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Introducing The Obama Scandal Bracket! (Jon Gabriel)
20 MayIntroducing The Obama Scandal Bracket! – Jon Gabriel
With so many White House scandals – and new ones popping up every day – how are average citizens supposed to keep track? Wouldn’t it be nice if Obama went on ESPN and mapped them all on a bracket?
Why wait for next year’s March Madness when you can start May Madness today? Introducing the Obama Scandal Bracket! Click here for a full-size version and vote for the scandal you think will bring down the president.
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Congressional Republicans To Investigate EPA Freedom Of Information Requests Scandal
20 MayLawmakers To Investigate EPA FOIA Scandal – Daily Caller
Republican lawmakers are launching an investigation into claims that the Environmental Protection Agency, while giving preferential treatment to environmental groups, made it harder for conservative groups to obtain government records.
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“According to documents obtained by the Committees, EPA readily granted FOIA fee waivers for environmental allies, effectively subsidizing them, while denying fee waivers and making the FOIA process more difficult for states and conservative groups,” wrote Republican lawmakers, including Rep. Darrell Issa and Sens. David Vitter, Chuck Grassley and Jim Inhofe in a letter to the EPA.
Citing a report by The Daily Caller News Foundation, Republicans are asking the EPA to hand over all Freedom of Information Act fee waiver requests, responses to requests, and FOIA officer training materials since the beginning of the Obama administration.
Lawmakers are also asking for all communications regarding FOIA fee waiver requests or appeals under the Obama administration.
The free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute obtained documents showing that since January 2012, the EPA granted fee waivers for 75 out of 82 FOIA requests from major environmental groups and only denied seven of them, giving green groups a 92 percent success rate.
At the same time, the EPA rejected or ignored 21 out of 26 fee waiver requests from conservative groups.
“The startling disparity in treatment strongly suggests EPA’s actions are possibly part of a broader effort to collude with groups that share the agency’s political agenda and discriminate against states and conservative organizations,” the lawmakers wrote. “This is a clear abuse of discretion.”
Republicans are tying the EPA to the broader controversy over the Internal Revenue Service targeting conservative groups.
“We know the Obama EPA has completely mismanaged FOIA, but granting fee waivers for their friends in the far-left environmental community, while simultaneously blocking conservative leaning groups from gaining access to information is really no different than the IRS disaster,” said Vitter.
Acting EPA administrator Bob Perciasepe announced Thursday that he was asking the inspector general to look into the matter.
“I am going to get an independent look at all that information so I can get a determination,” said Perciasepe, adding that the agency’s shift to an online system often means that groups are not charged any fees even if they are not formally waived.
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Benghazi Bombshell: CIA Warned Of Impending Jihadist Attack
20 MayBombshell In The Benghazi E-mails: The CIA Warned Of Impending Jihadist Attack – World Tribune
The White House recently released more than 100 pages of e-mails between the CIA, State Department and the White House regarding the now infamous talking points.
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President Barack Obama insists “there is no there, there,” as he stated during a May 13 press conference. Yet, the opposite is true. There is a bombshell there.
The CIA had warned on Sept. 10, 2012, one day before the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, of the possibility of a jihadist attack on an American embassy.
We now know that on Sept. 15, 2012, when then-CIA Director David Petraeus read the final version of the talking points, he wrote in an e-mail: “No mention of the cable to Cairo, either? I’d just as soon not use this, then… NSS’s (National Security Staff) call to be sure…”
At that point, all references to the perpetrators of the Benghazi attack, Ansar al-Sharia, a Libyan Al Qaida affiliate, had been redacted. The cable to Cairo contained a warning that Al Qaida-linked jihadists might strike the American embassy there, according to The Weekly Standard.
As an earlier version of the talking points put it: “On September 10 we warned of social media reports calling for a demonstration in front of the Embassy Cairo and that jihadists were threatening to break into the Embassy.”
In other words, America’s intelligence community feared there was danger in Cairo even before the rally occurred the following day. On September 11, there was no “spontaneous demonstration” protesting an anti-Muslim video in Egypt (or in Benghazi for that matter), as the administration would later claim, especially by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice who misled the public Sept.16 on five Sunday talk shows.
Instead, there was a rally in Cairo organized by five well-known Al Qaida-linked jihadists who had previously been jailed for terrorist activity, according to an Oct. 26 report by Thomas Joscelyn in The Long War Journal. This rally was an Al Qaida love-fest. Flags floated in the crowd honoring Al Qaida and the crowd chanted: “Obama, Obama! We are all Osama!” The five senior jihadist organizers were simply using the anti-Muslim video to gin up even more outrage and anti-American sentiment. The video was merely an appendage in their greater quest to proclaim, loudly and boldly that “Al Qaida’s ideology lives,” according to the detailed report.
Thus, Mr. Petraeus expressed his dismay on Sept.15 that a key piece of information – the essential context – was omitted. Without this, the talking points were one giant mess.
Yet, if this key piece of information were indeed revealed, the Obama administration would be exposed as having lied about the receding Al Qaida threat around the world. They would also appear to be incompetent in preventing another attack on sovereign American soil, right after having been warned that it might occur.
It was precisely this that Mr. Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were determined to conceal amidst the heated and closely contested 2012 presidential campaign. If they could convince the American people that both the Cairo and Benghazi events were spontaneous, then they could not be accused of failing to prevent the violent outbreaks that occurred.
The truth is now simple, stark and a scathing indictment of the Obama administration: On Sept. 10, the CIA knew that Al Qaida-linked jihadists posed a threat; they were stirring animosity, possibly endangering the American embassy in Cairo.
The Obama administration did not heed the warning of the intelligence community, nor have the good sense to fortify defenses in a “high-risk” outpost such as the consulate in Benghazi. Hence, when jihadists struck in Libya and four Americans died, Mr. Obama and his entourage grasped immediately that if the public understood the correct sequence of events, the Obama team would be lampooned out of office.
Every part of this story reveals the glaring failures of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy: The pro-jihadist rally in Cairo exposed the president as having badly miscalculated from the start of his term. There, in the very place where on June 4, 2009, he had proclaimed “a new beginning” for America and the Muslim world, terrorists now spewed hatred on the United States and celebrated Osama bin Laden as their champion and hero. And they also continued to threaten imminent violence.
In addition, the emails and cables the intelligence community had sent, warning of danger to a U.S. embassy on Sept. 11, 2012 (even if it was that in Cairo) should have put every security team in every American outpost on high alert for a possible strike, with contingency plans in place to counterattack and rescue Americans who might be in harm’s way. By contrast, Mr. Obama’s staff was caught completely flat-footed when jihadists struck in Benghazi.
When terrorists attacked in Libya, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens called his second-in-command, Deputy Chief of Mission Gregory Hicks and said, “Greg, we are under attack.” Mr. Hicks, as he testified in a May 8 congressional hearing, then called Mrs. Clinton and relayed that the U.S. diplomatic mission was besieged. And somewhere, somehow, as the horror unfolded, in the middle of that fateful night, an evil order to “stand down” was issued. A military rescue would not even be attempted. For the dark secret had to be preserved at all costs. If Americans had to die, so be it. In other words, the plot to conceal Mr. Obama’s glaring failures was concocted.
Thus, Ambassador Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty became four casualties in the glorious cause of the re-election of the very man whose entire foreign policy had just gone up in smoke.
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White House: ‘Irrelevant Fact’ Where Obama Was During Benghazi – The Blaze
Senior White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer said Sunday it’s an “irrelevant fact” where exactly President Barack Obama was while the Benghazi attack was unfolding.
Pfeiffer told “Fox News Sunday” that Obama was “kept up to date on this as it was happening” last September, “from the moment it started until the very end.”
But host Chris Wallace, who had asked what specifically Obama did during the night of the deadly assault, said Pfeiffer didn’t answer his question.
Pfeiffer said Obama “was in constant touch that night with his national security team” and repeated that he “was kept up to date with the events that were happening.”
Wallace asked whether Obama was in the White House Situation Room.
“I don’t remember what room the president was in on that night. That’s a largely an irrelevant fact,” Pfeiffer replied. “The premise of your question is that somehow there was something that could have been done differently and would have changed the outcome here. The accountability review board has looked at this, people have looked at it. It’s a horrible tragedy what happened and what we have to do is make sure it never happens again.”
Continuing to press the point, Wallace said “no one knows where he was or how he was involved.”
“The suggestion of your question that somehow the president – ” Pfeiffer began.
“I just want to know what the answer is,” Wallace said.
“The assertions from Republicans here that somehow the president allowed this to happen or didn’t take action is offensive,” Pfeiffer said. “It is absolutely offensive. And there’s no evidence to support it.”
“I’m simply asking a question,” Wallace said. “Where was he? What did he do? How did he respond – who told him you can’t deploy forces and what was his response to that?”
Pfeiffer repeated, “The president was in the White House that day, he was kept up to date by his national security team, he spoke to the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs earlier, and as events unfolded he was kept up to date.”
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Obama DOJ Spied On James Rosen Of Fox News
20 MayWashington Post Reports Obama DOJ Also Spied On James Rosen Of Fox News – Newsbusters
The Washington Post on Monday reported that Obama’s Department of Justice was investigating journalists before they started wiretapping the Associated Press – for one, Fox News correspondent James Rosen in 2010. Their headline wasn’t “Obama Team Also Spied on Fox News.” Fox wasn’t in the headline, on A-1 or on A-12, where the story continued.
Newly obtained court documents “reveal how deeply investigators explored the private communications of a working journalist – and raise the question of how often journalists have been investigated as closely as Rosen was in 2010.” Reporter Ann Marimow began:
When the Justice Department began investigating possible leaks of classified information about North Korea in 2009, investigators did more than obtain telephone records of a working journalist suspected of receiving the secret material.
They used security badge access records to track the reporter’s comings and goings from the State Department, according to a newly obtained court affidavit. They traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report. They obtained a search warrant for the reporter’s personal e-mails.
The case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, the government adviser, and James Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, bears striking similarities to a sweeping leaks investigation disclosed last week in which federal investigators obtained records over two months of more than 20 telephone lines assigned to the Associated Press.
The Kim case began in June 2009, when Rosen reported for Fox online that U.S. intelligence officials were warning that North Korea was likely to respond to United Nations sanctions with more nuclear tests. The CIA had learned the information, Rosen wrote, from sources inside North Korea.
The story was published the same day that a top-secret report was made available within a small group inside the intelligence community, including Kim, who at the time was a State Department arms expert with security clearance. “FBI investigators used the security-badge data, phone records and e-mail exchanges to build a case that Kim shared the report with Rosen soon after receiving it, court records show.”
In the documents, FBI agent Reginald Reyes described in detail how Kim and Rosen moved in and out of the State Department headquarters at 2201 C St. NW a few hours before the story was published on June 11, 2009.
“Mr. Kim departed DoS at or around 12:02 p.m. followed shortly thereafter by the reporter at or around 12:03 p.m.,” Reyes wrote. Next, the agent said, “Mr. Kim returned to DoS at or around 12:26 p.m. followed shortly thereafter by the reporter at or around 12:30 p.m.”
The activity, Reyes wrote in an affidavit, suggested a “face-to-face” meeting between the two men. “Within a few hours after those nearly simultaneous exits and entries at DoS, the June 2009 article was published on the Internet,” he wrote.
The court documents don’t name Rosen, but his identity was confirmed by several officials, and he is the author of the article at the center of the investigation. Rosen and a spokeswoman for Fox News did not return phone and e-mail messages seeking comment.
The Post suggested that unlike the AP, Fox News was the likely target of the investigation:
Reyes wrote that there was evidence Rosen had broken the law, “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.” That fact distinguishes his case from the probe of the AP, in which the news organization is not the likely target…
Privacy protections limit searching or seizing a reporter’s work, but not when there is evidence that the journalist broke the law against unauthorized leaks. A federal judge signed off on the search warrant – agreeing that there was probable cause that Rosen was a co-conspirator.
[U.S. Attorney Ronald] Machen’s office said in a statement that it is limited in commenting on an open case, but that the government “exhausted all reasonable non-media alternatives for collecting the evidence” before seeking a search warrant.
However, it remains an open question whether it’s ever illegal, given the First Amendment’s protection of press freedom, for a reporter to solicit information. No reporter, including Rosen, has been prosecuted for doing so.
The question now is whether other journalists will see Obama’s Justice Department spying on Fox News as objectionable as spying on the Associated Press.
Perhaps the bland headlines meant to project Rosen as just another journalist on Obama’s enemies list. The front-page headline was “Records offer rare glimpse at leak probe: Justice sought reporter’s personal e-mails after N. Korea story in 2009.” Inside the paper, the headline was simply “Badge data used to track reporter at State, records say.”
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Your Daley Gator Lying Leftist Liars IRS Cover-up News Roundup For Monday (Videos)
20 MayObama And The IRS: The Smoking Gun? – American Spectator
President met with anti-Tea Party IRS union chief the day before agency targeted Tea Party.
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“For me, it’s about collaboration.” – National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley on the relationship between the anti-Tea Party IRS union and the Obama White House
Is President Obama directly implicated in the IRS scandal?
Is the White House Visitors Log the trail to the smoking gun?
The stunning questions are raised by the following set of new facts.
March 31, 2010.
According to the White House Visitors Log, provided here in searchable form by U.S. News and World Report, the president of the anti-Tea Party National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelley, visited the White House at 12:30pm that Wednesday noon time of March 31st.
The White House lists the IRS union leader’s visit this way:
Kelley, Colleen Potus 03/31/2010 12:30
In White House language, “POTUS” stands for “President of the United States.”
The very next day after her White House meeting with the President, according to the Treasury Department’s Inspector General’s Report, IRS employees – the same employees who belong to the NTEU – set to work in earnest targeting the Tea Party and conservative groups around America. The IG report wrote it up this way:
April 1-2, 2010: The new Acting Manager, Technical Unit, suggested the need for a Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party cases. The Determinations Unit Program Manager Agreed.
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. Kelley herself is a 14-year IRS veteran agent. The union’s PAC endorsed President Obama in both 2008 and 2012, and gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles to anti-Tea Party candidates.
Putting IRS employees in the position of actively financing anti-Tea Party candidates themselves, while in their official positions in the IRS blocking, auditing, or intimidating Tea Party and conservative groups around the country.
The IG report contained a timeline prepared by examining internal IRS e-mails. The IG report did not examine White House Visitor Logs, e-mails, or phone records relating to the relationship between the IRS union, the IRS, and the White House.
In fact, this record in the White House Visitors Log of a 12:30 Wednesday, March 31, 2010 meeting between President Obama and the IRS union’s Kelley was not unusual.
On yet another occasion, Kelley’s presence at the White House was followed shortly afterwards by the President issuing Executive Order 13522. A presidential directive that gave the anti-Tea Party NTEU – the IRS union – a greater role in the day-to-day operation of the IRS than it had already – which was considerable.
Kelley is recorded as visiting the White House over a year earlier, listed in this fashion:
Kelley, Colleen Potus/Flotus 12/03/2009 18:30
The inclusion of “FLOTUS” – First Lady Michelle Obama – and the 6:30 pm time of the December event on this entry in the Visitors Log indicates this was the White House Christmas Party held that evening and written up here in the Chicago Sun-Times. The Sun-Times focused on party guests from the President’s home state of Illinois and did not mention Kelley. Notably, the Illinois guests, who are reported to have attended the same party as Kelley, included what the paper described as four labor “activists”: Dennis Gannon of the Chicago Federation of Labor, Tom Balanoff of the Service Employees International Union, Henry Tamarin of UNITE, and Ron Powell of the United Food and Commercial Workers.
Six days following Kelley’s attendance at the White House Christmas party with labor activists like herself, the President issued Executive Order 13522 (text found here, with an explanation here). The Executive Order, titled: “Creating Labor-Management Forums To Improve Delivery of Government Services” applied across the federal government and included the IRS. The directive was designed to:
Allow employees and unions to have pre-decisional involvement in all workplace matters…
However else this December 2009 Executive Order can be described, the directive was a serious grant of authority within the IRS to the powerful anti-Tea Party union. A union that by this time already had the clout to determine the rules for IRS employees, right down to who would be allowed a Blackberry or what size office the employee was entitled to. The same union that would shortly be doling out serious 2010 (and later 2012) campaign contributions to anti-Tea Party candidates with money supplied from IRS employees. The union, as noted last week here in this space, already has the authority to decide all manner of IRS matters, right down to who does and does not get a Blackberry.
It is the same union whose IRS employee-members were being urged in 2012 by Senate Democrats (Chuck Schumer, Al Franken, Max Baucus, and others) to target Tea Party and other conservative groups.
Which, as the IG records, they did.
Both Mr. Obama and the NTEU’s Kelley have been by turns evasive and tight-lipped about their roles in the blossoming IRS scandal.
Kelley refused to open up to the Washington Post. In an article titled ”IRS, union mum on employees held accountable in ‘sin’ of political targeting,” the Post quoted the following:
“NTEU is working to get the facts but does not have any specifics at this time. Moreover, IRS employees are not permitted to discuss taxpayer cases. We cannot comment further at this time,” NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said via e-mail.
A call to the NTEU office in Cincinnati resulted in a similar response: “We’ve been directed by national office. We have no comment.”
The President approached things in a more evasive manner.
Last Thursday at the President’s press conference with the Turkish prime minister, Julianna Goldman of Bloomberg News asked the following question:
“Mr. President, I want to ask you about the IRS. Can you assure the American people that nobody in the White House knew about the agency’s actions before your Counsel’s Office found out on April 22nd? And when they did find out, do you think that you should have learned about it before you learned about it from news reports as you said last Friday? And also, are you opposed to there being a special counsel appointed to lead the Justice Department investigation?”
The President’s response?
“But let me make sure that I answer your specific question. I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything about the IG report before the IG report had been leaked through the press.”
Take note: Goldman’s question was:
“Can you assure the American people that nobody in the White House knew about the agency’s actions before your Counsel’s Office found out on April 22nd?”
The President evaded by answering:
“I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything about the IG report…”
The question was not whether he knew about the IG report ahead of time. The question was whether he could “assure the American people that nobody in the White House knew about the agency’s actions.”
In response, the President ducked.
In other words, the IRS union chief went to the White House to meet personally with the president on March 31. The union already had Executive Order 13522 behind it, issued by the President barely three months earlier. An Executive Order directing that the IRS must “allow employees and unions to have pre-decisional involvement in all workplace matters…”.
The very next day after that March 31 meeting at the White House, the IRS, with the union involved in its decision-making, was setting up its “Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party.”
Which raises the famous question from Watergate: What did the President know and when did he know it?
While potentially explosive now, in fact the Obama Administration hadn’t been in office a month before Kelley was boasting of the IRS union’s influence in the White House.
In a February 15, 2009 interview given to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh is Kelley’s home town), there was this question from the PG reporter, with the now Washington-based Kelley boasting as below:
Q: Has the Obama staff been receptive?
A: Yes. We have worked with the transition team, given them suggestions; and throughout the campaign, President Obama talked about working with the federal employees and unions. He’s recognized the contributions federal employees make. I was just at the White House (Jan. 30) while he was signing some executive orders to undo some things the prior administration did.
Catch that?
The boast?
“I was just at the White House…”
Which is to say, the election of 2008, in which the union had endorsed Obama, was no sooner over than the head of the IRS union had “worked with the transition team” and “given them suggestions.” Literally ten days after the Obama January 20 inaugural in 2009 – January 30 the article notes – Kelley was boasting that “I was just at the White House while he (the President) was signing some executive orders to undo some things the prior administration did.”
And what did Kelley see as the IRS union’s relationship with the White House she had already visited ten days into the President’s first term?
Kelley responded candidly:
“We are looking for a return to what we used to call partnership. I don’t really care what it’s called. For me, it’s about collaboration.”
Catch those words?
Collaboration. Partnership.
In addition to Kelley’s three visits to see the President – in January of 2009, December of 2009, and March of 2010 – she is listed for three other visits, the contact names those of presidential aides:
“Kelley, Colleen Weiss, Margaret 11/04/2009 10:00”
“Kelley, Colleen Weiss, Margaret 12/01/2009 12:00”
“Kelley, Colleen Nelson, Greg 01/14/2010 13:40”
The obvious question instantly arises with the revelation that Kelley was meeting with the President personally – the day before the IRS kicked into high gear with its “Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party”.
Were the President of the United States and the President of the NTEU meeting in the White House at 12:30 on Wednesday, March 31, 2010 – and engaged in “collaboration” and “partnership”? A “collaboration” and “partnership” that was all about targeting the Tea Party?
And did that collaboration and partnership result in the IRS letting loose the hounds on the Tea Party and conservative groups – the very next day after the Obama-Kelley meeting?
To add to the administration’s IRS-NTEU woes is the fact that beyond the Inspector General, there is another IRS-connected agency in the Treasury Department: the IRS Oversight Board.
And on that board sits a presidential appointee named Robert M. Tobias. Tobias, oddly, was a Clinton appointee in 2005, confirmed by the Senate for a five-year term. He is still there. He is the longtime NTEU general counsel and Kelley’s predecessor as the union president. Here’s the statement, from the IRS Oversight Board, on all of this. It is headed:
IRS Oversight Board Deeply Troubled by Breakdown in IRS Process in Reviewing Tax-Exempt Applications.
There was no reference to the influence of the anti-Tea Party NTEU in the statement. Why would there be when the union’s ex-president sits on the Oversight Board itself?
Obama’s problem here is considerable.
By not forthrightly answering Goldman’s question, he seems to be evading the issue in the manner that brought so much trouble in the form of congressional investigations, special prosecutors, and impeachment threats to Presidents Nixon and Clinton, with Nixon being forced to resign the presidency and Clinton brought to a Senate trial.
The President’s too-clever-by half evasion added to Kelley’s silence leaves open the question of whether the union and the White House, not to mention the IRS Oversight Board, are collaborating – collaborating right now – on a cover-up.
Nixon looked the American people in the television eye and flatly lied about his personal involvement in the Watergate scandal, lies that came from a frantic attempt to conduct a cover-up.
Clinton looked the American people in the eye and famously wagged his finger as he lied that he “did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.” In Clinton’s case this extended to lying to a federal grand jury.
For a good long while, the American people in fact believed both Nixon and Clinton. The stories are now legion of Nixon cabinet and staff believing their man, and Clinton’s cabinet and staff believing their man’s protestations of innocence as well.
Finally, in both cases, the truth was out.
As Washington and the country have long since twice-learned the hard way, the parsing of presidential words in cases like this, not to mention looking into the cameras and boldly lying on the prayer of getting away with the lie, always bodes ill for presidents. It leads inevitably to that simple question famously uttered by then-Tennessee GOP Senator Howard Baker and posed of Nixon at the Senate Watergate hearings: “What did the President know and when did he know it?”
Twice in recent American history the answer to this question, once for Nixon and once for Clinton, has landed popular, powerful presidents in impeachment hot water. Ending Republican Nixon’s presidency altogether and coming close to doing the same with Democrat Clinton. Leaving the legacy of each permanently scarred.
The notion that the players in the IRS scandal did what they did to get past the 2012 election will only add to an Obama presidential reputation as borrowing the Nixon playbook on skirting scandal in a presidential election year.
Ironically re-casting the image of America’s first black president as the black Nixon.
With the examples of how Nixon and Clinton dodged, evaded, and lied, Obama’s non-answer to Juliana Goldman’s question at last week’s press conference comes in for much more scrutiny. Matched to the silence of Kelley it begins raising obvious questions. Such as:
• Did the President himself ever discuss the Tea Party with Kelley?
• Did the President ever communicate his thoughts on the Tea Party to Kelley — in any fashion other than a face-to-face conversation such as e-mail, text, or by phone?
• What was the subject of the Obama-Kelley March 31, 2010 meeting?
• Who was present at the Obama-Kelley March 31 meeting?
• Was the Tea Party or any other group opposing the President’s agenda discussed at the March 31 meeting, or before or after that meeting?
• Is the White House going to release any e-mails, text, or phone records that detail Kelley’s contacts with not only Mr. Obama but his staff?
• Will the IRS release all e-mail, text, or phone records between Kelley or any other leader of the NTEU with IRS employees?
• What role did Executive Order 13522 play in the IRS investigations of the Tea Party and all these other conservative groups?
Doubtless there are others, considerable others and the list of questions will grow.
Not to be lost sight of here is the role of the NTEU in raising money for Democrats in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles – the exact period when the IRS was busy going after the Tea Party and the others to curb any possible influence the groups could have in the elections of 2010 and 2012.
The NTEU, through its political action committee, raised $613,633 in the 2010 cycle, giving 98% of its contributions to anti-Tea Party Democrats. In 2012 the figure was $729,708, with 94% going to anti-Tea Party candidates. One NTEU candidate after another, as discussed last week in this space, campaigned vigorously against the Tea Party.
So the motivations here – defeating the Tea Party in 2010, and failing at that, making sure that the news of the metastasizing cancer in the IRS was kept quiet until after the 2012 presidential election was over – are clear.
What is particularly interesting here are the automatic assumptions of the mainstream media in all of this.
Like this “given” from the Washington Post’s Dan Balz, bold print added for emphasis.
The most corrosive of the controversies is what happened at the IRS, which singled out tea party and other conservative groups for special scrutiny in their applications for tax-exempt status. That Obama knew nothing about it does little to quell concerns that one of the most-feared units in government was operating out of control.
But if in fact the President did know about it?
Here’s the Washington Post’s “Journolist” Ezra Klein:
The crucial ingredient for a scandal is the prospect of high-level White House involvement and wide political repercussions…
If new information emerges showing a connection between the Determination Unit’s decisions and the Obama campaign, or the Obama administration, it would crack this White House wide open. That would be a genuine scandal. But the IG report says that there’s no evidence of that. And so it’s hard to see where this one goes from here.
Exactly.
Which is why it will be a curious sight indeed to see the efforts the media will go to ignore/dismiss the tight, on-the-record connection between the President personally and a vociferously anti-Tea Party union. A union that has the literal run of the IRS – and whose union chief is recorded as having met with the President in the White House the day before the IRS launched “a Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party cases.” A decision with which, according to the IG report: “The Determinations Unit Program Manager Agreed.” Check those words from Mr. Klein again:
If new information emerges showing a connection between the Determination Unit’s decisions and the Obama campaign, or the Obama administration, it would crack this White House wide open. That would be a genuine scandal.
The question now is a simple one.
In 1974, “the smoking gun” was a tape recording that ended the Nixon presidency.
In 1998, the smoking gun was a blue dress – and it almost undid Bill Clinton’s White House.
Now the all-too-familiar pattern of scandal and its day-by-day drip-drip-drip nature has begun to set in. Newsmax is now quoting Washington attorney and conservative activist Cleta Mitchell as saying:
“There were nearly 100 groups across the country that got the very egregious set of letters from the IRS that were almost identical and they came from offices all over the country, so I know of at least 85 to 90, maybe more, organizations.”
Regular American all over the country are coming forward with their stories. Understanding the relationship between the Obama White House and the IRS union will be a must for congressional investigators.
President Obama is coming perilously closer to becoming the new Nixon. The next Bill Clinton.
And once again, as news of exactly what a president was doing in the Oval Office on a particular day and time goes public, yet again the old question becomes new.
What did the President know? And when did he know it?
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Obama’s Chief Lawyer Knew About IRS Targeting Weeks Ago – Townhall
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.”
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.
In the week of April 22, the Office of the White House Counsel and its head, Kathryn Ruemmler, were told by Treasury Department attorneys that an inspector general’s report was nearing completion, the White House official said. In that conversation, Ms. Ruemmler learned that “a small number of line IRS employees had improperly scrutinized certain…organizations by using words like ‘tea party’ and ‘patriot,’ ” the official said.
President Barack Obama said last week he learned about the controversy at the same time as the public, on May 10, when an IRS official revealed it to a conference of lawyers.
The main question since this whole thing broke on May 10th is whether President Obama ordered the targeting, knew of targeting, or encouraged the targeting through his statements. Did this thing come from the top? Kim Strassel says of course it did.
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.
But that’s not how things work in post-Watergate Washington. Mr. Obama didn’t need to pick up the phone. All he needed to do was exactly what he did do, in full view, for three years: Publicly suggest that conservative political groups were engaged in nefarious deeds; publicly call out by name political opponents whom he’d like to see harassed; and publicly have his party pressure the IRS to take action.
Mr. Obama now professes shock and outrage that bureaucrats at the IRS did exactly what the president of the United States said was the right and honorable thing to do. “He put a target on our backs, and he’s now going to blame the people who are shooting at us?” asks Idaho businessman and longtime Republican donor Frank VanderSloot.
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A Bushel Of Pinocchios For IRS’s Lois Lerner – Washington Post
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.
The clumsy way the IRS disclosed the issue as well as Lerner’s press briefing by phone were seen at the time as a public relations disaster. But even so, it is worth reviewing three key statements made by Lerner and comparing them to the facts that have since emerged.
“But between 2010 and 2012 we started seeing a very big uptick in the number of 501(c)(4) applications we were receiving and many of these organizations applying more than doubled, about 1500 in 2010 and over 3400 in 2012.”
Lerner made this comment while issuing a seemingly impromptu apology at an American Bar Association panel (it was later learned that this was a planted question – more on that below.) In her telling, the tax-exempt branch was simply overwhelmed by applications and so unfortunate shortcuts were taken.
But this claim of “more than doubled” appears to be a red herring. The targeting of groups began in early 2010, after the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizen’s United was announced on Jan. 21. The ruling paved the way for political groups to apply under a tax-exempt status known as 501(c)4. Most charities apply under 501(c)3, but under 501(c)4 nonprofit groups that engage in “social welfare” can also perform a limited amount of election activity.
At first glance, the Inspector General’s report appears to show that the number of 501(c)(4) applications actually went down that year, from 1,751 in 2009 to 1,735.
But it turns out that these are federal fiscal-year figures, meaning “2010” is actually Oct. 1, 2009 to Sept. 30, 2010, so the “2010” year includes more than three months before the Supreme Court decision was announced.
Astonishingly, despite Lerner’s public claim, an IRS spokeswoman was not able to provide the actual calendar year numbers. By allocating one-quarter of the fiscal year numbers to the prior year, we can get a very rough sense of the increase on a calendar-year basis.(Figures are rounded to avoid false precision; 2012 is not possible to calculate)
2009: 1745
2010: 1865
2011: 2540
In other words, while there was an increase in 2010, it was relatively small. The real jump did not come until 2011, long after the targeting of conservative groups had been implemented. Also, it appears Lerner significantly understated the number of applications in 2010 (“1500”) in order to make her claim of “more than doubled.”
“I think you guys were reading the paper as much as I was. So it was pretty much we started seeing information in the press that raised questions for us and we went back and took a look.”
Here, Lerner suggests that she only found out about this issue when news reports appeared in February and March 2012 about tea party groups complaining that they were being targeted. But the IG timeline shows this claim to be false.
According the IG, Lerner had a briefing on the issue on June 29, 2011, in which she was told about the BOLO (“Be On the Look Out”) criteria that included phrases such as “Tea Party” or “Patriots.” The report says she raised concerns about the wording and “instructed that the criteria be immediately revised.” She continued to be heavily involved in the issue in the months preceding the new reports, according to the timeline.
“I don’t believe anyone ever asked me that question before.”
This was Lerner’s excuse during the media call for why she had not publicly addressed the issue before.
But in congressional testimony Friday, former acting director Steven T. Miller said he had discussed with Lerner about arranging to make a statement at a May 10 conference sponsored by the American Bar Association, knowing that the IG report would soon be released.
Lerner then contacted a friend, Celia Roady, a tax attorney with the Washington firm Morgan Lewis, to ask a question about the targeting, according to a statement by Roady on Friday. (Roady had previously denied this was a planted question when asked directly by participants at the meeting.)
So Lerner was dissembling when she suggested that a simple well-aimed question prompted the disclosure.
In fact, just two days before the ABA conference, Lerner appeared before Congress and was asked about the status of investigations into 501(c)(4) companies by Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.). She provided a bland answer about a questionnaire on the IRS Web site, failing to take the opportunity to disclose the results of the probe. (The clip is embedded below, with the question coming at 5:09.) Small wonder that Crowley is now calling for her to resign, saying that Lerner lied to him.
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We gave the IRS the weekend to provide a response. A spokeswoman said they were not able to offer an explanation for Lerner’s remarks in time for our deadline.
The Pinocchio Test
In some ways, this is just scratching the surface of Lerner’s misstatements and weasely wording when the revelations about the IRS’s activities first came to light on May 10. But, taken together, it’s certainly enough to earn her four Pinocchios.
Four Pinocchios
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Two IRS Offices Targeted Hawaii GOP Leader At The Same Time – Daily Caller
In what former Republican executive and activist Dylan Nonaka is calling a massive invasion of privacy that suggests a coordinated effort to target conservative groups, two IRS offices last year independently and simultaneously conducted costly audits and sought tea party-related training materials that they apparently believed could be tied to Nonaka.
Nonaka, who is the former executive director of the Hawaii Republican Party and a faculty member of the Arlington, Va.-based conservative activist training organization the Leadership Institute, is little-known outside of Hawaii. So when the now-infamous Cincinnati IRS office in 2012 demanded that the Hawaii Tea Party explain its “relationship with Dylan Nonaka” and the Leadership Institute, and “provide copies of the training material used by Dylan Nonaka” – all almost at the same time that the Baltimore IRS office separately began auditing the Leadership Institute and requesting its training materials – it wasn’t long before Nonaka became suspicious.
“It’s a little bit scary,” Nonaka told The Daily Caller, adding that the apparent coordination made it extremely unlikely that only two IRS officials were primarily behind the agency’s efforts to target conservative groups, as the IRS has claimed.
“To say that these were are a couple of rogue IRS agents, there’s just no way,” Nonaka said. “They obviously had to have done research into the state of Hawaii.”
BELOW – Four of the IRS’ questions for the Hawaii Tea Party. (Read the full request here)
The Hawaii Tea Party, based in Maui, was audited in 2011. But despite the IRS’ inquiries, Nonaka said he had only limited interaction with the group.
“I think I did one training with [the Hawaii Tea Party] through the Leadership Institute, when the Leadership Institute came to Hawaii,” Nonaka told TheDC.”I was never a member of the Hawaii Tea Party. I was never involved with them.”
Meanwhile, also in 2011, the Leadership Institute was under the IRS’ microscope.
“Our audit began June 1, 2011,” Leadership Institute spokeswoman Abigail Alger told TheDC. “We were asked for additional documentation in February 2012″ – just 19 days after the Hawaii Tea Party was asked for additional information.
“The Baltimore office asked for copies of our training material,” Alger said. “The questions ranged from turning over the content of our 2008 training materials, to giving them all the information on our 2008 interns. These were just college kids, but they asked who our 2008 interns went on to work for.”
“In May, the IRS had an internal workshop. Our audit was closed July of that year, with no evidence of wrongdoing,” Alger said. “By that point, we had spent $50,000 in legal fees.”
The Hawaii Tea Party was also cleared of wrongdoing by the Cincinnati office.
“It’s a pretty big invasion of privacy,” Nonaka said.
Hawaii Tea Party IRS Inquiries
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Your Daley Gator Lying Leftist Liars IRS Cover-up News Roundup For Saturday (Videos)
18 MayAn Internal Revenue Service watchdog testified Friday that he told Obama administration officials in June that he was looking into allegations the IRS targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status.
The revelation by Inspector General Russell George came at the first congressional hearing on the IRS misconduct, which has generated a political firestorm since it was disclosed a week ago.
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George’s testimony represented the first evidence that officials in the Obama administration knew of the allegations as long as a year ago, during the presidential campaign.
Appearing Friday before the House Ways and Means Committee, George said he told the Treasury Department’s general counsel of his investigation on June 4, in a routine briefing of what his office was working on.
George said he did not disclose that he had concluded the targeting was improper.
But his testimony that knowledge of the allegations was not limited to the IRS is likely to fuel efforts by Republicans to link the scandal to the White House and congressional Democrats.
Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Friday that he was briefed in March that an investigation was underway of IRS screening of conservative groups – though he didn’t learn the substance of the findings until last week.
In an interview with Bloomberg Television, Lew said he had “a getting-to-know-you conversation” with George in mid-March, a couple of weeks after he was sworn in as treasury secretary, and the investigation “was one of the things he briefed me was ongoing.”
“I didn’t know any of the details of it until last Friday,” Lew said.
Lew also disclosed that he has ordered Danny Werfel, whom President Obama named Thursday to take over as acting IRS commissioner, to come up with an action plan within 30 days to address the handling of applications for tax-exempt status.
Obama also has said he first learned of the matter last Friday – when a Treasury Department official, Lois Lerner, revealed during an American Bar Association conference that IRS workers in a Cincinnati office had subjected groups with “Tea Party” or “patriots” in their names for extra scrutiny to determine if they should be tax exempt.
During yesterday’s testimony, Steven Miller, who was forced to resign this week week as the IRS acting commissioner, revealed that Lerner made her disclosure in response to a planted question at the bar association conference.
“We talked about what would be said and how we might do it,” he said.
The revelation irked lawmakers already angry the IRS never told them it had been improperly targeting conservative groups, despite numerous inquiries by members of Congress.
Reps. Joe Crowley (D-Queens) and Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) demanded Lerner resign or be fired.
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Congressman: IRS Asked Pro-Life Group About ‘The Content Of Their Prayers’ – Washington Examiner
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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?”
“It pains me to say I can’t speak to that one either,” Miller replied.
After Schock pressed him further, Miller explained that although he couldn’t comment on the specific case, it would “surprise him” if that question was asked.
The report comes from the Thomas More Society, a national public interest law firm for religious liberty.
From their report:
Coalition for Life of Iowa found itself in the IRS’s crosshairs when the group applied for tax exempt status in October 2008. Nearly ten months of interrogation about the group’s opposition to Planned Parenthood included a demand by a Ms. Richards from the IRS’ Cincinnati office unlawfully insisted that all board members sign a sworn declaration promising not to picket/protest Planned Parenthood. Further questioning by the IRS requested detailed information about the content of the group’s prayer meetings, educational seminars, and signs their members hold outside Planned Parenthood.
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No kidding, you mean it wasn’t done for “efficiency”?
Via Breitbart:
In House testimony Friday, former Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller explained that the IRS mistakes in handling applications for non-profit status from tea party groups were due, in large part, to a flood of applications following the Citizens United decision. Miller said the targeting was a botched attempt to centralize the process to account for the increased workload. There were fewer applications in 2010, when the IRS began targeting conservative groups, than the year before, however.
In 2009, before IRS began targeting tea party organizations, 1,751 groups applied for 501 (c)4 status. That number dropped in 2010 to 1,735. In fact, applications were down across all areas in the Tax Exempt division’s jurisdiction. So, they had more staff available for processing. While the number of applications did increase in 2011 and 2012, there was no increase in applications when the IRS began isolating tea party groups.
Moreover, the IRS reportedly abandoned the targeting in early 2012. It presumably had little trouble handling the increased number of applicants in advance of the 2012 election.
For whatever reason the IRS chose to target tea party organizations for special scrutiny, it wasn’t due to a flood of new applications.
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IT GETS WORSE!
The Obama IRS demanded that several Tea Party groups provide back-end access to their websites.
And, from reliable sources: This happened to several Tea Party groups!
The source has this in writing. It states they wanted access to everything the members had access to, which would be chats, email, contact information, etc. The group raised less than $600. She was targeted as early as October 2010.
Central Texas 912 President, Maria Acosta joined Kristina Ribali from FreedomWorks to discuss being singled out by the Feds.
The IRS asked for back-end access to the group’s website.
And this is a tax question?
Here is the latest creepy story of IRS harassment and abuse.
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UPDATE: The IRS also demanded the Richmond Tea Party in Virginia to provide access to the back-end of their website.
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IRS Says Release Of Groups’ Materials To ProPublica Was ‘Inadvertent And Unintentional’ – TPM
The Internal Revenue Service on Friday issued a statement to ProPublica saying that the agency’s release of pending confidential tax-exempt applications from conservative groups last year had been found to be “inadvertent and unintentional disclosures by the employees involved.”
In the statement, the IRS said the cases had been referred to and reviewed by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.
“When these two issues were previously raised concerning the potential unauthorized disclosures of 501(c)(4) application information, we immediately referred these cases to TIGTA [Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration] for a comprehensive review,” the statement said. “In both instances, TIGTA found these instances to be inadvertent and unintentional disclosures by the employees involved.”
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This is not my country. The Chicago thugocracy we have in the White House is every bit what Michelle Malkin has always said it was, using government to target and oppress political ‘enemies’.
In this segment, Frank Vandersloot tells BillO that after he gave Romney one million to help his campaign, he was then targeted by the Obama campaign on their official website along with seven others. Shortly after that he received a letter from the IRS saying he would be audited. And then on top of that, he also had the Labor Dept. come calling because they wanted to look at his books.
He tells BillO his story:
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Homeland Security Guidelines: Target Conservatives, Legitimize Pro-Shariah Muslim Supremacists
17 MayHomeland Security Guidelines Advise Deference To Pro-Shariah Muslim Supremacists – Daily Caller
The Department of Homeland Security, which under Secretary Janet Napolitano has shown a keen interest in monitoring and warning about outspoken conservatives, takes a very different approach in monitoring political Islamists, according to a 2011 memo on protecting the free speech rights of pro-Shariah Muslim supremacists.
In a checklist obtained by The Daily Caller entitled “Countering Violent Extremism Dos and Don’ts” the DHS’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties notifies local and national law enforcement officials that it is Obama administration policy to consider specifically Islamic criticism of the American system of government legitimate.
This policy stands in stark contrast to the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis’ 2009 memo “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment” [pdf], which warned of the dangers posed by pro-life advocates, critics of same-sex marriage and groups concerned with abiding by the U.S. Constitution, among others.
The advice of the Dos and Don’ts list is far more conciliatory. “Don’t use training that equates radical thought, religious expression, freedom to protest, or other constitutionally-protected activity, including disliking the U.S. government without being violent,” the manual’s authors write in a section on training being “sensitive to constitutional values.”
The manual, which was produced by an inter-agency working group from DHS and the National Counterterrorism Center, advises, “Trainers who equate the desire for Sharia law with criminal activity violate basic tenets of the First Amendment.”
DHS CRCL CVE Training – Dos and Donts
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The checklist also advised against using moderate Muslim “trainers who are self-professed ‘Muslim reformers’” because they “may further an interest group agenda instead of delivering generally accepted, unbiased information.”
The Homeland Security document also seems to discount evidence unearthed by the Justice Department about the aims of some mainstream Muslim organizations, warning law enforcement not to rely on “unsubstantiated theories” and “conspiracies,” such as the belief that “many mainstream Muslim organizations have terrorist ties” or are “fronts for Islamic political organizations whose true desire is to establish Sharia law in America.”
The manual advises trainees not to assume Muslim Americans are “using democratic processes, like litigation and free speech, to subvert democracy and install Sharia law.”
In fact, the Justice Department proved that some very prominent Muslim organizations do have terror ties in a 2009 case and that they share the Muslim Brotherhood’s goal of Shariah law. “The government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR [Council on American-Islamic Relations], ISNA [Islamic Society of North America], NAIT [North American Islamic Trust], with the Islamic Association for Palestine, and with Hamas,” U.S. District Court Judge Jorge Solis said in the July 1, 2009 ruling.
Tim Clemente, a former FBI agent who hunted Anwar Al-Awlaki and who has worked with Muslims to help stop terrorist plots, told The Daily Caller the government overdoes its sensitivity. Clemente says that the Muslim community “needs a realization, not necessarily a reformation,” that only it can stop terrorist attacks.
“Muslims are the ones that should notice this and should nip it in the bud,” Clemente told TheDC. “When you see the guy radicalizing and yelling at an imam, do more. Take it to the next level. Don’t go turning a blind eye.”
“While it is true that the vast majority of Muslims, especially in America, will never ever be radicalized, the greatest percentage of those that will commit terrorist acts happen to Muslim,” continued Clemente, who was critical of DHS’s 2009 report on rightwing groups.
Although the two reports originated from different wings of Napolitano’s vast Homeland Security bureaucracy, the contrast in their deference to constitutional rights and presumption of innocence is striking.
The “Rightwing Extremism” report warned that the economic recession, Barack Obama’s election, and the “return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating” might lead to a rise in white-power domestic terrorist activity — a threat that, unlike the threat posted by radical Islam, has failed to materialize in the four years since the report was issued.
The 2009 report also defined “rightwing extremism in the United States” as including not just racist or hate groups, but also those who reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority and who “are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”
The 2009 report’s authors conceded that DHS “has no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence.”
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*VIDEO* IRS Targeting Of Conservatives: Entire House Ways & Means Committee Hearing – 05/17/13
17 May
IRS Official In Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office
16 MayIRS Official In Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office – ABC News
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.
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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.
Her successor, Joseph Grant, is taking the fall for misdeeds at the scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012. During at least part of that time, Grant served as deputy commissioner of the tax-exempt unit.
Grant announced today that he would retire June 3, despite being appointed as commissioner of the tax-exempt office May 8, a week ago.
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Senate Democrats Block Rand Paul’s Resolution Condemning The IRS
16 MaySenate Democrats Block Rand Paul’s Resolution Condemning The IRS – Red Alert Politics
Senate Democrats have decided that holding the Internal Revenue Service accountable is not a priority right now.
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On Tuesday the Democratic leadership in the chamber blocked a resolution by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to investigate the federal agency and fire all people responsible for improperly targeting conservative organizations.
“President Obama should terminate the individuals responsible for targeting and willfully discriminating against Tea Party groups and other conservative groups,” the resolution states.
His resolution also demanded an investigation “to determine if other entities in the administration of President Obama were involved in or were aware of the discrimination and did not take action to stop the actions of the Internal Revenue Service.”
The freshman senator asserted that he introduced the legislation to protect the First Amendment rights of the American people, and not to drive attention to the partisan nature of the scandal.
“This resolution is not about Republican vs. Democrat or conservative vs. liberal,” Paul said in a statement. “It is about arrogant and unrestrained government vs. the rule of law. The First Amendment cannot and should not be renegotiated depending on which party holds power.”
“Each senator took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, yet Senate Democrats chose to block my resolution and thus refused to condemn the IRS for trampling on our First Amendment rights,” he continued. “I am incredibly disappointed in Washington’s party politics and I am determined to hold the IRS accountable for these unjust acts.”
While Paul is personally a member of the Tea Party movement, he had previously acknowledged that he was offended by the IRS’s actions.
“I’m offended when any kind of government entity targets people for their political or religious beliefs,” Paul said at an Iowa GOP fundraiser, “so it’s, you know, particularly offensive, since I’m one of the groups they were targeting. They didn’t audit me personally, but, you know, government should never be used to bully people.”
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IRS Scandal Raises Fears About Enforcing Obamacare (Byron York)
16 MayIRS Scandal Raises Fears About Enforcing Obamacare – Byron York
The Internal Revenue Service scandal would be bad enough if the IRS just handled issues like collecting income taxes and granting nonprofit status. But the immensely powerful federal agency is about to become even more powerful with the arrival of national health care, and that makes the still-unfolding scandal even more troubling.
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“When I hold town meetings, a great deal of distrust comes through about the size and increasing power of government,” says Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa. “The IRS targeting crystallizes that distrust in a very big way because of the IRS’ reach into taxpayer information. What’s happened heightens fears about how the IRS will handle taxpayer information and wield its power when it enforces Obamacare starting next year.”
The IRS is critical to Obamacare. The structure created by the Affordable Care Act requires the government to know about both the health care coverage (or lack of it) and the financial resources of every American. The IRS, which already knows the latter, was the only agency with the reach to do the job.
A look at the text of the health care law reveals that much of it consists of amending the Internal Revenue Code to give the IRS more power. When Obamacare goes fully into effect in January, every American will have to prove to the IRS that he or she has “qualifying” health coverage, meaning coverage with a list of features approved by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. That will be done by submitting a document to the IRS, something like a W-2, to confirm coverage.
The IRS will also decide who is, and who is not, eligible for Obamacare’s subsidies. The law authorizes the IRS to share confidential taxpayer information with the Department of Health and Human Services for the purpose of determining those subsidies. And since subsidies don’t just apply to a relatively small number of the nation’s poorest citizens – under the law, they can go to a family of four with a household income of nearly $90,000 – they will affect a huge segment of the population.
In addition, the IRS will keep track of even the smallest changes in Americans’ financial condition. Did you get a raise recently? You’ll need to notify the IRS; it might affect your subsidy status. Have your hours been reduced at work? Notify the IRS. Change jobs? Same.
Last August, IRS official Nina Olson testified before Congress on the changes Obamacare will bring to Americans’ dealings with the nation’s tax collector. “Do you believe that most Americans are going to update the IRS or state exchanges when they change jobs, get married, move states, whatever?” Michigan Republican Rep. Tim Walberg asked Olson.
“I think it’s going to be a very great learning curve,” Olson answered. If Americans don’t keep the IRS up to date on their financial status, they might incur penalties, which the IRS will collect by withholding income tax refunds. “I think it will be a surprise to taxpayers if they don’t update their information,” Olson said.
And now the IRS has been exposed abusing its authority for apparently partisan purposes. At the height of the Tea Party movement, IRS officials applied special scrutiny to organizations with “Tea Party” or words like “patriot” in their names when those groups applied for tax-exempt status.
At his brief news conference Monday, President Obama sought to assure Americans that he will correct the situation. “If, in fact, IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that had been reported on and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that’s outrageous and there’s no place for it,” Obama said before heading to New York City for a series of fundraisers.
In the next few weeks, the details of the IRS’ apparent misconduct will be spelled out in a series of hastily arranged congressional hearings. Most of the discussion will focus on political nonprofits and the selective treatment they received from the IRS. For millions of Americans, the hearings will do what Charles Grassley noticed at those town meetings in Iowa: reduce their faith that the federal government will treat them fairly.
And that will mean even more anxieties about the coming of Obamacare. “Now every American understands there are elements of the IRS that go off on their own,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told MSNBC Monday morning. “Why would you trust the bureaucracy with your health if you can’t trust the bureaucracy with your politics?”
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Michigan Federal Judge Allows Muslim Violence Against Christians; Dearborn Stoning Caught On Video
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A severe blow for the freedom of speech, and victory for the advance of Sharia blasphemy laws here. “Michigan Federal Judge Allows Muslim Violence to Suppress Christian Speech; Immediate Appeal Filed,” from the American Freedom Law Center, May 14:
A Michigan federal judge today dismissed a civil rights lawsuit brought by several Christian evangelists who were violently assaulted by a hostile Muslim mob while preaching at an Arab festival last year in Dearborn, Michigan, which has the largest Muslim population in the United States. Video of the Muslim assault went viral on YouTube.
The American Freedom Law Center (AFLC) filed the lawsuit against Wayne County, the Wayne County Sheriff, and two Wayne County Deputy Chiefs for refusing to protect the Christians from the attack and threatening to arrest the Christians for disorderly conduct if they did not halt their speech activity and immediately leave the festival area.
Judge Patrick J. Duggan, sitting in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, granted Wayne County’s motion for summary judgment, dismissing the lawsuit. The judge also denied AFLC’s motion requesting that the court issue an order preventing the Wayne County Sheriff and his deputies from restricting the Christian evangelists from displaying their banners and signs on the public sidewalks outside of this year’s Arab Festival, which will be held in June. In the ruling, the judge stated the following: “The Court finds that the actual demonstration of violence here provided the requisite justification for [the Wayne County sheriffs’] intervention, even if the officials acted as they did because of the effect the speech had on the crowd.”
Robert Muise, AFLC Co-Founder and Senior Counsel, commented: “The First Amendment was dealt a severe blow today as a result of this ruling. Indeed, this ruling effectively empowers Muslims to silence Christian speech that they deem offensive by engaging in violence. And pursuant to this ruling, the Christian speakers are now subject to arrest for engaging in disorderly conduct on account of the Muslim hecklers’ violent response to their speech. In short, this ruling turns the First Amendment on its head.”
David Yerushalmi, AFLC Co-Founder and Senior Counsel, added: “This fight for our fundamental right to freedom of speech does not stop here. We have filed an immediate appeal of this ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. While Judge Duggan may have been the first judge to rule on this issue, he won’t be the last. Indeed, we are prepared to take this case to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary because it is imperative that our free speech rights not be subject to mob rule. This is the United States, not Benghazi.”
At least for now.
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President Asshat Caught In Yet Another Benghazi-gate Lie
15 MayFor months, conservative media has been howling over the falsehood that the Accountability Review Board (ARB) offered a thorough investigation into the September 11 terror attack in Benghazi. The most frustrating part is that in order to ignore the legions of unanswered questions surrounding Libya, Obama and his media (most famously Slate’s Dave Weigel, who used the report to say GOP claims of a cover up were “pure fiction”) have hid behind the ARB’s report as though it were definitive. For months, conservative media has been howling over the falsehood that the Accountability Review Board (ARB) offered a thorough investigation into the September 11 terror attack in Benghazi. The most frustrating part is that in order to ignore the legions of unanswered questions surrounding Libya, Obama and his media (most famously Slate’s Dave Weigel, who used the report to say GOP claims of a cover up were “pure fiction”) have hid behind the ARB’s report as though it were definitive.
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On Monday, President Obama tried this ruse again. But now that the media has finally woken up from a five-year infatuation, he isn’t getting away with it. PolitiFact has labeled as “mostly false,” Obama’s claim that…
Over the last several months, there was a review board headed by two distinguished Americans, Mike Mullen and Tom Pickering, who investigated every element of [the Benghazi incident.]
Here is PolitiFact’s reasoning:
While the [ARB] did investigate numerous angles of the security issues, it didn’t look at who perpetrated the attack, nor did it probe the administration’s public communications afterward. No less an authority than the board’s co-chairman undercut Obama’s sweeping claim that the board “investigated every element” with repeated comments on three Sunday shows. On balance, we rate Obama’s claim Mostly False.
Oh how times have changed. Back in December Weigel could get away with using the ARB report to falsely claim the Administration had been cleared of a cover up even though the ARB didn’t even look into the possibility of a cover up.
Today, Obama can’t even get away with it.
By the way, this is the second falsehood the President of the United States has been caught telling this week.
And it is only Wednesday.
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Your Daley Gator IRS Scandal Roundup For Wednesday
15 MayIRS Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over Theft Of 60 Million Medical Records – Healthcare IT News
The Internal Revenue Service is now facing a class action lawsuit over allegations that it improperly accessed and stole the health records of some 10 million Americans, including medical records of all California state judges.
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According to a report by Courthousenews.com, an unnamed HIPAA-covered entity in California is suing the IRS, alleging that some 60 million medical records from 10 million patients were stolen by 15 IRS agents. The personal health information seized on March 11, 2011, included psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual/drug treatment and other medical treatment data.
“This is an action involving the corruption and abuse of power by several Internal Revenue Service agents,” the complaint reads. “No search warrant authorized the seizure of these records; no subpoena authorized the seizure of these records; none of the 10,000,000 Americans were under any kind of known criminal or civil investigation and their medical records had no relevance whatsoever to the IRS search. IT personnel at the scene, a HIPPA facility warning on the building and the IT portion of the searched premises, and the company executives each warned the IRS agents of these privileged records,” it continued.
According to the case, the IRS agents had a search warrant for financial data pertaining to a former employee of the John Doe company, however, “it did not authorize any seizure of any healthcare or medical record of any persons, least of all third parties completely unrelated to the matter,” the complaint read.
The class action lawsuit against the IRS seeks $25,000 in compensatory damages “per violation per individual” in addition to punitive damages for constitutional violations. Thus, compensatory damages could start at a minimum of $250 billion.
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IRS Told Pro-Life Group It Must Promote Abortion – Gateway Pundit
It’s an Obama world…
The IRS told a pro-life group that it had to promote abortion or they wouldn’t qualify for nonprofit status.
World Net Daily reported:
The Internal Revenue Service already has confessed to targeting and trying to injure tea party, Constitution and patriot organizations, by demanding answers to arbitrary questions and delaying their applications for a tax status so they could operate.
Now WND has learned that the IRS also put an organization in its bull’s-eye that wanted to do nothing more than share its pro-life message with churches.
Cherish Life Ministries was created to be a non-profit under the IRS 501(c)3 provision so that churches would feel comfortable working together…
…Shinn said the IRS contacted him regarding his application for nonprofit status, and was told he didn’t qualify.
“The representative was telling me I had to provide information on all aspects of abortion, I couldn’t just educate the church from the pro-life perspective,” he said. “Every time I pressed her on this issue and asked her to clarify her position, she would state that it wasn’t what she was saying, and then, she would repeat it almost the same way.”
The IRS agent did not respond to a WND request for comment on the ministry’s position.
But Shinn said he was accused of setting up a political organization.
“I asked her why she said we were political organization and she said it was because we had said in our application that we did less than 5 percent political activity. I explained to her that this was what was stated in the application and all we were doing was acknowledging that we were doing less than 5 percent political activity,” he said.
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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 of the tax collection agency’s February 14, 2012 letter to 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.’
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.
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.
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 told NewsChannel 5 in Nashville.
‘We mentor high school and college students in conservative political philosophy. It’s a one on one relationship.’
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.
Jay 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.
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.
‘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.’
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By all accounts she did a splendid job targeting anti-Obama groups.
Via Beltway Confidential:
Lois Lerner, the senior executive in charge of the IRS tax exemption department and the person at the center of the exploding scandal over the IRS targeting conservative, evangelical and pro-Israel non-profits, has been given $42,531 in bonuses since 2009.
That figure was included in data provided by the IRS in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by The Washington Examiner. Lerner is director of the IRS exempt organizations division, which processes and approves or denies applications from groups seeking tax-exempt status.
Lerner received $17,220 for 2009, $24,691 for 2010 and $10,620 for 2011, the most recent year for which the I(RS said data was available.
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10 Of 12 IRS Offices Implicated In Scandal Are In Washington – Washington Examiner
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 audit, for example, probes into how the Cincinnati-based Determinations Unit developed its plan to pay attention to groups with the words “Tea Party,” “Patriot,” and other phrases used by anti-Obama groups during the 2010 election.
Washington-based offices denied involvement, but did change the “criteria” for groups to target in July 2011. Instead of looking for “Tea Party” groups seeking tax exempt status to investigate, the criteria was broadened to “political, lobbying or [general] advocacy.”
However, “the team of specialists subsequently changed the criteria in January 2012″ back, apparently without telling their bosses. “Specialists” are both Washington- and Ohio- based.
Popular talk radio host Mark Levin, one of the first to post the IG report online, suggested that the House committees investigating the scandal use the IG’s “High-Level Organization Chart of Offices Referenced in this Report” on page 29 in picking who should testify. He suggested that the heads of all 12 be called to testify.
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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.
According to Hendershott, the IRS audited her in 2010 and demanded to know who was paying her and “what their politics were.”
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 later 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.
Hendershott was surprised she was being audited on business grounds considering she does not operate an entrepreneurial endeavor in the traditional sense. In addition to her academic work, she told TheBlaze that she occasionally freelances for Catholic outlets and for the Wall Street Journal. But can this really be considered “business” activity?
“I don’t make a lot of money from writing. In fact most years I don’t show a profit,” she told TheBlaze.
Hendershott said some of the outlets and organizations she has written for haven’t paid her a cent.
But the circumstances surrounding the irregular nature of the experience don’t end there. 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.
The process was a grueling one, including many questions that Hendershott felt were political in nature. Numerous records were requested before the in-person meeting, as well as during and after.
“Every question had to do with bank deposits we made. Every single question,” she said. “What is this money? And I didn’t know a lot of it. We had to go to our bank and get deposits back. We had to get records showing where the money came from.”
While asking about the deposits, the agent wanted to know if the monies came from groups and, if so, what the organizations’ politics were.
The mention of groups, Hendershott notes, is particularly interesting, as she had been writing for numerous Catholic outlets and organizations at the time. In addition to Catholic World Report and the Catholic Advocate, she also penned op-eds for the Wall Street Journal. Many of these writings were critical of President Barack Obama and his policies.
And the plot thickens. Among the organizations she targeted in her writings were progressive groups highly supportive of Democratic causes, including: Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, Catholics United, and Catholic Democrats.
At the time, one of the founders of Catholics United, Chris Korzen, had become a target of her work, as she exposed, in her view, his true leftist agenda and some of the complicated theological stances the left-of-center organizations he associated with were taking. Plus, there were alleged financial ties with billionaire liberal George Soros. Here’s just two paragraphs from an article she wrote in March 2010, just months before her meeting with IRS officials:
On its website, Catholics United describes itself as a 501(c) (4) non-profit organization – eligible to accept donations. But, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good emerged in 2005 as a kind of sister organization to Catholics United. A 501(c) (3) organization, donors can claim a deduction against personal income tax when they donate money to Catholics in Alliance. Reviewing the 2007 IRS 990 forms for both Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United raises some questions, because Chris Korzen is listed as having received $84,821 in compensation for 40 hours per week from Catholics in Alliance on the group’s 990 Form – even though the Catholics United website claimed he was the director there during the same time period. [...]
Despite their inability to engage in extensive lobbying, Catholics in Alliance has been extremely successful in attracting large donors. Never a friend to the Catholic Church, George Soros, one of the earliest donors, contributed $50,000 to Catholics in Alliance in 2005 and another $100,000 in 2006 through his Open Society Institute. Likewise, Smith Bagley, a major Democratic donor and fundraiser, whose wife, Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, is Chairman of the Board of Catholics in Alliance, came close to matching Soros with grants from his family’s Arca Foundation. With a long history of supporting progressive organizations like ACORN, the Gamaliel Foundation, People for the American Way, and Planned Parenthood, Arca contributed $50,000 to Catholics in Alliance in 2007 and another $75,000 in 2008.
Hendershott can’t help but wonder if her writings against progressive groups played a role in her audit. It’s obvious that before she was notified by the IRS she was commenting regularly about matters of faith and politics and, in particular, Obamacare. While she doesn’t have proof that the IRS investigation was political in nature, she has strong suspicions that it was.
“I started writing articles like crazy saying these are fake Catholic groups,” she said of the aforementioned organizations, noting that Korzen would often target her work and rail against her assertions.
Hendershott noted that the progressive leader once called into a radio show she appeared on to challenge her contention that he had accepted Soros money.
“I had the tax return in front of me and read off the amounts that Chris Korzen was getting paid from Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good – a Soros supported fake Catholic group,” she told TheBlaze, noting that, through Catholics in Alliance, he had received $85,000.
While Korzen denied this on the air, Hendershott read from the 990 form in an effort to prove he wasn’t telling the truth. This, she believes, may have sparked – or played a role – in spawning the IRS audit.
“He was getting paid by one organization and working for another,” the professor said of Korzen. ”The IRS should have gone after them.”
Her writings for the Catholic Advocate soon ceased because, Hendershott admits, the IRS audit silenced her. If her suspicions are true, this may have been its chilling intention.
“I haven’t written for them since the audit, because I was so scared,” she said (records show her last article for the organization was on July 10, 2010 – the same month the IRS audit unfolded).
So far, she has only shared her story with friends and those close to her, but in light of the recent IRS scandal, she has decided to speak out.
“It was clear they didn’t like me criticizing the people who helped pass Obamacare,” she said of the audit,” later adding, ”The IRS is very frightening.”
In addition to creating stress and fear, Hendershott said that the experience came at a great emotional and financial expense for the family, noting that even after the audit the government sought more information from her.
“It was like they just couldn’t find what they wanted because they wanted more and more and more,” she said.
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Flashback 2012: Democrat Senators Demand IRS Scrutinize Tea Party Groups – Gateway Pundit
In March of 2012 Democratic Senators sent a letter to the Internal Revenue Service demanding that Tea Party groups get extra scrutiny (harassment). The Democrats even threatened legislative action if the IRS did not act.
From Sen. Chuck Schumer’s website:
A group of seven Senate Democrats urged the Internal Revenue Service on Monday to impose a strict cap on the amount of political spending by tax-exempt, nonprofit groups.
The senators said the lack of clarity in the IRS rules has allowed political groups to improperly claim 501(c)4 status and may even be allowing donors to these groups to wrongly claim tax deductions for their contributions. The senators promised legislation if the IRS failed to act to fix these problems.
“We urge the IRS to take these steps immediately to prevent abuse of the tax code by political groups focused on federal election activities. But if the IRS is unable to issue administrative guidance in this area then we plan to introduce legislation to accomplish these important changes,” the senators wrote.
The letter was signed by Senators Charles E. Schumer, Michael Bennet, Sheldon Whitehouse, Jeff Merkley, Tom Udall, Jeanne Shaheen and Al Franken. It follows an earlier letter, sent to the IRS by the same of group of senators last month, that also urged the IRS to better enforce rules pertaining to 501(c)4 organizations.
A copy of the letter is here.
This week Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana vowed congressional hearings and called the IRS actions “an outrageous abuse of power.” But, over the last three years, Democratic senators repeatedly and publicly pressured the IRS to engage in the very activities that they are only now condemning today.
UPDATE: Inspector General: The IRS targeted EVERY group with Tea Party in its name.
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Corrupt: Obama’s EPA Waived Fee Requests For Friendly Groups, Denied Conservative Groups
14 MayEPA Waives Fee Requests For Friendly Groups, Denies Conservative Groups – Washington Examiner
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 Conservative Enterprise Institute.
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CEI reviewed Freedom of Information Act requests sent between January 2012 and this spring from several environmental groups friendly to the EPA’s mission, and several conservative groups, to see how equally the agency applies its fee waiver policy for media and watchdog groups. Government agencies are supposed to waive fees for groups disseminating information for public benefit.
“This is as clear an example of disparate treatment as the IRS’ hurdles selectively imposed upon groups with names ominously reflecting an interest in, say, a less intrusive or biased federal government,” said CEI fellow Chris Horner.
For 92 percent of requests from green groups, the EPA cooperated by waiving fees for the information. Those requests came from the Natural Resources Defense Council, EarthJustice, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, The Waterkeeper Alliance, Greenpeace, Southern Environmental Law Center and the Center for Biological Diversity.
Of the requests that were denied, the EPA said the group either didn’t respond to requests for justification of a waiver, or didn’t express intent to disseminate the information to the general public, according to documents obtained by The Washington Examiner. CEI, on the other hand, had its requests denied 93 percent of the time. One request was denied because CEI failed to express its intent to disseminate the information to the general public. The rest were denied because the agency said CEI “failed to demonstrate that the release of the information requested significantly increases the public understanding of government operations or activities.”
Similarly, requests from conservative groups Judicial Watch and National Center for Public Policy Research were approved half the time, and all requests from Franklin Center and the Institute for Energy Research were denied. “Their practice is to take care of their friends and impose ridiculous obstacles to deny problematic parties’ requests for information,” said Horner. Freedom of Information Act requests from CEI forced the EPA to release emails under the the “Richard Windsor” alias former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson used to conduct government business.
CEI has also filed FOIA requests for emails, text messages and instant messages from Jackson and EPA nominee Gina McCarthy. Horner said he believes the EPA has denied CEI’s requests because his think tank is the most active group seeking to hold the agency accountable. “This is a clear pattern of favoritism for allied groups and a concerted campaign to make life more difficult for those deemed unfriendly,” he said. “The left hand of big government reaches out to give a boost to its far-left hand at every turn. Argue against more of the same, however, and prepare to be treated as if you have fewer rights.” Update: An earlier version incorrectly called the Natural Resources Defense Council the “National Resources Defense Council.”
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More IRS Scandal Stuff For Tuesday, May 14, 2013
14 MayDems Vow: ‘Hell To Pay’ If IRS Allegations Ring True – Boston Herald
Outraged Bay State Democrats are blasting President Obama for exhibiting a Nixonian abuse of power after the stunning news that the Department of Justice secretly obtained Associated Press phone records and the IRS targeted conservative groups – new scandals emerging against the backdrop of heightened Benghazi criticism.
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“There’s no way in the world I’m going to defend that. Hell, I spent my youth vilifying the Nixon administration for doing the same thing. If they did that, there should be hell to pay,” U.S. Rep. Michael E. Capuano (D-Somerville) said about the IRS scandal. “Not only is it bad government and bad to society, it is horrendous politics. The worst thing you can do is give your opponent an easy hammer with which to hit you.”
“It doesn’t seem to be a couple rogue employees. This appeared to be a systemic issue,” said U.S. Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-South Boston), who wants to investigate the matter as a member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The committee already has scheduled a hearing on the issue for this week, Lynch said, adding, “No American should find themselves the target of the IRS or any other federal organization because of their political beliefs.”
Both U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Malden) and the GOP’s Gabriel Gomez, rivals in the Senate special election, slammed the administration’s actions, as new reports emerged yesterday that the Department of Justice seized two months’ worth of phone records from Associated Press reporters and editors. Gomez called it “another troubling example of overzealous federal agencies restricting our First Amendment rights.”
Markey said in a statement: “The Justice Department has many questions it now must answer as to why this sweeping request for information was ever necessary. As we work to prevent terrorist attacks against our country, we must continue to respect our laws and uphold our constitutional rights, including freedom of the press.”
Obama yesterday called the IRS actions “outrageous” if true, saying those responsible must be held “fully accountable.”
“I’ve got no patience with it,” he added. “I will not tolerate it, and we will find out exactly what happened.”
The Treasury Department apologized Friday for “inappropriate” targeting of groups seeking tax-exempt status with “Tea Party” or “patriot” in their names, and others that stated their purpose was to question government spending or power. The IRS initially blamed low-level employees, but emails have since shown top officials knew as early as 2011.
“I’m old enough to remember Watergate, and I’m not saying this is another Watergate, but when the IRS is involved, it really hits home,” said U.S. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.). The references to the Nixon administration recalled the massive abuse of power scandals such as the bugging of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. Nixon aides also directed so-called “plumbers” to plug leaks – operatives digging up dirt on people such as Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.
Nixon’s aides maintained a so-called “enemies list,” with the intent of turning the IRS on them. A congressional investigation later found undue IRS audits were not carried out under Nixon.
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Baucus, Now Investigating IRS, Urged IRS To Target Conservative Groups In 2010 – Daily Caller
Democratic Montana Senator Max Baucus is leading an investigation into why the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative nonprofit groups for extra scrutiny despite the fact that Baucus once wrote a letter urging the IRS to do exactly that.
Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, will head the committee’s investigation into the IRS, which apologized Friday for targeting groups with the terms “Tea Party” and “Patriot” in their titles for extra scrutiny of their nonprofit status as early as 2011.
However, Baucus once wrote a letter requesting that the IRS engage in that very conduct.
Baucus wrote a letter to then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman dated September 28, 2010 urging the IRS to investigate nonprofit conservative groups during the Tea Party-dominated 2010 midterm elections.
“With hundreds of millions of dollars being spent in election contests by tax-exempt entities, it is time to take a fresh look at current practices and how they comport with the Internal Revenue Code’s rules for nonprofits,” Baucus wrote in the letter.
“I request that you and your agency survey major 501(c)(4), (c)(5) and (c)(6) organizations involved in political campaign activity to examine whether they are operated for the organization’s intended tax exempt purpose and to ensure that political campaign activity is not the organization’s primary activity,” Baucus wrote in the letter.
“The tax exemption given to non-profit organizations comes with a responsibility to serve the public interest and Congress has an obligation to exercise the vigorous oversight necessary to ensure they do,” Baucus said in a 2010 statement accompanying his letter.
Though Baucus identified 501 (c) (5) groups – or labor unions – as worthy of investigation, the only organizations cited in his request were conservative, pro-Republican groups.
Baucus specifically named Americans for Job Security, which is described as a “pro-Republican organization,” as a specific target for the IRS to investigate.
Crossroads GPS, co-founded by Karl Rove, and American Action Network, chaired by former Republican senator Norm Coleman, were also cited in press coverage related to Baucus’ letter as pro-Republican groups helping to elect GOP congressional candidates in 2010.
Those organizations appeared in a September 16, 2010 TIME article by writer Michael Crowley titled, “The New GOP Money Stampede.” Baucus cited that piece in his letter to the IRS.
Whatever the fallout might be from such a conflict of interest, Baucus won’t be around too much longer to deal with it.
He’s already announced his retirement from the Senate, and won’t run for re-election in 2014.
A Baucus spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.
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Flashback: Obama Wanted The Names Of Donors – Sweetness & Light
From the White House near the height of the mid-term campaign in 2010:
Remarks by the President at a DNC Finance Event in Austin, Texas
August 09, 2010
Four Seasons Hotel, Austin, Texas
THE PRESIDENT: …Right now all around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates all across the country. And they don’t have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don’t know if it’s a foreign-controlled corporation. You don’t know if it’s a big oil company, or a big bank. You don’t know if it’s a insurance company that wants to see some of the provisions in health reform repealed because it’s good for their bottom line, even if it’s not good for the American people.
A Supreme Court decision [Citizens United] allowed this to happen. And we tried to fix it, just by saying disclose what’s going on, and making sure that foreign companies can’t influence our elections. Seemed pretty straightforward. The other side said no.
This is the same blatant lie that Supreme Court Justice Alito shook his head about and said ‘no,’ during Obama’s State Of The Union address in January 2010. Citizens United does not allow foreigners to contribute to campaigns.
They don’t want you to know who the Americans for Prosperity are, because they’re thinking about the next election. But we’ve got to think about future generations. We’ve got to make sure that we’re fighting for reform. We’ve got to make sure that we don’t have a corporate takeover of our democracy…
This is nothing short of Obama’s ‘dog-whistle’ to his his supporters at the IRS. After all, Obama doesn’t need to give his bureaucrats a direct, written (and therefore traceable) order.
He merely has to express his displeasure with some group and his lackeys will know what they have to do. And we now know how much these ‘low level workers’ have done for his administration over the years. (Fast & Furious, Benghazi, the releasing of illegal alien criminals.)
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But now we fast forward to yesterday, where Obama expressed outrage that the IRS would be seeking the names of donors to conservative groups. In fact, Obama even denied knowing that the IRS was even interested in such things until he read about it in the papers back on Friday. A claim even his spokes-flack, Jay Carney, undercut.
From The Hill:
Carney: White House lawyers knew of IRS investigation in April
By Justin Sink | May 13, 2013
Press secretary Jay Carney acknowledged Monday that the White House was informed in April that the Treasury Department’s Inspector General was investigating the IRS’s Cincinnati field office, which is accused of targeting conservative political groups for extra scrutiny.
“My understanding is that the White House Counsel’s Office was alerted in the week of April 22 of this year, only about the fact that the IG was finishing a review about matters involving the office in Cincinnati,” Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One…
President Obama said earlier in the day that he first heard about the allegations that the IRS had specifically targeted Tea Party groups last week. “I first learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this. I think it was on Friday,” Obama told reporters at a joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron.
While Carney insisted that nobody in the White House knew of the specific allegations of improper targeting, the news nevertheless drew fresh questions from Republican critics.
Why only Republican critics? Doesn’t the news media object to be lied to? (This is a rhetorical question.)
“Who else in the White House knew about the IRS scandal but didn’t tell the president?” tweeted Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio)…
In his press conference Monday, the president pledged to hold accountable those responsible. “I can tell you that if you’ve got the IRS operating in anything less than a neutral and non-partisan way, then that is outrageous, it is contrary to our traditions,” Obama said.
So is he going to hold himself accountable? (This is another rhetorical question.)
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IRS Intimidation Forced Founder To Shut Down Tea Party Group – Big Government
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 intimidate 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.
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President Obama knows he’s in trouble when Andrea Mitchell – Andrea Mitchell! – proclaims the IRS and AP scandals to be among “the most outrageous excesses I’ve seen” in all her years in journalism [which pre-date Watergate]. The strength of Mitchell’s statement drew gasps from Scarborough and Brzezinski. Then Ron Fournier, former AP editor now with the National Journal, darkly described the White House being “consumed” if it turns out someone there or in the Obama campaign had been aware of the IRS targeting of conservative groups. It happened on Morning Joe today.
But hey, President Obama still has his hangers-on. Take good old Carl Bernstein. As we reported, on yesterday’s Morning Joe Bernstein blathered that he “can’t imagine” that President Obama coudl be involved in the IRS mess. And there was Bernstein again today. When Fournier spoke of consequences of White House or Obama campaign knowledge of the IRS targeting, Bernstein quickly burped out that “we have no evidence of that whatsoever.” Joe Scarborough had to remind the former Watergate reporter: “that’s why you have investigations. You know that.” View the video after the jump.
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…………………….Click on image above to watch video.
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Watch the clouds gather over the White House. And when among your few umbrellas are the likes of Carl Bernstein…
Note: The screencap brings Hollywood Squares to mind. PRESIDENT OBAMA: I’ll take the joker in the upper left-hand corner for the block!
ANDREA MITCHELL: Yes, they did have to look and see whether some of these groups were political rather than pro bono. But not in any kind of non-neutral way. The test had to be neutral. The fact they went after the Tea Party here as David said earlier feeds the Republican critics -
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: It really does.
MITCHELL: And this is one of the most outrageous excesses that I’ve seen in all my years in journalism.
BRZEZINSKI: Oh my gosh.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Wow.
MITCHELL: We knew about the past national security probes, but I think this Associated Press investigation just rises to that standard, as well. The press is not popular, we are not popular. But this is, I think, an outrageous invasion of constitutional rights.
SCARBOROUGH: Andrea, it’s remarkable. As long as you’ve been a reporter at the top of your game, to say that a scandal that broke on Friday is one of the most outrageous excesses, the IRS scandal, and then for us to talk about what happened yesterday that most reporters agree with Ron and you, it rises to that level as well. To have two of these falling in two successive business days is going to require a dramatic reset inside the White House, is it not?
MITCHELL: And I don’t see why they don’t get that yet.
RON FOURNIER: The IRS thing, to me, I think that’s the one that has the most chance to be a game changer. If we find out in these hearings that somebody in the White House, especially in the political shop, or somebody in the campaign knew about this political targeting of conservative groups, I think that could be something that could consume the White House for the rest of his second term.
SCARBOROUGH: I agree. That is the key.
FOURNIER: I’m not pleased to say that.
CARL BERNSTEIN: We have no evidence of that whatsoever.
SCARBOROUGH: How could we, Carl? Of course we don’t have any evidence of that, but that’s why you have investigations. You know that. I know that.
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Related video:
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