IRS
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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April 10, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
According to Judicial Watch, documents it has released show that top staffers from the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee met with Lois Lerner and others in a “marathon” meeting to discuss concerns raised by Senators John McCain and Carl Levin that IRS was not reining in political advocacy groups in response to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. The meeting took place 11 days prior to Lerner’s admission at an ABA
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February 14, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
Eli Lake reports that ISIS fighters captured in Iraq — of whom there reportedly are almost 100 so far — are being interrogated by Iraqis, not by U.S. intelligence officers. Thus, we’re left to rely on reports from Iraqis to obtain information from the captives. This may not be all bad. U.S. interrogation policy severely limits what we can do to extract information from terrorists. It’s likely, moreover, that ISIS
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February 9, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
Emails obtained by Judicial Watch show that the IRS stalled a criminal investigation into its practice of targeting conservative groups. IRS delayed granting permission to an agency employee to meet with investigators, despite the employee’s eagerness to testify. The employee’s attorney expressed his frustration with the IRS’s delay to the Department of Justice on June 12, 2013, saying “we find it amazing that [IRS attorneys] didn’t immediately respond giving us
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December 22, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
Tomorrow, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will release its report on the politicization of the IRS, including, of course, its targeting of conservative groups. The Daily Caller obtained an advance copy and has previewed six key finding. Mark Tapscott of the Washington Examiner also discusses the 210-page report. The report concludes that “IRS employees allow[ed] politics to seep into their work from February 2010 to May 2012.” Moreover,
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December 16, 2014 — John Hinderaker
Conservatives often express frustration that so little, seemingly, can be done about the corruption of the Obama administration. Part of the problem is that when a party is determined to stonewall, our legal system is generally too slow to provide an effective remedy within the time frame of a presidential administration. The case of Austan Goolsbee is instructive. In August 2010, Goolsbee, who directed Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board and
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December 11, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
Emails obtained by Judicial Watch through litigation confirm that Lois Lerner was in contact with DOJ officials about the possible criminal prosecution of tax-exempt entities two full years before what the IRS conceded was its “absolutely inappropriate” 2012 targeting of the organizations. On September 29, 2010, a DOJ official (whose name is redacted) emailed a staff assistant at the IRS (whose name is also redacted) as follows: As we discussed
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November 25, 2014 — John Hinderaker
The Obama Administration’s IRS scandal is multi-faceted. In addition to the persecution of conservative non-profits by Lois Lerner et al., the question has been percolating for some years whether Obama’s IRS has transferred confidential taxpayer information to Obama’s White House in violation of federal criminal laws. The issue first arose when Austin Goolsbee of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers told reporters that he had information about Koch Industries that
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November 12, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
The Republican takeover of the Senate is rich in potential consequences. One such consequence is the opportunity to get to the bottom of the IRS targeting scandal. Cleta Mitchell, the attorney who has led the charge to uncover the truth about IRS abuses, points out that Republicans now control key Senate committee’s with jurisdiction over the matter: Finance, Judiciary, and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. The new chairmen are, respectively,
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October 29, 2014 — Scott Johnson
The House Oversight Committee has released the video below providing a short refresher in the IRS targeting scandal. One of the Obama administration’s greatest successes is the stonewalling, covering up and bald-faced prevaricating with which it has kept the lid on the scandal. The video isn’t really comprehensible unless you’ve been following the story, so it is of limited usefulness. But it is good enough to have set me back
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October 7, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
Logan Clements is the producer of a film called “Sick and Sicker: ObamaCare Canadian Style.” He says that the IRS is auditing him, and that he had no issues with IRS before he made his movie. A month ago, Breitbart News announced that the IRS is auditing it. Breitbart News is, of course, consistently critical of the Obama administration. Coincidences? Clements thinks not. He explains why in this video: Clements
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October 7, 2014 — Scott Johnson
Lois Lerner was out for a walk with her dog when Jason Mattera accosted her regarding her wrongdoing on behalf of the Obama administration at the IRS. She has a lot to answer for and we may never get beyond something like Mattera’s attempted ambush interview (posted here, on Jason’s Daily Surge site). Jason delights in serving up to Democrats the Alinskyite tactics in which they specialize. I don’t think
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October 5, 2014 — John Hinderaker
While strong cases can be made for both Benghazi and Fast and Furious, most voters consider Barack Obama’s misuse of the IRS to be his administration’s worst scandal so far. But, as we wrote last year, targeting of conservative non-profits for harassment is not the only dimension of the IRS scandal. In addition, there is strong reason to believe that one or more White House political appointees have illegally accessed
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September 19, 2014 — Scott Johnson
William Henck has worked inside the IRS Office of the Chief Counsel as an attorney for over 26 years. We posted his personal account, including his testimony to a retaliatory audit conducted by the IRS against him, this past February in “Inside the IRS.” We followed up with subsequent posts including “Inside the IRS, part 5” and, most recently, “Inside the IRS, part 6,” both regarding the promotion of Fred
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August 26, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
The New York Observer reports that, according to an IRS court filing, the IRS destroyed Lois Lerner’s Blackberry after it knew her computer had crashed and after a Congressional inquiry was well underway. An IRS official declared under the penalty of perjury that the destroyed Blackberry would have contained the same emails (both sent and received) as Lois Lerner’s hard drive. Lerner’s hard drive crashed in June 2011 and the
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August 25, 2014 — John Hinderaker
Judicial Watch announced today that Department of Justice lawyers are now saying that all federal government emails are backed up, along with other data, which means that the “missing” emails of Lois Lerner and other IRS employees (as well as federal employees involved in other scandals) can be recovered: Department of Justice attorneys for the Internal Revenue Service told Judicial Watch on Friday that Lois Lerner’s emails, indeed all government
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