IRS
August 19, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Among the imponderables staring us in the face in year 1 of the Trump administration is John Koskinen. Why does this man remain Commissioner of the IRS? Speaking of Obama holdovers, Koskinen is a beaut. I should have thought he was a prime candidate for sacking on day 1, though I don’t recall President Trump ever mentioning the scandals that have disgraced the IRS on the campaign trail. Koskinen has
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August 8, 2016 — Scott Johnson
This past Friday the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals partly reinstated the lawsuits brought by two groups — True the Vote and Linchpins of Liberty — that had sued the IRS over its targeting of conservative or Tea Party-type organizations seeking 501(1)(c)(3) status. The court has resurrected the groups’ claims for relief enjoining the IRS against continued discriminatory treatment. The D.C. Circuit opinion is posted here and is worth reading.
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July 20, 2016 — Scott Johnson
The IRS is at the center of the deepest scandals of the Obama administration. Bill Henck has given us a look from his perspective inside the IRS Office of the Chief Counsel, where he has worked as an attorney for 29 years. In 2014 we posted Bill’s personal account of a retaliatory audit conducted by the IRS against him in “Inside the IRS.” We followed up with subsequent posts by
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July 4, 2016 — Scott Johnson
This past April the Claremont Institute and the Federalist Society co-sponsored a panel discussion of the weaponization of the bureaucracy against the Democrats’ political opponents. They called the program “Our Partisan Bureaucracy? The IRS, the DOJ, and the Future of Political Activism” (video below and at the link). The Claremont Institute has posted the video with this description: When the first Civil Service Reform Act passed in 1883, “good government”
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March 23, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (the Circuit that includes Ohio and thus the IRS’s Cincinnati office) released its decision in United States v. NorCal Tea Party Patriots. In the court’s published decision, rejecting the IRS’s petition for extraordinary relief in a pending class action by the NorCal Tea Party and others mistreated by the IRS, the baloney meets the grinder. Judge Kethledge introduces the
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January 22, 2016 — John Hinderaker
The saga of Barack Obama’s Internal Revenue Service is almost unbelievable. After “joking” years ago that he would audit his enemies, it turned out that Obama’s minions were in fact delaying or blocking routine applications for 501(c) status by conservative organizations, in order to help the Democratic Party. When Congress tried to investigate, the Obama administration stonewalled at every turn. Evidence mysteriously disappeared and the key player in the scheme,
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August 30, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) requires, in essence, that U.S. citizens who reside outside the U.S. disclose to the IRS all of their foreign banking assets including retirement plans, savings accounts, etc. It also requires foreign banks to assist the IRS in applying the disclosure rules or else face enormous penalties. As its not-so-subtle acronym suggests, the Act purports to be an anti-fat-cat measure through which to crack
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August 30, 2015 — John Hinderaker
The Obama administration has proved to be the least transparent in our modern history. To an unprecedented degree, the administration is staffed by scofflaws who flout their legal obligations. When confronted with requests for information, let alone actual investigations, Obama’s habitual response is to stonewall. This strategy has been remarkably successful in avoiding accountability, in part because legal processes are so slow. We have seen this pattern dozens of times.
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August 25, 2015 — Scott Johnson
The IRS has disclosed another private email account on which Lois Lerner conducted official business. The disclosure occurred in the Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit for Lerner emails. The newly disclosed email account is under the name of Toby Miles. Stephen Dinan reports the story on the incredibly annoying Washington Times site here. One can circumvent the Times site via Thomas Lifson’s American Thinker post here. Dinan reports: “In addition to
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July 30, 2015 — Scott Johnson
In his capacity as chairman of the relevant Senate subcommittee, Senator Cruz “gave a hard-hitting opening statement, comparing the [IRS]’s actual abuses of political opponents during the Obama presidency to Richard Nixon’s unsuccessful attempt to use the agency to target political adversaries.” So says Andrew McCarthy here at NR’s corner, where he has posted the transcript of Senator Cruz’s statement. Andy links to video of Senator Cruz’s statement here. Reiterating
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July 29, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
The IRS is in hot water once again with no-nonsense federal district court judge Emmet Sullivan over Lois Lerner’s emails. A year ago, Judge Sullivan ordered the IRS to explain in writing and under oath how some of Lerner’s emails went missing, and to detail any potential methods for recovering them. The IRS managed to recover 1,800 emails that it previously claimed “inadvertently” were destroyed. Now, it has again incurred
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July 28, 2015 — Scott Johnson
In their Wall Street Journal column “The stonewall at the top of the IRS,” Reps. Ron DeSantis and Jim Jordan write in connection with the bottomless IRS scandal: [O]n Aug. 2, the House Oversight Committee issued its first subpoena for IRS documents, including all of Ms. Lerner’s emails. On Feb. 2, 2014, Kate Duval, the IRS commissioner’s counsel, identified a gap in the Lerner emails that were being collected. Days
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June 25, 2015 — Scott Johnson
The IRS is at the center of the deepest scandals of the Obama administration. William Henck has given us a look from his perspective inside the IRS Office of the Chief Counsel, where he has worked as an attorney for over 26 years. Last year we posted his personal account of a retaliatory audit conducted by the IRS against him in “Inside the IRS.” We followed up with subsequent posts
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June 19, 2015 — Scott Johnson
The pro-Israel group Z Street had its application for tax-exempt status held up at the IRS. When founder Lori Lowenthal Marcus asked why, she was told that IRS auditors had been instructed to give pro-Israel groups special attention and that Z Street’s application had been forwarded to a special IRS unit for additional review. Not to put too fine a point on the legal issues, this isn’t kosher. It’s illegal.
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June 6, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
The conventional wisdom among hawkish conservatives is that ISIS cannot be defeated by U.S. air power unless we also put “boots on the ground.” This may well be true. But it’s also true that the U.S. air campaign against ISIS has not been serious. David Deptula, a retired air force general, provides the evidence: In the campaign against the Islamic State, we are averaging 12 strike sorties per day. During
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May 27, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post reports that Iraq’s Shiite militias have launched an offensive intended to put a stranglehold on ISIS fighters in Ramadi by cutting off ISIS supply lines and besieging the city. The Shiite militias in question are heavily influenced, if not dominated by Iran. The Badr Organization mentioned in the Post’s report, with its close ties to Iran’s elite Quds Force, is a good example. Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi
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May 11, 2015 — Scott Johnson
The pro-Israel group Z Street had its application for tax-exempt status held up at the IRS. When founder Lori Lowenthal Marcus asked why, she was told that IRS auditors had been instructed to give pro-Israel groups special attention and that Z Street’s application had been forwarded to a special IRS unit for additional review. Not to put too fine a point on the legal issues, this isn’t kosher. It’s illegal.
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