Tag Archives: Internal Revenue Service

News

Human Rights Campaign refuses to reveal name of IRS leaker

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CNS News reports.

Excerpt:

The Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual advocacy group, will not say who provided it with a confidential list of donors to the National Organization for Marriage, although NOM’s chairman believes someone at the Internal Revenue Service leaked the information. The IRS also is silent on the question.

Providing such donor information is a felony, John C. Eastman, chairman of the board for the National Organization for Marriage, told CNSNews.com. The Justice Department deferred the matter to the Treasury Department, but Eastman said the probe by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration seems to have stalled.

Nevertheless, Eastman told CNSNews.com, “We’re going to keep pressing until we get criminal indictments brought against the people responsible.”

NOM, which advocates traditional marriage, and HRC are on opposite sides in the national political battle over same-sex marriage.

The willful disclosure of donor information carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

Human Rights Campaign spokesman Charlie Joughin did not respond to numerous phone and e-mail inquiries from CNSNews.com on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday asking who provided the list that was posted on the HRC website in March 2012. The HRC advocates for same-sex marriage and other homosexual issues.

[…]The willful disclosure of NOM’s confidential tax information would violate 26 U.S.C. Section 6103, which states, “Returns and return information shall be confidential.” It also says: “no officer or employee of the United States,” “no officer or employee of any State, any local law enforcement agency,” “any local child support enforcement agency, or any local agency administering a program,” “no other person (or officer or employee thereof) who has or had access to returns or return information,” “shall disclose any return or return information obtained by him in any manner in connection with his service as such an officer or an employee or otherwise or under the provisions of this section.”

What a misnamed organization – the “Human Rights” Campaign. They are covering up for a felon because of their hatred and intolerance of those who support natural marriage.

News

Phone call recording of IRS agent reveals anti-Christian, anti free speech bias

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From Alliance Defending Freedom.

Excerpt:

Alliance Defending Freedom made public Monday audio of a phone conversation that the Internal Revenue Service placed to a non-profit organization that provides support to women in abusive pregnancy situations. In the recorded phone conversation, an IRS agent lectures the president of the organization about forcing its religion and beliefs on others and inaccurately explains that the group must remain neutral on issues such as abortion.

Alliance Defending Freedom represents the group, which did not receive its tax-exempt status until last week, nearly two and a half years after applying for it.

“The IRS is a tax collector; it shouldn’t be allowed to be the speech and belief police,” said Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley. “The current scandal isn’t new but has merely exposed the abuse of power that characterizes this agency and threatens our fundamental freedoms.”

The IRS grants tax exemptions to religious, educational, and/or charitable organizations. In January 2011, Pro-Life Revolution, which operates from Texas under all three purposes, filed an application for tax-exempt status with the IRS.

Four months later, the IRS sent a letter requesting “more information” and an explanation of how the organization’s activities are educational or charitable even though IRS rules specify that an organization need only operate for “one or more” of the three exempt purposes. President of Pro-Life Revolution Ania Joseph nonetheless replied and answered the IRS’s questions.

In March 2012, Joseph received a call from IRS Exempt Organization Specialist Sherry Wan, who told her that, in order to obtain a tax exemption, “You cannot force your religion or force your beliefs on somebody else…. You have to know your boundaries. You have to know your limits. You have to respect other people’s beliefs.”

The really horrible thing about this secular leftist fascism is that it is all taxpayer-funded. The victim of this inquisition is paying for the inquisition. Not even the Roman Catholic church did that.

News

Obama’s deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter met with IRS chief at the White House

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Jake Tapper of the left-leaning CNN reports.

Excerpt: (links removed)

Comments made by former White House adviser and Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter on CNN’s “The Lead” last week about meetings at the White House attended by both her and the then-director of the Internal Revenue Service, Doug Shulman, have prompted some conservatives to question her role in those meetings.

The White House has acknowledged that IRS officials seem to have inappropriately focused on conservative groups when vetting whether the groups qualified for special tax exempt status. White House visitor logs suggest that Shulman was cleared to attend meetings in the White House or Eisenhower Executive Office Building 157 times, which has prompted questions from Republican officials as to whether the targeting of conservative groups was ever discussed. More than 50 of Douglas Shulman’s scheduled visits are described as “health care meetings” or “health care reform meetings,” according to the visitor logs.

On “The Lead’s” political roundtable discussion about Shulman’s visits on Friday, Cutter – now a CNN contributor – said that “many of those meetings were for health care implementation. I was in them with him. So there is nothing nefarious going on.”

[…]Many conservative outlets have seized upon Cutter’s presence in the meetings as reason for suspicion. “The president’s deputy campaign manager attended the ‘nonpolitical’ ObamaCare implementation meetings with the former IRS commissioner at the White House,” wrote an Investor’s Business Daily editorial. “She wasn’t there to discuss the Easter Egg Roll.”

Wrote Carol Platt Liebau at Townhall.com, “as everyone knows, Stephanie Cutter’s expertise is not primarily in the policy area; it is in the realm of politics: Political strategy and communications.  She has been described by the Daily Beast as a partisan ‘pit bull.’  Her job isn’t the nuts and bolts of governing.  She is a political fixer.  That’s why she was a Deputy Campaign manager for the President’s re-election.”

Here’s what Carol Platt Liebau said in that Townhall article.

Excerpt: (links removed)

An interesting fact emerges from a look at a transcript of last Friday’s edition of “The Lead With Jake Tapper” — Stephanie Cutter was in on the White House meetings that IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman attended.

Cutter insists that Shulman was simply meeting about implementation of ObamaCare — and in fairness, one of her responsibilities was managing communications strategy for the unpopular law.  But as everyone knows, Stephanie Cutter’s expertise is not primarily in the policy area; it is in the realm of politics: Political strategy and communications.  She has been described by theDaily Beast as a partisan “pit bull.”  Her job isn’t the nuts and bolts of governing.  She is a political fixer.  That’s why she was a Deputy Campaign manager for the President’s re-election.

Given that’s the case, it’s far from clear why she would have been in meetings with Doug Shulman at all.  The whole point of the IRS’ supposed “independence” is to insulate the agency from the influence and machinations of people exactly like Stephanie Cutter.

So whether or not the stated purpose of the meetings was about ObamaCare — unless Shulman’s politics are very different from the lefty leanings of his wife — it isn’t hard to imagine Shulman and Cutter exchanging some congruent views.  That’s particularly true given that foremost in political discussion at the time was the Citizens United case (holding it unconstitutional for the government to restrict speech by corporations, associations and unions), which had recently been handed down by the Supreme Court — and which scared President Obama to death.  Is it really a stretch to think that Cutter and Shulman might have commiserated, bemoaned the supposed threat to democracy, and wished that something could be done, oh so subtly? . . . Consider the following timeline:

  • May 2009 – Cutter moves to White House from Treasury Department
  • January 2010 – Citizens United is handed down; Democrats are hysterical
  • March 2010 – IRS begins targeting Tea Party and other conservative groups
  • April 2010 – Cutter assigned to sell health care reform; if meetings with Shulman didn’t occur before, presumably they did so afterwards.

Indeed, this time line and Cutter’s presence in the IRS meetings makes it more likely than ever that subtle political influence was wielded.  Did anyone explicitly order Shulman to target conservatives?  Probably not . . . because given the extent and type of contact he had with White House politicos, no explicit directive was needed.

It seems likely that everyone understood each other just fine, and the IRS operated accordingly.

Do you think it’s possible that the Obama campaign worked with the IRS to delay and deny applications from conservative groups in order to influence the 2012 election? Why would the deputy campaign manager need to be in meetings with the head of the IRS at the White House?