%20(1)%20(4)%20(1)%20(1).jpg)
State citizens will now have the right to seek what they want through their own state legislatures. This is called Democracy at work. I thought most Americans liked democracy and being free to make decisions based on personal choice.
Americans have been engaged in doing this for some 200 years and the mass media had been, more or less, factually supportive but then corporate America started buying up the newspapers etc. and the mass media owners decided it was time to support Democrats and Leftists and to turn newspapers and their mass media brethren into entertainment organizations. In choosing that path they also chose to throw facts out the window and report however they wanted.
Consequently, bureaucrats who should be in jail walk the streets free and also, received full pensions. Obama, Holder and their lackeys corrupted the system and this is how our government now functions.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
NEW: Depositions of Obama IRS Officials Detail Knowledge of Tea Party Targeting |
We have been at the forefront in uncovering the Obama IRS scandal that showed the agency’s abuse of conservative Americans and organizations in the run-up to the 2012 election. We’re still learning the details of their conspiracy.
We have just received previously sealed court documents, including depositions of IRS officials Lois Lerner, the former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and Holly Paz, her top aide and former IRS director of Office of Rulings and Agreements, which show they knew most Tea Party organizations were legally entitled to tax-exempt status.
The release comes in the December 2017 amicus curiae brief (friend of the court) we filed in NorCal Tea Party Patriots, et al. v. The Internal Revenue Service, et al. (No. 1:13-cv-00341). We argued that the documents we sought may shed light on government misconduct, and the shielding of internal government deliberations does not serve the public’s interest.
Lerner’s and Paz’s depositions were sealed by Judge Barrett in April 2017, after Lerner’s and Paz’s lawyers claimed the two officials were receiving threats. The court finally ordered the unsealing of the depositions four years after the plaintiffs requested the depositions be unsealed and only after the plaintiffs filed for a writ of mandamus to force action in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
The sworn depositions were given in 2017 by Lerner and Paz. In the newly unsealed deposition transcripts, the two IRS officials repeatedly have memory lapses and regularly plead ignorance of the fundamental matters in question.
The unsealed Lerner and Paz deposition transcripts reveal through sworn testimony the bureaucratic tangle created by the Obama IRS to single out, delay and deny the processing of conservative, especially Tea Party non-profit groups’ applications for tax-exempt status and to disclose their donors’ names. At the same time, Paz admits under questioning that she knew from the beginning there was not sufficient legal basis to deny most of the targeted groups tax exempt status:
Q: [T]he organizations had filed applications representing …what they were organized for and what they have done and also their intended activities, and you thought that … for the majority of those applications that that would warrant the recognition of exemption?
The Witness [Paz]: My recollection is that at the time, my thinking was that the majority of the (c)(4) applications, while they may have indicated some amount of political activity, that we would not have enough basis to make a determination that that would be their primary activity and deny them exempt status.
Q: And, therefore, they would receive an approval or recognition of exemption?
A: Correct.
The records also include an unsealed court filing by NorCal Tea Party Patriots that provides a detailed description of the ordinary process by which the IRS determines whether to grant an organization tax exempt status and how the process under Lerner deviated from that norm after the IRS brought Tea Party groups under special scrutiny following the Citizens’ United Supreme Court decision. (The Citizens United decision held that the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for political campaigns by corporations, including nonprofit corporations, labor unions, and other associations.)
The NorCal Tea Party Patriots filing details:
Lerner expressed strong feelings about the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision. In a June 1, 2012, email exchange with [redacted], Lerner wrote that “Citizens United is by far the worst thing that has ever happened to this country.” Later in the same email exchange, Lerner expanded on her views of Citizens United:
We are witnessing the end of “America.” There has always been the struggle between the capitalistic ideals and the humanistic ideals. Religion has usually tempered the selfishness of capitalism, but the rabid, hellfire piece of religion has hijacked the game and in the end, we will all lose out. It’s all tied together— money can buy the Congress and the Presidency, so in turn, money packs the SCt. and the court backs the money—the “old boys” still win.”
Lerner sought to reverse the impact of Citizens United. In a June 11, 2012, email exchange with Robert Stern [former chair of the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws] about Stern’s report discussing states’ responses to Citizens United, Lerner wrote:
I like it! Very easy to find specific information, as well as get the big picture— you done good! Now, if you can only fix the darn law!”
In a February 13, 2012, email exchange among Lerner and various of her subordinates about [proposed] federal legislation that would require tax-exempt organizations to disclose their donors, Lerner wrote: “Wouldn’t that be great? And I won’t hold my breath.”
The NorCal Tea Party Patriots filing also describes Lerner’s targeting Tea Party groups after Citizens’ United:
Lerner began to worry that applicants for exemption would rely on Citizens United to challenge the IRS’s regulations on political activities by (c)(3) and (c)(4) organizations.
Lerner particularly worried that Tea Party groups would seek to challenge IRS regulations. In an email exchange concerning the February 1, 2011, SCR [Sensitive Case Report], Lerner told Paz and others: “Tea Party Matter very dangerous…This could be the vehicle to go to court on the issue of whether Citizen’s United [sic] overturning the ban on corporate spending applies to tax exempt rules. Counsel and Judy Kindell need to be in on this one please needs to be in this. Cincy should probably NOT have these cases—Holly please see what exactly they have please.’
Later in that exchange, Lerner directed her subordinates to find a reason other than political activity to deny the Tea Party applicants exemption under § 501(c)(3) to prevent them from challenging the exemption rules based on Citizens United.
Thanks—even if we go with a 4 on the Tea Party cases, they may want to argue they should be 3s, so it would be great if we can get there without saying the only reason they don’t get a 3 is political activity.
These new transcripts expose how the Obama IRS intentionally suppressed the Tea Party movement during the 2012 presidential campaign. These documents show how the Obama administration easily used the IRS to suppress an entire political movement threatening his reelection. The Obama IRS abuse is the epitome of election interference. Given this largely unchecked abuse by the IRS, the Biden administration’s massive new expansion of the IRS should concern all Americans.
Lois Lerner retired with full federal benefits in September 2013.
The original NorCal Tea Party Patriots lawsuit in which Lerner and Paz gave depositions was a class-action lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of the Treasury and named individual officials claiming that:
Elements within the Executive Branch of the federal government, including Defendants, brought the vast powers, incomprehensible complexity, and crushing bureaucracy of the IRS to bear on groups of citizens whose only wrongdoing was their presumed dissent from the policies or ideology of the Administration. In other words, these citizens were targeted based upon their political viewpoints.
The lawsuit was settled in 2017 when the Justice Department awarded the plaintiffs over $3.5 million for “attorneys’ fees, costs and expenses, and incentive awards.” In settling the case, the DOJ admitted the IRS abused its power and the criteria it used to screen applications for 501(c) status was inappropriate. Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated:
The IRS’ use of these criteria as a basis for heightened scrutiny was wrong and should never have occurred. It is improper for the IRS to single out groups for different treatment based on their names or ideological positions. Any entitlement to tax exemption should be based on the activities of the organization and whether they fulfill requirements of the law, not the policy positions adopted by members or the name chosen to reflect those views.
Despite these admissions of wrongdoing, the Obama IRS scandal resulted in no criminal charges.
We uncovered troves of documents about the Obama IRS scandal (see, for example, here and here). And we filed at least nine FOIA lawsuits about the IRS scandal. Much of what is known about the scandal resulted from our litigation and investigations.
Here is a partial summary of our disclosures:
In September 2014, our FOIA lawsuit forced the release of documents detailing that the IRS sought, obtained and maintained the names of donors to Tea Party and other conservative groups. IRS officials acknowledged in these documents that “such information was not needed.” The documents also show that the donor names were being used for a “secret research project.”
In April 2015, we released court ordered IRS documents that included an email from Lerner asking that a program be set up to “put together some training points to help them [IRS staffers] understand the potential pitfalls” of revealing too much information to Congress. The documents also contain a Lerner email from 2013 in which she says she is willing to take the blame on some aspects of the scandal. She also indicates that she “understands why the IRS criteria” leading to the targeting of Tea Party and other opponents of the President Obama “might raise questions.”
In July 2015, records showed the IRS scandal also included the Justice Department and FBI as well. According to documents obtained by Judicial Watch under court order, in an October 2010 meeting, Lerner, Justice Department officials and the FBI planned for the possible criminal prosecution of targeted nonprofit organizations for alleged illegal political activity. As part of that effort, the Obama IRS gave the FBI 21 computer disks, containing 1.25 million pages of confidential IRS returns from 113,000 non-profit, 501(c)(4) social welfare groups 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 …”
Also in July 2015, we released Obama IRS documents confirming that the agency used donor lists of tax-exempt organizations to target those donors for audits. The documents also show IRS officials specifically highlighted how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce may come under “high scrutiny” from the IRS.
In July 2016, we, through a federal court order in one of our FOIA lawsuits (Judicial Watch v Department of Justice (No. 1:14-cv-01239)), obtained FBI “302” documents, which contain detailed narratives of FBI agent investigations, revealing that top Washington IRS officials, including Lois Lerner and Holly Paz, knew that the agency was specifically targeting “Tea Party” and other conservative organizations two full years before disclosing it to Congress and the public.
The FBI 302 documents also confirm the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) 2013 report that said, “Senior IRS officials knew that agents were targeting conservative groups for special scrutiny as early as 2011.” Lerner did not reveal the targeting until May 2013, in response to a planted question at an American Bar Association conference. The documents reveal that then-acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller actually wrote Lerner’s response, where she admits:
They [IRS staff] used names like Tea Party or Patriots and they selected cases simply because the applications had those names in the title. That was wrong, that was absolutely incorrect, insensitive, and inappropriate.
In November 2016, after the IRS refused to acknowledge its targeting of conservative groups, we forced the release of IRS records revealing the agency used “inappropriate political labels” to screen the tax-exempt applications of conservative organizations. IRS agents were targeting organizations requesting tax-exempt status based on “guilt by association” and “party affiliation.” We brought to light that the IRS was going to require 501(c)(4) nonprofit organizations to restrict their alleged political activities in exchange for “expedited consideration” of their tax-exempt applications. FBI “302” documents we uncovered also reveal that IRS officials stated that the agency was targeting conservative groups because of their ideology and political affiliation in the summer of 2011.
We also separately uncovered in its lawsuit Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Internal Revenue Service (No. 1:13-cv-01559) that Lerner was under significant pressure from both Democrats in Congress and the Obama Justice Department and FBI to prosecute and jail the groups the IRS was already improperly targeting. In discussing pressure from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) to prosecute these “political groups,” Lerner admitted, “it is ALL about 501(c)(4) orgs and political activity.”
In March 2017, we obtained IRS documents through our FOIA lawsuit Judicial Watch v. Internal Revenue Service (No. 1:15-cv-00220) that contain admissions by IRS officials that the agency used “inappropriate political labels” to screen the tax-exempt applications of conservative organizations. Other records uncovered reveal that the IRS was going to require 501(c)(4) nonprofit organizations to restrict their alleged political activities in exchange for “expedited consideration” of their tax-exempt applications.
In June 2018, we obtained internal IRS documents through one of its FOIA lawsuits (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Internal Revenue Service (No. 1:13-cv-01559)) revealing that Sen. John McCain’s former staff director and chief counsel on the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee, Henry Kerner, urged top IRS officials, including then-director of exempt organizations Lois Lerner, to “audit so many that it becomes financially ruinous.” Kerner was appointed by President Trump as Special Counsel for the United States Office of Special Counsel.
Also, in an echo of the Clinton email scandal and in response to our litigation, the IRS initially claimed that emails belonging to Lerner were supposedly missing. Later, IRS officials conceded that the “missing” emails were on IRS back-up systems.
The Obama IRS scandal serves as a warning – that keeping a watch on our government is essential – as those in power are always willing to abuse government power for political ends.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No comments:
Post a Comment