IRS Deliberately Chose Not to Fess Up to Scandal Before Election
The IRS commissioner “has known for at least a year that this was going on,” said Myers, “and that this had happened. And did he share any of that information with the White House? But even more importantly, Congress is going to ask him, why did you mislead us for an entire year? Members of Congress were saying conservatives are being targeted. What’s going on here? The IRS denied it. Then when — after these officials are briefed by the IG that this is going on, they don’t disclose it. In fact, the commissioner sent a letter to Congress in September on this subject and did not reveal this. Imagine if we — if you can — what would have happened if this fact came out in September 2012, in the middle of a presidential election? The terrain would have looked very different.”
Representative Dave Camp, chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, charged top IRS officials, including former commissioner Doug Shulman, of lying to Congress over the targeting of tea-party groups.
“They knew this was going on and responded in writing to the committee that it was not,” said Camp in an interview at the Capitol. He also said “yes” when I asked him whether he felt that Shulman and others had lied.
Camp, who is the point man for House Republicans on tax issues, said his committee is still investigating the motivation of officials who targeted right-leaning organizations. Next week, the House oversight committee, led by Representative Darrell Issa, will hold a hearing on the IRS scandal.
In 2012 IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told Congress that the IRS was not targeting groups based on their political views.
Was he lying?
In 2012, conservative groups complained that the IRS was targeting them for audits. IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told Congress that the IRS was not targeting groups based on their political views.
It wasn’t true…
Internal Revenue Service officials were involved in the targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups in Cincinnati, Washington DC and California offices.
Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved in the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.
IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea-party-affiliated groups, the documents show.
IRS employees in Cincinnati told conservatives seeking the status of “social welfare” groups that a task force in Washington was overseeing their applications, according to interviews with the activists.
Lois G. Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, told reporters Friday that the “absolutely inappropriate” actions were undertaken by “front-line people” working in Cincinnati to target groups with “tea party,” “patriot” or “9/12” in their names.
In one instance, however, Ron Bell, an IRS employee, informed a lawyer representing a conservative group focused on voter fraud that the application was under review in Washington. On several other occasions, IRS officials in Washington and California sent conservative groups detailed questionnaires about their voter outreach and other activities, according to the documents.
Under Obama, the IRS audits of tax-exempt organizations have skyrocketed 79%.
Yesterday it was just some “low level” employees involved. Now AP is reporting that senior IRS officials were aware of the targeting, via AP, IRS watchdog:
WASHINGTON (AP) — IRS watchdog: Senior IRS officials knew in 2011 tea parties’ tax-exempt status being targeted.
(added) AP has expanded its report now (h/t reader):
A federal watchdog’s upcoming report says senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups in 2011.
The disclosure contradicts public statements by former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, who repeatedly assured Congress that conservative groups were not targeted.
On Friday, the IRS apologized for what it acknowledged was “inappropriate” targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see if those groups were violating their tax-exempt status.
The Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration is expected to release the results of a nearly yearlong investigation in the coming week.
The Associated Press obtained part of the draft report.
That report says the head of the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups learned that groups were being targeted in June 2011. It does not say whether Shulman was notified.
Remember, you’re not paranoid, they really do hate you. At the highest levels….
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) couldn’t believe what he was hearing: “So the people at State told you, ‘Don’t talk to the guy who is coming to investigate?’” Hicks’ answer: “Yes, sir.”
Jordan pressed: “You’ve had several congressional delegations come to various places you’ve been around the world. Has that ever happened, where lawyers get on the phone to you prior to a congressional delegate coming to investigate … Have you ever had anyone tell you, ‘Don’t talk with the people from Congress coming to find out what took place?” Hicks: “Never.”
Tapper played a portion of former Sec. Clinton’s testimony before Congress in which she asked “what difference, at this point, does it make” what the impetus behind the attack on the consulate was.“Well, that’s what I want to know,” Smith shot back. “Why did it happen? And she is in charge. Why couldn’t she do something about it? I blame her.”
“That’s her department. She’s supposed to be on top of it, and yet she claims that she knows nothing – it wasn’t told to her,” Smith said. “Who’s running the place?”
Just what we’ve all been waiting for! At last, yet another pivot to “jobs, jobs, jobs” because every other time President Obama has gone out campaigning — oops, I meant, jobs-touring — he’s been so effective at producing wonderful, real-world economic results, and definitely not merely creating an opportunity to air his many grievances about those obstructionist Congressional Republicans spitefully thwarting his agenda.
Just what we need another meaningless teleprompter seance …
President Obama will travel this week to Austin, where the jobs market has been booming, to kick off a new focus on the middle class and economic growth.
Obama is planning a campaign-style “Middle Class Jobs & Opportunity Tour” across the country, beginning Thursday in Austin, a magnet for new tech jobs. The push seems designed to help jump-start the president’s second term. …
Now, White House officials hope that Obama, by campaigning outside of Washington, can galvanize the public and pressure Congress to back his legislative agenda, including economic measures he outlined in February’s State of the Union address. …
“Four in ten Americans (42%) are unaware that the ACA [UN - Affordable Care Act] is still the law of the land,” the report says, “including 12 percent who believe the law has been repealed by Congress, 7 percent who believe it has been overturned by the Supreme Court and 23 percent who say they don’t know enough to say what the status of the law is.”
Talk about low information, this has to top the list.
Have fun. You are not going to be able to keep your doctor. Your premiums is going to go up. And it is looking like between 30-40 million people will not be able to afford it.
A clever idea boomerangs on Obama. Real cuts ahead?
The whole sequestration gambit has failed, to the point where even the Washington Post’s Ezra Kleinadmits that ”the Democrats have lost on sequestration.” The idea was that even the comparatively minor cuts in spending caused by the sequester would be so painful that voters would demand higher taxes rather than endure cuts in spending.
Problem was, when the spending cuts came, nobody noticed. This led the Obama administration to try to up the pain by focusing cuts in places where people might feel the pain: canceling White House tours for schoolchildren, or furloughing air traffic controllers.
That didn’t work either. The tour-canceling just looked mean, and the problem with targeting air travel is that members of Congress, and their top donors, fly a lot. Huge bipartisan majorities in Congress thus quickly passed legislation forcing the FAA to make cuts elsewhere instead.
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