by | ARTICLES, BLOG, FREEDOM, OBAMA, POLITICS, TAXES
The recent Z Street Case against the IRS before the D.C. Court of Appeals is a notable example of egregious behavior by IRS employees.
Z Street is a group that was created in order to educate “the public about Zionism; about the facts relating to the Middle East and to the existence of Israel as a Jewish State; and about Israel’s right to refuse to negotiate with, make concessions to, or appease terrorists.”
In December 2009, the group submitted an application to the IRS in order to gain 501(c)(3) status. By July 2010, Z Street spoke to the IRS about the unusually lengthy process; the “IRS agent said that auditors had been instructed to give special attention to groups connected with Israel, and that they had sent some of those applications to a special IRS unit for additional review.”
The interesting thing about this case is that it hearkens back to the early years of the Obama Administration beginning in 2009. That’s more than three years before the IRS scandal blew wide open in 2013, which goes to show you just how deeply entrenched the culture was at the IRS — it seems no one considered actions against certain groups (but not others) to be discriminatory or punitive. Why did the IRS not recognize their own audacity?
Incidentally, according to documents, IRS inspectors were instructed to “be on the look out” (BOLO) for groups that would fit the description of “occupied territory advocacy”; that instruction was sent on August 6, 2010, merely a few days after the Z Street application file was examined. After the IRS scandal broke, and during subsequent investigations, it was revealed that the file containing “occupied territory advocacy” groups listed exactly one such group: Z Street.
The IRS manager involved with the Z Street case stated under oath by documents submitted during the initial court proceedings in 2013 that he concluded Z Street might be involved with terrorism funding because “there is a higher risk of terrorism in Israel.”
The Circuit Court was patently outraged at the IRS’s illegal actions on the matter, and further chastised the IRS and the DoJ for ridiculously implying that there can be a holding period of up to 270 days before a decision is made for a 501(c)(3) application. One judge remarked, “If I were you, I would go back and ask your superiors whether they want us to represent that the government’s position in this case is that the government is free to unconstitutionally discriminate against its citizens for 270 days.”
Why are heads still not rolling at the IRS? Why is the IRS defending this behavior? The tactic to appeal last year’s halted discovery that would potentially embarrass the IRS. This “would have allowed Z Street to examine IRS officials, under oath, and to receive internal communications from the agency regarding the special unit and special procedures for handling pro-Israel groups.”
In other words, the IRS and the government are more worried about protecting themselves than fixing the problems, thus continuing to clog up the court system until the waning days of the Obama Administration. This maneuver shows that corruption is evidently still alive and well at the IRS.
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, CONSTITUTION, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, HYPOCRISY, OBAMA, POLITICS, TAXES
Eric Holder recently announced his plan to move forward with prosecuting “campaign-finance “coordination” between candidates and outside groups.” This is ridiculous.
Holder has the time to do this, but yet he hasn’t even begun to compose a report on the IRS — which everyone now knows is full of very serious breaches of impropriety.
How can he find the time to develop the politically charged concept of coordination (with no real evidence); investigations are based merely on supposition. In contrast, we have actual facts and actions with regard to the IRS fiasco — which was also politically charged — and Holder has done nothing so far.
Even the WSJ recognizes the farce that this “coordination” campaign is, pointing out that “the federal government can subpoena your documents, email, computers and bank records in a political fishing expedition conducted by the FBI.”
And more: “A coordination investigation can be started on almost any pretext. All you need is an allegation that someone talked to someone they should not have. Once the investigation makes it over that low evidentiary hurdle, the feds can comb through every shred of personal and group communications to find illegal contact.”
Why is the same diligence not being applied to the substantiated, documented IRS abuses? Where is the Department of Justice report on this egregious overreach by another federal department?
Unfortunately, we already know the answer.
2015/2016 is shaping up to be a particularly nasty election cycle. You can read the scathing WSJ opinion on the matter of “coordination” here:
by | ARTICLES, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, POLITICS, TAXES
As part of the IRS Scandal over the last 18 months, people have questions if, and how deeply, the ties exist between the IRS and White House. A group named “Cause of Action” sued to get access to any documents that show such communication.
Last week, the Justice Department apparently sent an email over the matter, asking for more time to finish the request made by Cause of Action, due to a potentially large number of documents that fit the request. Here is the available text of the email from the Justice Department’s tax office:
“My client wants to know if you would consent to a motion pushing back (in part) TIGTA’s response date by two weeks to December 15, 2014. The agency has located 2,500 potentially responsive documents and anticipates being able to finish processing 2,000 of these pages by the December 1 date. It needs the additional two weeks to deal with the last 500 pages to determine if they are responsive and make any necessary withholdings. We would therefore like to ask the court to permit the agency to issue a response (including production) on December 1 as to any documents it has completed processing by that date, and do the same as to the remaining documents by December 15. I note that the court’s remand was for a “determin[ation],” which the D.C. Circuit has recently explained can precede actual production by “days or a few weeks,” but we would prefer to simply agree on a date for turning over any of the remaining 500 documents that may be responsive.”
Here we have the admission that potentially 2500 documents exist which show taxpayer information being shared with the White House. This is a pretty large number; what information that is and in what context remains to be seen. So far, TIGTA has been a help, not a hindrance, in the IRS scandal. Will that continue with this latest revelation?
by | BLOG
The latest revelations in the never-ending IRS Scandal are pretty headline-worthy, but hardly a pip is being heard from the MSM, again. First, Judicial Watch has revealed, and the Department of Justice has confirmed, that the missing emails of Lois Lerner do indeed exist; second, that the content of one of Lois Lerner’s Blackberrys was destroyed after the Congressional investigation began in 2012.
The entire scandal has continuously had the makings of headline news: targeting citizens, evidence disappearing, perjury, and more. Yet few of the leading “news” outlets are bothering to cover the scandal with any journalistic depth.
On the subject of Lerner’s emails, Judicial Watch stated that,
“Department of Justice attorneys for the Internal Revenue Service told Judicial Watch on Friday that Lois Lerner’s emails, indeed all government computer records, are backed up by the federal government in case of a government-wide catastrophe. The Obama administration attorneys said that this back-up system would be too onerous to search. The DOJ attorneys also acknowledged that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) is investigating this back-up system.”
This is in direct contradiction to what has been declared by Lerner and the current head of the IRS, among others, have stated about the emails and their recoverability, as well as possible perjury. “Current IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testified before the House Government Oversight Committee in June that the emails during the key period when the targeting occurred were “lost” due to a hard drive crash in 2011.”
With regard to Lerner’s Blackberry, apparently the IRS submitted sworn declarations late last Friday as a response to Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is overseeing the case involving Judicial Watch v. IRS. In these sworn declarations, we find that Lois had two Blackberries. One was wiped clean after the Congressional inquiries began, without any attempt at data recovery. The second was issued in 2012, which the IRS still has. From the NY Observer:
“In two elusive and nebulous sworn declarations, we can glean that Ms. Lerner had two Blackberries. One was issued to her on November 12, 2009. According to a sworn declaration, this is the Blackberry that contained all the emails (both sent and received) that would have been in her “Outlook” and drafts that never were sent from her Blackberry during the relevant time.
With incredible disregard for the law and the Congressional inquiry, the IRS admits that this Blackberry “was removed or wiped clean of any sensitive or proprietary information and removed as scrap for disposal in June 2012.” This is a year after her hard drive “crash” and months after the Congressional inquiry began.
The IRS did not even attempt to retrieve that data. It cavalierly recites: “There is no record of any attempt by any IRS IT employee to recover data from any Blackberry device assigned to Lois Lerner in response to the Congressional investigations or this investigation,” according to Stephen Manning, Deputy Chief Information Officer for Strategy & Modernization.”
Unfortunately, these bombshells only serve to re-emphasize two things we already knew. 1) the government is not above lying and cover-ups; 2) no one in the mainstream media has the fortitude to cover the story in-depth. With CNN, CBS, and ABC News having all have direct ties to the Obama Administration over the years, we certainly won’t see any Pulitzer Prize winning investigations on the IRS Scandal at all.
by | ARTICLES, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, QUICKLY NOTED
From Katie Pavlich at Townhall.com
“According to new IRS emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from Judicial Watch, former head of tax exempt groups at the IRS Lois Lerner was in contact with the Department of Justice in May 2013 about whether tax exempt groups could be criminally prosecuted for “lying” about political activity.
JW IRS doc
Read the full story here
