As usual, the headline in the left-leaning media and the article that follows never tells the full story. The Governor of Wisconsin Scott Walker has been a target of the left for years now and the recall election that failed has made the left even more bitter. First an excerpt from TheHill.com
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) did not violate campaign finance laws during recall elections against him, the Wisconsin Supreme Court decided in an opinion released Thursday.
Wisconsin’s highest court ruled on Thursday that Walker did not illegally collaborate with conservative groups during 2011 and 2012 recall campaigns.
The ruling ends a significant legal challenge against Walker just three days after his entrance into the GOP’s 2016 presidential field. It halts any continuing investigation or legal discovery that could tarnish the Wisconsin governor’s image heading into next year.
The justices involved with the case split 4-2.
Justice Michael Gableman wrote in the court’s majority decision that the campaign finance law at issue in the case is “unconstitutionally overbroad and vague.”
“To be clear, this conclusion ends the John Doe investigation because the special prosecutor’s legal theory is unsupported in either reason or law,” he said. “Consequently, the investigation is closed.”
A twitter reaction sums it up well:
Read this absolutely brutal smackdown by WI Sup. Ct, at end of opinion striking down John Doe/Walker investigation. pic.twitter.com/HZXHh4vsxF
Last year’s predawn raids against Wisconsin conservatives and subsequent legal harassment from prosecutors suggest a police state.
In the predawn hours of October 3, 2013, armed deputies raided the homes of R.J. Johnson, Deborah Jordahl, and several others in a paramilitary style blitz across Wisconsin. The detainees weren’t terrorists bent on mass murder or the overthrow of the government. The agents weren’t looking for contraband narcotics or illegal firearms. In fact, no one was quite sure what they wanted, but agents got it all; computers, phones, business records, files, and communications dating back years. Deputies told the raided subjects to keep quiet or there would be consequences, as a pedophile might tell his prey.
The targets represent only a fraction of political activists sucked into Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm’s “John Doe”—a grand-jury-type mechanism Wisconsin prosecutors prefer for its secrecy. Chisholm accuses them of “illegal talking” by coordinating messaging, which is supposedly forbidden under Wisconsin’s prolix campaign finance code. The investigation, which Chisholm has expanded 18 times, has engulfed advocates, large and small, for years on end. His favorite tactic is bulk intimidation. Alongside raids and gag orders, he employs kitchen-sink subpoenas, many of which are eventually quashed at great legal expense. When he fails to get sufficient obeisance, he serves arrest warrants and sends people to jail on nonexistent charges. One judge reviewing a John Doe prosecutor’s actions stated, “The conduct described is nothing that we as Wisconsinites should be proud of, bottom line . . . . Mr. Landgraf was behaving badly, probably for political reasons.”
More:
Chisholm’s John Doe represents the worst kind of legal thuggery, rife with personal enmity, conflicts of interests, and professional skullduggery. Unfortunately victims are left with little practical recourse. The laws, judicial doctrines, and disciplinary structures that shield Chisholm and his cohorts should be reformed to prevent this type of abuse from ever happening again.
Only Conservatives Faced Chisholm’s Intimidation
Chisholm’s jihad against Walker’s allies has been clouded from the start. His personal antipathy for Walker is publicly known. His wife is a union steward reportedly brought by to tears by Walker’s union-busting Act 10. Both Chisholm and his wife have apparently attended anti-Act 10 union rallies. And according to whistleblower Michael Lutz, Chisholm considered it his “personal duty” to stop Walker
The 'progressive' Democrats are used to abusing their power and never being held accountable. Whether is is the GAB, IRS or any of the alphabet agencies of BIG government the 'progressives' think their ends always justify their means.
Judicial Watch puts some more pieces of the IRS scandal into place. The Obama administration's extensive effort to target his political opponents starting before the 2010 elections using the alphabet agencies of government is obvious.
Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released new Department of Justice (DOJ) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents that include an official “DOJ Recap” report detailing an October 2010 meeting between Lois Lerner, DOJ officials and the FBI to plan for the possible criminal prosecution of targeted nonprofit organizations for alleged illegal political activity.
The newly obtained records also reveal that the Obama DOJ wanted IRS employees who were going to testify to Congress to turn over documents to the DOJ before giving them to Congress. Records also detail how the Obama IRS gave the FBI 21 computer disks, containing 1.25 million pages of confidential IRS returns from 113,000 nonprofit social 501(c)(4) welfare groups – or nearly every 501(c)(4) in the United States – as part of its prosecution effort. According to a letter from then-House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, “This revelation likely means that the IRS – including possibly Lois Lerner – violated federal tax law by transmitting this information to the Justice Department.”
Judicial Watch continues.
The new IRSdocuments include a October 11, 2010 “DOJ Recap” memo sent by IRS Exempt Organizations Tax Law Specialist Siri Buller to Lerner and other top IRS officials explaining an October 8 meeting with representatives from the Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section and “one representative from the FBI” to discuss the possible criminal prosecution of nonprofit organizations for alleged political activity:
On October 8, 2010, Lois Lerner, Joe Urban [IRS Technical Advisor, TEGE], Judy Kindell [top aide to Lerner], Justin Lowe [Technical Advisor to the Commissioner of Tax-Exempt and Government Entities], and Siri Buller met with the section chief and other attorneys from the Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section, and one representative from the FBI, to discuss recent attention to the political activity of exempt organizations.
The section’s attorneys expressed concern that certain section 501(c) organizations are actually political committees “posing” as if they are not subject to FEC law, and therefore may be subject to criminal liability. The attorneys mentioned several possible theories to bring criminal charges under FEC law. In response, Lois and Judy eloquently explained the following points:
Under section 7805(b), we may only revoke or modify an organization’s exemption retroactively if it omitted or misstated a material fact or operated in a manner materially different from that originally represented.
If we do not have these misrepresentations, the organization may rely on our determination it is exempt. However, the likelihood of revocation is diminished by the fact that section 501(c)(4)-(c)(6) organizations are not required to apply for recognition of exemption.
We discussed the hypothetical situation of a section 501(c)(4) organization that declares itself exempt as a social welfare organization, but at the end of the taxable year has in fact functioned as a political organization. Judy explained that such an organization, in order to be in compliance, would simply file Form 1120-POL and paying tax at the highest corporate rate.
Lois stated that although we do not believe that organizations which are subject to a civil audit subsequently receive any type of immunity from a criminal investigation, she will refer them to individuals from CI who can better answer that question. She explained that we are legally required to separate the civil and criminal aspects of any examination and that while we do not have EO law experts in CI, our FIU agents are experienced in coordinating with CI.
The attorneys asked whether a change in the law is necessary, and whether a three-way partnership among DOJ, the FEC, and the IRS is possible to prevent prohibited activity by these organizations. Lois listed a number of obstacles to the attorneys’ theories:
[REDACTED]
She pointed to Revenue Ruling 2004-6, which was drafted in light of the electioneering communication rules before they were litigated.
Just prior this meeting, the IRS began the process of providing the FBI confidential taxpayer information on nonprofit groups. An IRS document confirms the IRS supplied the FBI with 21 disks containing 1.25 million pages of taxpayer records:
The coordination of the agencies with the administration and the Democrats in Congress is really no surprise, but does pose a final question.
The DOJ documents also include a July 16, 2013, email from an undisclosed Justice Department official to a lawyer for IRS employees asking that the Obama administration get information from congressional witnesses before Congress does:
One last issue. If any of your clients have documents they are providing to Congress that you can (or would like to) provide to us before their testimony, we would be pleased to receive them. We are 6103 authorized and I can connect you with TIGTA to confirm; we would like the unredacted documents.
“These new documents show that the Obama IRS scandal is also an Obama DOJ and FBI scandal,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The FBI and Justice Department worked with Lois Lerner and the IRS to concoct some reason to put President Obama’s opponents in jail before his reelection. And this abuse resulted in the FBI’s illegally obtaining confidential taxpayer information. How can the Justice Department and FBI investigate the very scandal in which they are implicated?”
*Obama's IRS also illegally leaked confidential tax documents of their political opponents to the liberal press during the 2012 election cycle.
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 IRS did not respond to requests Monday following up about that release, and whether it had determined how the applications were sent to ProPublica.
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.
ALL 9 of the groups are not only conservative, but one of the illegally leaked applications was for the Karl Rove lead Crossroads GPS, the largest and most hated group among them. Smaller and lesser known conservative groups confidential applications were also illegally leaked as Propublica reuports:
Applications were sent to ProPublica from five other social welfare groups that had told the IRS that they wouldn’t spend money to sway elections. The other groups ended up spending more than $5 million related to the election, mainly to support Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Much of that money was spent by the Arizona groupAmericans for Responsible Leadership. The remaining four groups that told the IRS they wouldn’t engage in political spending were Freedom Path, Rightchange.com II, America Is Not Stupid and A Better America Now.
The IRS also sent ProPublica the applications of three small conservative groups that told the agency that they would spend some money on politics: Citizen Awareness Project, the YG Network and SecureAmericaNow.org. (No unapproved applications from liberal groups were sent to ProPublica.)
That is right, NONE of the unapproved applications for liberal groups were leaked. The public and the press were eager to dismiss the targeting of conservatives by the Obama administration, BIG government and the Democrat party.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Sunday defended his decision to single out a key GOP group in a 2010 letter to the IRS.
Obama's IRS Targets Conservative Groups-Leaks Info
IRS cases were referred to ‘Group 7822’
The Internal Revenue Service diverted applications for tax-exempt status from tea party and like-minded organizations to a special track known as Group 7822 for special scrutiny, according to transcripts of an interview by congressional interrogators with a key IRS official.
A conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch, said it obtained an email chain from the Internal Revenue Service in which the department provided confidential tax information to the Federal Election Commission.
The watchdog group obtained the exchange from a freedom of information request made shortly after congressional investigators began prodding the agency on whether it inappropriately shared confidential tax information about a conservative group applying for tax-exempt status.
Lois Lerner Warned IRS Employees to Hide Information from Congress
A newly released email from former IRS employee Lois G. Lerner, sent just as the tea party targeting scandal was erupting, warned colleagues to “be cautious” about what information they put in emails because it could be turned over to Congress.
Targeting Conservatives: An IRS Political Timeline
President Obama spent months in 2010 warning Americans about the 'threat' to democracy posed by conservative groups, right at the time the IRS began targeting these groups.
A newly released email from former IRS employee Lois G. Lerner, sent just as the tea party targeting scandal was erupting, warned colleagues to “be cautious” about what information they put in emails because it could be turned over to Congress.
“I was cautioning folks about email and how we have had several occasions where Congress ask asked for emails and there has been an electronic search for responsive emails — so we need to be cautious about what we say in emails,” Ms. Lerner wrote in an April 9, 2013, message.
The message came less than two weeks after the IRS’s internal auditor shared a draft report with the agency accusing it of targeting tea party and conservative groups. A month after the email, Ms. Lerner would plant a question at a conference to reveal the scandal, just before the inspector general’s report was made public.
The email was turned over to the House oversight committee last week, more than a year after lawmakers sought it as part of their investigation into the IRS targeting.
Republicans said the email shows Ms. Lerner was aware Congress was probing the agency and that she was preparing to intentionally hide agency discussions from lawmakers.
Ms. Lerner’s emails have become a major scandal in and of themselves after the IRS revealed that her computer hard drive crashed in 2011, causing the agency to lose thousands of her messages.
The IRS went back and tried to recover some of the messages by asking others on the email chain to dig through their mailboxes, but the agency acknowledged some messages may be permanently lost.
Some Republicans have questioned whether the IRS took enough steps to try to recover the emails from the hard drive in 2011.
The House Ways and Means Committee has voted to 23-14 along party lines to refer former head of tax exempt groups at the IRS Lois Lerner to the Justice Department for prosecution. Although the details about exactly what charges will be have not yet been released, lawmakers are arguing Lerner has not been truthful with Congress or the IRS inspector general and leaked confidential tax information.
Last time a referral like this happened, it was to Major League Baseball player Roger Clemens, who was pursued by the Department of Justice for lying to Congress but was exonerated in court.
This is a test for the Department of Justice and the Obama administration. What's more important? Baseball and steroids? Or the most powerful federal agency abusing its power to target innocent conservative groups?
Last summer President Obama called the targeting "outrageous" and promised to hold people responsible and accountable for what happened. If the Justice Department refuses to pursue charges against Lerner, it's fair to say one reason is because they don't want information leading back to the administration coming out in court.
Tomorrow the House Oversight Comittee will vote on whether to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress.
President Barack Obama is briefed each day on a wide range of
domestic and international issues, yet when it comes to major
controversies, his administration’s response is often the same: the
president didn’t know.
The most recent appearance of the tendency
came Sunday, as the Wall Street Journal reported that Obama was unaware
of the National Security Agency’s surveillance of foreign leaders until
earlier this year. The story came on the heels of Health and Human
Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s claim that the president didn’t
learn of the problems with HealthCare.gov until after the site’s Oct. 1
launch.
Barack Obama: Out of the Loop or Excuses?
And earlier this year, Obama himself said he learned about the
Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of political groups “from the same
news reports that I think most people learned about this.”
The bottom line explanation in all these instances is the same:
President Obama didn’t know any more about the scandal than the ordinary
person on the street, and certainly wasn’t involved in decision-making
processes — at least, not until long after potential problems arose.
The IRS's targeting of conservative groups needs to be ignored by the left and the Obama sycophants in the media. Another textbook case of cognitive dissonance by the leftists. Keep repeating phony scandal, or they were all targeted just the same.
A version of this article appeared September 11, 2013, on page A18 in
the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Lois
Lerner's Own Words. Excerpted:
Congress's investigation into the IRS targeting of conservatives has
been continuing out of the Syria headlines, and it's turning up news.
Emails unearthed by the House Ways and Means Committee between former
Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner and her staff raise doubts
about IRS claims that the targeting wasn't politically motivated and
that low-level employees in Cincinnati masterminded the operation.
In a February 2011 email, Ms. Lerner advised her staff—including then
Exempt Organizations Technical Manager Michael Seto and then Rulings
and Agreements director Holly Paz—that a Tea Party matter is "very
dangerous," and is something "Counsel and [Lerner adviser] Judy Kindell
need to be in on." Ms. Lerner adds, "Cincy should probably NOT have
these cases."
That's a different tune than the IRS
sang in May when former IRS Commissioner Steven Miller said the agency's
overzealous enforcement was the work of two "rogue" employees in
Cincinnati. When the story broke, Ms. Lerner suggested that her office
had been unaware of the pattern of targeting until she read about it in
the newspaper. "So it was pretty much we started seeing information in
the press that raised questions for us, and we went back and took a
look," she said in May.
Earlier this summer, IRS lawyer Carter Hull, who oversaw the review of
many Tea Party cases and questionnaires, testified that his oversight
began in April 2010. Tea party cases under review are "being supervised
by Chip Hull at each step," Ms. Paz wrote to Ms. Lerner in a February
2011 email. "He reviews info from TPs, correspondence to TPs etc. No
decisions are going out of Cincy until we go all the way through the
process with the c3 and c4 cases here." TP stands for Tea Party, and she
means 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) nonprofit groups.
The emails also put the targeting in the context of the media and
Congressional drumbeat over the impact of conservative campaign spending
on the 2012 elections. On July 10, 2012 then Lerner-adviser Sharon
Light emailed Ms. Lerner a National Public Radio story on how outside
money was making it hard for Democrats to hold their Senate majority.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had complained to the
Federal Election Commission that conservative groups like Crossroads GPS
and Americans for Prosperity should be treated as political committees,
rather than 501(c)(4)s, which are tax-exempt social welfare groups that
do not have to disclose their donors.
Look at that impressive headline below from Salon. An Issa smear / White house propaganda piece disguised as a credible news story by an Obamabot named Alex Pareene
Another lying miss for the Oversight
Committee chair, though this one couldn't have fallen apart at a better
time
Thursday, Jun 27, 2013 07:27 AM CST
There has been so much news this week, from the Supreme Court to the
racist television cooking lady to the return of Crossfire, that some of
the political media’s old favorite stories have almost entirely
disappeared from cable news and the blogosphere. Victims of the news
cycle include the trio of “scandals”
that gripped official Washington for weeks beginning last month. In
particular, the controversy over IRS scrutiny of Tea Party groups has
largely disappeared from the headlines. Considering how much of a
political gift that particular controversy was to Republicans, you’d
expect them to be upset about this fact. But recent revelations have
actually given them cause to celebrate the nation’s short attention
span.
The
spokesman for the Treasury inspector general noted their audit
acknowledged there were other watch lists. But the spokesman added: “We
did not review the use, disposition, purpose or content of the other
BOLOs. That was outside the scope of our audit.”
We
then learned that the entire reason the Treasury Inspector General
highlighted IRS scrutiny of conservative groups, but not liberal groups,
was because the IG had been instructed to do so by Issa.
The article ends with more humor:
Conservatives will still trust Issa. They didn’t give up on him when
Fast & Furious failed to lead to impeachment, and they certainly
won’t give up on him now. And like I said, the scandal already sort of
served its purpose: It hurt Obama politically. The question, still, is
whether the objective press will continue to treat Issa’s claims
seriously, after a month in which he trumpeted the results of a
purposefully limited IG audit, released selectively edited transcripts
of testimony and generally took everyone for a ride that led nowhere.
Alas, you can lie to the political press dozens of times over the course
of years and still remain a trusted source, so don’t expect much
additional skepticism the next time Issa promises something huge.
Now we leave the leftist spin machine at Salon and head back to reality.
Liberal groups seeking tax-exempt status faced less IRS scrutiny than
Tea Party groups, according to the Treasury inspector general.
Russell
George, Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, told Rep.
Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) in a letter dated Wednesday that the IRS did not
use inappropriate criteria to scrutinize groups with “progressives” in
their name seeking tax-exempt status.
“Our audit did not find evidence that the IRS used the ‘progressives’
identifier as selection criteria for potential political cases between
May 2010 and May 2012,” George wrote in the letter obtained by The Hill.
The inspector general also stressed that 100 percent of the groups
with “Tea Party,” “patriots” and “9/12” in their name were flagged for
extra attention.
“While we have multiple sources of information corroborating the use of
Tea Party and other related criteria we described in our report,
including employee interviews, e-mails and other documents, we found no
indication in any of these other materials that ‘progressives’ was a
term used to refer cases for scrutiny for political campaign
intervention,” George wrote to Levin, the top Democrat on the
tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.
George and his office have faced criticism in recent days
after it emerged that its audit was tasked with looking into merely
whether conservative groups faced tough IRS scrutiny. Documents released
this week showed other groups — including liberal and non-partisan
organizations — also received scrutiny from the IRS, and Democrats have
suggested this wasn't noted in the ensuing scandal because of the IG's
focus on conservative groups.
George insisted that his office did not limit its audit to Tea Party groups.
Trust in government continues to plummet so leave it up to the leftist praetorian media and apparatchiks to distract and dis-inform for the Obama administration and continue to provide cover for a BIG government that targets American citizens.
President Obama spent months in 2010 warning
Americans about the 'threat' to democracy posed by conservative groups,
right at the time the IRS began targeting these groups.
June 6, 2013, 7:40 p.m. ET
Perhaps the only useful part of the inspector general's audit of the
IRS was its timeline. We know that it was August 2010 when the IRS
issued its first "Be On the Lookout" list, flagging applications
containing key conservative words and issues. The criteria would expand
in the months to come. What else was happening in the summer
and fall of 2010? The Obama administration and its allies continue to
suggest the IRS was working in some political vacuum. What they'd rather
everyone forget is that the IRS's first BOLO list coincided with their
own attack against "shadowy" or "front" conservative groups that they
claimed were rigging the electoral system. Below is a more relevant timeline, a
political one, which seeks to remind readers of the context in which the
IRS targeting happened.
Aug. 9, 2010: In Texas, President Obama for the
first time publicly names a group he is obsessed with—Americans for
Prosperity (founded by the Koch Brothers)—and warns about conservative
groups. Taking up a cry that had until then largely been confined to
left-wing media and activists, he says: "Right now all around this
country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for
Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads . . . And they
don't have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You
don't know if it's a foreign-controlled corporation."
Aug. 11: The Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee sends out a fundraising email warning about "Karl
Rove-inspired shadow groups."
Aug. 21: Mr. Obama devotes his weekly radio
address to the threat of "attack ads run by shadowy groups with
harmless-sounding names. We don't know who's behind these ads and we
don't know who's paying for them. . . . You don't know if it's a
foreign-controlled corporation. . . . The only people who don't want to
disclose the truth are people with something to hide.
Barack Obama address August 21 2010
Week of Aug. 23: The New Yorker's Jane Mayer
authors a hit piece on the Koch brothers, entitled "Covert Operations,"
in which she accuses them of funding "political front groups." The piece
repeats the White House theme, with Ms. Mayer claiming the Kochs have
created "slippery organizations with generic-sounding names" that have
"made it difficult to ascertain the extent of their influence in
Washington."
Aug. 27: White House economist Austan Goolsbee,
in a background briefing with reporters, accuses Koch industries of
being a pass-through entity that does "not pay corporate income tax."
The Treasury inspector general investigates how it is that Mr. Goolsbee
might have confidential tax information. The report has never been
released. This same week, the Democratic Party
files a complaint with the IRS claiming the Americans for Prosperity
Foundation is violating its tax-exempt status.
The I.R.S. scandal hits the press and the left needs to provide cover for Barack Obama. Lois Lerner headed the division of the I.R.S. that targeted conservative groups. Lerner's previous testimony and the Obama Administration's story doesn't appear to be completely honest. Denials and distractions are in order. What talking points will the Left use?
Surprising headlines from foxnewsradio.com ? Not so surprising to find out it is empty-suit
leftist Alan Colmes's posting. It starts....
"Sarah Jones at PolticusUSA
makes the case that Republican blocking of Obama appointees keeps Bush
appointees in place and that is what can be wrecking havoc."
Alan Colme's first sentence sends us out into the LEFTIST Blogosphere to PoliticusUSA- Real Liberal Politics. The Obama propaganda machine relies heavily on Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) to push most of their 'message' Five years into Obama's presidency, the dear leader's agenda and 'legacy' is to be protected at ANY cost. The leftist spin machine churns out the progressive pablum for consumption by the collective. Intellectual dishonesty is a hallmark of the 'new left'. Only reality can inoculate an individual from BDS, thus explaining the pandemic in the left wing.
The POTUS does not appoint lower level employees to jobs. Lois Lerner WAS NOT APPOINTED by Bush to her Job.
Lois G. Lerner Selected as Director of IRS Exempt Organizations Division
IR-2005-148, Dec. 22, 2005 WASHINGTON — Lois G. Lerner has been selected as the director of the
Exempt Organizations Division of the Internal Revenue Service. In this
position, she will be responsible for administering and enforcing the
tax laws that apply to more than 1.8 million organizations recognized by
the IRS as exempt from tax.
“Protecting the integrity of tax-exempt organizations is an important
part of our enforcement program,” said IRS Commissioner Mark W.
Everson. “Lois’s background, including her work for the Federal Election
Commission, qualifies her for this new assignment.”
Before this appointment, Lerner had been the director of the Exempt
Organizations Rulings & Agreements Division, where she was
responsible for the EO determinations letter program, public guidance
and technical assistance for IRS agents conducting examinations of
tax-exempt organizations. Lerner came to the IRS in 2001 from the
Federal Election Commission, where she was Associate General Counsel for
Enforcement and Acting General Counsel. She replaces Martha Sullivan,
who will retire from the IRS at the end of December.
“Lois is an integral part of the EO team and has successfully
increased the IRS presence in the exempt community,” said Steven T.
Miller, Commissioner of the IRS Tax Exempt and Government Entities
Division, of which EO is a part. “Her integrity, skills and judgment are
exceptional and will allow us to continue to provide improved service
and enhanced enforcement of the tax laws.” Lois G. Lerner Selected as Director of IRS Exempt Organizations Division
The site called 'Daily Progress' phrases it like this:
"ProPublica on Monday reported that the same IRS division that
targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny during the 2012
election cycle provided the investigative-reporting organization with confidential applications for tax-exempt status.
That revelation contradicts previous statements from the agency and
may represent a violation of federal guidelines. Lois G. Lerner, who
heads the IRS sector that reviews tax-exemption applications, told a
congressional oversight committee in April 2012 that IRS code prohibited
the agency from providing information about groups that had not yet
been approved.
Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee, and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) had asked Lerner in
March 2012 to provide a list of all organizations that the IRS had
subjected to special scrutiny.
(Daniel Acker/Bloomberg)
Lerner replied that she could not legally reveal information about
groups that were not approved and that identifying targeted applicants
that were already approved would require additional work, specifically a
“manual review of each file.” She did not identify any of the
organizations.
Below is an excerpt of Lerner’s response:
“Section 6104(a) of the Code permits public disclosure of
an application for recognition of tax exempt status and supporting
materials only after the organization has been recognized as exempt.
Consequently, we cannot provide a list of organizations that have
received [additional scrutiny] from the IRS, until those applications
have been approved.”
ProPublica reported that the Lerner’s division released “nine pending
confidential applications of conservatives groups” in response to a
request from the investigative-reporting organization for the
applications of 67 nonprofits in November 2012. "
"It was an unusual way to deliver bad news, even in a town known for
its selective leaks, Friday-night news dumps and wag-the-dog
distractions.
The Internal Revenue Service, apparently determined
to get out ahead of an inspector general report critical of its handling
of tax exemptions for Tea Party groups, came up with a plan: Lois
Lerner, the official responsible for the tax-exempt division, would
publicly apologize in response to a question at the American Bar
Association conference in Washington.
Details of the now-infamous
planted question emerged Friday after acting IRS commissioner Steven
Miller admitted the gambit under questioning from members of the House
Ways and Means Committee. STORY: IRS chief denies politics drove Tea Party screening
It
was the day after Lerner had testified to Congress last week, failing
once again to disclose the extent of the Tea Party targeting even under
direct questioning. The damning inspector general report would come out
any day, and Lerner and Miller wanted to figure out a way to disclose
the news publicly.
Miller testified about the thought process
behind the release strategy Friday. "Now that the (inspector general)
report was finalized, now that we knew all the facts, now that we had
responded in writing and everything was done, did it make sense for us
to start talking about this in public," he said.
The plan, he said, was to simultaneously notify Congress, but that never happened."
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/18/194248/irs-cases-were-referred-to-group.html#storylink=cpy
By David Lightman and Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Washington Bureau - Tuesday, June 18, 2013
WASHINGTON — The
Internal Revenue Service diverted applications for tax-exempt status
from tea party and like-minded organizations to a special track known as
Group 7822 for special scrutiny, according to transcripts of an
interview by congressional interrogators with a key IRS official.
The lengthy interview with John Shafer, a senior manager
in the screening department of the IRS division in charge of tax-exempt
designations, was shared with reporters by Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md.
Staffs
from several congressional committees have been interviewing employees
in the Cincinnati-based IRS office that handles applications for exempt
organization status.
Cummings’ aim was to refute assertions by the chairman of the
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Darrell Issa,
R-Calif., that the special scrutiny was part of a Washington-based
conspiracy. Cummings, the top Democrat on the committee, said the
transcript of five hours of interviews on June 9 “debunks conspiracy
theories about how the IRS first started reviewing these cases.”
Issa said he was “deeply disappointed” in Cummings. He said Cummings
“has wrongly argued that questions about IRS conduct are somehow not
legitimate. His own previous release of excerpts from this very same
transcript undermines his claims that the committee is somehow trying to
keep some specific revelation from public view.”
The IRS
transcript helped fill in blanks about information that was generally
known but not well understood. For example, Shafer confirmed that his
boss, Holly Paz, was present when a Treasury Department auditor queried
him about treatment of tea party applications. “I wasn’t sure why she
was there,” he said. Shafer said her presence did not change his
answers.
Shafer described himself as a conservative Republican and
explained how applications that met criteria that the IRS has since
called inappropriate were selectively screened. The criteria included
buzzwords such as constitution, Bill of Rights and other tea party
themes referring to the Founding Fathers. These words caused
applications to be pulled aside and sent to what’s called Group 7822. He
did not say how the criteria were developed or by whom.
He said
the tea party cases were called “emerging issues” by agency officials,
apparently because they had received media attention.
“Each case
is again reviewed and the determination is made on the facts and
circumstances within that case,” he said. Asked what caused an emerging
issue, “I 100 percent do not know, OK?” he answered. “What I would do is
go into the electronic system and I would transfer these cases to Group
7822.”
