Did
Obama Know Too? IRS Officials Knew Patriots And Tea Party Groups Were Being
Targeted 2 Years Ago
http://endoftheamericandream.com
http://albertpeia.com/irstargets.htm
‘The IRS has finally publicly admitted that
patriots and Tea Party groups were being specifically targeted for “extra
scrutiny”, but the truth is that top IRS officials knew that this intimidating
and harassing behavior was taking place two years ago. A report by the
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration that is going to be released
this week shows that the targeting of patriots and Tea Party groups began as early as March 2010, and
that the head of the IRS tax-exempt organizations division was specifically
told about this targeting in June 2011. But then the IRS lied to Congress
five separate times between November 18th, 2011 and June 15th, 2012 about what
was going on. IRS officials flat out lied to Congress and adamantly
denied that patriots and Tea Party groups had been specifically targeted.
So should we believe the IRS now when they try to pin the blame on a few “low-level”
employees in Cincinnati? And were Barack Obama or any members of his
administration ever told about any of this? After all, patriot groups and
Tea Party organizations were screaming bloody murder about this harassment at
the time and if the truth had come out before the election it could have been a
massive embarrassment for the Obama campaign. Are we to believe that
nobody inside the Obama campaign ever had any discussions about this? If
Obama or those close to him did know what was going on, why didn’t they ever do
anything to stop it?
According to Lois Lerner, the
head of the IRS unit that oversees tax-exempt groups, any groups that had the
words “patriot” or “tea party” in their names were specifically targeted for
additional scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status. The demands
that were made on some of these groups were extraordinary.
One group from Kentucky was sent
an 88 page questionaire…
Conservative
groups complained during the election that they were being harassed by the IRS.
They said the agency asked them an inordinate number of questions to justify
their tax-exempt status, and 27 Tea Party groups joined with conservative
lawyer Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice to push back on
the IRS.
Kentucky
9/12 Project is one of the conservative organizations that joined with Sekulow
to complain of government overreach.
Its
executive director, Eric Wilson, said his group applied for tax-exempt status
in December 2010. He said the IRS responded with an 88-page questionnaire that
sought all the organization’s correspondence, the names of its members — along
with details of group’s activity on Facebook and Twitter.
In
other instances, the level of information that was requested was beyond absurd…
Stephanie
Scruggs, who works with The912Project and United in Action, said, for
example the IRS demanded copies of every single post to every single
organization website page, Twitter feed and Facebook feed.
The
IRS also requested contact information for family members of each board member.
And yet another demand was for the name and contact for every person who ever
had attended one of the group’s meetings.
And
remember, this kind of scrutiny was only reserved for patriots and Tea Party
groups. Obviously the intent was to harass, intimidate and damage those
groups at a very politically sensitive time.
It
would have been one thing if the IRS had come out right away and had admitted
the mistakes and had worked feverishly to fix them.
But
that did not happen.
Even
though the IRS knew exactly what was going on, IRS officials vehemently denied
that targeting of patriot and Tea Party groups was taking place in response to
five different congressional inquiries between November 18th, 2011 and June
15th, 2012.
If
the IRS had admitted the truth to Congress, it would have been extremely
damaging to the Obama campaign. During that time period, the outcome of
the election was very much up in the air, and so IRS officials may have played
a role in altering the outcome of the election by blatantly lying to Congress.
Several
newspapers, including USA Today, have acquired excerpts of the
report that is going to be released this week. These excerpts show that
the IRS has known about this targeting of patriot and Tea Party groups for a very long time…
The
timeline was part of a report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax
Administration, which has been investigating the IRS’ treatment of Tea Party
groups at the request of Congress. The report is expected to be critical of the
IRS actions. Excerpts obtained by USA TODAY provide a timeline investigators
compiled through e-mails and interviews with IRS officials.
It
shows that on June 29, 2011, IRS officials in Cincinnati told Lerner how they
were handling applications for tax-exempt status for Tea Party groups. Certain
groups, the briefing paper showed, were subjected by the IRS to further
investigation based on politically loaded terms in the tax-exempt application
file. Groups were singled out for enhanced scrutiny if:
•
The words “tea party,” “patriots,” or “9/12 project” appeared anywhere in the
group name or case file;
•
The group’s stated issues included government spending, government debt or
taxes;
•
The organization had a goal of educating the public via advocacy or lobbying to
“make America a better place to live;”
•
Any statements in the case file critical of how the country is being run.
And
you know what? A lot of those groups still have not had their
applications approved. The delays and the harassment continue to this
day.
Needless
to say, a lot of Republicans are extremely outraged by this revolting behavior
by the IRS. For example, check out what Senator Susan Collins said on Sunday…
Sen.
Susan Collins (R-Maine) on Sunday called the Internal Revenue Service’s
singling out of conservative groups for extra scrutiny
“absolutely chilling” and called on President Obama to condemn the effort.
“This
is truly outrageous and it contributes to the profound distrust that the
American people have in government,” Collins, a
moderate Republican, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It is
absolutely chilling that the IRS was singling out conservative groups for extra
review, and I think it’s very disappointing that the president hasn’t
personally condemned this and spoken out.”
And
of course many Tea Party groups are absolutely livid…
“The
IRS has demonstrated the most disturbing, illegal and outrageous abuse of
government power,” said Jenny Beth Martin, National Coordinator for Tea Party
Patriots. “This deliberate targeting and harassment of tea party groups reaches
a new low in illegal government activity and overreach. It is suspicious that
the activity of these ‘low-level workers’ was unknown to IRS leadership at the
time it occurred. President Obama must also apologize for his administration
ignoring repeated complaints by these broad grassroots organizations of
harassment by the IRS in 2012, and make concrete and transparent steps today to
ensure this never happens again. We reject a simple apology that does nothing
to alleviate the danger of this happening again.”
This
is just another reason why the IRS needs to be shut down. The truth is
that the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history was during a time
when there was no federal income tax. For much more on this, please see
my previous article entitled “100
Years Old And Still Killing Us: America Was Much Better Off Before The Income
Tax“.
But
even if the IRS is shut down, this kind of harassment is going to keep
happening because Democrats at the highest level continue to send signals that
it is okay to demonize patriots and Tea Party groups. Just check out the
following examples of this phenomenon from a recent article by Lloyd Marcus…
Democrat
VP Biden said, “Republicans want y’all back (blacks) in chains.” Democrat Rep.
Andre Carson said the Tea
Party movement would “love” to see black Americans “hang from a tree.”
Democrat
Alan Grayson said, “Republicans want you to die quickly.”
Democrat
Rep. Maxine Waters said, “The tea party can
go straight to hell.” Think about that folks. Millions of Americans who
oppose Obama ignoring the Constitution and cramming his socialist/progressive
agenda down their throat have been told by a Democrat to go to hell.
When
top government officials use this kind of hateful language, of course their
subordinates are going to feel free to apply “extra scrutiny” to patriots and
Tea Party groups.
And
it seems absurd to suggest that nobody in the Obama administration knew about
any of this. We now know that the head of the IRS unit that oversees
tax-exempt groups knew that patriots and Tea Party groups were being
specifically targeted. We also know that the IRS lied to Congress five
times when they were specifically asked about this harassment.
Without a doubt, members of the Obama administration and key players in the
Obama campaign were aware of what Congress was asking the IRS. Did any of
them ever look into these allegations to see if they were true? Once they
looked into these things, did they report back to Obama?
The
inner circles of political campaigns tend to be obsessed with any potential
threats that could derail their candidates. It is crazy to think that
those close to Obama never talked about any of this or looked into it to see if
it might be a significant problem for the campaign.
One
thing is for sure – this goes a lot, lot higher than just a few “low-level”
employees in Cincinnati.
The
American people deserve the truth about this.
Let’s
hope that they get it.’
