The IRS -
Targeting Scandals
A Chronology of the News Coverage
October 1st
Other Chronologies: BENGHAZI | IRS ISSUES | DOJ & NSA ISSUES | DAILY NEWS COLUMNS ]
Oct. 1: The Daily Caller: Dr
. Ben Carson: “I had my first encounter with the IRS after challenging Obama”
At an event in Birmingham, Ala. Monday night, former Johns
Hopkins neurosurgeon Ben Carson revealed that he had received a visit
from the Internal Revenue Service following his much-noted remarks at a
National Prayer Breakfast earlier this year. “I had my first
encounter with the IRS this year, unsurprisingly after the prayer
breakfast,” Carson told an audience that at the annual Business Council
of Alabama Chairman’s Dinner, according to a report from Cliff Sims of
the Montgomery, Ala.-based Yellowhammer News. Carson’s
February speech made him a conservative darling for criticizing
President Barack Obama’s 2010 health-care reform law, while Obama was
sitting just a few feet away.
Sept. 23: The Daily Caller:
Conservative group suing IRS receives tax-exempt status, DOJ seeks to have case dismissed:
The Internal Revenue Service has granted the Texas-based
“election integrity” group True the Vote its tax-exempt status after
more than three years, the organization announced Monday. “We are
pleased and relieved that the IRS and the DOJ are finally doing what
should have been done three years ago, which is to recognize TTV as a
charitable and educational organization, which we have always been and
will continue to be,” Catherine Engelbrecht, president of True the
Vote, said in a statement.
True the Vote filed for tax-exempt status in July
2010. When it came to light in May 2013 that the IRS was targeting
conservative groups seeking tax-exemption, the organization filed
suit against the IRS in the federal district court of Washington, D.C.
The Department of Justice advised the court Friday that the IRS had
granted True the Vote its tax-exempt status and filed a motion to
dismiss the charges. “Since Plaintiff filed this action, the Service
has determined, with the concurrence of the United States Department of
Justice, to grant Plaintiff’s application for tax-exempt status and is
in the process of issuing a favorable determination letter,” DOJ wrote
in its motion.
According to Cleta Mitchelle, the lead counsel for the
plaintiff in the case and a partner at Foley & Lardner, “this case
is far from moot.” She highlighted questions that remain to be
answered, such as when True the Vote will receive its tax-exempt status
letter, what the government will do about the damages incurred while
the group waited for over three years and what will happen to the
confidential information the IRS demanded and the violation of True the
Vote’s employees’ rights. “This lawsuit is about getting to the truth
and we are not going to stop until we find out the answers to these and
many other questions,” Mitchell said.
Sept. 23: The Daily Caller: IRS scandal figure Lois Lerner retires:
Embattled Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner is
finally retiring from the scandal-plagued agency. Lerner has been on
administrative leave since May. Lerner, head of the IRS division
Washington, D.C. tasked with evaluating tax-exempt nonprofit
applications from groups, apologized in May for her division’s improper
scrutiny of conservative and tea party groups between 2010 and 2012.
Lerner tried to plead the Fifth to avoid self-incrimination in
congressional testimony, but the House Oversight Committee ruled that
she waived her Fifth Amendment rights when she said “I have not broken
any laws” before attempting her plea.
Sept. 18: Fox News:
IRS continued to target groups after granting then Tax Exempt Stutus, Lawmaker says:
The Internal Revenue Service continued to target conservative
political groups even after approving their applications for tax exempt
status, a key Republican lawmaker said Wednesday. The IRS acknowledged
in May that agents had improperly targeted tea party and other
conservative groups for additional, sometimes burdensome scrutiny when
they applied for tax-exempt status. An investigation by the House Ways
and Means Committee has uncovered evidence that IRS agents also
subjected conservative groups to special scrutiny after they were
granted tax-exempt status, said Rep. Charles Boustany, R-LA, who chairs
the panel's oversight subcommittee.
Speaking at a committee hearing Wednesday, Boustany
said the vast majority of groups subjected to special monitoring were
conservative. The monitoring, known as a review of operations, fell
short of a full audit in most cases. Instead, agents monitored the
groups to assess whether they were adhering to the activities described
in their applications for tax-exempt status. "The committee has
discovered that among the hastily approved applications for exempt
status in the early summer of 2012, a large number were flagged for IRS
surveillance by Washington," Boustany said. "Of those flagged, more
than 80 percent of the groups were right-leaning."
Acting IRS head Danny Werfel said all of the orders to
more closely monitor tax-exempt groups have been rescinded while the
IRS works to develop new guidelines. "They are no longer on a path of
potential examination at this time," Werfel said at the hearing. "That
whole process is on hold."
The IRS has been under siege since May when agency
officials acknowledged that agents working in a Cincinnati office had
improperly targeted tea party groups for extra scrutiny when they
applied for tax-exempt status. Shortly after the revelation, President
Barack Obama forced the acting IRS commissioner to resign and appointed
Werfel to run the agency temporarily. In August, Obama nominated John
Koskinen, a retired corporate and government turnaround specialist, to a
five-year term as commissioner. Werfel continues to run the agency
while Koskinen awaits Senate confirmation.
Sept. 18: The Daily Caller:
Washington Post Coverage of TEA Party targeting inspired IRS officials to target conservatives:
The Washington Post’s anti-tea party coverage inspired IRS
officials to improperly target conservative groups, according to a
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee memo. “The IRS first
identified and elevated the Tea Party applications due to media
attention surrounding the Tea Party…Media attention caused the IRS to
treat conservative-oriented tax-exempt applications differently,”
according to a September 17 House Oversight memo entitled “Interim
update on the Committee’s investigation of the Internal Revenue
Service’s inappropriate treatment of tax-exempt applications.”
While the memo acknowledged that President Obama’s and
the White House’s anti-Citizens United, campaign finance reform-related
rhetoric in early 2010 was not lost on IRS officials, the memo makes
clear that the Washington Post’s heavy anti-tea party coverage directly
inspired improper IRS targeting. “When other Tea Party applications
were discovered, the cases were classified as ‘sensitive’ due to media
attention and two more were transferred to Washington to be processed,”
according to the memo, which explains that in February 2010 a
Cincinnati-based IRS screener alerted a tea party group’s tax-exempt
application to his superior, who brought the concerns to the agency’s
Washington office, because “Recent media attention to this type of
organization indicates to me that this is a ‘high profile’ case.”
Sept. 13: The Daily Caller:
Holder, IRS officials coached tax-exempt black ministers on how to engage in political activity:
Attorney General Eric Holder and IRS officials advised black
ministers on how to engage in political activity during the 2012
election without violating their tax-exempt status. Holder, then-IRS
commissioner Douglas Shulman, and Peter Lorenzetti, a senior official
in the scandal-plagued agency’s exempt organizations division,
participated in a May 2012 training session for black ministers from the
Conference of National Black Churches at the U.S. Capitol hosted by
the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). Holder spoke at the event.
“We’re going to, first of all, equip them with the information they
need to know about what they can say and what they cannot say in the
church that would violate their 501(c)(3) status with the IRS,” said
then-CBC chairman Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat from Missouri. “In
fact, we’re going to have the IRS administrator there. We’re going to
have Attorney General Eric Holder there…the ACLU.” Cleaver’s session
advised black ministers on “draconian laws” including voter ID laws.
Cleaver was a sharp critic during the 2012 campaign of Republican Mitt
Romney’s policies.
Sept. 12: The Daily Caller: Dangerous: Lois Lerner Knew about TEA Party Targeting in 2011, emails show:
House Ways and Means chairman Rep. Dave Camp vowed that “there
will be consequences” after revealing secret emails that embattled
Washington-based IRS official Lois Lerner sent to her colleagues
suggesting collusion between the IRS and Democratic operatives and
claiming that tea party applications should not be processed through
the agency’s Cincinnati office. “Tea Party Matter very dangerous…
Counsel and Judy Kindell need to be in on this one… Cincy should
probably NOT have these cases,” Lerner said in a February 2011 email,
despite the fact that IRS officials initially claimed that the agency’s
Cincinnati office was solely responsible for the improper targeting of
tea party and conservative groups.
“Perhaps the FEC will save the day,” Lerner said in an email,
responding to a complaint the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee
registered with the Federal Elections Commission. The IRS and FEC
reportedly collaborated on conservative targeting. “There is
increasing and overwhelming evidence that Lois Lerner and high-level IRS
employees in Washington were abusing their power to prevent
conservative groups from organizing and carrying out their missions.
There are still mountains of documents to go through, but it is clear
the IRS is out of control and there will be consequences,” Camp said.
Sept. 12: The Daily Caller:
IRS, FBI Investigators still have not contacted targeted conservative groups:
Federal government investigators probing the IRS targeting
scandal have still not contacted any of the more than 40 victimized
conservative and tea party groups represented in the American Center
for Law and Justice lawsuit against the IRS. “Neither the FBI nor any
of the investigations have contacted any of our clients,” ACLJ chief
counsel Jay Sekulow told The Daily Caller.
More than four months have passed since beleaguered IRS
official Lois Lerner apologized for her agency improperly targeting
conservatives with extensive and sometimes harassing audits. FBI
director Robert Mueller and acting IRS commissioner Danny Werfel have
launched investigations into the matter, but have not contacted any of
the conservative groups involved in the ACLJ’s class-action suit. Eric
Holder’s Justice Department, which Holder claims is coordinating with
the FBI on its investigation, has also not contacted any of Sekulow’s
clients.
At least five different IRS offices in Cincinnati,
Ohio; Baltimore, Maryland; Chicago, Illinois; Laguna Niguel and El
Monte, California; improperly demanded extensive information from
conservative groups applying for tax-exempt nonprofit status between
2010 and 2012. The IRS demanded copies of training materials
distributed by conservative groups, as well as personal information on
college interns and even the contents of a religious group’s prayers.
Sept. 8: The Daily Caller: New IRS policy taxes automatic tips for waiters:
A new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) policy will classify many
waiters’ tips as taxable income instead of self-reported tips, leading
to increased costs for restaurants. The IRS will begin classifying
automatic tips at large restaurant tables — which are built into the
bill, and which currently count as tips that are not subject to payroll
tax withholding — as taxable service charges, according to the Wall
Street Journal.
Darden Restaurants, which owns Olive Garden and Red
Lobster, is considering eliminating automatic tips altogether, and
Texas Roadhouse is already planning to enact that policy before the end
of the year, eliminating a program that helps waiters who make less
than minimum wage get paid at least minimum wage. The new rule will
make waiters even less likely to split their tips with the busboys, who
often get cheated out of those tips anyway despite making less than
minimum wage to clean tablecloths, fold napkins a certain way, and eat
scraps in the kitchen while getting made fun of by the dishwashers.
Restaurants will be saddled with more tax costs, which will make them
even less likely to hire new waiters and waitresses, many of whom get
fired or have their hours cut by greasy-haired managers named “Dave”
for arbitrary personal reasons or for complaining about sexual
harassment.
Aug. 23: The Daily Caller: See which Veterans group the IRS is targeting now
The Internal Revenue Service is targeting the veterans’
organization the American Legion, and a U.S. senator believes that Lois
Lerner — a key figure in the IRS scandal – is to blame. “The IRS now
requires American Legion posts to maintain dates of service and
character of service records for all members… The penalty for not
having the required proof of eligibility is, apparently, $1,000 per
day,” the American Legion stated. The American Legion was referring to
a 13-part section
of Part 4, Chapter 76 of the Internal Revenue Manual pertaining to
“veterans’ organizations.” The section falls under “Exempt
Organizations Examination Guidelines,” which is the jurisdiction of
Exempt Organizations head Lois Lerner, who apologized for improperly
targeting tea party groups and tried to plead the Fifth Amendment in a
congressional hearing.
“The American Legion has recently learned of the so-called IRS
‘audit manual’ and is concerned that portions of it attempt to amend
statutes passed by Congress and approved by the president,” American
Legion legal counsel Philip Onderdonk, Jr. told The Daily Caller.
“Resolutions recommending action by the Legion’s legislative division
on two of the most egregious sections of the IRS document are being
presented for a vote by members at The American Legion’s annual
national convention in Houston [this] week. If the resolutions are
adopted, the Legion will be empowered as a body to urge correction of
the veterans service organization-related portion(s) of the IRS manual
and suggest congressional review of the entire 38 section IRS
document,” Onderdonk said.
“On the heels of Americans’ anger over revelations that the
IRS intentionally targeted certain groups, it has been brought to my
attention that the IRS is now turning their sights toward our nation’s
veterans,” Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran said. “The IRS seems to be auditing
veteran service organizations by requiring private member military
service forms.” “If a post is unable or not willing to turn over this
personal information, it’s possible they could face a fine of $1,000
per day,” Moran continued.
Aug. 15: The Daily Caller: Congressman charges Secretary Lew is stonewalling responses to IRS questions:
A Republican congressman is charging Secretary of Treasury Jack
Lew with stonewalling him on questions pertaining to the Internal
Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups. On June 7, Rep.
Scott Garrett (R-NJ) sent a letter to Lew inquiring when he first
became aware of the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups, even if only
in rumors, and if he was at any of the numerous meetings former IRS
chief Douglas Shulman had at the White House when Lew served as chief
of staff for President Obama in 2012.
The Treasury Department finally responded to Garrett’s
questions in a letter dated July 12, but the response didn’t directly
answer Garrett’s questions.
Aug. 10: The Hill: 2010 TEA Party Senate Candidates face Establishment opposition in 2014 run:
Several Tea Party-backed GOP candidates who lost Senate races
in the recent past are contemplating comebacks this fall. But, this
time around, they could face even steeper climbs than they did in their
initial quests. Ken Buck has said he is ready to try again to win a
Senate seat in Colorado. Christine O'Donnell and Joe Miller are also
considering bids in Delaware and Alaska. Back in 2010, Buck and
O’Donnell fell to Democrats Michael Bennet and Chris Coons,
respectively. Miller vanquished sitting Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski
in the primary that same year, only for her to take revenge by winning
the general election as a write-in candidate.
As party insiders tell it, weak candidates claimed GOP
nominations in 2010 largely because of their ability to marshal Tea
Party support. In so doing, they dispatched candidates who would have
been stronger in the general election to oblivion. More recently,
establishment Republicans have pledged to engage heavily in this
cycle's primaries to ensure the nomination of candidates whom they see
as more electable.
Of course, one of
the issues the grass-root Republicans have is when the “establishment”
and their money selects candidates that are supposed to be
“electable.” McCain and Romney are two examples and the grass-roots
ask “How is that working for you?”
Overall, the GOP appears poised for a strong year in
2014, thanks in part to its recruitment. The party needs to win six
seats to take control of the Senate. Strategists feel they are in a
good position to win three open seats and to defeat three other
Democratic incumbents.
Aug. 10: Fox News: Critics question IRS initiative to target small business:
Small business owners across the country are receiving letters
from the IRS questioning if they are reporting all of their cash
income, in a new push by the agency some are saying could unnecessarily
create fear in the small business community. The Wall Street Journal
reports the initiative is an attempt to respond to what the agency
feels is a widespread failure by small businesses to report all their
cash sales. The agency says the letters are not the same as an audit,
and it is simply seeking more tax information from the businesses.
However, some lawmakers and business owners who received the letters
say the initiative is alarming.
"There's an emotional thing when you get a pretty ominous-looking letter from the IRS,
[saying]
you might have done some bad things," small business owner Tom Reese
tells the Wall Street Journal. "I really work hard with my accountant
to make sure that I not only follow the law, but follow the letter of
the law." One letter the IRS sent is headlined, "Notification of
Possible Income Underreporting." It notifies the business owner "your
gross receipts may be underreported" and says they must complete a form
"to explain why the portion of your gross receipts from non-card
payments appears unusually low."
One lawmaker says the letter’s tone implies wrongdoing
from the start. "The letter implies that this is a serious matter
that could lead to assessments of additional tax, penalties and
interest," says a letter sent to the IRS Friday by Rep. Sam Graves,
R-MO, chairman of the House Small Business Committee.
Aug. 10: The Daily Caller: Colorado conservative group files suit over “Gestapo-like” IRS over disclosure of tax documents:
A conservative 501(c)(4) nonprofit whose application for tax
exempt status was among several wrongfully given to ProPublica earlier
this year is suing the IRS over the disclosure and demanding big bucks
in damages. The Denver-based Citizens Awareness Project filed the suit
in federal court Thursday, asking the court to award it $1,000 for
every time unauthorized persons saw its confidential returns, as well as
other unspecified damages. In addition to the IRS, the suit names
the United States of America and Attorney General Eric Holder as
defendants
“Defendants’ conduct has caused Plaintiff to incur actual
damages in the form of harm to its reputation, harm to its fundraising
ability, and direct costs for legal and public relations responses
related to the release of this tax return information,” the suit
reads. Citizens Awareness Project filed its application for tax-exempt
status in October 2012 and was among scores of conservative groups
that the IRS subjected to intensive scrutiny.. The application was
finally approved after nine months, on July 25.
But long before it was approved, the group’s
application was sent to ProPublica as part of a request for public
documents by the news site. The IRS sent ProPublica reports and
documents related to 31 groups, including nine for conservative groups
whose applications were still pending, meaning they were supposed to
remain confidential. IRS attorneys called Citizens Awareness Project
and told them their application “may have been illegally or improperly
released,” the suit says.
Aug. 9: Fox News Video: Camp, Chair of House Ways and Means says the targeting of TEA Party Group continues to this day.
Aug. 7: The Hill: Issa investigating alleged collusion between IRS and FEC:
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) sent a letter to the Federal Election
Committee (FEC) on Wednesday requesting documents he says are
potentially related to “inappropriate coordination” between the
independent regulatory agency and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
“Documents recently produced to the Committee demonstrate that FEC
personnel communicated with IRS personnel about tax-exempt groups
engaged in political activities,” Issa wrote. The chairman of the House
Oversight Committee cited emails between an FEC official and then-IRS
director Lois Lerner, who earlier this year plead the fifth in
testimony before Congress, in which the FEC official asked Lerner about
tax-exempt applications pertaining to two conservative groups.
Issa said the communications between the two groups
“raise the prospect of inappropriate coordination between the IRS and
the FEC about tax-exempt entities.” He’s requested documentation for
all communication between FEC and IRS employees from Jan. 1, 2008 to
the present. The Oversight chairman has fought to keep the
investigation into the IRS’s alleged singling-out of Tea
Party-affiliated groups in the public eye. Last week, Issa subpoenaed
IRS documents from the Treasury Department, and on Tuesday wrote an
op-ed urging the White House and IRS to be more cooperative in his
investigations.
Aug. 7: Politico: Lawmakers line up to take over Chairman Issa’s Gavel:
About a half-dozen lawmakers are jockeying for the gavel of the
powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, trying to
prove to their colleagues that they have the chops to probe the Obama
administration and savvy to flack their findings on television. Issa’s
term as the Obama administration’s chief inquisitor expires at the end
of 2014, and unless leaders waive party rules, he won’t be eligible to
keep running the committee. It’s no wonder so many lawmakers are lining
up to take his place. The Oversight chairman has jurisdiction over the
flashiest topics of the day: IRS, Benghazi, Fast and Furious, and
Solyndra. It’s also one of the highest-profile chairmanships in the
House — transforming Issa from an obscure Beltway name into a familiar
face on televisions across America.
Aug. 6: The Hill: Chairmen Camp and Issa press White House to cooperate in IRS investigation:
Two House chairmen are pressing the White House and the IRS to
be more cooperative in the investigation into the agency’s singling out
of Tea Party groups. In a new op-ed, Ways and Means Committee Chairman
Dave Camp (R-MI) and Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA)
said that the Obama administration had for weeks been trying to close
the door on the inquiry into the IRS’s scrutiny of groups seeking
tax-exempt status. “The administration’s own partisan anti-tea party
rhetoric, its evolving and inconsistent explanations and the IRS’s own
unwillingness to fulfill the president’s promises of cooperation with
our investigation have fueled skepticism about how dedicated they are
to holding the responsible parties accountable,” Camp and Issa
wrote in
The Washington Post.
The chairmen's op-ed comes after the House examination
into the IRS’s behavior has become increasingly partisan. Issa
himself raised the stakes last week by subpoenaing IRS documents from
the Treasury Department. Camp and Issa, among others, have expressed
frustration at what they say is the slow delivery of documents from the
IRS. Before heading out for August recess, House Republicans passed
several measures aimed at the IRS last week, including one that would
bar the agency from implementing Obama’s healthcare law.
Aug. 1: The Daily Caller: House Chair slams President for calling Administration problems “phony scandals”
Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California berated the Obama
administration Thursday for its repeated dismissals of congressional
investigations into the IRS, the 2012 Benghazi embassy attacks, and the
Department of Justice’s Fast & Furious program as “phony
scandals.” Speaking at a meeting of the House Republican Study
Committee, Issa stressed the need for vigilance in the ongoing
investigations, and lambasted the Obama White House for its blasé
attitude toward the continuing revelations. President Obama, White House
press secretary Jay Carney, and numerous Democratic members of
Congress have labeled the events “phony scandals” in the last year.
“We will follow the facts, and we will conduct
investigations,” Issa promised. “If the president hides those facts, we
will still find them, and we will report them.” As chairman of the
House oversight committee, Issa is one of the chief investigators of
government wrongdoing. Issa also played a short montage of testimony
from family members of the victims of the attacks on Benghazi and the
Fast & Furious “gun running” program, as living evidence that the
scandals were anything but phony.
July 29: The Hill: Tax-exempt groups were IRS targets:
The IRS subjected conservative groups already granted
tax-exempt status to additional scrutiny during the 2012 election
cycle, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) charged
on Monday. Issa called on a Treasury watchdog already looking into
the IRS to investigate the matter, and signaled he would expand his
committee’s probe into improper targeting of political groups given the
new revelations. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the ranking member on
Issa’s panel, accused the chairman of pushing a “political narrative”
by picking choice quotes and disregarding contrary evidence.
He said the Virginia-based Leadership Institute was
audited in 2011 and 2012 for activities it engaged in during the 2008
election year, even though it had functioned as a tax-exempt
organization since 1979. It faced “invasive questions” — including
about its interns and where they went on to work — and ended up turning
over to the IRS more than 23,000 pages of documents at a cost of
roughly $50,000 to comply with the inquiry, Issa said. “It has come
to the attention of the committee that in addition to inappropriate
treatment given to some applicants for tax-exempt status, existing
organizations already recognized as tax-exempt by the IRS, appear to
have faced questionable treatment by the IRS,” Issa wrote Monday in a
letter to the Treasury inspector general (IG) for tax administration.
Issa said the Institute was told by the IRS office
conducting the audit that there would be follow-up document requests
and questions. About two months later, in July 2012, the IRS concluded
the audit, which is roughly the same time the Treasury IG determined
the IRS changed its process for scrutinizing potential political groups
applying for tax-exempt status. Issa specifically questioned whether
the IRS had a “systematic” plan in place to automatically review
conservative groups several years after granting an exemption. He said
that interviews with 18 IRS employees indicated that at least some Tea
Party groups were referred to the unit that conducted follow-up
scrutiny.
July 29: The Hill: Watchdog requests IRS review of group that is promoting ObamaCare:
A watchdog group is asking the IRS to review the tax-exempt
status of a organization crucial in helping to promote ObamaCare.
Cause of Action has asked the IRS to investigate Enroll America, a
nonprofit that is encouraging people to enroll in new coverage options
under the healthcare law. The watchdog group said Enroll America
should not have received tax-exempt status because its work helps
secure new customers for insurance companies. “If Enroll America is
designed to benefit insurance companies instead of the American public,
then its charitable status no longer applies,” said Dan Epstein,
executive director of Cause of Action. “An organization that has been
granted tax deductible status but is actually depriving the American
people of taxable revenue warrants an investigation.”
Enroll America is a known ally of the White House, and
was established to help raise awareness of new insurance options
available under ObamaCare. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen
Sebelius has made fundraising calls for the organization.
July 29: Roll Call: The Baucus-Camp Tax Road shows faces obstacles
Give them credit for this much: The top congressional tax
writers are doing their level best to push for an overhaul of the
nation’s outdated tax code. Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT)
and House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) have their own
website, a Twitter handle and a road show. The problem for Baucus and
Camp is not Americans’ lack of interest in seeing their taxes get
simpler — and possibly lower — but in the stark ideological differences
between rank-and-file lawmakers when it comes to tax issues. And the
leaders of their respective parties have taken a wait-and-see approach
to the bicameral effort, which has hampered momentum in the halls of
Congress.
Sen. Charles Grassley, a former Finance Committee
head, said the two chairmen face tough odds, regardless of whether they
travel outside the Beltway to drum up interest in a tax policy
rewrite. “It might not be productive, but in — in public policy, you
never know for sure if something’s going to work. So, if there’s no
known negative, you ought to do it. So, in this case there’s no known
negative, so they ought to do it,” Grassley said. “I believe the
necessity of tax reform is complicated. You gotta educate the public
about it. The ideal thing would be to have tax reform be part of a
presidential campaign, you know, where you get a mandate to do it.”
July 28: The Hill: Lew: IRS exhibited ‘equal opportunity bad judgment’ in targeting:
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said Sunday the Internal Revenue
Service exhibited "equal opportunity bad judgment" in the improper
targeting of political groups, and there was no evidence of political
pressure. Just days after President Obama accused Washington of
focusing attention on "phony scandals," Lew said on "Fox News Sunday"
mistakes were made in the IRS, but there is no evidence the White House
or political officials drove the improper targeting. "There's no
political official who condoned it or authorized it," he said, adding
that the mistakes that were made were "unacceptable" and
"unjustifiable."
The scandal broke when IRS officials apologized for
improperly targeting Tea Party groups applying for tax-exempt status,
and has led to Republican accusations the White House used the tax
collecting agency to intimidate political opponents. But Lew said the
IRS review underway has found that both conservative and progressive
groups were targeted. More conservative groups faced probing questions,
but Lew argued there were more conservative groups to begin with.
Host Chris Wallace pressed Lew on whether he had
spoken with William Wilkins, the IRS chief counsel and one of two
political appointees at the agency, when he learned of the targeting.
Lew said he was leaving the investigation up to investigators, and
reiterated that no evidence has been uncovered of political pressure.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) did not agree with Lew, saying there were still
more stones to be uncovered. "There's a big deficit of trust with this
administration, particularly when it comes to the IRS," he said.
July 25: The Daily Caller: Obama Calls scandals “Phony”
President Barack Obama said Wednesday that Republicans are trying
to distract America from its economic problems by pushing “phony
scandals,” echoing a line repeatedly used this week by White House
press secretary Jay Carney. “With an endless parade of distractions,
political posturing and phony scandals, Washington has taken its eye
off the ball,” Obama said, according to prepared remarks released by
the White House prior to his economic speech Wednesday at Knox College
in Illinois. ”And I am here to say this needs to stop. Short-term
thinking and stale debates are not what this moment requires.” Obama’s
statement echoes a line repeatedly used by Carney to describe the IRS
targeting scandal and other Obama administration headaches, including
the National Security Agency surveillance and the Benghazi terrorist
attack.
July 25: Fox News: Victim speaks out about “phony” scandals: [Video Clip]
It's like the Captain of the Titanic calling the iceberg phony! (Becky Gerritson)
July 25: The Daily Caller: Fireworks erupt between Carney and MSNBC Host:
White House press secretary Jay Carney appeared on MSNBC’s
“Morning Joe” on Wednesday to discuss President Barack Obama’s recent
“pivot” back to economic issues, which is set to be kicked off with a
speech in Illinois.
Host Joe Scarborough, however, also wanted to discuss
the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups, which a
visibly irritated Carney dismissed as a “phony scandal.”
“At the beginning, you said it was just the Cincinnati
office,” Scarborough said. “And then we find out more people in
Washington are involved. And then this past week we found out, despite
what any of us think of the investigations on Capitol Hill — and I see
you smiling, I don’t know that there’s anything to smile about, that it
wasn’t a couple of crazy people in Cincinnati, that this information
actually went up to the Chief Counsel of the IRS, which was one of two
political appointees by the president of the United States and the
entire IRS. So it doesn’t sound phony to me, Jay.”
That led to a brief yet tense exchange between Scarborough and Carney:
- Carney: I greatly appreciate that that is the line pushed by
Republicans who want Washington to be focused on scandals instead of
the economy —
- Scarborough: No, no, no, no, no, no, Jay — is that the truth
or not? Don’t give me talking points! That doesn’t work on this show.
So answer my question, and then let’s talk about the economy.
- Carney: When you get to the question I’ll answer it—
- Scarborough: I gave you the question, and you decided to fight
me, Jay. Stop your games with me. We’ve known each other for too long.
I’m not playing your games. I’m not somebody you talk down to from your
podium.
July 23: Roll Call: Blame the IRS or Fix It? Rules of the Game:
When Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) launched his hearings into
improper IRS targeting of tea party groups, some voiced hope that the
probe would shed light not just on what went wrong at the IRS but on
how to fix it. So far, things haven’t turned out that way. Issa’s
Oversight and Government Reform panel has largely overlooked the
problem at the root of the targeting scandal: convoluted and subjective
regulations governing politically active tax-exempt groups. Instead,
Issa and his GOP colleagues have focused almost exclusively on
identifying how far up the Obama administration the scandal might
reach. His panel’s latest finding is that the office of the IRS chief
counsel, an Obama appointee, demanded information on the 2010 election
activity of tea party groups seeking tax-exempt status.
Democrats, too, have spent less time talking about how
to clear up muddled IRS rules than they have pointing fingers at Issa
and others. They have accused J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector
general for tax administration, of misleading them by failing to note
in his report that progressive groups were also singled out for special
scrutiny. Lost in all this is the question of how to clear up the
muddled IRS regulations that have rendered the agency all but incapable
of enforcing tax laws on social welfare and other nonprofit groups that
spend millions on elections. Expenditures by such groups, which are
not publicly reported, have soared in the wake of the Supreme Court’s
2010 ruling to deregulate independent political spending.
“It’s quite clear that the blurry standards are what led to
the potential misconduct,” said Lisa Gilbert, director of Public
Citizen’s Congress Watch. “The hearings so far have focused on that
potential misconduct, and we haven’t seen a shift to discussing
solutions.”
July 19: The Daily Caller: Retiring IRS Lawyer implicated Obama appointee in testimony:
Retiring IRS lawyer Carter C. Hull’s testified before the House
Oversight and Government Reform Committee, in which he implicated an
Obama appointee, ensuring that the IRS proceedings last through the
summer, according to insiders close to the situation. Hull has already
implicated Obama-appointed IRS chief counsel William Wilkins and
Washington-based IRS official Lois Lerner in his testimony. “In April
of 2010, I was assigned by my supervisor to work on two applications of
tea party groups. In that same month, I became aware that a group of
tea party applications were being held by EO determinations in
Cincinnati,” Hull testified in his opening statement. “It was my
understanding that the applications assigned to me would be ‘test cases’
to provide guidance for those other applications. I was also told by
my supervisor that I was to coordinate the review of the tea party
applications that were assigned to Elizabeth Hofacre in Cincinnati,”
Hull testified.
Hull, 72, implicated the IRS Chief Counsel’s office,
headed by Obama appointee William J. Wilkins, and Lois Lerner, the
embattled head of the IRS’s exempt organizations office, in the IRS
targeting scandal and made clear that the targeting started in
Washington. “According to Hull’s testimony, Ms. Lerner…gave an
atypical instruction that the Tea Party applications undergo special
scrutiny that included an uncommon multi-layer review that involved a
top advisor to Lerner as well as the Chief Counsel’s office,” Oversight
Committee documents revealed. In August 2012, the “Chief Counsel’s
office held a meeting with Mr. Hull, Ms. Lerner’s senior advisor, and
other Washington officials to discuss these test applications.”
Hull’s testimony set off a storm of controversy among
figures close to the case. “This is one of the most extremely
disturbing revelations yet,” said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of
the American Center for Law and Justice, which represents more than 40
tea party plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the IRS. “It is now clear
that the IRS Chief Counsel, appointed by President Obama in 2009, was
involved in examining and reviewing applications from Tea Party groups –
many that were basically shut out of the 2010 election process because
of delays in handling of their applications. This development raises
significant questions about what the White House knew and when. In a
politically charged run-up to the 2010 election, why was one of
President Obama’s most trusted and partisan appointees involved in
examining the applications for Tea Party groups? We look forward to
tomorrow’s testimony and further information about the origins of this
unlawful and unconstitutional scheme that violated the First Amendment
rights of our clients,” Sekulow said.
July 18: The Hill: IRS IG: We didn’t get progressive documents until last week:
The Treasury inspector general who outlined the IRS’s targeting
of conservative groups aggressively defended his office from
Democratic attacks on Thursday, saying he had never seen an independent
auditor treated that way
. [Watch Video] Democrats
at a House Oversight hearing charged that Russell George, Treasury’s
inspector general for tax administration, had examined the targeting
too narrowly and missed the IRS’s treatment of liberal groups. George,
Democrats contended, is also standing in the way of a requested
document release.
George told lawmakers he was “disturbed” that his office was not
until recently given documents that showed how liberal groups were
scrutinized. But the former GOP staffer at the Oversight panel added at
the end of a two-and-a-half hour appearance that he’d never seen
lawmakers be so confrontational toward an inspector general. “I have
to admit, I’m a little concerned that this type of forum could have a
chilling effect on the operations of inspectors general,” George said,
adding that when he was at Oversight “we never treated an IG office
like this.” George also expressed concern that the lawmakers were
questioning the integrity of members of his career staff who weren’t
political appointees. “If it were an allegation of personal wrongdoing
on my behalf or on my organization’s behalf, that’s one thing,” George
said. “But to just try to suggest that an audit could have been
differently. This is unprecedented.”
July 18: The Hill: Issa vows IRS hearing will show DC involvement in Tea Party targeting:
Claims that the IRS controversy can be blamed on staffers in a
Cincinnati office are "absurd," House Oversight Committee Chairman
Darrell Issa (R-CA) said Thursday. Issa said Thursday's hearing on
the IRS controversy would definitively show that Washington officials
were deeply involved in the targeting of Tea Party groups seeking
tax-exempt status. He faulted the White House for casting blame on
the Cincinnati staffers, saying that claim would be “debunked” at the
hearing, where Elizabeth Hofacre, an Ohio-based staffer who dealt with
tax-exempt applications, and Carter Hull, a D.C.-based tax law
specialist, are testifying. “Washington made a catastrophic mistake” in
dealing with the Tea Party applications, Issa said.
But Issa also struck a conciliatory tone in his
opening statement, after the partisan rancor had ramped up between
Republicans and Democrats on the Oversight panel in recent days. Issa
said references to Washington shouldn’t be construed to mean the White
House, and that references to the IRS chief counsel would refer to the
full office — not just the Obama appointee at its head. “It is
important that we understand that words matter, that nuances matter,”
Issa said.
July 17: The Daily Caller | Fox News (Video): IRS Lawyer says scandal was overseen by D.C. and names names:
Top IRS officials in Washington, D.C. planned and oversaw
the agency’s improper targeting of conservative groups, according to
the 72-year old retiring IRS lawyer who will testify Thursday before
the House Oversight Committee.
Retiring IRS lawyer Carter C. Hull implicated the IRS Chief
Counsel’s office and Lois Lerner, the embattled head of the IRS’ exempt
organizations office, in the IRS targeting scandal and made clear that
the targeting started in Washington, according to leaked interviews
that Hull granted to the Oversight Committee in advance of Thursday’s
hearing.
Treasury Inspector General J. Russell George will return to
Republican chairman Darrell Issa’s committee Thursday along with two
central characters in the IRS saga: Hull and Cincinnati-based IRS
employee Elizabeth Hofacre, who previously gave Hull’s name to
congressional investigators, fingering him as her Washington-based
supervisor.
Hull is naming names. “In April 2010, Mr. Hull was
instructed to scrutinize certain Tea Party applications by one of his
superiors in Washington. According to Mr. Hull, these applications were
used as ‘test’ cases and assigned to him because of his expertise and
because IRS leadership in Washington was ‘trying to find out how [the
IRS] should approach these organizations, and how [the IRS] should
handle them,’” according to Oversight Committee documents.
“According to Hull’s testimony, Ms. Lerner…gave an atypical
instruction that the Tea Party applications undergo special scrutiny
that included an uncommon multi-layer review that involved a top
advisor to Lerner as well as the Chief Counsel’s office,” according to
Oversight Committee documents.
In August 2012, the “Chief Counsel’s office held a
meeting with Mr. Hull, Ms. Lerner’s senior advisor, and other
Washington officials to discuss these test applications.”
Lerner eventually told Hull that tea party applications would
have to go through a round of review at the IRS Chief Counsel’s office,
which “created a bottleneck and caused the delay of other Tea Party
applications in Cincinnati,” according to Oversight Committee
documents.
July 15: Politico: Lawmakers wrestle with cutting big tax breaks:
When it comes to tax reform, it’s go big or go home. As
lawmakers wade into the specifics of overhauling the Tax Code, they’ll
find it tough to enact major cuts in tax rates — for many, the only
reason to bother with all the controversy that will come with a
once-in-a-generation overhaul — without slicing a wide swath of tax
breaks benefiting millions of Americans. That means going well
beyond “loopholes” and targeting popular breaks, including ones that
benefit the middle class. That will make tax reform — an already heavy
lift — exponentially more controversial.
Yet if they stop short of turning the Tax Code upside
down, they could end up with so little savings that they won’t be able
to afford cutting taxes by more than a percentage point or two — likely
leaving lawmakers, especially Republicans, to wonder why they should
bother. It’s a dilemma that’s often overlooked amid the ongoing
impasse over whether any revenue generated by clamping down on tax
breaks must be used exclusively for offsetting the cost of cutting tax
rates or if some may go toward deficit reduction. It’s as though
policymakers are haggling over the spoils of tax reform without much
consideration of where they’ll get the money in the first place.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.)
and ranking Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah are gaging support for
specific individual and corporate provisions, giving their colleagues
until July 26 to explain which ought to survive any overhaul. They
haven’t said how much they’d like to cut rates. “We don’t know — that’s
why we’re going through this process,” Hatch said.
House Republicans want to cut the top rate for
individuals and corporations to 25 percent. Statutory rates for
individuals currently top out at 39.6 percent while corporations pay a
maximum 35 percent rate. At least on the corporate side, Baucus
has questioned whether lawmakers could ever reach a 25 percent rate,
calling such targets a “stretch.”
July 10: Politico: House to IRS: It’s Payback Time!
It’s payback time for the agency Congress loves to hate. After
two months of pummeling the IRS in the wake of the tea party targeting
scandal, Republicans are trying to starve the agency of its funding
and ensure $70 million in scheduled bonuses aren’t paid out while
handing more money to the watchdog charged with keeping tabs on the tax
collectors. More legislative hits are in the offing.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) wants the
House to pass multiple bills this month that would, among other things,
suspend employees under investigation without pay and allow Americans
to record conversations with federal employees, including IRS agents.
Perhaps most importantly, a House subcommittee on Wednesday hit the
IRS where it counts: in the wallet. “Hopefully this will finally get
their attention, because they haven’t been as forthcoming as we’d like
them to be,” Congressman Tiberi (R-OH), a senior Ways and Means
Committee member, told Politico. The House Appropriations
subcommittee with IRS jurisdiction cleared a spending measure gutting
the tax-collecting agency’s budget next year by 24 percent in fiscal
2014. That $9 billion allocation is 30% less than President Barack Obama
requested for the agency charged with rolling out his signature health
care law.
Congressman Roskam (R-IL), the chief deputy whip in
the House, called the appropriation a “reckoning for the IRS.” “The
IRS has abused power, abused the taxpayer, abused discretion and been
unwise and foolish in how they’ve carried out the authority that was
delegated to them … and they will be held to account in the
appropriations process,” Roskam said. The spending bill now heads to
the full Appropriations Committee before passage on the House floor. It
faces more significant hurdles in the Senate, which is controlled by
Democrats.
Congressman Yoder (R-KS), who sits on the
Appropriations subcommittee with IRS jurisdiction, said the budget cuts
combined with Cantor’s proposals are attempts to “clean house,” “send a
message” and “try to begin the process to fix the challenges” at the
IRS. The congressional purse strings are “one tool that Congress can
use to ensure that agencies do not continue a pattern of
mismanagement,” he said.
July 9: Fox News: House Republicans push to slash IRS Budget by 24% citing abuses and sequestration:
House Republicans want the IRS to pay for targeting political
groups and are pushing legislation that would cut the tax collecting
agency’s budget by $3 billion -- nearly a quarter of what it received
last fiscal year. The House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to
start “marking up” the spending bill Wednesday. While it’s unlikely
that such a severe cut will pass both congressional chambers, it does
give lawmakers another opportunity to verbally punish the agency for
unfairly scrutinizing conservative groups applying for tax-exempt
status. The bill would place additional restrictions on spending at the
IRS and
prohibit employees from implementing the individual mandate in ObamaCare.
[This is a step in the right direction but does not go as far as I suggested earlier regarding the Continuing Resolution] It also bans conferences, the production of videos and curbs what lawmakers see as a number of abuses at the IRS.
The fiscal 2014 spending bill figures were released Tuesday by
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. Hal Rogers. The
legislation would give $9 billion to the IRS - $4 billion less than
what President Obama requested and $3 billion less than what House
Republicans gave last year. In fiscal 2013, the agency’s budget was
around $12 billion.
The cuts aren’t sitting well with the National
Treasury Employees Union which represents 150,000 employees in 31
agencies and departments. President Colleen Kelley said, “In terms of
the ability of the IRS to meet its mission on behalf of the American
people, such a budget would absolutely devastate the agency.” Kevin
Brady (R-TX) said, “I can’t think of a federal agency in a weaker
position than the IRS. [It] should resign itself to not getting more
money.” Separately, acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel told workers
in an email that he is canceling annual bonuses for managers because of
sequestration cuts. The union's collective bargaining agreement calls
for about $70 million in performance bonuses this year, but there is a
clause that could enable the IRS to renegotiate.
July 9: The Daily Caller: Congressman introduces bill to make IRS political targeting a fire-able offense:
IRS employees who inappropriately target people because of their
religious beliefs could be fired under a bill proposed Tuesday by
Congressman Renacci (R-OH).
Renacci, introduced the bill Tuesday in response to the
controversy surrounding the IRS’s applying extra scrutiny to groups
based on their political beliefs. “Americans are rightly upset no one
has been fired by the IRS for the admitted targeting of political
groups by employees at the agency,” he said in a statement. “There are,
however, policies in place to immediately terminate an IRS employee for
specific offenses. Unfortunately, targeting a group or individual for
their political beliefs is not one of them. My bill would close that
loophole by giving the head of the IRS the ability to fire an employee
for engaging in political targeting.”
July 9: Fox News: Meanwhile the IRS releases Tens of Thousands of Social Security Numbers: [Video]
The IRS routinely posts financial information about non-profit
entities on a public database, this time they forgot to redact many of
the Social Security Numbers. The numbers were up for a little less
then 24 hours before it was discovered and the database removed from
the IRS website, but in the interim the damage had already been done and
yet another black eye given to the tax collecting agency.
The IRS says that those submitting reports to the IRS are told
not to include confidential information like Social Security numbers
because their information may be released to the public.
July 5: The American Thinker: Another Potentially explosive development in the IRS Scandals:
One of the most important, and yet so-far least noted, threads
in the IRS sandal cloth is the inexplicable remark made by Austan
Goolsbee, at the time the Chairman of the White Council of Economic
Advisors about the taxes paid by the Koch brothers that would have
required his having knowledge of their confidential tax returns. This
raises the question did, or does, the White House
senior
staff illegally browse through the tax records of their political
enemies? The Washington Free Beacon has been trying to find out, and
uncovered an interesting response:
This week the Treasury Department refused to confirm
or deny the existence of an inspector general report investigating
whether former White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee illegally
accessed tax information on the Koch brothers. The Treasury
Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), in response to a
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Washington Free
Beacon, declined to acknowledge the existence of the report. "With
regard to your request for documents pertaining to a third party, TIGTA
can neither
admit nor deny the existence of
responsive records," said in its response. "Your request seeks access
to the types of documents for which there is no public interest that
outweighs the privacy interests established and protected by the FOIA
(5 U.S.C. §§ 552(b)(7)(C) and (b)(6))."
Former White House Council of Economic Advisers
chairman Austan Goolsbee apparently had access to the private tax
returns of Kock Industries in 2010 when he told reporters that they paid
no taxes.
Some have contended the American public deserves to know whether
White House staff are rummaging around through the tax returns of their
supposed enemies. The Congressional committees investigating the IRS
scandals should start pressing the question on Goolsbee, who has now
returned to the University of Chicago. He might well be in a position
to let the public know what the president knew, and when did he know
it, the column contends.
July 5: The Washington Free Beacon: Treasury Department IG Refused FOIA on Goolsbee Investigation:
Former White House Council of Economic Advisers chairman Austan
Goolsbee sparked a mini-scandal in 2010 when he told reporters during a
background press briefing that Koch Industries—the company of
libertarian philanthropists Charles and David Koch—paid no income
taxes. Conservative lawmakers and activists said Goolsbee’s statements
not only unfairly singled out the president’s political opponents but
also used confidential IRS documents to do so.
TIGTA announced in a response to a letter from six
Republican senators it was launching an investigation into Goolsbee’s
comments and whether he violated the law. However, the report was never
released to the senators or the public. The Washington Examiner
obtained an Aug. 10, 2011, email from Treasury Special Agent Daniel K.
Carney, in which he wrote, “The final report relative to the
investigation of Austan Goolsbee’s press conference remark is
completed, has gone through all the approval processes.” So we know it
was done. The question is what is in it and why isn’t it being release
to legislators and the public?
Koch Industries also filed a FOIA request in 2011 and
received a similar response. The response from TIGTA essentially
argues that the privacy rights of a former White House adviser trump
the public interest in whether or not he illegally accessed the tax
information of a private company owned by the president’s political
opponents. “Almost three years since his remarks and the inspector
general’s investigation of those remarks, we still don’t know what Mr.
Goolsbee really relied upon nor has it ever been explained why Mr.
Goolsbee was talking about Koch in the first place,” Koch Industries
legal counsel Mark Holden told the
Free Beacon in May.
July 3: The Daily Caller: Coburn, Gingrey demand answers in 201 full-time IRS Union Reps
Republican congressional leaders are demanding to know why the
Internal Revenue Service pays hundreds of full-time employees to do
union work. As reported last month by
the Daily Caller,
201 IRS employees receive full-time pay while doing no actual work,
instead devoting their entire work days to union business. The
revelation came as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request from
Americans for Limited Government.
"Recently, it has come to our attention that the IRS pays a
number of employees full time salaries, funded by taxpayer dollars, for
work they do not perform. Instead, these employees spend their time
working for government employee unions,” according to a letter sent to
IRS acting commissioner Danny Werfel by Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom
Coburn, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs, and Republican Rep. Phil Gingrey of Georgia. These
workers collect taxpayer salaries to serve full-time as exclusive
representatives of a union in dealing with the Department of Treasury,
according to information the IRS provided to Americans for Limited
Government. More than 200 IRS employees spend 100 percent of their
work time doing union work, according to IRS documents cited in the
letter.
“Known as ‘official time,’ in this arrangement
(permitted under Title V of the U.S. Code, section 7131, enacted under the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act)
federal employees are paid to perform union duties instead of the jobs
they were actually hired to do. While the IRS continues to request
more funding to further close the more than 14.5 percent tax gap,
especially under the current budget crunch and sequestration, it makes
little sense to use taxpayer resources to pay for union work. This
kind of practice takes place only in the government – in the private
sector, union work and staff are paid for by union dues,” according to
the letter from Coburn and Gingrey. “Documents from your department
list more than 200 IRS employees serving in 100 percent official time
capacity from January 20, 2012 through the date of response, June 6th
of 2012. The IRS has shut down on certain days, and required employees
to take unpaid furloughs, due supposedly to the effects of
sequestration. However, the IRS is also planning to pay out $70 million
in employee bonuses, and pays more than 200 employees to work for the
union, instead of fulfilling the duties described in their positions of
record,” according to the letter.
July 3: The Daily Caller:
FBI investigators still have not contacted any of the 41 conservative groups abused by the IRS:
FBI and IRS investigators working on the federal government’s
probe into the IRS targeting scandal still have not contacted any of
the conservative groups involved in a class-action lawsuit against the
tax agency. “No one from the FBI or the IRS investigative team has
contacted any of the 41 conservative groups we represent or any of our
attorneys,” American Center for Law and Justice spokesman Gene Kapp
told The Daily Caller. ACLJ is representing tea party and other
conservative groups in the lawsuit.
At least five different IRS offices in Cincinnati, Ohio;
Baltimore, Maryland; Chicago, Illinois; Laguna Niguel and El Monte,
California; improperly demanded extensive information from conservative
groups applying for tax-exempt nonprofit status between 2010 and 2012.
The IRS demanded copies of training materials distributed by
conservative groups, as well as personal information on college interns
and even the contents of a religious group’s prayers.
FBI director Robert Mueller and acting IRS
commissioner Danny Werfel have both launched investigations into the
matter, but have not contacted any of the conservative groups involved
in the ACLJ’s class-action suit.
The IRS targeting scandal broke in the media in early May.
Mueller was excoriated by Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio at a June
13 hearing for knowing very little about his own bureau’s investigation
into IRS conduct. “You’ve had a month now to investigate. This has
been the biggest story in the country and you can’t even tell me who
the lead investigator is. You can’t tell me the actions the inspector
general took which are not typically how investigations are done. You
can’t tell me if that’s appropriate or not. This is not speculation.
This is what happened,” Jordan said to Mueller.
Acting IRS commissioner Werfel also garnered criticism
from congressional investigators at a June 6 hearing for knowing
little about the scandal he is investigating. “I have been here
for two weeks. There is a lot to cover. I am not ready to make
assurances because I have not completed the review,” Werfel said at the
hearing in response to a tough line of questioning from North Carolina
congressman Mark Meadows.
July 3: Politico: IRS’
Lois Lerner:
The price for testimony is immunity to prosecution! But if you do that, perhaps the guilty goes unpunished!
Embattled IRS official Lois Lerner will not testify before the
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee unless she’s given
immunity from prosecution, her lawyer told Politico. “They can obtain
her testimony tomorrow by doing it the easy way … immunity,” William W.
Taylor III said in a phone interview. “That’s the way to resolve all
of this.” The comments reflect the hard-line approach Lerner,
the former head of the IRS division that scrutinized conservative
groups, and her legal team are taking in defending her role in the
agency’s scandal.
Taylor, a founding partner of Zuckerman Spaeder LLP, is even
shrugging off the possibility that the full House might vote to hold
Lerner in contempt. “None of this matters,” he said. “I mean, nobody
likes to be held in contempt of Congress, of course, but the real
question is one that we’re fairly confident about, and I don’t think
any district judge in the country would hold that she waived.”
The oversight panel voted along party lines last week
that Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment rights at a May 22 hearing when
she boldly declared her innocence in the IRS scandal and said she
violated no laws — then invoked her constitutional protections to ward
off self-incriminating questions from lawmakers.
Republicans immediately argued that Lerner forfeited her Fifth
Amendment right by speaking and they should be allowed to question her
opening statement.
June 30: Fox News: Justice with Judge Jeanie (Video):
Referring to the IRS scandals and witness testimony, Judge
Jeanie says the Obama playbook is “first, deny, then lie, then commit
perjury, and if you can’t beat the clock and they are still coming
after you plead the fifth.”
June 28: The Hill | The Daily Caller:
Issa Committee declares Lerner of the IRS waived her Fifth Amendment Rights:
The House Oversight Committee declared Friday in a party-line
vote that Lois Lerner, a central figure in the IRS targeting
controversy, waived her Fifth Amendment rights against
self-incrimination in testimony last month. The 22-17 vote on the
resolution makes it more likely that a federal court will ultimately
decide whether Lerner can still claim her Fifth Amendment right.
Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) stressed that the
panel’s decision — which could pave the way for Lerner to be hauled
back before the committee — wasn’t taken lightly. But the one-sided
vote shows the partisan divide over the committee's IRS investigation
is growing.
On May 10, Lerner became the first IRS official to apologize for
the agency’s targeting of Tea Party groups. Issa and other
Republicans, such as Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), said Lerner voluntarily
made more than a few statements of fact in her May 22 appearance before
the committee that opened her up to cross-examination. “She made four
specific denials,” Issa said. “Those denials are the core of the
committee’s investigation in this matter.” Lerner told members of the
Oversight panel she had done nothing wrong and had broken no laws or
IRS regulations. Lerner’s attorney, Bill Taylor, has denied that his
client waived her right.
Committee leaders have not said when they might recall Lerner,
who could still refuse to testify. That could open the door for the
House to hold Lerner in contempt, which would move the dispute into
federal courts. Democrats at Friday’s hearing agreed that Lerner’s
testimony could bring needed clarity to the IRS investigation, and they
broached the idea of offering her some sort of immunity to answer
questions. Lerner is currently on administrative leave at the IRS
after declining a request from the new acting IRS chief, Danny Werfel,
to resign. Werfel has installed a replacement for Lerner at the top of a
division that oversees tax-exempt groups.
June 25: Fox News: IRS credit cards used for wine and pornography, IG report says:
Another government watchdog report has flagged inappropriate
behavior at the IRS, this time claiming government credit cards were
used to make questionable purchases on items ranging from wine to
online pornography. The report from the Treasury Inspector General for
Tax Administration (TIGTA) found that between fiscal 2010-11, the more
than 5,000 IRS card accounts racked up $103 million in
purchases. "While the majority of IRS cardholders appear to use their
purchase cards properly, TIGTA's audit identified some troubling
instances of inappropriate usage," J. Russell George, the inspector
general, said in a statement.
The report said the cards were at one point used to
pay for a dinner that cost roughly $140 per person -- four times the
amount allowed by federal rules. They were also used to pay for a lunch
that cost about $100 per person, five times the allowed amount. The
report said IRS credit cards paid for 28 bottles of wine at the 2010
luncheon for tax officials from other countries. There were 41
guests. In another case, cards were used to make questionable purchases
of decorative and give-away items including plush animals, bandanas,
kazoos and a rented popcorn machine. Another cardholder allegedly made
$2,655 worth of personal purchases -- the report said credit card
information indicates it was spent on diet pills, romance novels and
other items, and that the purchaser may have provided false receipts to
justify it. Two IRS credit cards were also used to buy online
pornography, though the employees reported the cards stolen. One of the
workers reported five agency credit cards lost or stolen.
The report said the IRS has inadequate controls to stop
inappropriate purchases. The report was issued by the same watchdog
that flagged the IRS' inappropriate screening of conservative groups
that were seeking tax-exempt status. The IG office has also criticized
the agency for its conference spending practices, though agency leaders
say that spending has been curbed.
June 23: Fox News: Judge Jeanine: IRS bonuses on our buck? (Video)
The IRS spends our money foolishly while it makes sure that it
gets every nickel and dime out of us, says Judge Jeanine. "Why even
give them bonuses?" she asks. "Our govenment is colapsing under the
weight of federal spending, but not just spending; irresponsible,
unnecessary and foolish spending." "Why give it to people who are
already paid an agreed upon salary?" she continues. "Why? Because they
are in a union?" "Read the contract Mr. President! If there is a budget
shortfall you don't have to give them the money!" Judge Jeanine
continued.
June 23: The Daily Caller: What being targeted looks like: The Human Face of the IRS scandal:
Gerritson is the president and founder of the Wetumpka Tea
Party in Alabama. In an exclusive — and at times, emotional — interview
with The Daily Caller, she spoke about the fear and mistrust in her
life since the IRS targeted her and other Americans on the basis of
their political beliefs.
Gerritson and her testimony before the House Ways and Means
Committee put a human face on the IRS scandal and made her an overnight
sensation. In an interview with TheDC’s special correspondant Ginni
Thomas, Gerritson said that it appears that the government wants its
citizens to fear it. “It’s almost as if the government has given the
citizens the reason to be fearful of them, and it’s just scary to think
the government is so emboldened to come down on their citizens like
they have with this IRS scandal,” she said. “I don’t know if this is
true, but this is what it feels like. It’s that the government wants us
to fear them. They are not our friends. They want us to fear them, and
they want us to come under their submission.”
June 19: Politico: IRS bonuses to labor unions fuel GOP anger:
The embattled IRS is poised to give employees $70 million in
bonuses, according to a Republican senator. Sen. Chuck Grassley
(R-IA), a senior member on the Finance Committee, said his office has
learned that the IRS is preparing to negotiate an agreement with its
union to pay out the bonuses. In a letter to acting IRS
Commissioner Daniel Werfel on Tuesday, Grassley said it violates an
April directive from the White House to agencies to halt all bonuses
because of budget constraints. Werfel, who worked at the Office of
Management and Budget at the time, was the author of those guidelines.
“The IRS always claims to be short on resources,” Grassley said. “But
it appears to have $70 million for union bonuses.”
The bonuses, which were reported earlier Wednesday by
The Associated Press, are sure to provide the GOP with an explosive new
line of criticism of the agency, which has come under fire for
targeting conservative groups for extra review as they applied for a
tax exemption. Sen. Orrin Hatch, (R-UT) a member of the Senate
Finance Committee, said “further scrutiny” is required.
“It’s like robbing Peter to pay Paul. On the one hand, the IRS
claims it’s short on resources, but on the other hand, it appears
they’re ready to dole out $70 million in bonuses that looks like a
payoff to union workers at a time when we’re drowning in a sea of red
ink.” The IRS says it is legally required to pay out the bonuses
because of a collective-bargaining agreement with the National
Treasury Employees Union, raising the discussion of the power given to
unions representing public servants. In the case of the NTEU about 95%
of its campaign contributions went to Democrat candidates.
June 16: Fox News: IRS Supervisors in DC scrutinized TEA Party groups’ cases:
An Internal Revenue Service supervisor in Washington says she
was personally involved in scrutinizing some of the earliest
applications from tea party groups seeking tax-exempt status, including
some requests that languished for more than a year without action.
Holly Paz, who until recently was a top deputy in the division that
handles applications for tax-exempt status, told congressional
investigators she reviewed 20 to 30 applications. Her assertion
contradicts initial claims by the agency that a small group of agents
working in an office in Cincinnati were solely responsible for
mishandling the applications. Paz, however, provided no evidence
that senior IRS officials ordered agents to target conservative groups
or that anyone in the Obama administration outside the IRS was involved.
Paz was among the first IRS employees to be interviewed as part
of a joint investigation by the House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee. Congressional
investigators have interviewed at least six IRS employees as part of
their inquiry.
June 14: The Daily Caller: Congressional investigators vow to expand IRS investigation:
Top congressional investigators from both parties vowed Friday
to expand their respective investigations into the IRS targeting
scandal, with one leading House investigator suggesting the Obama
administration had a role in the scandal and slapping down claims that
the IRS’ misconduct was not planned and coordinated. “We’re going to
get the truth and we’re going to hold people accountable,” said
Republican Rep. Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means
Committee, which along with Rep. Darrell Issa’s Oversight Committee is
one of the two House committees investigating the IRS for its improper
targeting of conservative groups and individuals between 2010 and 2012.
“The IRS is part of the [Obama] administration,” Camp said at a
newsmaker breakfast on Friday. “There is a lot more work to do.”
June 14: The Daily Caller:
IRS Official Holly Paz Reportedly fired:
Embattled IRS official Holly Paz is believed to have been fired
from the scandal-ridden agency, indicating that the growing IRS scandal
could end up implicating more IRS agents than previously thought.
Paz, the director of the IRS Rulings and Agreements division, has
virtually disappeared since her reported Friday firing, and her
computer is now inactive.
A Fox News anchor said Friday that Paz’s firing has
been confirmed. Paz, a former private-practice attorney, personally sat
in on 36 of the 41 interviews conducted for Treasury Inspector General
J. Russell George’s report last month on the IRS’ improper targeting
of conservative groups between 2010 and 2012. “Why was Holly Paz… in
almost all of the interviews you conducted? Why would you have someone
from the IRS in those meetings? Is that proper protocol?,” North
Carolina congressman Mark Meadows, a member of the House Oversight
Committee, asked George in a May hearing. “I am unaware of it. This is
the first I’ve heard this,” George replied.
June 14: The Daily Caller: The FBI hasn’t contacted a single TEA Party group in IRS probe, groups say
There is no evidence that the FBI has contacted a single tea
party group in its criminal investigation of the Internal Revenue
Service, according to the groups the IRS abused. “We have not been
contacted by any federal investigative agency and, to date, none of our
clients have been contacted or interviewed by the FBI,” Jay Sekulow of
the American Center for Law and Justice told The Daily Caller on
Thursday. The ACLJ has filed suit against the IRS on behalf of 25
conservative groups, with additional groups being added in the next
couple weeks, according to a spokesman. “I have been very surprised
that I have not heard from anybody and frankly, none of my clients
have. I talk to other tea party leaders on a regular basis,” said Cleta
Mitchell, the lawyer largely credited with pushing the IRS abuses to
the forefront.
The revelation suggests that the FBI is in no hurry to
get to the bottom of the scandal, despite the Obama administration’s
promise to investigate the IRS’s multi-year abuse of conservative
groups.
June 13: National Review: Did the IRS Fire Holly Paz?
An IRS source says that the agency has fired Holly Paz, the
director of the agency’s Rulings and Agreements office. The source says
Paz was fired last Friday, and a second IRS source tells National
Review Online that Paz “dropped off the edge of the world” that
day, and that her agency-issued computer, phone, and Blackberry show no
activity since then. The IRS would not confirm or deny reports of
Paz’s firing, citing her right to privacy as protected by federal law.
Paz became the subject of controversy when, in an interview
with the House Oversight Committee, she revealed that she participated
in an IRS internal investigation about the agency’s discrimination
against tea-party groups and was aware of its findings, which emerged a
year before the inspector general’s report and reached similar
conclusions. Paz, however, did not notify Congress of those findings.
Lawmakers have also raised eyebrows at the fact that Paz was
present when members of the inspector general’s team interviewed her
subordinates during the course of their investigation.
June 13: Fox News: FBI director in the dark about IRS probe while defending surveillance programs:
The country’s top investigator seemed to be in the dark
Thursday when pressed to provide details of the IRS investigation into
the tax agency’s targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) seemed to rattle FBI Director Robert
Mueller for not knowing the specifics surrounding the IRS probe.
“You’ve had a month now to investigate,” Jordan said. “This has been
the biggest story in the country and you can’t even tell me who the
lead investigator is. You can’t tell me the actions the inspector
general took which are not typically how investigations are done. You
can’t tell me if that’s appropriate or not. This is not speculation.
This is what happened.” Mueller repeatedly declined to answer
Jordan’s questions, saying he couldn’t because the investigation was
ongoing or that he’d have to get back to the lawmakers with answers.
When Jordan asked again,” Can you tell me who the lead
investigator is?” Mueller responded, “Off the top of my head, no.”
Mueller, who is stepping down from his post in September.
June 13: The Daily Caller:
Freedom of Information Response shows 201 IRS employees work full-time on union business:
In a response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request
from Americans for Limited Government, the IRS revealed this month that
201 of its employees work full-time on union activities. “A lot of
people are not aware that under federal law, a federal agency is allowed
to enter into a collective bargaining agreement with a union that has
provisions where employees of the agency, in this case the IRS, are
allowed to do union work on the taxpayer’s time and get paid for it,”
ALG president and Nathan Mehrens explained in an interview with The
Daily Caller.
As Office of Personnel Management documents explain, the
performance of union duties instead of official government business is
allowed, as it is a part of the government’s collective bargaining
system.
Really? Then perhaps someone ought to change the terms of the labor agreement!
June 12: The Daily Caller: House Committee looks into IRS seizure of 60 million medical records:
Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee
are looking into allegations that the Internal Revenue Service seized
60 million medical records from a California health care provider. “The
Committee on Energy and Commerce is investigating allegations that the
Internal Revenue Service (IRS), in the course of executing a search
warrant at a California health care provider’s corporate headquarters
in March 2011, improperly seized the personal medical records of
millions of American citizens in possible violation of the Fourth
Amendment to the United States Constitution,” members of the committee
wrote in a letter Tuesday to Acting IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel.
The letter requires a response by June 25, comes on the heels
of a lawsuit filed by an unnamed health-care provider against the IRS
in California Superior Court.
The lawsuit alleged that 15 IRS agents improperly stole medical
records during search of the facility in March 2011, according to a
report about the incident from Court House News. The search warrant the
agents were executing, the committee noted in citing the Court House
News report, was allegedly limited to financial records of a former
employee of the company, not medical records.
June 11: The Daily Caller: Cummins (D-MD): Conservative Republican is behind IRS abuses:
Rep. Elijah Cummings has yet to reveal the name of the
“conservative Republican” IRS agent he claims started the agency’s
improper targeting of conservative groups, despite evidence that the
targeting was overseen by a registered Democrat working out of
Washington, D.C.
Cummings, a Democrat from Maryland and the top Democrat on the
House oversight committee, claimed this week that an unnamed Republican
manager in the IRS’s Cincinnati office started the agency’s targeting
of conservative groups, and that “the case is solved” with no evidence
of White House wrongdoing.
Cummings claimed in a letter to Republican Oversight Committee
chairman Darrell Issa, dated June 9, that his staff had interviewed a
“conservative Republican” manager from the IRS’ Cincinnati office who
took the blame for the improper targeting.
June 11: The Daily Caller: TEA Party group targeted by Hull: Our members are afraid to send in donations:
The tea party group targeted by infamous Washington-based IRS
attorney Carter C. Hull said that its members are now afraid to send in
donations, for fear that their names will be linked to conservative
politics in the view of the federal government. “It takes some courage
to stand up to stand up to what President Obama wants to,” Albuquerque
Tea Party president Rick Harbaugh told The Daily Caller, adding that
the federal tax agency’s pursuit of tea party and conservative groups
caused his organization financial hardship.
As The Daily Caller reported, Hull, a registered
Democrat, was fingered by two employees of the IRS Cincinnati office as
the overseer of the agency’s targeting of conservative groups. Hull
instructed Cincinnati-based IRS employee Elizabeth Hofacre to target tea
party groups and provided her a copy of a letter he wrote to a
conservative group requesting additional information in an audit. “I
was essentially a front person, because I had no autonomy or no
authority to act on [applications] without Carter Hull’s influence or
input,” Hofacre told congressional investigators.
June 9: Fox News:
Ranking Member of House Oversight and Government Affairs Accuses Chair of “Accuse now and prove later” tactics:
Elijah Cummings (D-MD) suggested Sunday that the House
Oversight and Government Affairs Committee that is leading probes into
controversial Obama administration activities is squashing testimony in
the recent IRS scandal and taking an overall “accuse, then prove”
approach to investigations. The Committee has released closed-door
testimony that indicates two Cincinnati IRS field agents were directed
by Washington officials to target Tea Party groups applying for
tax-exempt status. Cummings complained that the entire transcript was
not released. In the partial transcript that was released, the
unidentified manager said he or she was unaware of any political
motivation in giving extra scrutiny to the groups.
Cummings also sent a five-page letter to committee
Chairman Darrell Issa, accusing the California Republican of
withholding information in the IRS probe and criticizing how he has
investigated the Justice Department’s flawed gun-tracking program
Operation Fast and Furious, the fatal Benghazi terror attacks last
year, and now the IRS. In response Chairman Issa said "I strongly
disagree with … Cummings' assertion that we know everything we need to
know. His extreme and reckless assertions are a signal that his true
motivation is stopping needed congressional oversight and he has no
genuine interest in working, on a bipartisan basis, to expose the full
truth.”
June 9: The Daily Caller:
Washington IRS official who oversaw “targeting” is a registered Democrat:
Carter C. Hull, a resident of Silver Spring, Maryland, is the
Washington-based Internal Revenue Service attorney who oversaw improper
targeting of tea party groups and he is a registered Democrat,
according to the Real Voters Database. As the Daily Caller reported,
Hull instructed Cincinnati-based IRS employee Elizabeth Hofacre to
target tea party groups and provided her a copy of a letter he wrote to
a conservative group requesting additional information in an audit.
Hull signed a May 12, 2010 letter to the Albuquerque Tea Party grilling
the group on the recent content of its newsletters and its website. “I
was essentially a front person, because I had no autonomy or no
authority to act on [applications] without Carter Hull’s influence or
input,” said Elizabeth Hofacre, an employee of the Cincinnati IRS
office, according to an interview with congressional investigators.
June 9: The Hill: Republicans demand “decisive action” from new IRS Chief and soon:
Republicans are warning the new IRS chief that his honeymoon
will be short unless he does more to clean up the agency and explain
how and why the targeting of conservative groups began. Lawmakers on
both sides of the aisle acknowledge that the acting commissioner, Danny
Werfel, is saying the right things and has been aggressive in his
first two weeks on the job — especially compared to his predecessors,
and given the IRS's reputation for being a slow-moving bureaucracy. But
GOP members say that Werfel will soon have to move beyond placing
staffers on administrative leave and prove to Congress that he’s
working to get to the bottom of the situation.
Werfel eagerly told Congress in his two appearances this week
how unacceptable he found both the agency’s improper targeting of Tea
Party groups and its past spending on conferences, and has vowed to
restore the public’s trust in the tax collector. Republicans
who have been hotly critical of the IRS have taken a softer touch with
the man tapped by President Obama to steer the agency through the
crisis, and have pledged to back his efforts. House Oversight Chairman
Darrell Issa (R-CA), who has doggedly pursued the improper targeting
of Tea Party groups, said Thursday that Werfel’s first steps had been
reassuring. “No doubt something bad happened. It didn't happen on your
watch. We're not blaming you,” he told Werfel. “But you're the person
we're looking to take immediate and decisive action, and to the extent
you have so far, I want to personally thank you.” But Republicans warn
that their support for Werfel could get dialed back if they don’t
start getting more answers from the IRS.
June 8: The Daily Caller: White House blamed for IRS scandal:
A clear majority of independents, and even a plurality of
Democrats, believe high-ranking IRS officials were aware of the
agency’s harassment of conservatives’ political organizing, according
to a new Gallup poll. The poll’s results are risky for Obama, whose
political approval rate has remained relatively high, despite the lousy
economy, because of his relatively high personal ratings. Sixty-two
percent of adults disapprove of his handling of the IRS scandal, said
the Gallup poll. Only 32 percent of adults approve of his reaction to
the scandal. If his approval ratings falls, he’ll have even more
difficulty accomplishing his top political goals which includes winning
back the a majority in the House during the mid-term election.
- Fifty-seven percent of independents say high IRS
officials were “aware of conservative targeting,” said the Gallup poll,
released Friday. Only 23 percent believe the “knowledge [was] limited
to IRS employees in one office.”
- Fifty-four percent of independents also believe that
“high-ranking Obama administration officials” knew of the targeting.
- Forty-three percent of Democrats said they believe high-level
IRS officials were aware, and 41 percent said the knowledge was
limited to employees in one office.
- Twenty-six percent of Democrats also believe high-ranking Obama officials knew of the targeting.
GOP voters, in contrast, overwhelmingly believe top IRS
officials knew, by 84 percent to seven percent. Seventy-two percent
believe top administration officials knew of the targeting.
Forty-eight percent of independents think the scandal is very serious,
and 24 percent believe it is “somewhat serious.”
June 7: The Daily Caller: IRS lawyer who oversaw conservative targeting is retiring and his Facebook page has been removed:
Carter Hull, the Washington-based IRS attorney who oversaw
targeting of conservative groups beginning in 2010, will retire this
summer. Hull was fingered in interviews with two IRS employees as the
overseer of the agency’s improper targeting of conservative groups
beginning in 2010. “I was essentially a front person, because I had no
autonomy or no authority to act on [applications] without Carter
Hull’s influence or input,” Elizabeth Hofacre, an employee of the IRS’
Cincinnati office, told congressional investigators, according to
Hofacre’s interview with the investigators.
Hull provided Hofacre a sample letter requesting
additional information to send to Tea Party groups in March 2010, after
Hofacre appealed to the IRS’ Washington headquarters for help with new
applications from Tea Party groups for tax-exempt nonprofit status.
Hull signed a letter dated April 21, 2010 to the Albuquerque Tea Party
requesting additional information related to its tax-exempt
application.
It is unclear at this time whether Hull, an elderly Maryland
resident and longtime IRS employee, was planning to retire anyway.
Meanwhile
Hull’s Facebook page has been remived since Thursday’s
revelation that he was responsible for overseeing the improper
targeting.
June 7: CBS Washington, DC: IRS workers say supervisors directed targeting:
Two Internal Revenue Service agents working in the agency’s
Cincinnati office say higher-ups in Washington directed the targeting
of conservative political groups when they applied for tax-exempt
status, a contention that directly contradicts claims made by the
agency since the scandal erupted last month. The Cincinnati agents
didn’t provide proof that senior IRS officials in Washington ordered
the targeting. But one of the agents said her work processing the
applications was closely supervised by a Washington lawyer in the IRS
division that handles applications for tax-exempt status, according to a
transcript of her interview with congressional investigators. Her
interview suggests a long trail of emails that could support her
claim.
The revelation could prove to be significant if
investigators are able to show that Washington officials were involved
in singling out tea party and other conservative groups for extra
scrutiny. IRS officials have said repeatedly that the targeting was
initiated by front-line agents in the Cincinnati office and was stopped
once senior officials in Washington found out.
June 7: Deseret News: Finding the Root of the IRS Corruption:
The Obama administration, claiming it has been forced by
sequestration to cut corners wherever it can, has indefinitely canceled
all White House tours. Closing the Executive Mansion off from the
public is cutting the multi-trillion-dollar federal budget less than $4
million dollars a year. At the same time, the Internal Revenue
Service has revealed that it spent more than 10 times that amount on
employee conferences — a whopping $50 million to fund 220 meetings
between 2010 and 2012.
There may be no logical connection between the two; no
conscious decision by the president, for instance, to place a higher
priority on meetings for bureaucrats than public access to
taxpayer-funded buildings. The IRS operates with a high degree of
independence, or at least it is supposed to.
But the public is likely to draw the connection, anyway, and it
is not unreasonable to do so. Both are funded with tax dollars.
The federal government has become so bloated and
pervasive that $50 million doesn't attract much attention. This is
especially upsetting when the culprit is the IRS, an agency with a
reputation for ruthlessness in pursuit of every cent owed to it under
the law. Its agents offer little leniency as they gather money, then
show little accountability once it is safely in their hands.
June 6: Fox News: Lawmakers Rip IRS over Conference Spending:
Lawmakers pummeled the IRS on Thursday for spending millions of
the taxpayer dollars it collected on lavish conferences, with one
Republican calling the behavior "maliciously self-indulgent." The IRS
was summoned to a House oversight hearing to explain how it blew
through $50 million on conferences between 2010 and 2012, including
spending more than $4 million on a single California conference in
2010. For the agency's many critics, it compounded frustrations which
had already mounted over the agency's targeting of conservative
groups. "Not only does the IRS take your money, not give you proper
answers, but then when it comes to tens of millions of dollars, use it
in a way that is, at best, maliciously self-indulgent," said Rep.
Darrell Issa, (R-CA) chairman of the HouseOversight and Government
Reform Committee.
Inspector
General J. Russell George ticked off a list of over-the-top expenses
incurred at the 2010 conference in Anaheim. He said the agency spent
$35,000 on planning trips, $64,000 on gifts and trinkets including
squirting fish toys, and $135,000 on outside speakers.
A personal insight:
While serving in Washington, DC and overseeing the Bureau of Export
Administration’s seminar program, we annually held two Export Control
conferences – one in Washington the other in California. The typical
cost of these events was about $450-$500 per participant. That cost,
which was paid for by the members of the business community who
attended this three-day event, included several meals, conference
kits, and the use of the hotel facilities. We would never have even
considered using taxpayer money. And what we did benefitted both the
exporting community and our agency, which was tasked with regulating
exports for national security and foreign policy reasons. The use of
taxpayer money for the gratification of IRS employees is outrageous and
should not be tolerated.
June 5: The Daily Caller:
IRS Employees: Washington IRS official Carter Hull oversaw the targeting of conservative groups:
A Washington IRS attorney named Carter Hull closely oversaw the
targeting of conservative nonprofit groups and suggested questions that
IRS employees could ask of conservative and Tea Party groups applying
for tax-exempt nonprofit status, according to interviews that two IRS
employees gave with Congressional investigators. “I was essentially a
front person, because I had no autonomy or no authority to act on
[applications] without Carter Hull’s influence or input,” said
Elizabeth Hofacre, an employee of the Cincinnati IRS office, according
to a new report in the Wall Street Journal.
Hofacre’s office, which oversaw tax-exempt applications,
reportedly requested help from the agency’s Exempt Organizations
Technical unit in Washington, D.C. in 2010 to deal with an influx of
new applications from Tea Party groups. IRS attorney Hull sent
Hofacre additional information request letters [
pdf]
that he’d already sent to two tea party groups and instructed her to
use them as a “foundation to prepare and review” cases and prepare her
own letters to new applicants.
June 5: The Hill: Chaffetz: Generally, those with subpoena power don’t get a two-by-four against the head!
David Plouffe, former White House senior advisor, took on
Chairman Darrel Issa (R-CA) personally on Sunday. Plouffe felt he
had no choice: There was simply no other Obama aide with the stature or
street creed with the Democratic base to confront Issa — even though he
was a key player in the administration during the period covered by
Issa’s inquiry. His decision to trash Issa in such a personal way
stunned Plouffe admirers who privately fret about poking such an
ambitious and unpredictable adversary in the eye, fearing it will only
reinforce the California Republican’s determination to prove that the
orders to scrutinize conservative groups came from high-ranking
administration officials.
“Generally, those with subpoena power don’t get a two-by-four
against the head,” said Issa ally Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), referring
to broad authority vested in Issa as chairman of the House Oversight
and Government Reform Committee. “Does the White House really need to
out-source the pit bull stuff?” added Chaffetz. “It was a very
aggressive statement from someone who is known to be very calculating
and sure of themselves. He is usually not one to just tee off
indiscriminately, so they must think it serves a purpose. I don’t know
what it good it does to have a guy that close to the president say that
kind of thing.”
June 5: Politico: IRS-targeted groups cry foul after playing GOP politics:
The conservative groups testifying about overzealous IRS
scrutiny during a House Ways and Means Committee hearing Tuesday can’t
get around a simple fact: All have been involved in the kinds of
political activity that’s ripe for red flags. Simple searches on
Google, Facebook, Twitter and other news engines point to plenty of
political activities that are the essence of what the IRS looks for
when deciding who gets an exemption from Uncle Sam. But for the murky
world of charitable exemptions now under heightened political scrutiny,
their backgrounds underscore the gray area the IRS was in as it posed
questions to the groups. "Certainly, one of the IRS’s responsibilities
is to wring out the ambiguity as much as possible in order to ascertain
what the organization is going to do, and then make not necessarily
the easy call of whether the political activity is less than a primary
activity,” said Marcus Owens, the head of the IRS’s exempt
organizations division from 1990-2000. The IRS is in a bind when it
comes to the regulation of nonprofit groups. Agency regulation
prohibits nonprofits from primarily engaging in political activity but
offers no public guidance to judge what unacceptable behavior means.
June 5: The Daily Caller: Shulman met with Werfel two days before the IRS resumed improper targeting:
Former White House budget office controller Danny Werfel, the
man President Obama has tapped to lead the scandal-ridden Internal
Revenue Service, met with embattled then-IRS commissioner Douglas
Shulman just two days before the agency decided to resume its improper
targeting of conservative groups. Werfel, who as acting commissioner
had vowed to restore “trust” in the IRS, met with Shulman at the tail
end of an approximately six-month period in which the IRS was
officially practicing a nonpartisan approach in reviewing the
tax-exempt status of nonprofit groups. Two days after the meeting
between Shulman and Werfel, the IRS renewed its improper focus on
conservative groups.
In May 2010, the IRS Determinations Unit began
developing a spreadsheet known as the “Be On the Look Out” (or “BOLO”)
listing that identified Tea Party groups as targets for extra scrutiny,
and by July 2010 the Determinations Unit management had requested that
its specialists look out for Tea Party groups. But on July 5, 2011,
the IRS changed its criteria used to identify tax-exempt applications
for review, cutting out specific references to conservative groups and
returning the operation to its proper nonpartisan bent. On
January 23, 2012, Shulman met personally with Werfel in Room 234 of the
Eisenhower Executive Office Building, according to White House visitor
logs. Two days later, on January 25, 2012, the criteria used by the
IRS to identify tax-exempt applications for review was once again
revised, according to the Inspector General report, in order to resume
targeting small-government groups.
June 4: The DC Caller: Conservative groups reveal “chilling” information requests from the IRS:
Leaders of conservative groups targeted for extra scrutiny by
the Internal Revenue Service testified Tuesday on Capitol Hill about
the “chilling” demands from the agency as they sought tax exempt status
over the last several years. The organizer of an educatyional
group called Linchpins of Liberty said the IRS wanted the names of all
his students, many of whom are minors. The organizer of a tea
party group said the IRS requested copies of all their communications
with legislators. The organizer of a pro-life group said an IRS
official even asked the group to pledge not to picket the pro-abortion
organization Planned Parenthood if they wanted their application to go
through. “The questions were chilling,” said Becky Gerritson of the
Wetumpka Tea Party, while testifying before the House Ways and Means
Committee. “I was shocked that I was getting those questions.”
June 4: Associated Press: IRS Officials Enjoyed Luxury at Conference
Already heavily criticized for targeting conservative groups,
the IRS absorbed another blow Tuesday as new details emerged about
senior officials enjoying luxury hotel rooms, free drinks and free food
at a $4.1 million training conference. It was one of many expensive
gatherings the agency held for employees over a three-year period.
One top official stayed five nights in a room that regularly goes for
$3,500 a night. Another official, Faris Fink, stayed four nights in a
room that regularly goes for $1,499. Fink was later promoted to
head the IRS division that staged the 2010 conference in Anaheim,
Calif., a position he still holds.
A total of 132 IRS officials received room upgrades at
the conference, according to a report by J. Russell George, the
Treasury Department inspector general for tax administration. The tax
agency paid a flat daily fee of $135 per hotel room, the report said,
but the upgrades were part of a package deal that added to the overall
cost of the conference. The report was made public on the same
day leaders of six conservative groups testified at a congressional
hearing, where they told lawmakers they had endured abuse from IRS
agents as they spent years trying to qualify for tax-exempt status.
June 4: The Daily Caller: Liberal Campaign finance reform activist linked to IRS Commissioner meetings with Obama:
Nick Nyhart, the CEO of a liberal organization that criticizes
corporate campaign spending and employs the wife of former IRS
commissioner Douglas Shulman, visited the White House seven times and
had two visits with President Obama around the time that the Internal
Revenue Service was targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny.
Nyhart, the president and CEO of Public Campaign, appears on the
White House visitor logs seven times between September 16, 2009 and
September 22, 2010. Public Campaign is a liberal
Washington-based organization that “aims to dramatically reduce the
role of big special interest money in American politics” and operates
on the same office floor as the liberal groups Center for Progressive
Leadership and Common Cause, which also urged Shulman to scrutinize the
tax-exempt status of conservative nonprofit groups.
June 2: The Daily Caller:Cincinnati IRS employee: Washington was “basically throwing us underneath the bus”
In interviews with House Oversight Committee investigators,
Cincinnati IRS employees said that they believed that targeting of
conservative groups came from Washington, not from a couple of “rogue
agents.“ Sunday the House Oversight Committee released partial
transcripts of Oversight Committee investigators’ interviews with
unnamed Cincinnati IRS employees, which contradicts the line coming
from the White House. “It’s impossible,” an IRS employee responded to
an investigator’s question about the allegations that the targeting of
conservative groups was due to “two ‘rogue agents.” “As an agent we are
controlled by many, many people. We have to submit many, many
reports. So the chance of two agents being rogue and doing things like
that could never happen.”
Answering a question about the employee’s reaction to
news reports that the targeting was contained in Cincinnati and the
fault of the Cincinnati office, the employee said that Washington has
been throwing them under the bus. He noted further that it was a
supervisor who requested they do a search for tea party and similar
applications in March of 2010.
“Did [your supervisor] give you any indication of the need for
the search, any more context?” an investigator asked.“He told me that
Washington, D.C., wanted some cases,” the employee responded, going on
to answer that by April 2010 the group was handling fewer than 40 cases
and had sent seven cases to Washington, D.C.
June 2: Politico: Issa charges Washington involvement with IRS Scandal:
Chairman
Issa contends that the interviews show the targeting was not
solely done by the Cincinnati office and that officials in Washington
requested that searches identifying applications by conservative groups
be conducted and then asked to see certain files.
“As late as last week, the [Obama] administration was still trying
to say there was a few rogue agents from Cincinnati, when in fact the
indication is they were directly being ordered from Washington,” Issa
(R-CA) said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” The Oversight panel
did not release the full transcripts from the interviews and it did not
identify the two IRS employees who spoke with the committee. In
addition, the transcripts do not identify who in Washington was involved
or the specific office. The question and answers in the transcripts
mostly refer to “Washington, D.C.” rather than a specific person or
office.
June 2: The Daily Caller: Darrell Issa rips Jay Carney on abuses: a “paid liar” [Video]
On Sunday’s broadcast of CNN’s “State of Union,” Republican
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa also took a jab at
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, calling the spokesman a “paid
liar.” Issa unveiled a part of his committee’s investigation that
included interviews with Internal Revenue Service workers in Cincinnati
who maintained the IRS targeting of tea party groups was coordinated
out of Washington, D.C. In light of those revelations, Issa took
issue with the White House’s claim that a “local rogue” was responsible
when the White House knew better.
“...He’s still making up things about what happens in calling
this [a] ‘local rogue.’ There’s no indication — the reason the Lois
Lerner tried to take the Fifth [Amendment] is not because there is a
rogue in Cincinnati. It’s because this is a problem that was
coordinated in all likelihood right out of Washington headquarters and
we’re getting to proving it. We have 18 more transcribed interviews to
do.” The California Republican said that despite the White
House’s messaging, he believes documents will eventually show the
truth.
June 2: Politico: RNC Chair says White House culture led to IRS targeting:
The culture of the Obama administration, which sees
conservatives as political foes, led to the IRS targeting scandal,
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Sunday. “The
culture of the president calling tea party groups terrorists and
tea-baggers, and that entire culture has been cultivated by the
president and his people, and everyone has been following,” Priebus
said on “Fox News Sunday.” Priebus added that he doesn’t buy
the Obama administration’s explanation that the targeting of
conservatives was the act of lower government employees acting
independently. If the White House didn’t know about what was
going on at the IRS, that means that the government has gotten too big,
he added.
“Government under Barack Obama has gotten so big that his main
defense is, ‘Look, I don’t know anything about these scandals, because
everything under me is so big and unwieldy that I can’t possibly know
about it,’” Priebus said. “Well that’s a world and that’s an America
that the founding fathers didn’t fight for.”
June 1: The Hill: Report: IRS sought gift tax on conservative group’s donors:
The IRS tried to impose a gift tax on donors to a conservative
group formed to support former President George W. Bush’s 2007 troop
surge in Iraq,
The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. The
timing of the effort coincided with the time-frame of the IRS’s
scrutiny of Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status, and it began
under the unit led by Lois Lerner, who is the subject of a congressional
investigation into the Tea Party targeting.
The probe centered on a group called Freedom’s Watch and involved five separate audits, the
Journal
reported. It was halted in 2011 after an outcry from Congress,
although the identity of the organization was not revealed at the time.
Freedom’s Watch is now defunct, but tax experts told the
Journal that the effort to impose gift taxes on its donors was highly unusual. The IRS declined to comment in the story.
May 31: The Hill: Report said to expose lavish spending at 2010 IRS conference:
The House Oversight Committee is holding another hearing on the
IRS — but not one dealing with the agency’s targeting of conservative
groups.
The panel, led by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), will hear on Thursday
from Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration about
“excessive spending” at IRS conferences. “The IRS is an agency in
crisis," Issa said in a statement. "The American people expect that
their tax-dollars will be used responsibly and not for financing lavish
hotel suites and entertainment for government employees. The Oversight
Committee will examine these egregious abuses of the public trust and
an IRS culture that shuns accountability." Danny Werfel, the
acting IRS chief, said that the inspector general report would discuss
an IRS conference from 2010 — "an unfortunate vestige from a prior
era," as Werfel put it.
May 31: CNN: IRS collects documents from 88 employees in investigation of targeting:
The Internal Revenue Service has told House GOP investigators
they have identified 88 IRS employees who may have documents relevant
to the congressional investigation into targeting of conservative
groups, according to a congressional source familiar with the
investigation.
The IRS asked these employees to preserve all the "responsive
documents" on their computers, and it has been in the process of
collecting it all to comply with congressional requests for
information. The IRS missed its May 21st deadline to turn over
documents to the House Ways and Means Committee.
The same source said the IRS argues it missed its deadline because
of the scope of documents it is collecting.
The request for documents was a bipartisan one, but
Republicans are privately preparing to seize on the fact that if nearly
90 IRS employees may have been somehow involved in this targeting, it
is evidence that the controversy extends well beyond the mistakes by a
few low level employees.
May 31: The Daily Caller:
Former IRS commissioner Shulman’s wife works for liberal group fighting open campaign spending:
Former Internal Revenue Service commissioner Douglas H. Shulman,
a frequent White House guest during the period when the IRS was
targeting conservative nonprofits, is married to the senior program
advisor for Public Campaign, an “organization dedicated to sweeping
campaign reform that aims to dramatically reduce the role of big
special interest money in American politics.” The IRS is under fire for
improperly scrutinizing the tax-exempt nonprofit status of
conservative groups between 2010 and 2012.
IRS supporters have defended the beleaguered agency by railing
against outside spending and special interest money supposedly pumped
into the 2012 campaign by conservative benefactors. One of those
defenders is the group of which Shulman’s spouse is an executive.
Shulman’s wife, Susan L. Anderson, is the senior program advisor for
the Washington-based nonprofit organization Public Campaign, which
claims that it “is laying the foundation for reform by working with a
broad range of organizations, including local community groups, around
the country that are fighting for change and national organizations
whose members are not fairly represented.
May 31: Fox News: Criticism of IRS grows amid allegations of targeting beyond the TEA Party.
What started as a scandal over the IRS's targeting of
conservative groups has broadened, with lawmakers and other critics now
questioning whether other kinds of organizations were unfairly flagged
for additional scrutiny. Rep. Sam Graves, R-MO, chairman of the
House Small Business Committee, wrote a letter to Acting IRS
Commissioner Daniel Werfel on Friday asking a series of questions about
the agency's audit practices for small businesses. He made no
specific allegation, but said that lawmakers' investigations to date
prompted the letter. "(Congressional) investigations have only raised
more questions as to the extent these practices may have extended
beyond conservative groups," Graves wrote. Indeed, the scope of
the IRS' heavy auditing and scrutiny appears to go beyond Tea Party
groups.
A report by the IRS' Taxpayer Advocate Service found
the IRS improperly targeted adoptive families -- flagging for further
review 90 percent of those who claimed the adoption tax credit in 2012.
Further, nearly 70 percent of them endured at least a partial audit of
their returns.
By contrast, just one percent of all returns are audited.
The report fueled concerns that the IRS is unfairly lumping
categories of filers together for additional review, in turn
scrutinizing small-fry individuals and groups while ignoring bigger and
richer organizations.
May 31: The Daily Caller: White House defense?
Visitor logs are too unreliable to reveal whether Shulman actually visited the White House 157 times:
The White House on Friday pushed back against the discovery that
former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House at
least 157 times from 2009 to 2012. When challenged last week by
Congressional investigators, Shulman, a central figure in the IRS’s
targeting of conservative groups, did not dispute the number, only
identifying several reasons why he visited so often. The Daily
Caller first reported on Thursday that White House visitor access
records show “Douglas Shulman” with 157 publicly disclosed visits in
that time frame. By comparison, no Obama cabinet member comes close in
terms of publicly disclosed visits.
May 31: The Daily Caller: White House avoids apologizing for IRS scandal:
During Friday’s White House press conference, Special
Assistant to the President and Principal Deputy Press Secretary Josh
Earnest declined to apologize for the Internal Revenue Service targeting
President Barack Obama deemed “outrageous.” A
video of the exchange between Earnest and The Daily Caller is available on YouTube.
Mark Meckler, president of the conservative Citizens
for Self Governance, told TheDC the Obama administration “should
apologize on behalf of the IRS and on behalf of the U.S. government,”
calling it “a simple human courtesy.” He also said that he thought “the
president was behaving worse than a child,” by not owning up to the
actions taken by the IRS.
May 31: BreitBart.com: IRS Ignores Senate deadline to answer questions about scandal:
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) declined Friday afternoon to
meet a Senate Finance Committee deadline for answering detailed
questions about the origins of the IRS scandal. The questions had been
submitted jointly nearly two weeks ago by Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and
Ranking Member Orrin Hatch (R-UT). In a joint statement to
Breitbart News, Baucus and Hatch said: “It’s disappointing that the
IRS failed to produce any of the documents requested by the Committee.
This is an agency that revolves around making the American taxpayer
meet hard deadlines each and every year when they file their taxes,
oftentimes penalizing those that are late. The IRS needs to do much
better.”
Baucus and Hatch wanted to know who at the IRS made
the decision to target conservative organizations, as well as who was
aware of the conduct, and what specific actions they took to address it
once they found it. They demanded that the IRS respond to each of the
forty-one questions asked "no later than May 31, 2013."
May 30: The Daily Caller: Republican who ran against Durbin says Lois Lerner told me never to run for office again!
Former Illinois state representative Al Salvi, who ran as a
Republican against Democrat Dick Durbin in his state’s 1996 U.S. Senate
race, said that embattled IRS official Lois Lerner intimidated him in
her then-capacity as a Federal Elections Commission (FEC) official and
told him she would drop various complaints against him if he never ran
for office again. Lerner is currently on administrative leave from her
position at the IRS, where she oversaw groups’ applications for
tax-exempt nonprofit status, and where she admittedly targeted
conservative nonprofit groups for extra scrutiny.
Salvi told Illinois Review this week that he went
head-to-head with Lerner after his 1996 electoral loss to Durbin, when
she was head of the commission’s Enforcement Division. The FEC hit his
campaign committee with a small handful of complaints related to a $1.1
million personal loan he made to his campaign in its final weeks.
Though a federal district court dismissed the case against Salvi, the
FEC appealed it to the 7th U.S. District Court of Appeals, and
featured Salvi’s case multiple times in the official FEC magazine.
Salvi said that Lerner offered to drop the case if Salvi agreed never
to run for office again.“She said, ‘If you promise to never run for
office again, we’ll drop this case,’” Salvi said, noting that he
thought Lerner was helping Durbin keep him out of Illinois politics in
the future.
May 30: Politico: House panels to interview Cincinnati IRS employees:
House investigators will interview four Internal Revenue
Service employees over the next two weeks, Politico has learned. The
House Ways and Means and Oversight committees hope the four front-line
employees from the agency’s Cincinnati office will help lawmakers
better understand how the IRS targeting of conservative groups first
began. A committee aide declined to name the employees to be
interviewed. But House Oversight and Government Reform Committee
Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) said earlier this month he wants the IRS
to make available five employees for transcribed interviews including
John Shafer, a screening group manager, Gary Muthert, a screener in the
tax-exempt division, Liz Hofacre, a former case coordinator from April
to October 2010, and Joseph Herr, a former advocacy group manager. Two
of the interviews will take place this week with the second pair of
interviews happening next week.
May 29: The Daily Standard: Mysterious Tweets About Koch Brothers' Taxes
In August 2010, Austan Goolsbee, serving at the time as
economic adviser to President Obama, told reporters during an
anonymous background briefing that Koch Industries doesn't pay corporate
income taxes. That statement was made at the same time that top
Democrats, including President Obama himself, were denonizing Charles
and David Koch, the owners of Koch Industries, for giving money to Tea
Party groups. Goolsbee's remark led to a federal investigation, the
results of which have never been released.
In a September 2010 Weekly Stanard interview, Mark Holden, a
lawyer for Koch Industries, disputed Goolsbee's claim and asked how
Goolsbee came up with the idea that Koch Industries doesn't pay
corporate taxes. Holden raised the question of whether someone in the
Obama administration might have looked at Koch Industries' tax returns
-- which would be a violation of a federal law that was enacted in
1976 in response to Watergate.
May 29: Associated Press: Congressional Committees Plan More Hearings on IRS Scandal:
At least two congressional panels are planning more hearings
next week on the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative
groups seeking tax-exempt status. Underscoring how the IRS controversy
is spreading, 25 tea party and conservative groups filed a federal
lawsuit on Wednesday against the government, saying the IRS illegally
obstructed their efforts.
When Congress returns from a weeklong recess on Monday, Danny
Werfel is scheduled to appear before a House Appropriations
subcommittee in his first congressional testimony since becoming
acting IRS commissioner last week. Also appearing will be J. Russell
George, the Treasury Department inspector general whose report
detailed the IRS tactics. Florida Republican Rep. Ander Crenshaw, who
chairs the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees financial
services and general government, said he wants to make sure Americans
are treated fairly, whatever their political beliefs. On Tuesday, the
House Ways and Means Committee plans a hearing with groups targeted by
the IRS. The panel did not identify which organizations would
testify.
May 26: The Hill: Democrats prepare game plan as House investigates Benghazi:
Democrats vow they won't be caught flat-footed when the
co-author of the State Department's independent audit on Benghazi
appears for a closed-door interview with congressional investigators
next month.
Retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering has agreed to be deposed by
Rep. Darrell Issa's (R-CA) Oversight panel on June 3 after being
threatened with a subpoena. Democrats say they're wary of a trap, and
want to be able to counter what they say is Issa's habit of leaking
“cherry-picked” portions of witnesses' testimonies to the press.
May 26: The Hill: Dems want more time before weighing in on the need for an IRS special prosecutor:
Leading congressional Democrats say they don’t believe the
investigation into the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups needs a
special prosecutor – at least not yet. They have expressed deep anger
about how the IRS handled applications from Tea Party groups.
Like Republicans, top Democrats also want to give their own
probe into the issue more time, two weeks after news first broke and
following three hearings left many questions unanswered. “I think it’s
too soon,” said Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT), whose
committee held one of those three hearings. “I don’t think there’s
enough evidence to warrant a special prosecutor.” Of course,
Democrats don’t agree with every reason why Republicans aren’t on board
with a special counsel. GOP lawmakers, for instance, are troubled that
Attorney General Eric Holder, with whom they’ve sparred on more than a
couple occasions, would be in charge of appointing the prosecutor.
But Democratic lawmakers do believe that Congress is more than
capable of handling a deeper dive into the IRS’s treatment of
conservative groups, and aren’t ready to see another investigation take
any momentum away from what’s happening on Capitol Hill.
May 26: The Hill: Senator Durbin: No regrets in calling out "Crossroads" to the IRS:
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) on Sunday defended his
decision to single out a key GOP group in a 2010 letter to the IRS.
Durbin said Crossroads GPS, co-founded by Karl Rove, had been
boasting about how much money they had been raising, and the role they
were playing in the 2010 midterms. “Citizens United really unleashed
hundreds, if not thousands of organizations, seeking tax-exempt status
to play in political campaigns,” Durbin said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Durbin said he didn’t mention any liberal groups in his
letter because an IRS examination into Crossroads would have put
organizations across the political spectrum on notice.
During the current IRS scandal, Democrats like Durbin have said
there need to be broader questions raised about how and if political
groups like Crossroads and Tea Party groups should be allowed the
tax-exempt status reserved for social welfare groups. “There is no
basis for targeting within the IRS,” Durbin said. “What we basically
need to say is all groups need to have the law applied to them
equally.”
May 24: Fox News: IRS official who refused to testify signed letters to Tea Party groups under review:
The IRS official who refused to testify this week -- while
claiming she had done nothing wrong -- signed letters to Tea Party
groups a year ago that asked them to turn over everything from
printouts of their Facebook pages to the credentials of speakers who
participated in their events. A group representing more than a dozen
Tea Party groups now suing the IRS released a sample of one of the
letters overnight, after the official Lois Lerner was placed on
administrative leave. According to one lawmaker, she was only placed on
leave after she refused to resign.
Jay Sekulow, chief counsel with the American Center for
Law and Justice, said the March 2012 letters show a "paper trail" that
reveals her "direct involvement in sending intrusive and harassing
questionnaires." "It appears Lerner did nothing to stop the abusive
conduct. And our evidence suggests she was actively participating in
the improper targeting in March 2012," he said in a statement.
It was no secret that Lerner, as head of the exempt
organizations division, was aware of the program that had developed in
the Cincinnati office under her watch. A time-line provided in the
inspector general's report on the practice showed she was first briefed
in June 2011. But while she apparently raised concerns at that
briefing over the criteria used, the ACLJ said the March 2012 letters
show she was still involved in carrying out the policy. At the
time, the program itself was in flux. Lerner had earlier ordered the
criteria to be changed in June 2011. The criteria was then broadened,
but somehow it was changed again in January 2012 "without executive
approval," according to the IG report.
After that, the unit in question sent out a new round of letters
requesting additional information, while giving groups that had not
responded to the prior requests an additional 60 days to comply. These
appear to be the letters that, in some cases, Lerner signed.
May 24: Politico: What is next for the IRS?
In the two weeks since the news surfaced that the Internal
Revenue Service wrongly targeted conservative groups applying for a tax
exemption, the debacle has unfolded at a breathless pace — complete
with resignations, three congressional hearings and the transformation
of civil servants into household names. Lois Lerner, the
embattled IRS official, provided many of the more bizarre twists and
turns by defiantly proclaiming her innocence at a congressional hearing
before invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination
and ultimately rejecting a request from her new boss to step down.
Congress has hauled virtually every conceivable witness before
several committees to testify on their role in the debacle. And
lawmakers are heading out of town for a week — meaning Republicans risk
losing a news cycle that has been unusually kind to them as the IRS
scandal collided with other Washington meltdowns. The GOP — and
many Democrats — insist the investigation is only getting started. But
where can the saga go from here?
May 23: Fox News: IRS official on leave refused to resign GOP Senator Says:
First she refused to testify. Now Lois Lerner, the IRS official
at the center of the tax agency scandal, is refusing to resign,
according to a top Republican senator. Sources confirmed to Fox
News earlier Thursday that Lerner, the head of the IRS division that
oversaw the unit targeting conservative groups, had been placed on
administrative leave, with pay. But Sen. Charles Grassley, R-IA,
claimed she was only put in that status after refusing to step down.
He said the commissioner was in his right to demand her
resignation, and said taxpayers should not continue to pay her salary
indefinitely.“My understanding is the new acting IRS commissioner asked
for Ms. Lerner’s resignation, and she refused to resign. She was then
put on administrative leave instead,” Grassley said in a statement.
“The IRS owes it to taxpayers to resolve her situation quickly. The
agency needs to move on to fix the conditions that led to the targeting
debacle."
Lerner, the official who first acknowledged the
controversial IRS practice earlier this month, asserted her innocence
at a House hearing on Wednesday. She then refused to testify, citing
her Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination. The move angered
many who say she should have been forced to answer why the tax agency
targeted conservative groups applying for tax exempt status.
Republican leaders of that committee, though, now say she waived that
right by giving a statement and want to haul her back to testify.
It's unclear whether Republicans will succeed in trying to recall her
before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Rep.
Darrell Issa, R-CA, chairman of the panel, said through an aide
Thursday that her Fifth Amendment assertion is "no longer valid," since
she delivered remarks at the start of Wednesday's hearing. That
hearing was never technically adjourned, and Republicans hope to bring
her back.
May 23: Fox News: The IRS Controversy May have started because of push by Democrat lawmakers:
The 2010 Congressional midterm elections were approaching.
Attacks on the Tea Party and groups calling for less government
spending and taxation were in full swing. President Barack Obama
in his state of the union address in January had attacked the Supreme
Court with the justices in attendance for signing off on the Citizens
United case, for opening the ”flood gates” for special-interest money
in U.S. elections.
And 2010 was the year Democrats went full bore pressuring the
IRS to investigate nonprofit politicking, which resulted in the IRS
targeting Tea Party and other nonprofit applicants who were ideological
opponents. Again, this is when Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) who pushed through
Obamacare was the Speaker of the House. Letters from 10
high-profile Democrats to then-IRS commissioner Doug Shulman pressured
the IRS to investigate nonprofit politicking, even threatening
legislation to change IRS standards if the IRS didn’t act. The
letters show how elected officials pressured the IRS during an election
season, fearing opponents were unfairly using the tax law to raise
money to their advantage.
Shulman testified yesterday that back in March 2012,
there was “absolutely” no special targeting of conservative groups
going on. “At no time, to the best of my memory, was I ever given the
impression that these [IRS employees] were only [looking closely] at
conservative groups,” Shulman told Congress on Wednesday. IRS
official Lois Lerner has already publicly apologized for the IRS’s
targeting of tax-exempt applications by using key words such as "Tea
Party" and "Patriots.” The time-line of the events show
top-ranking Democrats were sending a flurry of letters to Shulman,
demanding that the agency act, and act fast.
May 23: The Wall Street Journal: Peggy Noonan: At the IRS A Battering Ram Becomes a Stonewall:
"I don't know." "I don't remember." "I'm not familiar with that
detail." "It's not my precise area." "I'm not familiar with that
letter." These are quotes from the Internal Revenue Service
officials who testified this week before the House and Senate. That is
the authentic sound of stonewalling, and from the kind of people who
run Washington in the modern age—smooth, highly credentialed and
unaccountable. They're surrounded by legal and employment protections,
they know how to parse a careful response, they know how to blur the
essential point of a question in a blizzard of unconnected factoids.
They came across as people arrogant enough to target Americans for
abuse and harassment and think they'd get away with it.
So what did we learn the past week, and what are the
essentials to keep in mind? We learned the people who ran and
run the IRS are not going to help Congress find out what happened in
the IRS. We know we haven't gotten near the bottom of the political
corruption of that agency. We do not know who ordered the targeting of
conservative groups and individuals, or why, or exactly when it began.
We don't know who executed the orders or directives. We do not know the
full scope or extent of the scandal. We don't know, for instance, how
many applicants for tax-exempt status were abused.
We know the IRS commissioner wasn't telling the truth in March
2012, when he testified: "There's absolutely no targeting." We have
learned the Lois Lerner lied when she claimed she had spontaneously
admitted the targeting in a Q-and-A at a Washington meeting. It was
part of a spin operation in which she'd planted the question with a
friend. We know the tax-exempt bureau Ms. Lerner ran did not simply
make mistakes because it was overwhelmed with requests—the targeting
began before a surge in applications. And Ms. Lerner did not learn about
the targeting in 2012—the IRS audit time-line shows she was briefed in
June 2011.
[The article goes on.... it is well worth reading... just click on the link]
May 22: Real Clear Politics: Gowdy says Lerner “Waived her 5th Amendment Rights” by giving an opening statement:
Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-SC): Mr. Issa, Mr. Cummings just said
we should run this like a courtroom, and I agree with him. She just
testified. She just waived her Fifth Amendment right to privilege. You
don't get to tell your side of the story and then not be subjected to
cross examination. That's not the way it works. She waived her Fifth
Amendment privilege by issuing an open statement. She ought to stand
here and answer our questions.
May 22: Real Clear Politics:
Krauthammer: Lerner “Clearly Gave Up Her 5th Amendment Right” (Video)
Krauthammer: She clearly gave up her Fifth Amendment right, if
not entirely, at least on the things she said: ‘I didn’t break any
laws, I didn’t break any of the regulations, I did nothing wrong.’ On
those she must speak with the Committee.
May 22: Politico: Chairman Issa slams IRS Watchdog:
Until now IRS inspector general J. Russell George is one of the
few people to emerge from the agency’s scandal looking good thanks to
his just-the-facts report on the controversial practice of targeting
conservative groups. House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee Chairman Darrell Issa slammed George on Wednesday for not
alerting Congress to the targeting of conservative groups earlier. It’s
the toughest swing anyone has taken at George over the course of three
congressional hearings probing the IRS scandal.
“Despite numerous requests from the committee for information and
updates, including an Aug. 3 letter, the request for the inspector
general to inform Congress about serious problem … the inspector
general failed to do that,” the California Republican said at the
hearing today.
Issa called his failure to inform lawmakers the
“greatest failing of an otherwise well regarded inspector” and implied
that he didn’t live up to what is expected of such watchdogs in the
law. “You have a responsibility to keep us continually, and according
to statue, equally informed,” Issa said. “In this case, it appears you
did not. Would you agree with that?”“No actually,” George answered,
explaining that he should not brief Congress until all the information
had been analyzed and a solid, correct conclusion has been made. “There
are established procedures for conducting an audit. … It would be
impractical to give you partial information which might not be accurate.
It would be counterproductive, sir, if we were to do that.”
May 22: The Hill: Chairman Issa may haul IRS’s Lerner back:
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa said Wednesday
that the official at the center of the uproar over the Internal Revenue
Service’s targeting of conservative groups effectively waived her
Fifth Amendment right, strongly suggesting the staffer could be hauled
back before the panel. Issa (R-CA) and other GOP lawmakers say
that Lois Lerner, who heads an IRS division that oversees tax-exempt
groups, might have tossed aside her rights against self-incrimination
by emphasizing in her opening statement that she had done nothing
wrong.
Hours later, Issa decided to recess — not adjourn — his panel’s
hearing looking into the IRS’s treatment of Tea Party groups,
increasing the prospects that Lerner could once again find herself
sitting before the committee. “I am looking into the possibility of
recalling her, and insisting that she answer questions,” Issa said.
Issa’s comments were on a hearing in which Republicans gave their
sharpest criticism to date to the inspector general for tax
administration, Russell George, who examined the IRS, and to former IRS
Commissioner Doug Shulman.
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, testifying in a separate
hearing down the hall, also absorbed charges from Republicans that he
was dodging their questions on the IRS targeting, as GOP lawmakers
continue to skeptically eye the idea that Treasury and White House
officials could have been totally in the dark about the extra
scrutiny. Lerner, making her first public appearance since
disclosing the IRS’s treatment of conservative groups almost two weeks
ago, had informed House Oversight through her attorney that she would
assert her Fifth Amendment rights. At the end of the hearing,
Issa said that led him to believe that Lerner, who has hired the same
high-profile attorney that defended Dominique Strauss-Kahn against
sexual assault charges, would not give an opening statement. But Lerner
ended up vigorously defending her actions, saying that she had broken
no laws or IRS regulations.
May 22: Politico: IRS Scandal hearing: Best Moments
Two weeks in and the IRS scandal isn’t turning into any less of
a spectacle on Capitol Hill. Check out the highlight reel from
a House hearing Wednesday: bizarre plot twists, witness missteps and
new revelations from IRS officials. The hearing was so
action-packed that the scandal itself is feeling no less interesting —
or even strange — than it did on the first day.
May 22: The Daily Mail:
IRS tea-party bloodbath continues in Congress, as evidence
emerges that IRS's own internal probe ended in May 2012, six months
before election, but was hidden from legislators:
Tempers flared in a House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee hearing Wednesday, with members on both sides of the aisle
castigating the Internal Revenue Service for targeting conservative
groups with special scrutiny, and then hiding the practice from
Congress. Rep. Darrel Issa, the committee's chairman, said that
the committee learned just yesterday that the IRS completed its own
investigation a year before a Treasury Department Inspector General
report was completed. But despite the IRS recognizing in May
2012 that its employees were treating right-wing groups differently
from other organizations, Issa said, IRS personnel withheld those
conclusions from legislators.
'Just yesterday the committee interviewed Holly Paz,
the director of exempt organizations, rulings and agreements, division
of the IRS,' Issa said. 'While a tremendous amount of attention is
centered about the Inspector General's report, or investigation, the
committee has learned from Ms. Paz that she in fact participated in an
IRS internal investigation that concluded in May of 2012 - May 3 of
2012 - and found essentially the same thing that Mr. George found more
than a year later.'
May 22: The Daily Caller: Head of the IRS, Shulman, never looked into IRS targeting:
Even though 132 congressmen contacted the former Internal
Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman about the IRS targeting
of conservative groups, Shulman reiterated Wednesday that he did not
have the full story until the inspector general’s report came out.“In
the two years that this targeting was taking place, did any member of
Congress contact you? Write you? About this particular subject? Jim
Jordan (R-OH) asked during a House Oversight hearing. “Did you get
letters from Congress?”“Yes,” Shulman replied.
Jordan pointed out to Shulman that there had been 42 news stories
about potential IRS targeting in that two-year time-frame as well. “So
here is what everyone wants to know: You’ve got 132 members of the
United States Congress contacting you about this issue, 42 news stories
about this issue in the time period in question, and you never checked
it out. You never researched it. I mean, are you sure you’re being
square with us today, Mr. Shulman?” “I am absolutely telling you the
truth today,” Shulman said.
Jordan also delved into the number of times Shulman
visited the White House. “One hundred and eighteen times you were at the
White House, 132 Members of Congress contact you about this
information, 42 major news stories about this very subject and you told
Congress a year ago, ‘I can give you assurances nothing is going on,
everything is wonderful, we’re not targeting conservative groups,’”
Jordan said. “That is why the American people are like, ‘This is
unbelievable.’”
May 22: Daily Caller: Former IRS Director Didn’t Discuss Targeting with the White House:Former
Internal Revenue Service commissioner Douglas Shulman told members of
the House Oversight Committee that he had not discussed the IRS
targeting of conservative groups during his numerous visits to the
White House. Shulman, according to Jim Jordan (R-OH), visited the
White House 118 times in 2010 and 2011, when he was IRS commissioner.
Asked whether, during his myriad of visits he had brought up the
IRS targeting of conservative groups. Shulman said “No, I did not,” he
said, saying that he went as “a nonpartisan, nonpolitical person
trying to implement the laws that were on the books. It would have
been inappropriate and nobody ever asked me.”
Under further questioning from Jason Chaffetz (R-UT),
Shulman said he did not remember at any point discuss Citizens United
or 501(c)(4)s during his White House visits. Shulman said the
numerous visits in the log were likely when he met with the Office of
Management and Budget, and that he would have met with “a variety of
people” to discuss a variety of topics, primarily “the budget, general
tax policy, and the Affordable Care Act.” He also expressed
skepticism that he had visited 118 times. “I don’t accept the premise
that there are 118 visits to the White House,” he objected. “That may
or may not be true.”
May 22: The Washington Times: Democrats raise the prospect of Special Prosecutor for IRS Scandal:
A Democrat on the House’s investigative committee raised the
specter of a special prosecutor on Wednesday to investigate political
targeting of conservative groups at the IRS from 2010 to 2012.
Congressman Lynch (D-MA) warned IRS and Treasury Department witnesses
before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee not to
stonewall congressional efforts to get to the bottom of the scandal.“We
know where that will lead, it will lead to a special prosecutor. …
There will be hell to pay if that’s the route that we choose to go
down,” he said. The Democrat’s reference to a special prosecutor
was noteworthy, since the most vocal criticism for the IRS has come
from GOP ranks in recent weeks.
May 22: The Washington Post: Administration Officials Clam Up:
For the second straight day and the third time in one week, IRS
officials will testify Wednesday in front of Congress about the
agency’s improper targeting of conservative groups. Highlighting
today’s House Oversight Committee hearing is IRS official Lois
Lerner’s decision to invoke the 5th amendment and not answer questions.
Lerner is still under subpoena to testify, meaning she will have to
invoke her rights in person — and likely repeatedly. Also
appearing is Douglas Shulman, the former IRS commissioner who also
testified in front of a Senate committee on Tuesday. Rounding out the
witnesses are the inspector general who investigated the wrongdoing —
J. Russell George — and Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal S. Wolin, who
learned of the investigation into the IRS’s targeting last summer.
Related story:
May 22: Fox News
May 22: The Daily Caller: Lois Lerner’s blink-and-you’ll miss it appearance at the House IRS Hearing [DC Edited Video]:
Lois Lerner appeared before the House Committee On Oversight
& Government Reform today but you probably missed it. Having stated
in advance that she was going to invoke her Fifth Amendment right
against self-incrimination, Lerner guaranteed that the appearance would
at best yield some entertaining grandstanding by Republicans.
Even that didn’t happen, though, as committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa
of California let Lerner leave after making an exculpatory statement.
So in case you missed it because you went to get a coffee, had a
potty break or just blinked at the wrong second, here are the edited
highlights (now with added Richard Nixon).
May 21: Fox News Video: IRS officials could potentially face criminal felony charges:
IRS officials could face perjury and charges of making false
statements to Congress. “If the officials knowingly and willfully
falsified, concealed, or covered up a “material fact” or if they were
making a materially false statement they could be facing prosecution
for a felony,” former federal prosecutor, Douglas Burns contended.
May 21: The Hill: Former IRS chief denies knowing full extent of targeting at agency:
Former Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Doug Shulman told
Congress Tuesday that he only learned the “full extent” of the agency’s
targeting of conservative groups after he left his post and did not
know why employees initially implemented the policy. Shulman said IRS
staffers should have more quickly alerted their superiors about the
higher scrutiny given to Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status — a
feeling shared by the acting commissioner, Steven Miller. The two
officials faced tough questions about the IRS scandal before the Senate
Finance Committee, as lawmakers probe when senior officials at
Treasury and the White House first learned about it and what steps they
took to stop it. A Treasury inspector general’s report found
ineffective management at the agency led to Tea Party groups being
subjected to delays and additional questioning.
Shulman, in his first testimony on the controversy,
said the report left him “saddened” and “dismayed,” but he also noted
that it didn’t find any political motivations by the employees. “While
the inspector general's report did not indicate that there was any
political motivation involved, the actions outlined in the report have
justifiably led to questions about the fairness of the approach taken
here,” Shulman, who left the agency in November 2012, told the
committee. The testimony frustrated Republicans already
irritated by Miller’s contentious appearance before the House Ways and
Means Committee last Friday and shed little additional light on when
key figures in the White House and Treasury found out about the IRS
targeting.
Related Story: May 21: The Hill: Boehner: The American people deserve the truth:
Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) on Tuesday said the House would
continue to investigate the growing list of scandals plaguing the Obama
administration, and said it would do so because people "deserve the
truth." "We have a responsibility to the American people to provide
oversight of the Executive Branch," Boehner said in rare remarks on the
House floor. "And I think Americans understand, and our colleagues
understand, that the American people deserve the truth."
"Whether it's
Benghazi, whether it's
the IRS,
whether it's the Justice Department investigating journalists, the
Congress of the United States and the American people need to know what
the truth is, to hold this administration accountable. Those of us in
public office understand that our job is to serve the American people,
not the other way around."
May 21: Fox News: IRS official calls decision to use planted question on scandal an “incredibly bad idea”
The outgoing IRS commissioner expressed regret Tuesday for a
decision to use a planted question to go public with the agency's
practice of targeting conservative groups, calling the move "an
incredibly bad idea." Steven Miller, appearing on the Hill for a
second hearing in two weeks on the scandal, acknowledged that the
agency was trying to get ahead of a damning investigative report at the
time. As was confirmed over the weekend, he admitted the agency had a
question planted at a conference two Fridays ago -- a senior IRS
official, in response to the question, then confessed to a long-running
program that singled out conservative groups for additional
scrutiny. "Obviously the entire thing was an incredibly bad idea,"
Miller said.
Miller explained that the agency had been trying to brief
lawmakers on the Hill, in advance of the release of the inspector
general report. But that "did not work out," he said, so they used the
planted question. "The report was coming, we knew that," he told the
Senate Finance Committee.
May 21: The Hill: Carney: The White House & IRS strategized how to tell the public:
Officials in the White House discussed how and when the Internal
Revenue Service would tell the public that the agency had targeted
political groups, White House press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday.
Carney said that Mark Childress, the White House deputy chief of staff,
twice spoke with Lois Lerner, the IRS official who oversaw the
agency's tax-exempt organization, about the strategy for revealing
conservative targeting. Childress and Lerner discussed the possibility
that either Lerner would reveal that an inspector general's
investigation had found misconduct in a speech or that then-acting IRS
director Steve Miller could receive questions about the IG
investigation in congressional testimony.
According to Carney, the pair discussed “what [Miller]
would say” if asked about the issue. The press secretary went on to
characterize the discussion “as just part of trying to find out when
and under what circumstances this information would be released, made
public, and what those findings would be.” But Carney insisted that
the White House had no knowledge of the agency's eventual plan — to
plant a question at an ABA conference for Lerner earlier this month.
Carney said that while multiple senior staff were made aware of the
findings of the IG report, the decision by the IRS to plant the
question and publicly apologize for the targeting came from outside the
White House.
May 21: The Associated Press: Former IRS Chief: Can’t say how targeting happened:
The man who led the Internal Revenue Service when it was giving
extra scrutiny to tea party and other conservative groups seeking
tax-exempt status told Congress on Tuesday that he knew little about
what was happening while he was still commissioner. Douglas Shulman,
who vacated his position last November when his five-year term expired,
told the Senate Finance Committee he didn't learn all the facts until
he read last week's report by a Treasury inspector general confirming
the targeting strategy.
In his first public remarks since the story broke, Shulman
said: "I agree this is an issue that when someone spotted it, they
should have brought it up the chain. And they didn't. I don't know
why." Shulman testified at Congress' second hearing on an episode that
has largely consumed Washington since an IRS official acknowledged the
targeting and apologized for it in remarks to a legal group on May 10.
Shulman and the two officials who testified at Tuesday's
three-and-a-half hour session - the outgoing acting commissioner,
Steven Miller, and J. Russell George, the Treasury Department inspector
general who issued the report - were all sworn in as witnesses, an
unusual step for the Finance panel.
May 21: WashingtonExaminer.com: IRS went after 83 year old TEA party granny:
Internal Revenue Service officials not only wanted a wide
variety of information from the Albuquerque Tea Party's application for
non-profit status, it also wanted to know what contacts it had with
people from other political organizations too. That included an
83-year-old great-grandmother who was once held in a World War II
internment camp, New Mexico Watchdog has discovered. "I've always paid
my taxes and everything," Marianne Chiffelle told New Mexico Watchdog.
"What I do think is, it doesn't surprise me... because of this
government we have at the moment."
According to a review of documents conducted by the
online news organization Politico the IRS asked the Albuquerque Tea
Party about connections to other groups, including "Marianne
Chiffelle's Breakfasts." It took New Mexico Watchdog less than an hour
to learn that "Marianne Chiffelle's Breakfasts" is not some restaurant
chain, but a reference to the volunteer work of Chiffelle, a retiree
who helps organize informal 9 a.m. meetings for members of the
Bernalillo County Republican Party. The group meets on Fridays at a
Golden Corral restaurant. "We've had these meetings for a long time,"
Chiffelle said. "It's not a business."
May 20: The Daily Caller: IRS Targets College Interns:
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) demanded information about
conservative groups’ college-aged interns, prompting outrage from one
of the country’s top conservative activist organizations and leading
one former intern to wonder whether his family’s pizza parlor would be
endangered. The IRS requested, in an audit, the names of the
conservative Leadership Institute’s 2008 interns, as well as specific
information about their internship work and where the interns were
employed in 2012, according to a document request the IRS sent to the
Leadership Institute, dated February 14, 2012. The request states:
– In regards to such internships, please provide information
regarding where the interns physically worked and how the placement was
arranged.
– After completing internships and courses, where were the students and interns employed?”
The Arlington, Virginia-based Leadership Institute is a
conservative activist training organization founded in 1979 by Virginia
Republican National Committeeman Morton C. Blackwell, the youngest
elected delegate to the 1964 Republican convention that nominated Barry
Goldwater. The institute was audited in 2011.
The Daily Caller has reported, at least two different IRS offices made a concerted effort to obtain the group’s training materials.
May 20: Politico: The White House’ shifting IRS account:
The White House on Monday once again added to the list of people
who knew about the IRS investigation into its targeting of
conservative groups — saying White House chief of staff Denis McDonough
had been informed about a month ago. Press secretary Jay Carney said
again that no one had told President Barack Obama ahead of the first
news reports: not his top aide McDonough, nor his chief counsel Kathy
Ruemmler, nor anyone from the Treasury Department.
Monday’s revelation amounts to the fifth iteration of
the Obama administration’s account of events, after initially saying
that the White House had first learned of the controversy from the
press. Republicans said they were on the lookout for the next
installment in the White House’s ever-shifting narrative.
The Politico Story lays out the time line of the revelations.
May 20: The Washington Post: (Related Story)
White House senior aides knew details of IRS probe but didn’t tell Obama, spokesman says!
Senior White House officials, including Chief of Staff Denis
McDonough, learned last month about a review by the Treasury
Department’s inspector general into whether the Internal Revenue
Service targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, but
they did not inform President Obama, the White House said Monday.
The acknowledgment is the White House’s latest disclosure in a
piecemeal, sometimes confusing release of details concerning the extent
to which White House officials knew of the IG’s findings that IRS
officials engaged in the “inappropriate” targeting of conservative
non-profits for heightened scrutiny.
Previously, the White House said counsel Kathryn Ruemmler did
not learn about the final results of the investigation until the week
of April 22nd, and had not disclosed that McDonough and other aides had
also been told about the investigation. On Monday, White House
Spokesman Jay Carney said a member of Ruemmler’s staff learned of the
probe the week of April 16; Ruemmler learned of the investigation on
April 24th; and after that point she informed the chief of staff and
other aides about the probe’s findings.
May 20: Fox News: Fact Check Story Rips IRS official over TEA Party Targeting claims:
A detailed fact-check published Monday tore into an IRS
officials claim that the agency's scrutiny of conservative groups
started in response to an influx of nonprofit applications, showing the
practice started well before the forms started flooding in.
The piece in The Washington Post disputed a central claim that
Lois Lerner, head of the exempt organizations division, and other IRS
officials made as they admitted to targeting conservative groups for
additional scrutiny as they sought tax-exempt status. Lerner
claimed they did so in response to a "very big uptick" between 2010 and
2012 in the number of applications for a status known as 501(c)(4).
Indeed, there was an uptick recorded in that time period. But, as
the Post wrote, "it was relatively small." "The real jump did
not come until 2011, long after the targeting of conservative groups
had been implemented," the Post wrote. The inspector general
report released last week said a Cincinnati office began drafting the
new criteria as early as May 2010. But statistics included in the
report show the number of applications in that group actually declined
between 2009 and 2010 -- from 1,751 to 1,735.
May 20: ABC News: An IRS Chronology of what was happening on the ground in Cincinnati, OH
Three days into the scandal IRS staffers in Cincinnati were hard to
find as reporters descended on the city. The mail at the home of
Elizabeth Hofacre, at the center of the controversy, was piling up . A
few miles away IRS analyst Mitchell Steele, in a bath robe, answered
the door to his home as the work day was just beginning. He seemed
genuinely beaten down and told ABC News “This isn’t fair to me.”
Meanwhile Stephen Seok, another IRS staffer in Cincinnati and one of
the supervisors failed to answer his phone or his front door even
though his family could be seen coming and going.
At the IRS office, a woman who answered the buzzer referred
reporters to officials in Washington, though they were not returning
very many calls. That staffer also said she was not allowed to speak to
anyone – a line that was repeated by agency personnel during the week.
IRS headquarters in Washington denied that a no-talk rule was
official policy because, after all, agency staffers still have a
constitutional right to talk to whomever they want.
So what is really going on at the IRS? Only God and the Obama Administration leadership seem to know!
May 20: The National Journal: Ways Obama might restore public trust and rescue His Presidency:
Swamped in controversies, President Obama and his slow-footed
team are essentially telling the American public, “We’re not crooked.
We’re just
incompetent.” The IRS targeting
conservatives, the Justice Department snooping at The Associated Press,
the State Department injecting politics into Benghazi – each of these
so-called scandals share two traits. First, there is some
element of “spin," the cynical art of telling just enough of the truth
to avoid political embarrassment. Second, there is almost comical
bungling. While denying involvement in high crimes and misdemeanors,
the Obama administration appears to be pleading guilty to lesser crimes
of bureaucratic incompetence.
The backdrop to this parade of buffoonery is a decades-long
decline in the public’s faith in government, a trend continued under
Obama. Restoring the public’s trust in his governance is the only way
Obama can survive the controversies with his agenda and legacy intact.
In interviews, allies of the White House privately suggested a
few things Obama could do, including:
- Appoint a bipartisan oversight board to oversee the implementation of Obamacare. There
is no way around the fact that a vast majority of voters will not
trust the IRS to implement the greatest piece of social legislation in
decades. Before the tempests, Obamacare was unpopular and largely
misunderstood by most Americans. The law’s success hinges on the
government recruiting young adults into insurance pools. And polls show
young adults are the least likely to trust government.
- Layer the White House communication team with experienced crisis managers. Obama needs to realize that the dedicated public servants in the West Wing are not getting the job done.
- Apologize to the AP and announce a new policy for leaks investigations. The
White House needs to punish people who leak classified information
that endangers national security. But the scope of the snooping at AP
combined with Obama's unprecedented zeal for leaks investigations
raises doubts about his commitment to transparency and to an unfettered
media.
- Appoint a special prosecutor on the IRS. We
need a special prosecutor with a narrowly defined mission to
investigate the actions and motives of IRS agents and their superiors.
Is there a better way to restore the agency’s integrity? The
administration investigating itself will not lift the cloud from Obama’s
White House
May 18: Politico: What to take away from the IRS Hearings:
The ousted head of the IRS was grilled for four hours
Friday, but we still don’t know how the tea party targeting really
started. What we do know from the first hearing since the scandal
broke is that IRS officials haven’t convinced lawmakers they played it
straight with Congress. It’s not over for the IRS workers. And
witnesses are being beat up too much for these to be “just the facts”
hearings.
Here are the top takeaways from Friday’s hearing:
How’d this really start: Who knows?
The big question that’s on everyone’s mind didn’t get answered
during the House Ways and Means Committee hearing Friday: Who, exactly,
had the bright idea at the IRS to zero in on conservative groups with
search terms like “tea party” and “patriot”? Lawmakers asked Steven
Miller, the acting IRS commissioner who has since been forced to
resign, to detail how the targeting program began — but his answers
didn’t clear up what happened or why. Miller and inspector general
J. Russell George both denied that there were political motives behind
the extra review given to conservative groups. “My understanding is
that the cases that went into this queue included groups from across
the political spectrum,” Miller said. But under questioning from Paul
Ryan of Wisconsin, Miller said agents did not create search terms more
commonly associated with liberal groups like “progress” or “organizing.”
May 18: Fox News: Republicans: IRS scandal shows agency 'rotten at the core,' needs major reform:
The IRS targeting Tea Party groups and other
conservative-leaning political organizations has reignited calls for
reform and the argument among Capitol Hill Republicans that the federal
government has become too big and out of control.
Among those leading the calls for reform is Michigan
Congressman Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee,
which held a hearing on the scandal five days after the targeting was
made public and two days after the resignation of acting IRS
Commissioner Steven Miller. “This systemic abuse cannot be fixed with
just one resignation,” Camp said at the start of the hearing
Wednesday. “This is a problem of the IRS being too large, too powerful,
too intrusive and too abusive of honest, hardworking taxpayers.”
May 18: The Daily Caller: “It’s scary”: Records show IRS officials independently targeted conservative groups:
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.
May 18: The Hill: Complaints of IRS targeting of religious groups on the rise:
The number of religious groups reporting they were improperly
targeted by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is increasing.
At least a half-dozen conservative groups say they received an
unusual degree of scrutiny from the IRS, according to the Religion New
Service, a non-profit news service operated out of the University of
Missouri’s journalism school. Earlier this week Rev. Billy
Graham’s son made headlines with a letter to President Obama accusing
the administration of targeting the Samaritan's Purse charity and the
Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in an attempt to intimidate the
group. Since then, the Catholics United Education Fund and the
Christian Voices for Life have reported significant delays in their
applications for tax-exempt status from the IRS.
The Coalition for Life of Iowa also said that it took
unusually long to receive their tax exempt status, according to the
Thomas More Society, a non-profit group focused on supporting pro-life
causes.
At a House hearings investigating the IRS abuses on Friday, Rep.
Aaron Schock (R-IL) called attention to The Coalition for Life of
Iowa’s complaint, citing one particular question that the group was
asked by the agency. “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. Would that be an
inappropriate question to a 501 c3 applicant? The content of one’s
prayers?” asked Schock of the IRS’s former acting commissioner, Steven
Miller.
Additionally, a North Carolina newsletter, the
Biblical Recorder, reported receiving an audit after coming out in support of a state amendment banning gay marriage.
May 17: Politico: Darrell Issa calls top Treasury official to testify on IRS:
The Obama administration will face more questions over its role
in the IRS scandal next week when a top Treasury Department official
will testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee. Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin will appear at a panel
hearing on Wednesday, a committee aide tells Politico. He’ll testify
alongside J. Russell George, the IRS inspector general who released a
damaging report this week that slammed lax management at the agency.
IRS commissioners technically report to the deputy Treasury
secretary so Wolin’s testimony will provide important insight into what
the administration knew about the agency’s practice of subjecting
conservative groups to extra scrutiny as they applied for a tax
exemption. In the first congressional hearing on the debacle this
morning, acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller reiterated earlier
agency statements that there wasn’t any communication with the White
House about the program. President Barack Obama has said he only
learned of the activity when news reports surfaced on May 10.
Wolin will be the first administration official to testify before
Congress on the scandal, which has cost two IRS officials their jobs
this week. Wolin worked closely with former Treasury Secretary Timothy
Geithner and speculation has swirled that he plans to soon leave the
administration.
May 17: The Weekly Standard: Report: IRS Deliberately Chose Not to Fess Up to Scandal Before Election:
NBC's Lisa Myers reported this morning that the IRS deliberately
chose not to reveal that it had wrongly targeted conservative groups
until after the 2012 presidential election: [video] The IRS
commissioner "has known for at least a year that this was going on,"
said Myers, "and that this had happened. And did he share any of that
information with the White House? But even more importantly, Congress is
going to ask him, why did you mislead us for an entire year? Members
of Congress were saying conservatives are being targeted. What's going
on here? The IRS denied it. Then when -- after these officials are
briefed by the IG that this is going on, they don't disclose it. In
fact, the commissioner sent a letter to Congress in September on this
subject and did not reveal this. Imagine if we -- if you can -- what
would have happened if this fact came out in September 2012, in the
middle of a presidential election? The terrain would have looked very
different."
May 17: The Daily Caller: Lerner’s admission of IRS’s inappropriate behavior was pre-planned public disclosure:
Last week, Lois Lerner, head of the
tax exempt division of the Internal Revenue Service dropped a
bombshell: The IRS had been applying extra scrutiny to conservative
groups claiming tax exempt status.
The revelation came seemingly out of the blue, in response to a
question during a panel at an American Bar Association conference,
leaving the audience baffled, according to reports.
As it turns out, it was not a spontaneous revelation. The
question, said outgoing IRS Commissioner Steven Miller in testimony
before the House Ways and Means Committee Friday, was planted, as part
of a prepared strategy for the IRS to release this information to the
public.
Under questioning from Republican Rep. Devin Nunes,
Miller said it was a “prepared Q and A,” and the question, which came
from tax lawyer Celia Roady had been discussed in advance as well.
Roady told U.S. News and World Report later Friday afternoon that
Lerner had personally contacted her and requested she ask the specific
question. Roady said she did not know at the time what Lerner’s answer
would be. Later, Miller, questioned by Rep. Peter Roskam,
explained that the disclosure had been made to coincide with the
conclusion of the inspector general’s report. Miller said he and
Lerner discussed, in a what he believed was a phone conversation,
whether “now that the TIGTA report was finalized, now that we knew all
of the facts … did it make sense for us to start talking about this in
public.” Asked why he had not first reached out to the committee
to tell them, Miller first said they had planned “to do that at the
same time,” but that “did not happen.” He later said they “were
reaching out to this committee at the same time,” and that they had
“called to try to get on the calendar.”
May 17: Real Clear Politics: GOP Congressman Mike Kelly Receives Standing Ovation After He Rips IRS Commissioner:
Congressman Mike Kelly (R-PA): This has nothing to do with
political parties. This has to do with highly targeted groups. This
reconfirms everything the American public believes. This is a huge blow
to the faith and trust that the American people have in their
government. Is there any limit to the scope where you folks can go? Is
there anything at all? Is there any way that we could ask you is there
any question that you should have asked?
My goodness. How much money do you have in your wallet? Who do
you get emails from? Whose sign do you put up in your front yard? This
is a tax question? And you don't think that's intimidating? It's sure
as hell intimidating. And I don't know that I got any answers from you
today. And I don't know that -- what Mr. George said is great work --
but you know what? There's a heck of a lot more that has to come out in
this. Any anybody that sat here today and listened to what you had to
say, I am more concerned today than I was before, and the fact that you
all can do just about anything you want to anybody?
You know, you can put anybody out of business that you want. Any
time you want. I gotta tell you. You could talk about how you're a
horribly run organization, if you're on the other side of the fence,
you're not giving that excuse. And the IRS comes in, you're not allowed
to be shoddy, you're not allowed to be run horribly, you're not
allowed to make mistakes, you're not allowed to do one damn thing that
doesn't come in compliance, and if you do, you're held responsible
right then. I just think the American people have seen what's going on
right now in their government. This is absolutely an overreach and this
is an outrage for all Americans.
May 17: The Washington Times: Rep. Dave Camp accuses White House of ‘cover-up’ in IRS scandal
The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday
said the IRS scandal shows a “culture of cover-ups” and “political
intimidation” within the Obama Administration.
Dave Camp, Michigan Republican, while speaking at a hearing his
panel held regarding the IRS's improper targeting of tea party and
other conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status, suggested the
White House hid the scandal until after the 2012 elections. “This
appears to be just the latest example of a culture of cover-ups and
political intimidation in this administration,” said Camp at the nearly
four-hour hearing, the first of several that will take place on Capitol
Hill on the matter. Camp said the IRS scandal shows the tax-collecting
agency has become too large and powerful and called for widespread
reforms within he agency.“This systematic abuse cannot be fixed with
just one resignation or two,” he said. “And as much as I expect more
people need to go, the reality is this is not a personnel problem.”
Lawmakers from both parties — though especially Republicans — grilled
Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, the hearing key witness, who
apologized for his agency’s targeting conservative groups. “The
effected organizations and the public deserve better,” Miller said.
“Partisanship or even the perception of partisanship has no place at the
IRS.”
May 17: The Washington Examiner: Senator Baucus warns of more to come in IRS scandal:
Senior Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, who recently slapped Obamacare
as a "train wreck," believes that the IRS scandal is just beginning
and that "a lot more" damaging information will be revealed, likely at
congressional hearings. "I have a hunch that a lot more is going to come
out, frankly," Baucus, whose pending retirement seems to have freed
him up to speak bluntly, told Bloomberg Government's "Capitol Gains"
TV show."It's broader than the current focus. And I think it's
important that we have the hearings, and I think that will encourage
other information to come out that has not yet come out. I suspect that
we will learn more in the next several days, maybe the next couple
three weeks which adds more context to all of this," added Baucus,
chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
But a House leader, Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp,
said the scandal hasn't reached the level where a special prosecutor is
warranted. "I don't think we're [at the point of appointing a special
counsel]. At least I'm not there yet," Camp told the show. "We need to
know how and why and certainly try to restore the faith that's been
broken and the trust that's been broken as people have been targeted for
their political beliefs, which is completely unacceptable."
May 17: Fox News:
Tables turn on IRS, lawmakers grill outgoing agency chief at heated hearing:
For the first time in years, the IRS was knocked down a peg or
two. In a hearing that escalated into a boisterous public shaming
of one of the country's most-feared government agencies, lawmakers took
turns Friday calling outgoing IRS Commissioner Steven Miller on the
carpet for his department's scandalous practice of targeting
conservative groups. Miller rebuffed attempts to extract the
names of those responsible, saying he did not know. But lawmakers vowed
that the tense hearing would mark only the start of a series of
investigations, in which criminal activity could be probed.
Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., seemed to capture the angst
against the agency toward the end of the hours-long hearing, as he
described the ways its agents are capable of ruining lives.
"You can put anybody out of business that you want. ... When the IRS
comes in there, you're not allowed to be shoddy," he said, suggesting
the agency's leadership was being held to a different standard now that
it is coming under scrutiny. "This is absolutely an overreach,
and this is an outrage for all Americans," he said.
May 17: C-Span: Video of the House Ways and Means and Committee Hearing on IRS Targeting Abuses:
Fifty minutes into the hearing Congressman Kevin Brady (R-TX)
who represents the Huntsville-Conroe area questioned Steve Miller, the
outgoing IRS Commissioner. I think you will find the dialogue
interesting. Here is a summary:
Mr. Brady describes what happened to one of his constituents, a
small businesswoman, when she applied in July 2010 for tax exempt
status for the TEA party she headed. Twenty months later she received a
follow up letter from the IRS with numerous questions, many of them
intrusive, but she answered them well within the two weeks required in
the letter. Now, nearly three years later, her application is still
pending. But let’s look at what happened to her in the three years
since she applied: In Dec 2010 she was visited by the FBI Domestic
Anti-terrorism Unit; her personal and business returns were both
audited by the IRS; she received four FBI inquiries; her business
received audits, unscheduled audits, by OSHA, the Commission on
Environmental Quality, and the ATF (twice). “Now this is a small
businesswoman who had never been audited by any of these agencies until
she applied for tax exempt status to you (the IRS) for her TEA Party.
There is a broader question here. Is this still America? Is this
government so drunk on power that it would turn its full force, its
full might, to harass and intimidate and threaten an average American
who only wants her voice heard?” Congressman Brady then asked the
IRS witness, Steve Miller, for the names of the people who are
responsible for these abuses. The witness evaded the question.
“Can you assure this committee that none of the information
provided to the IRS by these groups was shared or given to any other
federal agency?” Brady asked. “I believe that would be a violation of
law and I do not believe that happened.” Miller responded. "I would be
shocked if that happened!"
May 16: WashingtonExaminer.com | Fox News:
IRS “Targeting” Executive Gets $100K+in Bonuses and Promotion to Oversee Obamacare Enforcement!
Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS executive in charge of the tax
exempt division in 2010 when it began targeting conservative Tea Party,
evangelical and pro-Israel groups for harassment, got more than
$100,000 in bonuses between 2009 and 2012. More recently, Ingram was
promoted to serve as director of the tax agency's Obamacare program
office, a position that put her in charge of the vast expansion of the
IRS' regulatory power and staffing in connection with federal health
care, ABC reported earlier today. Ingram received a $7,000 bonus in
2009, according to data obtained by
The Washington Examiner
from the IRS, then a $34,440 bonus in 2010, $35,400 in 2011 and $26,550
last year, for a total of $103,390. Her annual salary went from
$172,500 to $177,000 during the same period.
May 16: The Daily Caller:
Tea Party Leaders Want Media Apology for failing to take reports of IRS targeting seriously.
At least one tea party leader has had employees at a major
national newspaper and a major Ohio newspaper apologize to him for
failing to take his concerns about the Internal Revenue Service
targeting tea party groups seriously last year, though he wouldn’t say
who specifically. “I actually have had several [members] of the media
apologize to me today and yesterday,” Tom Zawistowski, former leader of
the Ohio Liberty Coalition and current president of We the People
Convention, Inc. and head of the Portage County Tea Party, said at a
FreedomWorks roundtable event Thursday. “They said, ‘Tom I want to
apologize to you because when this story came out last year it was so
over the top I didn’t believe it, and I didn’t believe it and I
questioned it and I didn’t really look into it and then when the IRS
commissioner came out and testified to Congress and said, ‘There is no
targeting of the tea party, I shut it down,’” he said.
I can tell you that when I addressed this issue in
March of last year it went absolutely nowhere! See the press release I
provided to the media and
posted on this Website.
May 16: The Daily Caller: Obama evades question on White House knowledge of IRS targeting
President Barack Obama dismissed calls for the appointment of a
special prosecutor to investigate the IRS scandal, and evaded a
question asking if White House officials knew of the IRS targeting of
conservative political groups. “I can assure that I certainly did not
know anything about the [inspector general] report before the IG report
had been leaked through the press,” he told reporters during a
Thursday lunchtime press conference held in the White House Rose
Garden. Obama’s evasion will likely spur public suspicions that White
House officials knew about, or even supported, the IRS targeting. When
asked about a special prosecutor, Obama said he would work with
investigations begun by Congress and the Department of Justice.
May 16: The Hill: Obama Appoints Werfel as New IRS Commissioner:
President Obama on Thursday appointed Office of Management and
Budget (OMB) Controller Danny Werfel as acting commissioner of the
Internal Revenue Service. Steven Miller, the acting IRS
commissioner, stepped down on Wednesday amid a growing scandal after it
was discovered that the IRS targeted conservative groups based on
their politics. Over the last year at OMB, Werfel, who also
worked at OMB under President George W. Bush's administration, has been
charged with planning out how the sequester would be implemented.
The White House announced President Obama was
appointing Werfel, 42, in a press release. “Throughout his career
working in both Democratic and Republican administrations, Danny has
proven an effective leader who serves with professionalism, integrity
and skill," Obama said. "The American people deserve to have the utmost
confidence and trust in their government, and as we work to get to the
bottom of what happened and restore confidence in the IRS, Danny has
the experience and management ability necessary to lead the agency at
this important time.”
May 16: The Daily Caller: Tea party groups speak out against the IRS: ‘Folks, this is bad’
Tea party leaders spoke out Thursday about their experience with
the Internal Revenue Service and warned others that it could happen to
them too. “We want to make sure every American understands what tyranny
looks like and what we can do as citizens to regain our voice, to
regain our rights, to ensure that this administration or the next one
after it never does this again,” Matt Kibbe, president and CEO of
FreedomWorks said at a tea party roundtable Thursday afternoon.
Katrina Pierson of the Dallas Tea Party said that the
scandal has shed further light on one of the reasons the tea party
started: concern about overreach and abuse of government.
The IRS requested the Dallas Tea Party’s campaign contribution
lists and membership communications. The group ended up having to
compile and send about six inches of documents in two weeks. The group
still has yet to receive its tax-exempt status. “How many scandals is
it going to take for the American people to stand up and take back what
is rightfully theirs?” Pierson asked.
May 16: Fox News Latino: Conservative Hispanic Groups Targeted In IRS Scandal:
The Internal Revenue Service scandal involving the apparently
unjustified targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups has
also hit home with the Hispanic community. George Rodriguez,
former president of the San Antonio Tea Party, said that when the
organization applied for non-profit status, leaders were intimidated by
IRS workers with excessive paperwork and meddling questions.
“They asked us all sorts of things that were out of the norm,”
Rodriguez, now head of the conservative South Texas Alliance, told
Fox News Latino. “We knew these questions were not the norm and we had our suspicions about them.”
Rodriguez said the group received a questionnaire from the IRS
with “well over 50 questions,” including inquiries into who the group
met with, where they held their meetings, who was in attendance and
what the subject of their internal emails were. “They should have been
worried about the numbers, not who we were meeting with,” he added. “It
was flat-out dirty politics.”
May 15: The Daily Caller: IRS to be sued over targeting
The American Center for Law and Justice expects to file suit in
federal court over the targeting of fourteen of its clients by the IRS
soon. Jay Sekulow, ACLJ chief counsel, told The Daily Caller
Wednesday he expects to file suit next week and has a team of lawyers
working on the issue. ACLJ has not decided whether it will file one
class action suit on behalf their aggrieved clients or separate suits.
“We are looking at the issue of whether it could be certified as a class
or whether we would have to bring each claim as an individual claim,”
he explained. “Which would mean we would be filing some in Cincinnati
or the District Courts in Ohio, some in the district courts in
California, some in the District of Columbia. We are looking at all
that.”
According to Sekulow, it is too early in their review process
to know whether the conservative groups that the IRS targeted for
enhanced scrutiny would qualify as “a class certifiable action.” “You
have a number of aggrieved parties coming out of the same targeting, so
we are looking at [a class action suit],” he explained. “The difference
in our case is — this is the technical side — some have been granted
status and they still may be filing suit because of the fact that they
were targeted.”
Of the 27 Tea Party groups ACLJ represents, 10 are
still awaiting responses on their tax exempt status and this week
received another letter of inquiry about one of their clients from the
IRS. Currently ACLJ has 14 plaintiffs.
May 15: Townhall.com:
IRS Spared Liberal Groups as Tea Party Languished – Appears 500 may have been targeted:
Remember what we were told when this explosive story first broke
less than a week ago? The IRS official in charge of tax exemptions
for organizations said the improper methods employed within her
division were executed by "low level workers" in Cincinnati who weren't
motivated by "political bias," and impacted roughly 75 organizations?
Wrong, wrong and wrong:
-
"Seventy-five organizations effected" - That number almost immediately swelled to 300. Now it's closer to 500;
-
"Low Level" - Officials within the
highest echelons of the agency were aware of the inappropriate
targeting, including the last two commissioners -- at least one of whom
appears to have misled Congress on this very question. Now
Politico reports that Lerner herself sent at least one of the probing letters to an Ohio-based conservative group.
-
"No Political Bias" - This claim was
laughable on its face from the start, in light of the agency's surreal
criteria for added scrutiny and the "red flag" words and phrases that
triggered investigations. Now add to the mix this scoop from
USA Today
May 15: The Hill | The Daily Caller:
First Heads Roll in IRS Scandal
Acting Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Steven Miller
resigned on Wednesday over his role in the agency’s controversial
singling out of conservative groups. President Obama announced the
resignation — which Treasury Secretary Jack Lew asked for earlier in
the day — at the White House. Miller, a 25-year veteran of the IRS,
became the first official to lose his job in the uproar over the
agency’s actions, which have consumed Washington and the Obama
administration since they were revealed last week. The president said
he has urged Lew to quickly implement recommendations from a Treasury
audit, and vowed that the White House would work closely with Congress
as it investigates the matter. Top Republicans had said that Miller,
who found out about the targeting in May of 2012, had misled them about
the IRS’s actions.
May 15: The Daily Caller: Krauthammer: Obama IRS scandal statement ‘a holding operation,’ ‘the absolute minimum’
Immediately following President Barack Obama’s remarks on
Wednesday about the current scandal embroiling the Internal Revenue
Service, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer reacted by
downplaying the gesture. “That was a holding operation,” Krauthammer
said. “That was the absolute minimum he could have done. He relieves
one person. He obviously had to. He had to relieve at least one person.
And he chose, of course, the acting commissioner. But, I would have
expected more. The other actions he announced are, up to now,
meaningless. Obama and this administration have said a hundred times
they’re going to hold x, y, z accountable for all kinds of behavior —
in Benghazi, regarding a lot of other scandals. It means nothing.”
May 15: Politico: Resignation won’t plug the IRS leadership gap
The resignation of Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller might offer a
cathartic moment for an angry tax paying public — but it won’t right
the ship at the troubled agency. There are no clear candidates
inside the agency who would have the gravitas to overhaul the IRS,
rehabilitate it, and bring a sense of moral authority to the job —
while effectively dealing with a voracious congressional opposition.
But it might also be impossible to get a prominent outside candidate
confirmed in a divided Senate. President Barack Obama did not
announce a replacement for Miller in his brief remarks Wednesday night
announcing the resignation, and it remains unclear whether he’ll tap
someone from inside the bureaucracy or look for a high profile outsider
to come in and shape up the agency.
The new commissioner will face two major challenges: First,
the nominee will have to fix the flawed internal policies that led to
the scandal of the IRS targeting conservative groups, and the new
commissioner may be charged with overhauling the entire process for
auditing politically oriented nonprofits. Second, the next IRS leader
has a massive public relations job to carry out, convincing Congress
and the American public that the agency can get back on track and
become a trusted government entity again.
May 15: The Daily Caller:
Holder: We will bring criminal actions -- against whom is yet to be determined -- so this doesn’t happen again:
Attorney General Eric Holder promised criminal action Wednesday in
the Internal Revenue Service scandal, but said he does not know who
will be targeted. On Tuesday, Holder announced he would launch a
criminal investigation into the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups
for heightened scrutiny. “We have to bring criminal actions so that
this kind of activity does not happen again,” Holder said Wednesday
before the House Judiciary Committee. Against whom those criminal
actions would be taken, however, Holder was not yet sure.
Was he saying we need to take some kind on action and hang this on
somebody? If so, watch out, they are looking for a person other than
themselves to pin it on!
May 15: Politico: The IRS wants you to share Everything!
The Internal Revenue Service asked tea party groups to see donor
rolls. It asked for printouts of Facebook posts. And it asked what
books people were reading. A Politico review of documents from 11 tea
party and conservative groups that the IRS scrutinized in 2012 shows
the agency wanted to know everything — in some cases, it even seemed
curious what members were thinking. The review included interviews
with groups or their representatives from Hawaii, New Mexico, Ohio,
Texas and elsewhere.
The long-awaited Treasury Department inspector general
report released
Tuesday says the agency itself decided some of its questions to
conservative groups were way over the line — especially the one about
donors. But interviews with members of the groups paint a more dramatic
picture than the bland language of the report, which just says the IRS
“requested irrelevant (unnecessary) information because of a lack of
managerial review, at all levels, of questions before they were sent
to organizations seeking tax-exempt status." " They were asking for a
U-Haul truck’s worth of information,” said Toby Marie Walker, the
president of the Waco Tea Party.
May 15: The Blaze: ‘Very
Frightening’: Prominent Catholic Prof. Claims IRS Audited Her After
Speaking Out Against Obama and Demanded to Know Who Was Paying Her:
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 The Blaze 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.
May 14: USA Today: Interesting Data on IRS Approvals of Tax Exempt Applications:
In February 2010, the Champaign Tea Party in Illinois received
approval of its tax-exempt status from the IRS in 90 days, no
questions asked. That was the month before the Internal Revenue
Service started singling out Tea Party groups for special treatment.
There wouldn't be another Tea Party application approved for 27 months.
In that time, the IRS approved perhaps dozens of applications from
similar liberal and progressive groups, a USA TODAY review of IRS data
shows.
As applications from conservative groups sat in limbo, groups
with liberal-sounding names had their applications approved in as
little as nine months. With names including words like "Progress" or
"Progressive," the liberal groups applied for the same tax status and
were engaged in the same kinds of activities as the conservative
groups. They included:
• Bus for Progress, a New Jersey non-profit that uses a red,
white and blue bus to "drive the progressive change." According to its
website, its mission includes "support (for) progressive politicians
with the courage to serve the people's interests and make tough
choices." It got an IRS approval as a social welfare group in April
2011.
• Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment says it
fights against corporate welfare and for increasing the minimum wage.
"It would be fair to say we're on the progressive end of the
spectrum," said executive director Jeff Ordower. He said the group got
tax-exempt status in September 2011 in just nine months after "a
pretty simple, straightforward process."
• Progress Florida, granted tax-exempt status in January
2011, is lobbying the Florida Legislature to expand Medicaid under a
provision of the Affordable Care Act, one of President Obama's
signature accomplishments. The group did not return phone calls.
"We're busy fighting to build a more progressive Florida and cannot
take your call right now," the group's voice mail said.
Like the Tea Party groups, the liberal groups sought
recognition as social welfare groups under Section 501(c)(4) of the
tax code, based on activities like "citizen participation" or "voter
education and registration."
May 14: Politico: Watchdog: The IRS used criteria:
The Internal Revenue Service used “inappropriate criteria” to
select conservative groups applying for nonprofit status for
additional scrutiny, according to a watchdog report obtained by
Politico. The 48-page report is a stinging rebuke of an agency
suddenly surrounded by scandal. Attorney General Eric Holder announced
Tuesday he is launching a criminal probe of the agency’s actions.
“The inappropriate and changing criteria may have led to inconsistent
treatment of organizations applying for tax-exempt status,” according to
the report prepared by the Treasury inspector general for tax
administration.
The criteria led to “substantial delays in processing certain
applications and allowed unnecessary information requests to be
issued,” the report says. IRS employees also inappropriately requested
the political affiliations of members of the groups seeking nonprofit
designation.
[See a copy of the Report]
May 14: The Weekly Standard:
Just because the IRS apologized, it doesn't mean they did something wrong! Really?
"If I could then go back to the IRS issue," said a reporter from the AP. "The president did use the word '
if
these activities had taken place,' but there has been an
acknowledgment on the part of the IRS leadership that these things did
indeed occur. I wondered why the president used that phrasing in
claiming that it was outrageous?"
"Those from the IRS that have spoken about this obviously have
much greater insight into what took place than we do. We have not seen
the report. We have not independently collected information about
what transpired. We need the independent inspector general's report to
be released before we can make judgments. One person's view of what
actions were taken or what that individual did is not enough for us to
say something concretely happened that was inappropriate,"
Presidential spokesman Carney said.
May 14: The Daily Caller:
Reports of IRS sending confidential info on conservative groups to liberal non-profit organization:
The division of the Internal Revenue Service that improperly
scrutinized the tax-exempt status of conservative groups sent
confidential information on 31 conservative groups to the well-funded
liberal nonprofit journalism organization ProPublica, according to a
revelation made by ProPublica Monday. “The same IRS office that
deliberately targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status
in the run-up to the 2012 election released nine pending confidential
applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year,” the
report discloses.
“In response to a request for the applications for 67 different
nonprofits last November, the Cincinnati office of the IRS sent
ProPublica applications or documentation for 31 groups. Nine of those
applications had not yet been approved — meaning they were not supposed
to be made public. (We made six of those public, after redacting their
financial information, deeming that they were newsworthy.),” according
to ProPublica.
May 14: Fox News: Hatch: The IRS purposefully misled me!
Republicans are training their attacks on acting IRS Commissioner
Steve Miller amid new revelations that he and the agency’s former top
official knew employees were targeting conservative groups but failed to
notify Congress despite repeated requests. Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch,
the top Republican on the Finance Committee, and 10 other GOP lawmakers
wrote to then-IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman on June 18, 2012 demanding
answers about why the agency requested donor information from groups
seeking nonprofit status.
(Also see March 2012 post below)
By the time this letter was sent, Shulman and Miller, who was
the deputy IRS commissioner at the time, were aware of the extent of
the targeting program for about a month. Still, in a Sept. 11, 2012
response to the letter, Miller offered a broad interpretation of the
law allowing the request for donor information and said nothing about
the targeting practice. “They purposefully misled me,” Hatch told
reporters on Tuesday. “I am very upset about it. This should have never
happened.”
May: 14: Politico: Scandal and politics sweep Capitol Hill:
Just days after news broke that the IRS targeted conservative
nonprofits, Speaker John Boehner's House committees will morph into
mock courtrooms where the White House will be the defendant in what
amounts to a number of high-stakes political trials. The most recent
scandal to grip the Obama administration came Monday evening, when The
Associated Press disclosed that the Justice Department sought its
reporters’ phone records — including those of correspondents who sit
in the Capitol. Within hours, House Republicans vowed to investigate.
To make things worse for President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric
Holder is scheduled to be on Capitol Hill Wednesday for a House
Judiciary Committee hearing.
That’s hardly the president’s only problem. Two separate
committees — Oversight and Government Reform, and Ways and Means —
will probe whether the IRS was treating right-leaning groups unfairly.
Republicans moved swiftly to secure the IRS acting director for a
Friday hearing, just a week after the news broke. GOP aides hinted
Monday afternoon that widespread calls for the director’s resignation
could come shortly.
May 14: CNSNews.com: IRS will not confirm whether it will comply with request from House Ways and Means:
The Internal Revenue Service has given no indication to the House
Ways and Means Committee about whether it will respond to the
committee’s demand, delivered in writing last Friday, that the agency
hand over copies of all internal communications containing the words
“tea party,” “patriot,” or “conservative” and the names and titles of
all IRS officials involved in discriminating against tea party and
conservative groups when they submitted applications for tax-exempt
status.
IRS spokesmen also did not respond to repeated emailed and
telephone inquiries that CNSNews.com made between Friday afternoon
and Tuesday morning asking if the IRS intended to comply with the
committee’s demand--and if not, why not.
May 13: Larry Conners - KMOV News Facebook Post: IRS: Direct Hit or Co-incidence?
Shortly after I did my April 2012
interview with President Obama, my wife, friends and some viewers
suggested that I might need to watch out for the IRS. I don't
accept "conspiracy theories", but I do know that almost immediately
after the interview, the IRS started hammering me. At the time, I
dismissed the "co-incidence", but now, I have concerns ... after
revelations about the IRS targeting various groups and their members.
Originally, the IRS
apologized for red-flagging conservative groups and their members if
they had "Tea Party" or "patriot" in their name. Today, there
are allegations that the IRS focused on various groups and/or
individuals questioning or criticizing government spending, taxes,
debt or how the government is run ... any involved in
limiting/expanding government, educating on the constitution and bill
of rights, or social economic reform/movement.
May 13: The Hill: House Ways and Means sets hearings on IRS Targeting of Conservative Groups:
The House Ways and Means Committee will examine the Internal
Revenue Service's targeting of Tea Party groups at a hearing Friday.
The panel announced the hearing Monday, which will occur exactly one
week after IRS officials apologized for applying additional scrutiny
to groups applying for tax-exempt status that had the words "Tea
Party" or "patriot" in their names. Members of both parties vowed a
thorough investigation into the matter.
"News that the agency admits it targeted American taxpayers
based on politics is both astounding and appalling," said Chairman
Dave Camp (R-MI). "The Committee on Ways and Means will get to the
bottom of this practice and ensure it never takes place again.”
"The nation deserves a complete understanding of this matter,
and as Chairman Camp and I discussed this morning, it is essential
that there be a thorough and bipartisan investigation and effective
remedial action," said Rep. Sandy Levin (D-MI), the ranking member of
the panel.
May 13: The Hill: Majority Leader Reid Promises Actions on IRS Scandal:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Monday said the
Senate would act if a report suggests more investigation is needed of
the Internal Revenue Service targeting conservative groups for
scrutiny. “These allegations of course are very troubling,” Reid said
on the Senate floor Monday. “As soon as we have the inspector
general's report, the Senate will swiftly take appropriate action."
Reid said that targeting groups for political reasons was “terrible" and
a "breach of the public's trust."
May 13: Fox News: IRS scrutiny went beyond Tea Party, targeting of conservative groups broader than thought:
An IRS campaign to apply additional scrutiny to conservative
groups went beyond targeting "Tea Party" and "patriot" groups to
include those focused on government spending, the Constitution and
several other broad areas. The additional guidelines created by the
agency were part of a time line, obtained by Fox News, from the
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which is looking
into the controversial IRS practice. IRS officials apologized Friday
for the scrutiny, but new information suggests senior leaders were
apprised of the effort as early as 2011 despite public denials from
the top. Republican lawmakers have vowed to investigate and hold
hearings, calling the revelations deeply troubling.
May 13: Politico: TEA Party Groups Threaten to Sue the IRS
Tea party groups on Monday are threatening to sue the Internal
Revenue Service after the agency admitted last week that it wrongly
targeted conservative groups applying for nonprofit status. “We are
looking at it pretty seriously,” said Dan Backer, a lawyer who
represents a half dozen conservative groups targeted by the IRS,
including Combat Veterans Training Group and TheTeaParty.net. “Given the
sheer scope of maleficence at the IRS, there may be a legal
recourse.” Backer said the IRS asked some of his clients for donor lists
and extensive information from their Facebook pages. The agency has
maintained that although its actions were inappropriate, laws weren’t
broken.
May 13: The Hill: White House knew of the IRS activities in April:
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. "But
that’s all they were informed as a normal sort of heads up. And we
have never — we don’t have access to, nor should we, the IG’s report
or any draft versions of it."
May 13: Politico: Obama says he has "No patience" for "outrageous" IRS mess
President Barack Obama said Monday that the alleged Internal
Revenue Service targeting of conservative political groups for extra
scrutiny is “outrageous,” and promised those responsible would be
“held accountable.”
“You don’t want the IRS ever being perceived to be biased and
anything less than neutral in terms of how they operate,” Obama said
at a joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron.
“I’ve got no patience with it, I will not tolerate it and we will
make sure we find out exactly what happened on this.” Obama’s comments
were his first on the situation since the IRS’s scrutiny of groups
with “tea party” and “patriot” in their names came to light on Friday.
We have learned that the White House Counsel's Office was informed of
the IRS activities in late April.
The IRS also targeted groups working to make “America a
better place to live” and ones focused on government spending and debt,
according to a draft report from the agency’s inspector general.
May 12: Associated Press | Politico: IRS Targeting of TEA Party called Chilling:
The Editor discussed
this story on March 16th of last year.
The IRS has been targeting conservative groups and in
particular the TEA party. AP now reports Republicans said Sunday that
the Internal Revenue Service's heightened scrutiny of conservative
political groups was "chilling" and further eroded public trust in
government.
Lawmakers said President Barack Obama personally should
apologize for targeting tea party organizations and they challenged the
tax agency's blaming of low-level workers. "I just don't buy that
this was a couple of rogue IRS employees," said Sen. Susan Collins,
R-ME. "After all, groups with `progressive' in their names were not
targeted similarly." If it were just a small number of
employees, she said, "then you would think that the high-level IRS
supervisors would have rushed to make this public, fired the employees
involved, apologized to the American people and informed Congress. None
of that happened in a timely way."
The IRS said Friday that it was sorry for what it called the
"inappropriate" targeting of the conservative groups during the 2012
election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status. The
agency blamed low-level employees, saying no high-level officials were
aware. But according to a draft of a watchdog's report obtained
Saturday by The Associated Press that seemingly contradicts public
statements by the IRS commissioner, senior IRS officials knew agents
were targeting tea party groups as early as 2011.
The Treasury Department's inspector general for tax
administration is expected to release the results of a nearly yearlong
investigation in the coming week.
Lois G. Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees
tax-exempt organizations, said last week that the practice was
initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by
political bias. But on June 29, 2011, Lerner learned at a
meeting that groups were being targeted, according to the watchdog's
report. At the meeting, she was told that groups with "Tea Party,"
`'Patriot" or "9/12 Project" in their names were being flagged for
additional and often burdensome scrutiny, the report says.
Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said "the conclusion that the IRS
came to is that they did have agents who were engaged in intimidation
of political groups is as dangerous a problem the government can have."
He added, "This should send a chill up your spine. ... I don't
know where it stops or who is involved." Congressional
Republicans already are conducting several investigations and asked for
more.
May 12: Politico: IRS officials Knew of TEA Party Targeting [Related Story]
May 12: The Daily Caller: ISSA – IRS “mea culpa” on TEA Party “not an honest one”
On this weekend’s broadcast of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” House
Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa dismissed the Internal
Revenue Service’s apology for targeting groups with the words “tea
party” and “patriot” for audits, something the AP reported the agency
had known about going back to 2011. Issa, a California
Republican, told moderator David Gregory that the apology from the IRS
on Friday was an insincere one only put out to spin the news. And he
likened it to the Obama administration handling of the Benghazi
terrorist attack.
The IRS quietly dropped the news of the audit abuses Friday, the
traditional day for burying embarrassing news. The announcement came
ahead of a pending inspector general’s report on the targeting of Obama
administration foes.
“They targeted conservatives for tax exempt status, but the
bottom line is they used keywords to go after conservatives,” Issa
said. “This is something where you have to institute changes to make
sure it doesn’t happen again. There has to be accountability for the
people who did it. And quite frankly, up until a few days ago, there’s
got to be accountability for people who were telling lies about it
being done.”
“And lastly, to be honest, one of the most offensive parts is,
my committee and — Jim Jordan and I instigated this investigation, got
the IG to do the investigation, before the IG’s report comes to the
public or to Congress as required by law, it’s leaked by the IRS to try
to spin the output,” he continued. “This mea culpa is not an honest
one. The honest one is, in fact, let’s see the– the IG report, let’s go
through it. And then let’s– just like the ambassador [Thomas
Pickering] said on the 29 changes, which we agree with, let’s see what
the instituted changes need to be to make this not happen again.”
May 11: National Review: IRS Inquisition of Jewish Groups:
In a related story the Associated Press revealed that the IRS
may also have given extra-special attention to the tax-exempt status of
some Jewish groups for political reasons. The passionately
pro-Israel organization Z STREET filed a lawsuit against the IRS,
claiming it had been told by an IRS agent that because the organization
was “connected to Israel,” its application for tax-exempt status would
receive additional scrutiny. This admission was made in response to a
query about the lengthy reveiw of Z STREET’s tax exempt status
application.
In addition, the IRS agent told a Z STREET representative that
the applications of some of those Israel-related organizations have
been assigned to “a special unit in the D.C. office to determine
whether the organization’s activities contradict the Administration’s
public policies.”
And at least one purely religious Jewish organization,
one not focused on Israel, was the recipient of bizarre and highly
inappropriate questions about Israel. Those questions also came from
the same non-profit division of the IRS at issue for inappropriately
targeting politically conservative groups. The IRS required that Jewish
organization to state “whether [it] supports the existence of the land
of Israel,” and also demanded the organization “[d]escribe [its]
religious belief system toward the land of Israel.”
May 10: CNSNews.com: Ways
and Means Committee to IRS: “Provide All Communications Containing the
Words ‘TEA Party’, ‘Patriot’, or ‘Conservative’ by Wednesday”
The House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight has thrown
down an investigative gauntlet to the Internal Revenue Service,
demanding that the agency hand over by next Wednesday every
communication in its records that includes the words “tea party,”
“patriot” or “conservative.”
The committee is also demanding of the IRS that by
next Wednesday it provide the committee with the names and titles of
all individuals who were involved in targeting conservative non-profit
groups for more intensive review of their applications for non-profit
status.
The request follows a report this morning from the Associated
Press that Lois Lerner, director of the IRS Exempt Organizations
Division, said at an American Bar Association conference that the IRS
had targeted for special review applications of non-profit groups that
included the words “tea party” or “patriot.”
“That was wrong,” the AP quoted Lerner as saying. “That was
absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and inappropriate. That’s not
how we go about selecting cases for further review.”
“The IRS would like to apologize for that,” Lerner said.
Lerner’s statement at the ABA conference, however,
seems to contradict testimony that then-IRS Commissioner Douglas
Shulman made in the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight on March
22, 2012.
At that hearing, Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Charles
Boustany (R-LA) specifically asked Shulman about allegations that the
IRS had been targeting Tea Party groups.
Mar. 16, 2012: Bill Sargent Calls for Ways and Means Committee Hearing on IRS Abuses:
Today, (March 2012), Bill Sargent, Candidate for Congressional
District 14, contacted Dave Camp (R-Mi), Chairman of House Ways and
Means and Chairman Charles Boustany, Jr. (R-LA), Chairman of the
Oversight Subcommittee of Ways and Means and urged them to hold
hearings on whether the IRS has been overreaching in its review
process and the extent to which there may have been targeting of
various conservative organizations such as the Liberty groups and the
TEA Party. Sargent strongly believes that the TEA Party brings an
important perspective to the table and would oppose any effort by the
IRS to treat them in a way that is different from any other 501(c)4
organization.
The House Ways and Means Committee and, in particular, their
Oversight Subcommittee, has direct oversight over the operations of
the Internal Revenue Services. "That is why I contacted them and asked
them to take a serious look at whether the IRS is targeting
conservative groups like the TEA Party," Sargent said. "It can be very
threatening when you get a 30-page questionnaire from the IRS and
your tax-exempt status hangs in the balance. We need to ensure that
there is no political motivation behind it," Sargent contended.
The
IRS division responsible for flagging Tea Party groups has long been
an agency afterthought, beset by mismanagement, financial constraints
and an unwillingness to spell out just what it expects from social
welfare nonprofits, former officials and experts say.
But by 1998, after hearings in which Republican Senator Trent Lott accused the IRS of "Gestapo-like"
tactics, a new law mandated the agency’s restructuring. In the years
that followed, the agency aimed to streamline. For most of the ‘90s,
the IRS had more than 100,000 employees. That number would drop every
year, to 
