BREAKING: Ethics Charges Filed for Multiple Democrat Senators for Corruption
One thing in particular that has been learned is that the IRS targeting occurred at the behest of several Democrat Senators, and that the IRS broke the law by providing tax information to these Senators and their allies in order to help the Democrat Party mitigate their losses in the 2010 and 2012 elections.
It all stems from President Obama and the Democrats frustration over the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that cleared the way for conservative and libertarian political groups to get more involved in the political process.
The Center for Competitive Politics, which opposes campaign finance restrictions and other limits on political speech, filed a complaint with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics against nine Democratic senators, most notably Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin of Illinois and Carl Levin of Michigan, for repeated lobbying of the IRS to probe conservative groups.David Keating, President of the organization, made note of the IRS abuses that occurred under President Nixon, and the laws passed after Watergate, by Democrats, that would purportedly prevent such abuse from occurring again, especially from the White House.
It also specifically cites Charles Schumer of New York, who was the lead author of letters to the IRS signed by Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire; Tom Udall of New Mexico; Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island; Al Franken of Minnesota; Michael Bennet of Colorado; and Jeff Merkley of Oregon.
“If someone in the White House was connected it would make it a real criminal violation and a very sensational thing,” Keating told TheBlaze. “I doubt that happened. But there was huge heat coming from the Senate.”A staffer for the Senate Ethics Committee refused to confirm whether the matter would be investigated, but said that all charges are taken seriously.
“I don’t think it’s ever appropriate for Congress to ask a law enforcement agency to go investigate this group, go audit that group,” he added. “Congress is not the FBI. It is not the Justice Department.”
The complaint says the senators interfered with executive branch agency proceeding, misused official resources for campaign purposes, gave at least the appearance of impropriety, and engaged in conduct that might reflect poorly on the Senate.The complaint also notes that the targeting began almost immediately after Obama called out the Supreme Court and disparaged their Citizens United decision during one of his State of the Union addresses, inferring that all conservative groups were only posing as non-profits, and taking advantage of loopholes to conduct partisan political business.
“All of these actions appear to have been undertaken for electoral, rather than official purposes – Sens. Durbin and Schumer, in particular, have openly stated as much,” the complaint says. “Additionally, Sen. Levin’s repeated requests for information, after being explicitly informed that the information could not lawfully be disclosed, violate Paragraph 2 of the Code of Ethics for U.S. Government Service. We request that the Committee, in accordance with its mandate, investigate each violation accordingly and impose appropriate sanctions.”
“Within days, a member of the United States Senate abused his office to advance his political party’s midterm election campaign efforts by using official resources to pressure the Internal Revenue Service to investigate certain conservative organizations that Democrats had not been able to silence with legislation,” the complaint says, referring to Sen. Max Baucus (D-Montana), who became the U.S. ambassador to China earlier this year.This could very well be the smoking gun behind the IRS attacks on conservative and Tea Party groups. The IRS would likely not have gone after these groups the way that they did if they hadn’t been pressured to do so by Democrats in Congress.
Levin, the chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, had 14 correspondence to and from IRS officials from March 2012 to March 2013, where he urged the IRS to probe the nonprofit groups. In one he called for the IRS to send “a message…to Section 501(c)(4) entities on an urgent basis.” He also asked the agency to provide tax information about the political activity of the groups, to which IRS officials told him they could not legally provide him.
The complaint says the action by the senators may have triggered audits, citing a May 12, 2011 article in the New York Times that reported the IRS is sent letters to donors of 501(c)(4) groups “informing [the donors] that their contributions may be subject to gift taxes depending on whether the donations exceeded limits under the tax laws.”
The Times said “[t]he timing of the agency’s moves, as the 2012 election cycle gets under way, is prompting some tax law and campaign finance experts to question whether the I.R.S. could be sending a signal in an effort to curtail big donations.”
The Citizens United decision, which leveled the playing field and allowed regular conservative citizens to compete in the political arena against the established leftist groups and unions, has proven to be a thorn in the side of Democrats. They hate that decision because it lessened the advantage they had built up through the unions and Democrat machinery.
There is likely still more to be learned about the IRS targeting scandal, and it is now more apparent than ever that there must be special prosecutors appointed who can conduct outside investigations and determine the involvement of the numerous Senators implicated, along with the Justice Department and the White House.
Please share this on Facebook and Twitter if you are glad Democrats are getting hit with ethics charges for their role in the IRS scandal, and think they ought to lose their seats in Congress as well.
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