and indirect communication. "'Direct and indirect communications'
is profoundly chilling of First Amendment rights," said David French, senior counsel for American Center for Law & Justice, which has been
representing 27 conservative organizations met with IRS inquisitions. "It's so vague as to be impossible to comply with."
The IRS
Targets Conservative Groups. This morning [5/10/2013], an IRS official named Lois Lerner apologized for inappropriately
targeting non-profit groups for scrutiny in 2012 based on the fact that they had the words "Tea Party" or "Patriot" in their names.
There are many things that need to be said about this. First, and simplest, is to ask how seriously the Obama administration is going
to take this outrageous effort at political suppression by an agency under its charge. Has the IRS inspector general gotten involved?
Has a U.S. attorney been apprised of this matter, which can only be considered an act of political intimidation and therefore would fall
under the aegis of various federal criminal statutes? If not, why not?
Cantor:
House Will Investigate IRS for Targeting Tea Party Groups. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said the House will
investigate the IRS after the agency admitted to and apologized on Friday for targeting Tea Party and conservative groups during the 2012
election. "The IRS cannot target or intimidate any individual or organization based on their political beliefs," Cantor said on
Friday. "The House will investigate this matter."
IRS
political scandal a new political nightmare for Obama administration. Out of the blue, the Internal Revenue Service has
apologized for targeting conservative groups with "tea party" or "patriot" in their titles for special treatment in applying for tax
exempt nonprofit organization status.
The IRS's Tea-Party Targeting.
The IRS denies having conducted a partisan witch-hunt against tea-party groups in the run-up to the 2012 election, arguing that its improper
targeting of conservative groups was the result of a series of procedural errors rather than a political attack with malice aforethought.
But the IRS is keeping the relevant evidence secret, so you will just have to take the agency's word for it.
Media Mocked Idea of Targeted IRS Audits.
The Internal Revenue Service has admitted that it explicitly targeted conservative groups for tax audits during the 2012 election season.
Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal reported during last year's election that President Barack Obama had an "enemies list,"
and those that found themselves on it could find themselves a target of the IRS. The media discounted such charges and said the
Obama administration was too clean to engage in such tactics.
Using the IRS as a weapon against charter schools: Obama's IRS to
Target Charter Schools? The last two weeks have been filled with stories of the Obama administration's
attack on religious organizations by forcing them to perform and/or pay for activities that are in direct opposition
to their core beliefs. Now, it appears that the Obama administration is targeting charter schools.
Is IRS Targeting Obama's
Enemies? Ohio Liberty Council ... says they are being made to jump through hoops by the IRS, which has
demanded certain documents in order for the group's process of acquiring non-profit status to move forward. OLC
President Tom Zawistowski posted a letter on the organization's website detailing the difficulties.
Obama's Enemies List —
Part II. This column has already told the story of Frank VanderSloot, an Idaho businessman who last year contributed
to a group supporting Mitt Romney. [...] Mr. VanderSloot has since been learning what it means to be on a presidential enemies list.
Just 12 days after the attack, the Idahoan found an investigator digging to unearth his divorce records. This
bloodhound — a recent employee of Senate Democrats — worked for a for-hire opposition research firm.
Now Mr. VanderSloot has been targeted by the federal government. In a letter dated June 21, he was informed that his
tax records had been "selected for examination" by the Internal Revenue Service.
The enemies list, then and now. One of the
charges in the standard liberal narrative of the Nixon years — see, e.g., Stanley Kutler's The Wars of Watergate — is
Nixon's misuse of the IRS to torment his political enemies. I don't know whether Nixon's enemies list(s) was actually put to this use.
Kutler reports in the text that Washington Post lawyer Edward Bennett Williams was audited three years running and adds in a footnote that the
practice goes back to FDR. The IRS-related charge in any event made it into Count II of the articles of impeachment voted against Nixon.
IRS Audits of Charities
Up 79% Under Obama. An analysis by the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) figures
has found that audits of tax-exempt charities have increased 79% under President Barack Obama. [...] The GAI's findings come on the heels
of a controversial White House gathering last month with the heads of charitable organizations, wherein the Obama Administration allegedly
engaged in "bullying" and "intimidation" tactics to scare charities into supporting Obama's tax hikes on the wealthy or face the
prospect of losing their tax-exempt status.
The IRS: The Power to Ruin Lives.
[Most people] don't like the IRS, in part because it has so much arbitrary power to ruin lives. But it's not just that is has the power to
ruin lives. That can be said about the FBI, the DEA, the BATF, and all sorts of other enforcement agencies. What irks people about the IRS is
that it has so much power combined with the fact that the internal revenue code is a nightmare of complexity that can overwhelm even the most
well-intentioned taxpayer.
McConnell: 'Radical, Dangerous'
Obama Admin Seeks to 'Shut Up' Opponents. [Scroll down] McConnell is incensed over the administration's
use of government and nongovernmental resources to target its political enemies. "They've used the IRS,
the FEC, the FCC, the SEC, their allies in the Obama campaign to go after people who disagree with them. The
Obama campaign has rifled through the divorce records of a major donor to an opposing super PAC. The government
itself is intimidating donors. Appointees at the IRS and other agencies are pursuing similar efforts to ferret out
who is contributing to outside groups critical of the administration so that they can scare them off the playing field and
shut them up."
It's time to investigate the IRS. Richard Nixon ordered the IRS to
conduct tax audits of those on his infamous "Enemies List." Now, a spate of investigations and leaks coming out of President Obama's IRS raises concerns that
this administration may also be using the power of the nation's most feared agency to silence its political opponents. Today, more than six dozen grassroots
citizens groups seeking to gain 501(c)(4) — and in some cases 501(c)(3) — tax status today find themselves facing unexpectedly invasive
investigations and onerous procedural hurdles. All these groups have received non-profit recognition at the state level. Yet their requests for IRS
recognition have been left in bureaucratic limbo for months — in some cases, for more than two years.
IRS
Might Have Stalinist Powers Under New Law. The Republican House of Representatives may soon
follow the Democratic Senate and give the IRS the power to confiscate your passport on mere suspicion of owing taxes.
The IRS Gets Political.
We're starting to see a pattern here. Since the Supreme Court restored the First Amendment rights of businesses and
unions in last year's Citizens United ruling, Democrats have been searching for a way to claw back control over political
speech. The latest bureau to get the memo is the Internal Revenue Service, which may retroactively tax top donors to
political advocacy groups.
Is the IRS sending a
message? The IRS is apparently using gift tax compliance to target certain big donors to Republican
political advocacy groups. A group of six Republican senators has written to the head of the IRS seeking
further explanation.
Apparently there is some evidence in the the Barrett Report that the IRS was used as a weapon by the Clinton Administration, which
is why the report is being aggressively suppressed. If the public ever finds out that the IRS has been used in such a manner, the fund-raising arm of the
government would be in big trouble. Politicians might have to stop spendingmoney so recklessly. Who knows what might happen then?
David vs. Goliath of Governmental
Agencies. One of the most hideous ways the Internal Revenue Service usurps power and control
over Americans is through its oppression over nonprofits, especially religious groups. Threatening to
withdraw tax-exempt status and to levy penalties are just a couple of ways it exercises its tyranny. For
example, April 3, Catholic Answers, one of the nation's largest lay-run apologetic (or defense) ministries
for the Catholic movement, filed suit in federal court against the IRS for violating its right to free speech.
No Word From I.R.S.
on Protest by Pastors. Nearly seven months after defying a prohibition on endorsing candidates
from the pulpit, 33 churches across the country are still waiting to learn whether the Internal Revenue
Service will take action against them.
FBI
Twist in Spitzer Probe. Gov. Spitzer is being blamed for siccing the FBI on Senate
Majority Leader Joseph Bruno — after earlier accusations that he unleashed the State
Police, and tried to unleash the Internal Revenue Service, on him as well.
Does IRS have political hit list? [Scroll down] According to attorney William
Wewer, a specialist in non-profit law, all of the groups singled out have one thing in common — they have challenged the Clinton administration in
a "high-profile fashion." "Every one of our clients who is under audit has taken on the Clinton administration vigorously, usually through a direct-mail
campaign," says Wewer, who represents about a thousand charities. His observation applies to the other identified groups as well. But now some are
raising the specter of the IRS being used as a political weapon against not just groups, but individuals, as well — people like Margie Gray,
outspoken citizens who challenge administration policies or criticize the president himself.
Is the NEA a 'terrorist
organization'? Shortly after stepping off the stage that night to a standing ovation, I was
given a message from an angry supporter of the liberal education plan I was opposing. "You can count on
an audit by the IRS," I was told. I really did not take the comment seriously but, to my amazement,
within a matter of a few short weeks, I had my IRS audit notice. ... And since I was not only being critical
of the Clinton's education agenda, but also the NEA and PTA, should I have been shocked to be the recipient
of extreme and untrue insults, much less the harassment of an IRS audit?
The Editor mumbles...
I can't say that I feel sorry for the teachers' unions.
Are your tax records safe? The Treasury Department last month
admitted investigating thousands of cases of IRS employees improperly snooping through taxpayer records. And although this led to 1,600 "adverse
personnel actions" and 126 criminal prosecutions, Treasury officials concede "there has not been a noticeable decrease" over the last eight years in
the number of IRS bureaucrats who gain unauthorized access to confidential data.
Politics and IRS Audit Rates. Congress created the IRS Oversight
Board in 1998 after the Senate Finance Committee held public hearings, the first in twenty years, on IRS abuses. For days the committee heard
testimony from angry taxpayers who recounted horror stories of overly aggressive revenue agents exercising seemingly boundless power. At the
conclusion of the hearings the Finance Committee labeled the IRS a rogue agency, but took no direct responsibility for reining it in.
Survey shows 96% of respondents want IRS Commissioner Rossotti brought to justice. An
overwhelming number of respondents believe that IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti should be criminally prosecuted for conducting politically-motivated audits
for the Clinton Administration. IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti conducted several audits of Clinton's opponents, including women associated
with [Clinton] and several non-profit conservative organizations.
Obama audits me. Who will audit him? As I predicted would be the case
early on in Barack Obama's administration, I got my audit notice from the Internal Revenue Service last week. That's just the way it works in recent
Democratic Party administrations — the IRS is used as a political attack dog against its "enemies."
JFK used audits to silence critics: In "Power to
Destroy: The Political Uses of the IRS from Kennedy to Nixon," author John A. Andrew III presents new evidence for what he calls "the
utilization of the Internal Revenue Service in what became a covert effort to discredit the right and undercut its sources of support" as part of "a broad
assault on the right wing by the Kennedy administration."
