'IRS PROBE A SHAM, NONEXISTENT'

Tea-party lawyer tells Congress scandal 'real,' blasts Obama claim

 

By Garth Kant, WND, February 6, 2014

 

WASHINGTON — “The IRS scandal is not over. It is continuing to this day. And the Department of Justice investigation is a sham. It is a nonexistent investigation,” a high-powered Washington attorney testified before Congress this morning.

Attorney Cleta Mitchell, who represents many tea-party groups, blasted President Obama’s claim on Sunday that there is no IRS scandal, and his insistence that there was “not even a smidgen of corruption” in the agency’s targeting of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.

“The IRS scandal is not just a bone-headed bunch of bureaucrats in some remote office, contrary to what the president of the United States told the American people,” she said.

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Why I Submitted a Comment Objecting to the IRS Proposed Rule Targeting 501(c)(4) Groups

By Loren Heal, FreedomWorks, February 5, 2014

The Internal Revenue Service is attempting to change the standards for tax exempt status for 501(c)(4) groups. Rather than sticking to enforcing the will of Congress, the IRS, with the full blessing of the political operation in the White House, wants to ensure they won't have to harass conservative and tea party groups about their tax exempt status applications, because those groups won't even bother to apply. They need to hear from America.

Following its targeting of tea party and conservative groups in the runup to the 2012 election, the IRS now wants to codify into regulatory law the organization's illegal and tyrannical behavior. The rules are meant not just to stifle free speech, which would be bad enough, but to favor progressive groups over conservative and libertarian ones.

After initially calling the IRS targeting "outrageous," President Obama shifted to calling it a "phony scandal."  The White House and its allies in Congress have worked hard in favor of the new targeting. 

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IRS to get 'license to kill' groups that oppose Obama agenda

The Washington Times, January 7, 2014 — The Internal Revenue Service is getting a special new power: a “license to kill” group that oppose the Obama agenda. James Bond’s license to kill isn’t nearly as broad.

The power to tax is the power to destroy. Its new powers will let the IRS destroy certain groups, especially those connected to the Tea Party, by imposing a tax on their work and messages during campaign seasons. Even the value of volunteer work could be taxed.

Suspicion traces the plan directly to President Barack Obama, since he personally met with IRS chief counsel William Wilkins — an Obama political appointee and long-time supporter — in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on April 23, 2012, two days before the IRS issued its key internal directives to target Tea Party and other conservative groups.

Now, unless Congress acts quickly to block them, new IRS regulations will deliver a death penalty to many of almost 100,000 grass-roots non-profits known as 501(c)(4) groups. They often provide information to the public about political issues, befitting their tax requirement to benefit social welfare.

The IRS wants to create a new bureaucratic definition that re-labels those common voter information activities by re-naming them “candidate-related political activity.” For short, IRS calls it CRPA, but CRAP would fit better.

This is actually a gag rule. But the IRS’s new speech restrictions do not apply to labor unions, trade associations, political parties, or other non-profit groups such as 501(c)(3)’s. The impact is limited to the 501(c)(4)’s, which are the favorite vehicle for Tea Party groups.

The Left also has 501(c)(4) non-profits which could be muzzled by the new rules. But the Obama Administration is notorious for selective enforcement, meaning it could choose to give a pass to friendly groups while it puts conservatives out of business. They could use this in efforts to shut down groups like the Faith and Freedom Coalition, Club for Growth, Americans for Prosperity and the National Rifle Association, while ignoring People for the American Way, American Civil Liberties Union, USAction and the Democratic Leadership Council.

Here’s how the IRS’s new license to kill would work:

IRS agent: Tax agency is still targeting Tea Party groups | WashingtonExaminer.com

The Washington Examiner
August 8, 2013

In a remarkable admission that is likely to rock the Internal Revenue Service again, testimony released Thursday by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp reveals that an agent involved in reviewing tax exempt applications from conservative groups told a committee investigator that the agency is still targeting Tea Party groups, three months after the IRS scandal erupted..

In closed door testimony before the House Ways & Means Committee, the unidentified IRS agent said requests for special tax status from Tea Party groups is being forced into a special "secondary screening" because the agency has yet to come up with new guidance on how to judge the tax status of the groups.

In a transcript from the committee provided to Secrets, a Ways & Means investigator asked: "If you saw -- I am asking this currently, if today if a Tea Party case, a group -- a case from a Tea Party group came in to your desk, you reviewed the file and there was no evidence of political activity, would you potentially approve that case? Is that something you would do?"

The agent said, "At this point I would send it to secondary screening, political advocacy."

The committee staffer then said, "So you would treat a Tea Party group as a political advocacy case even if there was no evidence of political activity on the application. Is that right?" The agent admitted, "Based on my current manager's direction, uh-huh."

Camp called the renewed targeting of Tea Party groups "outrageous."

Added a committee aide, "In plain English, the IRS is still targeting Tea Party cases."

CONTINUED:  http://washingtonexaminer.com/irs-agent-tax-agency-is-still-targeting-tea-party-groups/article/2534044