IRS apologizes for targeting Conservative Groups

[Soul Crusher]

Obama can't keep his lies straight fr one hour to the next.

[Soul Crusher]

In a wild press conference today, White House press secretary Jay Carney blithely informed reporters that just because the IRS had admitted to giving extra scrutiny to conservative non-profit applicants doesn’t mean something negative had occurred. President Obama has already said that it would be “outrageous” if reports about IRS profiling were true.

An AP reporter asked, “The president did use the word 'if these activities had taken place,' but there has been an acknowledgement on the part of the IRS leadership that these things did indeed occur. I wondered why the president used that phrasing in claiming that it was outrageous?"
 
Carney’s response: “Those from the IRS that have spoken about this obviously have much greater insight into what took place than we do. We have not seen the report. We have not independently collected information about what transpired. We need the independent inspector general's report to be released before we can make judgments. One person's view of what actions were taken or what that individual did is not enough for us to say something concretely happened that was inappropriate.”

In other words, the IRS’ apology may have been wrongheaded. Carney is apparently unaware of the first rule of holes: stop digging.


Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).
 



http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/14/Carney-IRS-wrong








LMFAO!!!!  HA HA HA !!!!

[Soul Crusher]

IRS Did Not Tell Congress About Tea Party Targeting


By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER and HENRY C. JACKSON 05/14/13 05:29 PM ET EDT


WASHINGTON — A government watchdog is blaming ineffective management at the Internal Revenue Service for allowing agents to improperly target tea party groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax exempt status.

In an upcoming report, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration says lax management allowed the practice to go on for 18 months. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the report ahead of its release.

The IRS on Friday apologized for targeting tea party as well as other conservative groups.

The report said that when asked by investigators, IRS supervisors said the criteria they used to decide which groups they examined were not influenced by people or organizations outside the IRS.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

The Justice Department is investigating the Internal Revenue Service for targeting tea party groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax exempt status, Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday.

Holder said the FBI will investigate to see if any laws were broken. He said he ordered the criminal investigation Friday – the day the IRS publicly acknowledged that it had singled out conservative groups.

"Those (actions) were, I think, as everyone can agree, if not criminal, they were certainly outrageous and unacceptable," Holder said. "But we are examining the facts to see if there were criminal violations."

Numerous congressional committees already are investigating the IRS for singling out tea party and other conservative groups during the 2010 congressional elections and the 2012 presidential election. But Holder's announcement takes the matter to another level, if investigators are able to prove that laws were broken.




 



Holder said he wasn't sure which laws may have been broken.

Meanwhile, documents obtained by The Associated Press suggest the targeting of conservative groups could be more widespread than the IRS has acknowledged. The agency has said it was limited to low-level workers in a Cincinnati office.

But documents sent from the IRS to tea party groups show that IRS offices in California and Washington, D.C., also sought extensive information from tea party groups who requested tax-exempt status.

The IRS apologized Friday for what it acknowledged was "inappropriate" targeting of conservative political groups.

The agency started targeting groups with "Tea Party," `'Patriots" or "9/12 Project" in their applications in March 2010. The criteria later evolved to include groups that promoted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The practice ended in May 2012, according to a draft of an upcoming report by the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration.

In some cases, the IRS acknowledged, agents inappropriately asked for lists of donors. The agency blamed low-level employees in a Cincinnati office, saying no high-level officials were aware.

But in letters provided by the American Center for Law and Justice, which represents 27 tea party groups that have sought tax exempt status, IRS officials from two cities in California – El Monte and Laguna Nigel – as well as officials in Washington, D.C., and Cincinnati contacted groups seeking extensive information.

The law center's chief counsel, Jay Sekulow, said he was astonished the IRS said activity was limited to Cincinnati.

"To me, that was what was mind-boggling, they tried to create a narrative," he said.

Sekulow said 10 of the groups his organization represents are still without tax exempt status years after applying for it, while 15 others have been granted the status after long delays and two others decided to drop their effort because it was taking up too much time and required too much private information.

"Donor lists, conversations you've had with members of the House or Senate," he said. "They were so intrusive they violate the IRS manual."

Julia Hodges, a member of the Mississippi Tea Party, said she received a questionnaire from an IRS official in El Monte. She said she went back and forth with IRS officials for three years before her organization withdrew its application for tax exempt status because it was taking up too much time and effort.

She said the IRS requested all sorts of information she didn't think was relevant, including resumes of the group's members. The organization first sought tax exempt status in 2009 and abandoned its efforts in April 2012.

"The biggest thing was just the amount of time," said Hodges. "We would answer these questions on the side and thought this is never going to end. It's never going to cease."

The IRS did not respond Tuesday to questions about why agents outside Cincinnati had also questioned tea party groups.

In an opinion piece in Tuesday's editions of USA Today, acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller conceded that the agency demonstrated "a lack of sensitivity to the implications of some of the decisions that were made." He said screening of advocacy groups is "factually complex, and it's challenging to separate out political issues from those involving education or social welfare."

These groups were claiming tax-exempt status as organizations promoting social welfare. Unlike other charitable groups, they can engage in political activity. But politics cannot be their primary mission.

That determination is up to the IRS.

Miller said the agency has implemented new procedures that will "ensure the mistakes won't be repeated."

On Monday, the IRS said Miller was first informed on May, 3, 2012, that applications for tax-exempt status by tea party groups were inappropriately singled out for extra scrutiny.

At least twice after the briefing, Miller wrote letters to members of Congress to explain the process of reviewing applications for tax-exempt status without disclosing that tea party groups had been targeted. On July 25, 2012, Miller testified before the House Ways and Means oversight subcommittee but again did not mention the additional scrutiny – despite being asked about it.

Miller's op-ed did not address why he did not inform Congress after he was briefed.

Miller was a deputy commissioner at the time. He became acting commissioner in November, after Commissioner Douglas Shulman completed his five-year term. Shulman had been appointed by President George W. Bush.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, questioned the timing of the IRS admission. It came days before the expected release of the inspector general's report. The IRS admission was made at an American Bar Association conference.

"This timing is curious," Grassley says in a letter Tuesday to Miller. "The IRS chose not to fully answer long-standing congressional questions on the issue, even though they had been posed months before this particular question was asked at the conference."

Grassley asked Miller to provide records relating to the agency's decision to disclose the targeting of tea party groups at a Friday conference rather than to members of Congress who had been asking about it for more than a year. He also asked for any communications on the issue between the IRS and the White House.

At least three congressional committees have made similar requests. The House Ways and Means Committee, chaired by GOP Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, is holding a hearing on the issue Friday and Miller is scheduled to testify.

On Tuesday, Camp and Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the committee, requested a trove of documents from the IRS on the issue.

___

Associated Press writer Pete Yost contributed to this report.

___

Follow Stephen Ohlemacher on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stephenatap

[Soul Crusher]

IRS Intimidation Forced Founder To Shut Down Tea Party Group
 
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/14/IRS-Intimidation-Forced-Founder-To-Shut-Down-Tea-Party-Group


by John Nolte14 May 2013

, 5:40 AM PDT597post a comment

The IRS scandal is growing by leaps and bounds in a way that must be terrifying to an Administration already dealing with fallout from the uncovering of their Libya lies and the knowledge that the Department of Justice seized the phone records of 20 Associated Press reporters. Tuesday morning, ABC News revealed what might have been the political motivation behind the IRS's decision to target Tea party groups -- to ensure they weren't as effective in 2012 as they were in 2010.

In the 2010 midterms, even the media that despises the Tea Party will admit that the nationwide grassroots movement was a major factor behind record GOP electoral gains. By the time the smoke cleared, Obama had lost the House and his filibuster-proof majority in the United States Senate.

Is it just a coincidence that it was only after these 2010 victories that the IRS decided to single out Tea Party groups for special scrutiny? And not just scrutiny, but the kind of scrutiny that bogged these groups down with paperwork and restricted their political activities.

The Narrative some in the media, like JournOlist founder Ezra Klein of The Washington Post, are desperate to spin is that this was a single Midwest IRS office concerned with political groups abusing a new tax exempt status. The isolation of Tea Parties was merely "discriminatory."

Already this morning, though, Klein's spin is falling apart. Chris Good of ABC News reports that Jennifer Stefano of Philadelphia was so intimidated by the IRS that she closed her Tea Party down:
 
"In the documents that were sent to me, if you did not tell the whole truth by not putting all your personal information out there by Facebook, by Twitter, of your personal relationship with candidates and parties ... it could be considered perjury and perjury carried jail time," Stefano, 39, told ABC News.

"That was frightening and that's why I shut it down. I shut my group down."
 
Tom Zawistowski, former president of the Ohio Liberty Coalition, told ABC News that, "The reason for this attack by the IRS on the tea party was to make sure we were not as effective in 2012 as we were in 2010, and that's what they did[.]"
 
Zawistowski also believes that the ridiculous amount of information and documents requested by the IRS was "opposition research," having nothing to do with whether or not a group would qualify as tax exempt.

The IRS asked another Ohio tea party organization, the Liberty Township Tea Party, about its political views and relationships with an individual and another group.

"Provide a list of all issues that are important to your organization. Indicate your position regarding each issue," the IRS commanded in a letter with 35 questions, many including between three and six bullet-pointed subquestions.

ABC News adds:
 
In letters obtained by ABC News, the Internal Revenue Service asked detailed questions of local tea party groups from 2010 to 2012.
 
Other Tea Party groups interviewed complained of getting bogged down by the paperwork. One group claims that "500 pages of stuff" went "back and forth" between them and the IRS:
 
There was kind of a cloud over us. ... It did curtail the things we could do. We could not go outside the IRS rules. Tax-exempt status allows you to do certain things, and we did not go outside them.
 
These groups say they didn’t hear from the IRS until after their 2010 victories. Then, before they could recreate that success against Obama in 2012, all of a sudden they are intimidated, restricted from certain political activities, and bogged down in a bureaucratic nightmare -- all at the hands of the IRS.

Sorry, Ezra Klein, that doesn't sound "discriminatory" to me -- that sounds like a political tactic. Moreover, if it was a political tactic, we already know that it was not one confined to a single office in the Midwest. Klein's own Post reports Tuesday that…

Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.
 
We now know that the IRS targeted Obama's political enemies, and either by accident or design, made them less effective during his reelection campaign in 2012. W also now know that Administration officials are lying about what they knew about this scandal and when they knew it.

The only question that matters now is whether or not anyone in the Obama re-election campaign is in any way tied to this. And at this point, that is a perfectly reasonable question to ask.
 



Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC   

[Soul Crusher]

Franklin Graham: IRS targeted us, too
By: Reid J. Epstein
May 14, 2013 05:08 PM EDT
 
The IRS came after Billy Graham, too, his son charged Tuesday in a letter to President Barack Obama.

Franklin Graham, the president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and the family’s international humanitarian organization Samaritan’s Purse, said that the IRS notified the organizations in September that it was conducting a “review” of their activities for tax year 2010.

With the IRS admitting it gave extra scrutiny to conservative political organizations, Graham says he now believes that the review was part of an Obama administration effort of “targeting and attempting to intimidate us.”

(PHOTOS: 10 slams on the IRS)

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association urging of voters to back “candidates who base their decisions on biblical principles and support the nation of Israel” during last year’s presidential race was the reason why IRS agents visited the North Carolina offices of both Graham groups, the letter accuses.

“While these audits not only wasted taxpayer money, they wasted money contributed by donors for ministry purposes as we had to spend precious resources servicing the IRS agents in our offices,” Graham wrote in the letter, which was shared with POLITICO. “I believe that someone in the administration was targeting and attempting to intimidate us. This is morally wrong and unethical – indeed some would call it ‘un-American.”

Graham said that “in light” of the IRS admission that it targeted tea party groups for added scrutiny, “I do not believe that the IRS audit of our two organizations last year is a coincidence – or justifiable.”

(Also on POLITICO: IRS head: 'Mistakes were made')

Graham was not available to comment Tuesday because he was traveling, a spokesman said. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An IRS spokesman said that he had not seen the letter and could not comment.

The Graham organizations kept their federal income tax exemptions after the audit — but were not told they’d be able to until after the November election, he wrote.

Graham, who last week attended a White House meeting for religious leaders to discuss gun control, said the IRS story threatens to engulf all manner of non-profit organizations.

“Mr. President, the IRS has already publicly acknowledged it operated in a less than neutral and non-partisan way,” Graham wrote. “We also now know that the target of their improper actions was much wider than political or Tea Party organizations. Will you take some immediate action to reassure Americans we are not in a new chapter of American history – repressive government rule?”

(Also on POLITICO: Tea party groups threaten to sue IRS)

The IRS review, which Graham wrote involved an IRS agent visiting the two agencies last October, followed the Billy Graham ministry publishing newspaper ads in North Carolina backing a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. The amendment passed in May.

 
© 2013 POLITICO LLC
 

[Soul Crusher]

IRS official Lerner speedily approved exemption for Obama brother’s ‘charity’

Posted By Charles C. Johnson On 5:06 PM 05/14/2013 In Politics | No Comments


Lois Lerner, the senior IRS official at the center of the decision to target tea party groups for burdensome tax scrutiny, signed paperwork granting tax-exempt status to the Barack H. Obama Foundation, a shady charity headed by the president’s half-brother that operated illegally for years.
 
According to the organization’s filings, Lerner approved the foundation’s tax status within a month of filing, an unprecedented timeline that stands in stark contrast to conservative organizations that have been waiting for more than three years, in some cases, for approval.
 
Lerner also appears to have broken with the norms of tax-exemption approval by granting retroactive tax-exempt status to Malik Obama’s organization.
 
The National Legal and Policy Center filed an official complaint with the IRS in May 2011 asking why the foundation was being allowed to solicit tax-deductible contributions when it had not even applied for an IRS determination. In a New York Post article dated May 8, 2011, an officer of the foundation admitted, “We haven’t been able to find someone with the expertise” to apply for tax-exempt status.
 
Nevertheless, a month later, the Barack H. Obama Foundation had flown through the grueling application process. Lerner granted the organization a 501(c) determination and even gave it a retroactive tax exemption dating back to December 2008.
 
The group’s available paperwork suggests an extremely hurried application and approval process. For example, the group’s 990 filings for 2008 and 2009 were submitted to the IRS on May 30, 2011, and its 2010 filing was submitted on May 23, 2011.
 
Lerner signed the group’s approval [pdf] on June 26, 2011.
 
It is illegal to operate for longer than 27 months without an IRS determination and solicit tax-deductible contributions.
 
The ostensibly Arlington, Va.-based charity was not even registered in Virginia despite the foundation’s website including a donation button that claimed tax-exempt status.
 
Its president and founder, Abon’go “Roy’ Malik Obama, is Barack Obama’s half-brother and was the best man at his wedding, but he has a checkered past. In addition to running his charity, Malik Obama ran unsuccessfully to be the governor of Siaya County in Kenya. He was accused of being a wife beater and seducing the newest of his twelve wives while she was a 17-year-old school girl.
 
Sensing something wrong when he and a group of Missouri State students visited Kenyan in 2009, Ken Rutherford, winner of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on banning landmines, determined that Malik Obama was an “operator” and elected to give a donation of 400 pounds of medical supplies to a local clinic instead.
 
“We didn’t know what he was going to do with them,” Rutherford told the New York Post in 2011.
 
It is also not clear what the Barack H. Obama Foundation actually does. Its website claims the organization has built a madrassa and was building a imam’s house but there is no other evidence that the nonprofit was actually helping poor Kenyan children.
 
“The Obama Foundation raised money on its web page by falsely claiming to be a tax deductible. This bogus charity run by Malik had not even applied and yet subsequently got retroactive tax-deductible status,” Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, told The Daily Caller. Boehm described Malik Obama’s attempt to raise money as constituting “common law fraud and potentially even federal mail fraud.”
 
Boehm doubted that the charity is doing what it says it’s doing and wondered why the charity was given tax-exempt status so quickly after the evidence of wrongdoing came to light.
 
“How do you get retroactive tax-exempt status when you haven’t even applied to get it in the first place?” Boehm said.
 
Lerner continues to draw fire for her handling of the IRS targeting of conservative and citizen groups, but her colleagues have started to defend her, alleging that she behaves “apolitically.”
 
Larry Noble, who served as general counsel at the FEC from 1987 to 2000, hired and promoted Lerner. “I worked with Lois for a number of years and she is really one of the more apolitical people I’ve met,” Noble told The Daily Beast. “That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have political views, but she really focuses on the job and what the rules are. She doesn’t have an agenda.”
 
Lerner could not be reached for comment. Calls to the Barack H. Obama Foundation went directly to the organization’s voicemail and were not returned.
 
Follow Charles on Twitter
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from The Daily Caller: http://dailycaller.com

URL to article: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/14/irs-official-lerner-approved-exemption-for-obama-brothers-charity

[Soul Crusher]

IG report: ‘Corrective actions have not been fully implemented’

Posted By Caroline May On 7:39 PM 05/14/2013 In Politics | No Comments


The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration report released Tuesday, reveals that the IG believes the issues raised have not been fully resolved.
 
The hotly anticipated report delves into the fact that the IRS singled out conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status for enhanced scrutiny, delayed their applications and burdened groups with unnecessary requests, including donor information.
 
According to the report, Acting Deputy Inspector General for Audit Michael E. McKenney believes the issues has not been completely corrected.
 
“Nine recommendations were made to correct concerns we raised in the report, and corrective actions have not been fully implemented,” McKenney wrote in a memo dated Tuesday and included in the report. “Further, as our report notes, a substantial number of applications have been under review, some for more than three years and through two election cycles, and remain open.”
 
“Until these cases are closed by the IRS and our recommendations are fully implemented, we do not consider the concerns in this report to be resolved,” he added.
 
The inspector general recommended in part that the IRS improve documentation of the reasons applications are held for review, develop a process to track assistance requests, publish guidance, offer training to employees in advance of election cycles, finalize the remaining “political campaign intervention cases” and request that the “social welfare activity guidance be developed by the Department of the Treasury.”
 
“In their response to the report, IRS officials agreed with seven of our nine recommendations and proposed alternative corrective actions for two of our recommendations,” the report reads. “TIGTA does not agree that the alternative corrective actions will accomplish the intent of the recommendations and continues to believe that the IRS should better document the reasons why applications potentially involving political campaign intervention are chosen for review and finalize and publish guidance.”
 
Follow Caroline on Twitter
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from The Daily Caller: http://dailycaller.com

URL to article: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/14/inspector-general-corrective-actions-have-not-been-fully-implemented/

[Dos Equis]

Franklin Graham: IRS targeted us, too
By: Reid J. Epstein
May 14, 2013 05:08 PM EDT
 
The IRS came after Billy Graham, too, his son charged Tuesday in a letter to President Barack Obama.

Franklin Graham, the president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and the family’s international humanitarian organization Samaritan’s Purse, said that the IRS notified the organizations in September that it was conducting a “review” of their activities for tax year 2010.

With the IRS admitting it gave extra scrutiny to conservative political organizations, Graham says he now believes that the review was part of an Obama administration effort of “targeting and attempting to intimidate us.”

(PHOTOS: 10 slams on the IRS)

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association urging of voters to back “candidates who base their decisions on biblical principles and support the nation of Israel” during last year’s presidential race was the reason why IRS agents visited the North Carolina offices of both Graham groups, the letter accuses.

“While these audits not only wasted taxpayer money, they wasted money contributed by donors for ministry purposes as we had to spend precious resources servicing the IRS agents in our offices,” Graham wrote in the letter, which was shared with POLITICO. “I believe that someone in the administration was targeting and attempting to intimidate us. This is morally wrong and unethical – indeed some would call it ‘un-American.”

Graham said that “in light” of the IRS admission that it targeted tea party groups for added scrutiny, “I do not believe that the IRS audit of our two organizations last year is a coincidence – or justifiable.”

(Also on POLITICO: IRS head: 'Mistakes were made')

Graham was not available to comment Tuesday because he was traveling, a spokesman said. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An IRS spokesman said that he had not seen the letter and could not comment.

The Graham organizations kept their federal income tax exemptions after the audit — but were not told they’d be able to until after the November election, he wrote.

Graham, who last week attended a White House meeting for religious leaders to discuss gun control, said the IRS story threatens to engulf all manner of non-profit organizations.

“Mr. President, the IRS has already publicly acknowledged it operated in a less than neutral and non-partisan way,” Graham wrote. “We also now know that the target of their improper actions was much wider than political or Tea Party organizations. Will you take some immediate action to reassure Americans we are not in a new chapter of American history – repressive government rule?”

(Also on POLITICO: Tea party groups threaten to sue IRS)

The IRS review, which Graham wrote involved an IRS agent visiting the two agencies last October, followed the Billy Graham ministry publishing newspaper ads in North Carolina backing a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. The amendment passed in May.

 
© 2013 POLITICO LLC
 

Holy smokes.  Cascade. 

[Soul Crusher]

Carney: W.H. 'People Were Aware' of IRS Targeting Conservatives, But Didn't Do Anything About It


2:14 PM, May 14, 2013• By DANIEL HALPER


Spokesman Jay Carney said some at the White House "were aware" of reports that IRS was targeting conservatives, but that nobody bothered to do anything about it:



"I still don't quite understand the timeline," said MSNBC's Chuck Todd, about the IRS scandal. "We had members of Congress complaining about this for two years. Did it just never reach you guys here at the White House that there was these complaints that conservative groups felt they were being singled out and targeted?"

"I'm sure people were aware of and knew some of the stories that had been reported about the complaints, but we were not aware of any activity or of any review conducted by the inspector general until several weeks ago," Carney responded.

Todd replied, "Should you have been made aware sooner? I don't understand."

"Let's just say that -- well, first of all for all the reasons why distance between -- you know, why the IRS should not be politicized, you know, there has to be that distance. But on the specific question that you had, I want to wait and see what the report says and wait and see what we actually know happened and what the facts are before we comment beyond what the president said yesterday on this matter and before we make any decisions or pronouncements about what actions should be taken. I mean, you heard the president say what he believed and what he feels what is reported about specific targeting turned out to be true. But we need to see if that's actually the case," Carney said.

[Soul Crusher]

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Andrea Mitchell: IRS scandal ‘one of the most outrageous excesses I’ve seen in all my years of journalism’

By Charlie SpieringMay 14, 2013 | 7:43 am

4


 On "Morning Joe" Tuesday this morning, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell delivered a strong reaction to the news that the IRS targeted Tea Party groups beginning in 2011, calling it “one of the most outrageous excesses I’ve seen in all my years in journalism.”
Mitchell explained that Americans have to understand that their tax returns are private, especially since the Richard Nixon era.

[Soul Crusher]

http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/14/rand-paul-wants-criminal-charges-against-officials-involved-in-irs-targeting


 

[Soul Crusher]

BOMBSHELL… ABC Analyst: West Wing Of White House Authorized IRS-Gate Targeting (Video)
Gateway Pundit ^ | 5-14-2013 | Jim Hoft
Posted on May 14, 2013 8:55:50 PM EDT by servo1969



Barack Hussein Nixon (M.Ryan)

ABC News’ Trey Hardin: West Wing Of White House Authorized IRS-Gate Targeting

Gee, it wasn’t a local IRS office scandal after all. ABC’s Trey Hardin suggested “with a very strong sense of certainty” that the West Wing of the White House authorized the IRS targeting of conservative groups.
Via ORYR:

[Video]

From the video:

Trey Hardin: “I will tell you this on the IRS front. I’ve worked in this town for over 20 years in the White House and on Capitol Hill and I can say with a very strong sense of certainty that there are people very close to this president that not only knew what the IRS were doing but authorized it. It simply just does not happen at an agency level like that without political advisers likely in the West Wing certainly connected to the president’s ongoing campaign organization.”

Trey Hardin was on with Doug McIntyre on 790 KABC this morning.

[Soul Crusher]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/05/14/irs-tea-party-progressive-groups/2158831


WTF!!!!   Yeah, nothing going on here.   

[Soul Crusher]

WASHINGTON -- In the 27 months that the Internal Revenue Service put a hold on all Tea Party applications for non-profit status, it approved applications from similar liberal groups, a USA TODAY review of IRS data shows.

As applications from conservative groups sat in limbo, groups with obviously liberal names were approved in as little as nine months. With names including words like "Progress" or "Progressive," these groups applied for the same tax status and were engaged in the same kinds of activities as the conservative groups.

The controversial, 3-year-old strategy to manage the increasing number of political groups seeking tax-exempt status came under fire Tuesday. The agency's own inspector general blamed IRS leadership for "ineffective management."

The Justice Department wants to know if that was more than just mismanagement. Calling the IRS' actions "outrageous and unacceptable," Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that he has asked the FBI to investigate. "We're examining the facts to see if there were any criminal violations," he said.

A federal official who has been briefed on the matter said the investigation could focus on potential violations of civil rights law, including targeting groups based on political affiliation and infringing free speech. The official, who is not authorized to comment publicly, said authorities could consider possible violations of the Hatch Act, which restricts political activities of government workers.

The IRS inspector general, in an audit issued Tuesday, said the agency used "inappropriate criteria that identified Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy positions" instead of evidence of political activity. The tax exemption requires that organizations have "social welfare" as their primary purpose, but IRS officials said the rules are unclear how much political activity they can engage in.

The White House says it knew nothing of the screening until a few weeks ago. In a statement Tuesday, President Obama said, "The report's findings are intolerable and inexcusable." Obama said he has directed Treasury Secretary Jack Lew "to hold those responsible for these failures accountable, and to make sure that each of the Inspector General's recommendations are implemented quickly, so that such conduct never happens again."

Contributing: Kevin Johnson



Copyright 2013 USATODAY.com

[Bad Boy Dazza]

Fuck this makes watergate look like kiddies playing in the sandpit.  Current administration is operating like some African dictatorship - corruption everywhere you turn.

[Soul Crusher]

Document: IRS ordered conservative educational group to turn over a list of high school and college students it trained

 Federal government demanded a list of everyone a Tennessee organization had ever trained, or planned to train

 Linchpins of Liberty mentors high school and college students and teaches them conservative political philosophy, but is not tea-party-linked

 'Can you imagine my responsibility to parents if I disclosed the names of their children to the IRS?' asked the group's founder

 IRS Inspector General report listed seven questions the agency should never have asked, but this wasn't one of them

 
By David Martosko In Washington
 
PUBLISHED:00:18 EST, 15 May 2013| UPDATED:04:15 EST, 15 May 2013

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2324716/Document-IRS-ordered-conservative-educational-group-turn-list-high-school-college-students-trained.html
 

When a Tennessee lawyer asked the IRS for tax-exempt status for a mentoring group that trained high school and college students about conservative political philosophy, the agency responded with a list of 95 questions in 31 parts, including an ultimatum for a list of everyone the group had trained, or planned to train.
 
'Provide details regarding all training you have provided or will provide,' the IRS demanded. 'Indicate who has received or will receive the training and submit copies of the training material.'
 
That question was part ofthe tax collection agency's February 14, 2012 letterto Kevin Kookogey. founder of the group Linchpins of Liberty. He had submitted his application 13 months earlier.
 
'Can you imagine my responsibility to parents if I disclosed the names of their children to the IRS?' he asked MailOnline.
 
It's 'an impossible question to answer fully and truthfully,' he said, 'without disclosing the names of anyone I ever taught, or would ever teach, including students.'

 
Three of the more than 90 questions the IRS posed to Linchpins of Liberty, including (#24) the demand for a list of everyone the organization had trained, or planned to train - all of whom would be students in college and high school

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney faced hostile media questions on Tuesday, including many about the fast-brewing IRS scandal. He maintained that the White House had no knowledge of the IRS's practice of targeting conservative groups
 
Like the leaders of many tea party-affiliated groups whose tax-exemption applications have become the subject of angry complaints, Kookogey called the IRS's inquisition an overreach, 'especially considering that my organization mentors high school and college students.'
 
It 'should send chills through your spine,' he told MailOnline, 'that the government would ask me to identify those I teach, and to provide details of what I teach them.'
 
The 13-month delay, while burdensome, was far shorter than those some other groups endured. According to a report released late Tuesday by the IRS's Office of Inspector General, the average delay at one point was 574 days.
 
 Revealed: The 55 questions the IRS asked one tea party group after more than two years of waiting - including demands for names of all its donors and volunteers

 Obama battles to contain THREE growing 'scandals': White House evades fury over Benghazi cover-up, IRS targeting tea party and DOJ spying on reporters' phone calls

 Obama condemns IRS targeting of conservative groups as 'intolerable and inexcusable' as he fights to control mounting scandal
 Attorney general demands criminal investigation into 'outrageous and unacceptable' IRS targeting of Tea Party


But Kookogey said a $30,000 grant was canceled as a result of the IRS's months-long radio silence, when he couldn't tell his donor that Linchpins had earned its 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status.
 
That money would have made a significant difference to the group, judging from its public filings in Tennessee. In 2011, Linchpins of Liberty reported collecting just $3,460 in contributions, and spending $7,328 on its programs.


Kevin Kookogey said his group, Linchpins of Liberty, should never have been caught up in the IRS's anti-conservative dragnet. The IRS Inspector General issued a report on Tuesday largely clearing upper-echelon officials in the Obama administration
 
The group's online materials refer to it as 'an American leadership development enterprise.' Its stated purpose is to mentor high school and college students, placing an emphasis on Western civilization and an old-style core curriculum - what previous generations called the 'great books.'
 
'Our ideas are opposed to the Obama administration, but we’re not tea party,' Kookogey told The Tennessean.
 
It's that lack of a tea party connection, he said, that makes his predicament so maddening.
 
He told MailOnline that nothing about his group - 'not our name or our description or our website, or anything' - should have placed it among the organizations the IRS chose to scrutinize closely by using key words like 'tea party,' '9/12,' and 'patriots' as qualifiers.
 
'I'm not a Tea Party group. I'm not a Patriot group by name' he toldNewsChannel 5in Nashville.
 
'We mentor high school and college students in conservative political philosophy. It's a one on one relationship.'

Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that he ordered a Justice Department investigation into the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups for extra tax scrutiny. He will face questions on Wednesday from House Republicans in a Judiciary Committee hearing
 
Kookogey summed it up in an interview with MailOnline as 'unethical, unconstitutional, and unfair,' later asserting in an email that '[w]e were targeted by the IRS based on our political beliefs and the content of our speech.'

 
The American Center for Law and Justice, which represents 27 conservative groups including Linchpins of Liberty, is planning to file suit against the IRS.


Jordan Sekulow, that organization's chief counsel, wrote on Tuesday that 'the IRS abuse is ongoing.'

'Even though the IRS admitted wrongdoing,' Sekulow wrote in an essay for FoxNews.com, even though the Inspector General’s report indicates that wrongdoing was widespread, the IRS still hasn’t withdrawn its overbroad and unconstitutional questions, and it still hasn’t granted the exemptions it should grant, despite the fact that some applications have been pending for more than two years.'
 
The Inspector General's report includes a list of 'the seven questions' the IRS asked right-wing groups that were later 'identified as being unnecessary.'
 
Its request for the list of students trained by Linchpins of Liberty was not among them.

 
The report also largely exonerates political appointees in the Treasury Department and at the top of the IRS, instead blaming mid-level bureaucrats for providing 'ineffective management' and using 'inappropriate criteria' to red-flag conservative groups.
 
It makes no mention of anyone in the White House directing the IRS to play political favorites. But The Washington Post has reported that 'senior IRS officials' in Washington, D.C. were notified of the practice in 2011.

The IRS Inspector General identified just seven questions that were 'unnecessary,' among the hundreds asked of tea party groups and other conservative organizations that sought tax-exempt status
 
In December of that year, Kookogey says, he called the IRS's nonprofit evaluation arm in Cincinnati, Ohio, to find out why his group's application had taken so long.
 
The agent on the other end of the line, he said, told him, 'We are waiting on guidance from our superiors as to your organization and similar organizations.'

 
Attorney General Eric Holder has said that he ordered the FBI to initiate a criminal probe on Friday, when he learned about the IRS's practices.


The IRS's actions, he said, were, 'certainly outrageous and unacceptable, but we are examining the facts to see if there were criminal violations.'
 
Holder is expected to testify in a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday in Washington. On Friday the House Ways and Means Committee will hear testimony from acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller and Treasury Inspector General J. Russell George.
 
Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio has called for Miller to lose his job.


Jordan Sekulow (R) is threatening to sue the IRS on behalf of his conservative clients, while Sen. Marco Rubio (L) has asked Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to fire the acting IRS commissioner


'At a bare minimum, those involved with this deeply offensive use of government power have committed a violation of the public trust that has already had a profoundly chilling effect on free speech,' Rubio wrote Monday in a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. 'Such behavior cannot be excused with a simple apology.'
 
'It is clear the IRS cannot operate with even a shred of the American people’s confidence under the current leadership,' Rubio continued. 'Therefore, I strongly urge that you and President Obama demand the IRS Commissioner’s resignation, effective immediately.'
 
On Friday, Sekulow demanded that the IRS immediately approve the tax-exempt status applications of his organization's 10 legal clients, including Linchpins of Liberty, that are still waiting. He issued the agency an ultimatum: Grant the requests by noon on May 17, or prepare to fight in court.

 
'We are demanding that the IRS grant our remaining clients tax-exempt status immediately,' Sekulow said in a statement. 'If that does not occur by Friday, we will advise our clients of their right to sue the IRS for the redress of their grievances.'
 




Read more: Read the IRS Office of Inspector General's report


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2324716/Document-IRS-ordered-conservative-educational-group-turn-list-high-school-college-students-trained.html#ixzz2TMZpXr5p


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[Soul Crusher]

Obama classmate audited 2 years ago now 'vindicated'
 
Critic charges IRS abuse part of plan to destroy opposition
Published: 10 hours ago
Art MooreAbout | Email | Archive

http://www.wnd.com/2013/05/obama-classmate-see-i-told-ya-so-about-irs



As Attorney General Eric Holder orders an investigation of the International Revenue Service after a top official admitted targeting conservative groups with extra scrutiny, an outspoken critic of Obama who claimed more than half a year ago that the administration was using the IRS to punish him is feeling vindicated.
 
“I feel like a million bucks. I feel absolutely vindicated. I knew this was going on,” Wayne Allyn Root told WND.
 

Root, the Libertarian Party vice-presidential candidate in 2008 who has claimed Obama was strangely unknown to him and his fellow Columbia University classmates, recounted his story to WND last October of becoming the target of unusual audits, beginning in January 2011, despite a “spotless” 30-year tax record.
 
He charged in October that the order to audit him came from Obama himself, and he is even more convinced now.
 
“I believe this is not rogue agents, who would be risking their pension and careers,” he said.
 
In October, Root said the order to audit him “must have come from the highest levels of government.”
 
“Obama is using the power of the IRS and other government agencies to punish his political opposition and intimidate and silence his critics,” Root charged at the time.
 
At that time he was calling for congressional hearings “to determine if the Obama administration is misusing its power to damage or ruin the lives, drain the finances, or just distract Obama’s critics and political opposition.”
 
Now, the House Ways and Means Committee has scheduled a formal hearing for Friday to probe the IRS scandal.
 
In March 2012 hearings before the Financial Services and the Ways and Means Oversight subcommittees, former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman twice denied that the IRS had targeted conservative groups.
 
On Monday, Root contacted the office of Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., offering to testify before Congress.
 
Root said that until this week, he would not have expected scrutiny of the Obama administration to get much traction, but with the news Monday that the Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of Associated Press journalists, he thinks the media “woke up overnight and realized this is a tyrant that we’ve got in charge.”
 
Root has been a relentless critic of Obama in thousands of appearances on political talk shows on TV and radio over the past four and a half years, focusing on what he calls the president’s anti-capitalist policies. He also writes columns and commentaries for many popular conservative websites.
 
A pre-law and political science major in the class of 1983, like the president, Root told WND that he received an “unsettling” telephone call from an IRS agent in January 2011 who called himself a fan of his and considered it “an honor” to audit him.
 
Root won a complete victory last summer in tax court, which found no taxes owed in his 2007 and 2008 filings. But then, he said, he and his tax attorney were shocked when he was hit with a new audit just five days later, for 2009 and 2010.
 
Root told WND in October he knew of many cases like his that pointed to a pattern of abuse by the Obama administration, including of high-profile friends who contribute to the Republican Party and GOP bundlers.
 
Last year, billionaire Frank VanderSloot became the target of investigations by both the IRS and the Labor Department after he gave $1 million to a super PAC that supported Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. The GOP’s biggest donor, Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, said a federal criminal investigation into his company’s business practices was politically motivated. Another casino giant, Steve Wynn, also has been investigated.
 
This week, Root has received many emails from people who identify as conservative and believe the IRS has been harassing them for political reasons.
 
He said he was contacted by a Mormon man who said everyone he knew in his small Mormon community was being audited for the first time in their lives.
 
The man told Root the Mormons are easy to identify because their tax forms show they give 10 percent of their income to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
 
Root said the Mormon man told him, “Everywhere I go, I run into people who are being audited, and they have never been audited before.”
 
Root sees the alleged targeting of Mormons as consistent with the report Tuesday that the IRS was targeting Jewish groups that are pro-Israel.
 
“Who in America would be more conservative Republican and donate more to Romney than Mormons?” he asked.
 
Cloward and Piven
 
Root has charged that Obama is borrowing from the radical, collectivist strategy of former Columbia professors Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.
 
The aim is to overwhelm the welfare system for the purpose of collapsing it and replacing it with a system of guaranteed annual income.
 
“I’ve been saying it since he was elected in 2008,” Root said of Obama, “his goal is the Cloward and Piven plan we learned at Columbia University – you’ve got to bankrupt your opposition and you’ve got to bankrupt the United States of America. You’ve got to bankrupt it with debts, entitlements and spending. And it’s all happening in front of our very eyes.”
 
The recent admission by the IRS, he said, supports his contention that Obama aims to attack business owners who fund conservative candidates and causes until they have no money left.
 
“If you raise people’s taxes and regulate them to death, and assess IRS liens and audit them to death, eventually the people who write all the big checks to conservative causes will go bankrupt,” he said.
 
Root acknowledges his assessment of Obama opens himself to charges that he is extreme, but he insists anyone who has met him “would describe him as a family man or a man of faith who does not make exaggerative statements and wear a tin foil hat.”
 
“And yet,” he said. “I believe with every bone in my body that Barack Obama is a Marxist out to destroy capitalism and the United States of America.”
 
Now, he said, as Obama his hit with a perfect storm of scandals, “you tell me if anything I’ve said now appears to be extreme.”
 
“No,” he said, “the only extremists here are the radical Marxists sitting in the White House.”
 
After Obama’s inaugural speech in January, House Speaker John Boehner seemed to agree that Obama was undertaking a scorched-earth political strategy, notably declaring that he believed the president wanted to “annihilate” the Republican Party.
 
Boehner said the broader goal of the administration was “to just shove us into the dustbin of history.”
 
Recalling Boehner’s statement, Root commented: “That’s how you become a communist or socialist nation.”
 
In September, Root announced that he was stepping down from his positions in the Libertarian Party to focus on helping elect Republicans to office who share his small-government values. He reasoned that it’s not enough to have a “philosophical foundation rooted in liberty” if you can’t win as a third-party candidate.
 
No sign of Obama at Columbia
 
Root drew wide attention as the Libertarian Party vice presidential candidate in 2008 when he contended that although he and Obama were both pre-law and political science majors in Columbia’s class of 1983, he never even heard of Obama during his time at the university. None of the classmates with whom he’s spoken knew of him either, he claimed. A 2008 Wall Street Journal article cited a Fox News survey of 400 people who were Columbia students from 1981 to 1983 and found no one who remembered Obama.
 
Root said Tuesday it’s telling that no one from his Columbia days has yet to come forward and declare any knowledge of Obama at the time.
 
“Every kid I went to school with was a liberal, trending toward Marxist. They all said it. They all said they were proud Marxists,” Root said. “You would think they would defend the president, and you would have students saying, ‘I knew him, and Wayne Root is wrong.’ No one has.”
 
There’s “just dead silence,” he said.
 
“Nobody saw him there. There is something wrong with the story, I am telling you.”

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/05/obama-classmate-see-i-told-ya-so-about-irs/#xRJqqLxKcIjD3GiV.99

[Soul Crusher]

[ Invalid YouTube link ]

[Soul Crusher]

The IRS wants YOU — to share everything
By: David Nather and Tarini Parti and Byron Tau
May 14, 2013 07:36 PM EDT
 
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. The review included interviews with groups or their representatives from Hawaii, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas and elsewhere.

The long-awaited Treasury Department inspector general report released Tuesday says the agency itself decided some of its questions to conservative groups were way over the line — especially the one about donors.

(Also on POLITICO: Watchdog: IRS used ‘inappropriate criteria’)

The report shows that top IRS officials put a stop to some of the questions in early 2012, including the ones that asked tea party groups who their donors were, what issues were important to them and whether their top officers ever planned to run for office. And they told the investigators they planned to destroy the donor lists that had already been sent in.

But interviews with members of the groups paint a more dramatic picture than the bland language of the report, which just says the IRS “requested irrelevant (unnecessary) information because of a lack of managerial review, at all levels, of questions before they were sent to organizations seeking tax-exempt status.”

“They were asking for a U-Haul truck’s worth of information,” said Toby Marie Walker, the president of the Waco Tea Party.

(Also on POLITICO: White House stuck on IRS scandal response)

Some groups even gave up in the face of the IRS questions.

Several of the groups were asked for résumés of top officers and descriptions of interviews with the media. One group was asked to provide “minutes of all board meetings since your creation.”

Some of the letters asked for copies of the groups’ Web pages, blog posts and social media postings — making some tea party members worry they’d be punished for their tweets or Facebook comments by their followers.

(PHOTOS: 10 slams on the IRS)

And each letter had a stern warning about “penalties of perjury” — which became intimidating for groups that were being asked about future activities, like future donations or endorsements.

In one instance, the American Patriots Against Government Excess was asked to provide summaries or copies of all material passed out at meetings. The group had been reading “The 5000 Year Leap” by Cleon Skousen and the U.S. Constitution.

The group’s president, Marion Bower, sent a copy of both to the IRS. “I don’t have time to write a book report for them,” she said.

The Albuquerque Tea Party was asked about connections to other groups — Conspiracy Brews, Marianne Chiffelle’s Breakfasts, Concerned Citizens for Limited Government, Concerned Citizens for Common Sense.

The Hawaii Tea Party was about Dylan Nonaka, the former head of the Hawaii Republican Party.


Some were asked about any connection to Americans for Prosperity, a nonprofit group backed by the Koch brothers that ironically never underwent the same level of IRS scrutiny.

And then they asked whether one group knew Justin Binik-Thomas.

Never heard of him? He’s a former leader of the Cincinnati Tea Party, and clearly someone in the Cincinnati IRS office knew who he was.

So when the Liberty Township Tea Party applied for tax-exempt status, the IRS threw this question into its March 2011 letter to the group: “Provide details regarding your relationship with Justin Binik-Thomas.” (They didn’t know him well enough to spell his name right.)

In an interview Tuesday, Binik-Thomas said he has never worked with the Liberty group and isn’t sure why the IRS asked that group about him — although he says it’s “possible that they just Googled ‘tea party’ and assumed that we’re all the same.”

But Binik-Thomas said it was a chilling experience when the Liberty group told him his name was in their letter — because now he wonders what else the IRS has in store for him.

“Will my personal taxes get audited? Will my small-business taxes get audited? Am I a pawn to try to get at another group?” Binik-Thomas asked.

“There are a lot of people involved in the tea party. Why was I isolated from thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people? Why was I singled out?”

Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California-Irvine and an election law expert and blogger, said that it’s the IRS’s job to ensure that these groups are not primarily involved in campaign-related activities. “So it has taken a murky rule and tried to resolve disputes about status in some cases using a very fact-intensive and intrusive inquiry,” he said.

“It would be far better for the IRS — or even better, Congress — to have a bright line rule about who has to disclose what and keep the IRS out of this line of inquiry,” Hasen added. “For example, make every group regardless of tax status disclose major donors funding election ads to the FEC. That’s it. Then there would be no reason for political groups to take the (c)(4) status and the pressure would be off the IRS.”

The IRS investigations took time. Several conservative group leaders spoke of 18 months or more of delays, only to get missives in early 2012 demanding answers to detailed questions within a few weeks.

“The thing that would characterize the attitude of the IRS was silence. We submitted our application, and it would be almost a year before we would get an answer back,” said Laurence Nordvig, the executive director of the Richmond Tea Party. “It’s not like we were talking to someone every day and they were being polite or rude. We weren’t hearing from them at all.”

The Richmond group first applied for 501(c)(4) status in December 2009 and got final approval in July 2012.

The letters came from IRS offices in Ohio, California and Washington, D.C. And one letter — to American Patriots Against Government Excess — came under the name of Lois Lerner, the director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations office. Lerner was the IRS official who announced last Friday the agency had singled out certain groups for review based on search terms like “tea party” and “patriot.”

Tea party groups felt that the requests for donors were particularly intrusive.


“They were asking for the names of the donors, which is exactly the opposite of what we were looking for because if people knew their names would be made public or known to the government, they stop giving,” said Nordvig.

“Why do you even need that? There’s no reason your tax status should depend on your donors,” Littleton said.

Toby Marie Walker, the president of the Waco Tea Party, says her group applied for 501(c)(4) status in July 2010 and didn’t get a response from the IRS until February 2012 — when it sent a letter with 20 questions, including requests for printouts of its Web page and social networking sites.

It also wanted copies of all newsletters, bulletins and fliers, as well as any stories written about the group.

“They were killing trees right and left,” Walker said.

The IRS also asked for transcripts of radio shows where her group had mentioned political candidates by name — a job she figured would have cost her group $25,000. And it asked whether her group had “a close relationship” with any candidates or parties, a question she considered especially vague.

Walker said her group eventually got the questions knocked back a bit, with the help of the American Center for Law and Justice — and the IRS agreed to drop items like the Web page and Facebook printouts.

In January, Walker said, the Waco Tea Party submitted its final responses to the IRS — and in March, it won its tax-exempt status. By that point, she didn’t really feel like celebrating.

“It was a win, but I didn’t feel like it was a win, because it took us 18 months,” Walker said.

Chris Littleton, one of the co-founders of the Ohio Liberty Coalition, said the group got a grilling from the IRS when it submitted its application, in letters the group has posted on its website. The IRS also gave him so much grief when he tried to apply for tax-exempt status for another group, American Junto, that “we just gave up on it,” he said.

But when he submitted an application for a third group — Ohioans for Health Care Freedom, now renamed Ohio Rising — “it went through just fine,” Littleton said. “They never asked a single set of questions.”

Julie Hodges of the Mississippi Tea Party said the group has less than $800 in its account and relied on volunteer lawyers to deal with the IRS. It withdrew its application for 501(c)(4) status in early 2012, citing the delays and questions.

“The government is harassing us over a political position,” Hodges said.

The Greater Phoenix Tea Party Patriots applied in January 2010, and two years later, received an inquiry from the IRS with 35 questions.

“I do recall our co-founder called the IRS and the agent on the phone pretended he had our case file open in front him,” said the group’s president, Chris Rossiter. “Then she asked him a question, and he said, ‘What’s your group’s name again?’”

Several said that because the tea party groups constantly spoke to each other, it was easy to see they were all getting the same questions from IRS.

“It was a mistake for the IRS to take on the tea party because what we do is organize, so we’re going to figure out we were getting the same letters,” Rossiter said.

Lauren French contributed to this report.
 
© 2013 POLITICO LLC
 

[Soul Crusher]

So How Did Obama’s Organizing for Action Get IRS 501(c)(4) Approval So Quickly?
 Jammie Wearing Fools ^ | May 15, 2013 | Jammie

Posted on Wednesday, May 15, 2013 12:00:39

With Obama’s IRS scandal mushrooming by the day, we’ve been learning that some applications for 501(c)(4) status have languished for years and while some targeted groups have simply given up since delays were so long. Yet curiously, some groups favorable to Obama or actually run by an Obama have been mysteriously sped up through the process.

Lois Lerner, the senior IRS official at the center of the decision to target tea party groups for burdensome tax scrutiny, signed paperwork granting tax-exempt status to the Barack H. Obama Foundation, a shady charity headed by the president’s half-brother that operated illegally for years.

According to the organization’s filings, Lerner approved the foundation’s tax status within a month of filing, an unprecedented timeline that stands in stark contrast to conservative organizations that have been waiting for more than three years, in some cases, for approval.

Lerner also appears to have broken with the norms of tax-exemption approval by granting retroactive tax-exempt status to Malik Obama’s organization.

The National Legal and Policy Center filed an official complaint with the IRS in May 2011 asking why the foundation was being allowed to solicit tax-deductible contributions when it had not even applied for an IRS determination. In a New York Post article dated May 8, 2011, an officer of the foundation admitted, “We haven’t been able to find someone with the expertise” to apply for tax-exempt status.

Nevertheless, a month later, the Barack H. Obama Foundation had flown through the grueling application process. Lerner granted the organization a 501(c) determination and even gave it a retroactive tax exemption dating back to December 2008....


(Excerpt) Read more at jammiewf.com ...

[Soul Crusher]

Prominent Catholic Prof. Claims IRS Audited Her After Speaking Out Against Obama
 The Blaze ^ | May 15, 2013 | Billy Hallowell

Posted on Wednesday, May 15, 2013 12:03:06 PM


In the midst of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scandal, individuals and groups, alike, are continuing to come forward with ever-startling allegations. On Wednesday, Dr. Anne Hendershott, a devout Catholic and a noted sociologist, professor and author, exclusively told TheBlaze that she believes she may have been one of the IRS’s targets.

SNIP

It all started with a phone call she received at her home in May of that year — a call during which Hendershott was told she would be audited. A letter that followed on May 19, 2010 solidified the IRS’s request to meet her in person two months alter in July. While IRS investigations are certainly not uncommon occurrences, the professor believes that the situation surrounding hers was more-than-curious.

“The IRS calls my house and says … ‘I just wanted to let you know that we’re going to be auditing your business’ and I said ‘My businesses?’ and he said, ‘You know the expenses you take off for writing,” the academic recalls.

SNIP

But the circumstances surrounding the irregular nature of the experience don’t end there, though. Hendershott noted it was particularly surprising that she, alone, was audited. Her husband, who brings in the vast majority of the family’s income, was not included in the IRS’s inquiry — even though the Hendershotts always files jointly.

So when the agent explained that she would need to come alone and in person to discuss her “business” activity in July of 2010, the professor was perplexed.

“[The IRS agent] didn’t even let me decide when it would be good for me … He didn’t want my husband to come,” she said of the meeting, which was held at an IRS office in New Haven, Connecticut.


(Excerpt) Read more at theblaze.com ...

[Soul Crusher]

IRS Scandal Grows: Agency Withheld Approval of Pro-Life Group
 LifeNews.com ^ | 5/15/13 | Steven Ertelt

Posted on Wednesday, May 15, 2013 1:03:42 PM by tellw

The scandal involving IRS discrimination against conservative groups is growing. In one case LifeNews has profiled, a pro-life group was told it had to promote abortion.

Now, the Thomas More Society is speaking out about blatant bias by the supposedly apolitical tax-collection agency. The pro-life legal group informed LifeNews today that cases it handled support mounting accusations that demonstrate the agency’s abuse of pro-life organizations, in addition to those identified as ‘tea party’, ‘patriot’, or ‘government spending’ groups.

Outrage spurred by recent revelations of IRS discrimination against these groups has also led the Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus to announce a­ full investigation into the matter.

According to TMS, in one case, the IRS withheld approval of an application for tax exempt status for Coalition for Life of Iowa.

In a phone call to Coalition for Life of Iowa leaders on June 6, 2009, the IRS agent “Ms. Richards” told the group to send a letter to the IRS with the entire board’s signatures stating that, under perjury of the law, they do not picket/protest or organize groups to picket or protest outside of Planned Parenthood. Once the IRS received this letter, their application would be approved.

After a series of letters following a request for more invasive information, Thomas More Society special counsel Sally Wagenmaker sent a letter to the IRS demanding the tax exempt status be issued immediately.

Wagenmaker summarized her concerns about what she called “the IRS’s disturbing ability” to stall and suppress legitimate applicants. She explained how through lengthy questionnaires and wrong citations of applicable law (as in the case of Coalition for Life of Iowa), applicants with less fortitude or without access to legal advocates like the Thomas More Society will be effectively silenced from exercising their constitutional freedoms.

Wagenmaker added, “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. It’s high time that the IRS be called to account for its workers’ potential to trample on our constitutional rights, through such ostensibly innocuous means…what the Ways and Means committee will discuss may only be the tip of the iceberg of IRS abuses.”

In another similar case, the IRS withheld approval of an application for charitable tax-exempt recognition of Christian Voices for Life, questioning the group’s involvement with “40 Days for Life” and “Life Chain” events. The Fort Bend County, Texas, organization was subjected to repeated and lengthy unconstitutional requests for information about the viewpoint and content of its educational communications, volunteer prayer vigils, and other protected activities.

“The application of Christian Voices for Life clearly indicated that the organization qualified as a charitable organization under section 501(c)(3),” stated Sally Wagenmaker. She added, “The IRS seemed to be intent on denying or delaying tax-exempt status based upon the organization’s pro-life message, rather than any legitimate exemption concern, through its exhaustive, cumbersome questioning. The implication that Christian Voices for Life somehow intended to engage in illegal activity was insulting.”

[Soul Crusher]

http://www.wyff4.com/news/politics/URGENT-IRS-Rogue-Employees/-/9324082/20159778/-/xh0ed5/-/index.html?absolute=true


LOL - IRS blaming two people.   

[Dos Equis]

Whomever gets thrown under the bus will probably start opening up about how high up the chain this went. 

[Soul Crusher]

Reports: IRS Spared Liberal Groups as Tea Party Languished, More Conservative Orgs Targeted Than First Thought
Guy Benson | May 15, 2013

 




Recommend this article





Comments 29


 









Remember what we were told when this explosive story first broke less than a week ago?  The IRS official in charge of tax exemptions for organizations said the improper methods employed within her division were executed by "low level workers" in Cincinnati who weren't motivated by "political bias," and impacted roughly 75 organizations?  Wrong, wrong and wrong: 

"Low Level" - Officials within the highest echelons of the agency were aware of the inappropriate targeting, including the last two commissioners -- at least one of whom appears to have misled Congress on this very question.  Now Politico reports that Lerner herself sent at least one of the probing letters to an Ohio-based conservative group. 



The director of the Internal Revenue Service division under fire for singling out conservative groups sent a 2012 letter under her name to one such group, POLITICO has learned. The March 2012 letter was sent to the Ohio-based American Patriots Against Government Excess (American PAGE) under the name of Lois Lerner, the director of the Exempt Organizations Division...at the time of the letter, the group was in the midst of the application process for tax-exempt nonprofit status — a process that would stretch for nearly three years and involve queries for detailed information on its social media activity, its organizational set-up, bylaws, membership and interactions with political officials. The letter threatened to close American PAGE’s case file unless additional information was received within 60 days.
 

These burdensome requests were apparently designed to bury the victimized groups in paperwork.  Carol reported last night that some 58 percent of these applicants were asked for unnecessary information and data, according to the Inspector General's review.  Some inquiries asked for screenshots of organizations' Facebook posts and even lists of what books (!) its members were reading.   

"No Political Bias" - This claim was laughable on its face from the start, in light of the agency's surreal criteria for added scrutiny and the "red flag" words and phrases that triggered investigations.  Now add to the mix this scoop from USA Today:
 


In February 2010, the Champaign Tea Party in Illinois received approval of its tax-exempt status from the IRS in 90 days, no questions asked. That was the month before the Internal Revenue Service started singling out Tea Party groups for special treatment. There wouldn't be another Tea Party application approved for 27 months. In that time, the IRS approved perhaps dozens of applications from similar liberal and progressive groups, a USA TODAY review of IRS data shows. As applications from conservative groups sat in limbo, groups with liberal-sounding names had their applications approved in as little as nine months. With names including words like "Progress" or "Progressive," the liberal groups applied for the same tax status and were engaged in the same kinds of activities as the conservative groups.
 

Lerner also reportedly fast-tracked an approval for a foundation operated by President Obama's half brother, taking the extraordinary step of granting it retroactive tax-free status.
 
"Seventy-five organizations effected" - That number almost immediately swelled to 300.  Now it's closer to 500:


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.
 
We have an answer to that question now, too.  Here's Carol again, quoting the cover letter from the IG's findings, dated yesterday: "A substantial number of applications have been under review, some for more than three years and through two election cycles, and remain open."  Lest you even ask, nobody involved in this scheme has been disciplined (yet); just the opposite, in fact:
 

More allegations of IRS impropriety are cropping up across the country, and similar questions are now being raised about political favoritism within the EPA's FOIA request process: "Conservative groups seeking information from the Environmental Protection Agency have been routinely hindered by fees normally waived for media and watchdog groups, while fees for more than 90 percent of requests from green groups were waived, according to requests reviewed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute."  This steady drumbeat of ugliness was enough to prompt NBC's Nightly News to kick off its broadcast with a Nixon comparison last evening, and for Jonathan Alter to pronounce the administration's crisis management efforts "disastrous:"

An "unhealthy love" for Obama is a diagnosis that applies to some people well beyond the White House walls.  Think, for instance, of the famously tingly man who hosts the show on which Alter appeared.  The good news in all of this is that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid see these allegations of Statist bullying as a prime opportunity to...turn back the clock on stifling political speech and pass pet legislation that would hamper conservative organizations while shielding Democrats' union cronies.  Good luck with that, guys.  Conservatives have far better messaging opportunities here: If the IRS is at best grossly incompetent, and at worst maliciously politicized, how can they be trusted to enforce Obamacare starting next year?  And don't citizens have more cause than ever to be leery of ideas like national gun registries?  Parting quotation: "What we are witnessing is nothing less than a dramatic reversal of the nation’s political narrative."