Tag Archives: IRS

News

Democrats launch investigation of pro-life group that filmed Planned Parenthood videos

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Here's Democrat Elijah Cummings with his good friend Lois Lerner
Here’s Democrat Elijah Cummings (left) with his good friend Lois Lerner

The Democrats won’t investigate Planned Parenthood, they want to investigate the group that revealed the truth about Planned Parenthood to the public.

Life News reports:

Just one day after Planned Parenthood was exposed cutting up a live baby for body parts for sale, Democrats in the House of Representative are launching their own investigation after the Planned Parenthood abortion business. Instead of looking into the abortion giant, they are probing the pro-life group behind the series of expose’ videos.

The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee is launching an investigation into the Center for Medical Progress, the pro-life organization that spent years recording the undercover videos and tracking information to expose Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry and biotech industry’s involvement in the abortion of unborn babies and the sales of their body parts to top universities for research.

While House Republicans are investigating Planned Parenthood and more than a dozen states have either taken steps to de-fund Planned Parenthood or launch their own investigations, Democrats in Congress are going after the pro-life advocates responsible for the undercover sting operation. The Hill has more:

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) sent a letter to the Center for Medical Progress on Thursday, demanding details to show whether the group broke state or federal laws when it secretly recorded videos of Planned Parenthood staff without consent.

The Center, led by the anti-abortion activist David Daleiden, established a fake company to gain entry into clinics and meetings with Planned Parenthood officials — a move that Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), have blasted as potentially illegal.

The group has also been asking for donations as a nonprofit charitable organization for the last two years, which Cummings said contrasts with its current self-identification as a group of citizen journalists.

Cummings warned that if Republican leaders of the committee decide to hold hearings on Planned Parenthood, he will ask Daleiden to testify as well.

“Any legitimate and balanced congressional investigation must also address your group’s role in these activities,” Cummings wrote.

[…]Meanwhile, two committees in the House of Representatives have already launched investigations of Planned Parenthood. One committee is looking into whether or not the abortion business is breaking federal law by altering abortion procedures to better obtain aborted baby body parts for sale. Another committee, among other things, is investigating the Obama administration and whether there is any connection between it and the abortion giant.

The differences between Republicans and Democrats could not be more clear on abortion.

Now, you might be wondering why I put a picture of Elijah Cummings next to a picture of IRS fascist Lois Lerner at the top of the post.

Here’s why:

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) sent tax documents on a targeted conservative group to Democratic staff on the House Oversight Committee, newly released emails show, despite previous denials by ranking Oversight Democrat Elijah Cummings (D., Md.) that such contact had occurred.

Emails released by the GOP-led Oversight Committee show Democratic staff requested information from the IRS’ tax-exempt division on True The Vote, a conservative group that monitors polling places for voter fraud.

Republicans and conservative activists say the IRS tax-exempt division, led by former official Lois Lerner, targeted dozens of conservative groups because of their politics while ignoring similar progressive organizations.

Cummings publicly requested information from True the Vote in October 2012 on its volunteer activities and training.

Five days later, the IRS sent True the Vote a letter requesting the group provide the agency with copies of its volunteer registration forms and additional information on its volunteer activities.

Cummings’ staff requested more information from the IRS about True the Vote in January 2013.  The request was channeled from the IRS’ Legislative Affairs office to several other IRS officials, including Lerner.

[…]In a February 2014 Oversight Committee hearing, Cummings denied allegations by True The Vote attorney Cleta Mitchell that his staff had worked with the IRS in targeting the group.

“We want to get to the bottom of how these coincidences happened, and we’re going to try to figure out whether any—if there was any staff of this committee that might have been involved in putting True the Vote on the radar screen of some of these Federal agencies,” Mitchell said. “We don’t know that, but we—we’re going to do everything we can do to try to get to the bottom of how did this all happen.”

“What she just said is absolutely incorrect and not true,” Cummings replied.

Cummings has staunchly opposed the Oversight Committee’s months-long investigation of the IRS targeting scandal, arguing it is a waste of time and money.

Oversight chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) and five subcommittee chairmen sent a letter to Cummings Thursday demanding an explanation for his staff’s activities.

“Although you have previously denied that your staff made inquiries to the IRS about conservative organization True the Vote that may have led to additional agency scrutiny, communication records between your staff and IRS officials—which you did not disclose to Majority Members or staff—indicates otherwise,” Issa wrote. “As the Committee is scheduled to consider a resolution holding Ms. Lerner, a participant in responding to your communications that you failed to disclose, in contempt of Congress, you have an obligation to fully explain your staff’s undisclosed contacts with the IRS.”

It’s not out of character for Elijah Cummings to use government to persecute people he disagrees with, it’s just business as usual.  This is the Democrat Party – what they are really about.

News

How a Democrat district attorney terrorized conservatives in Wisconsin

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District attorney John Chisholm (left)
District attorney John Chisholm (left)

Would you like the police to break into your house at 4 AM and search it just because you are a conservative? Then order you to tell no one about the raid? That’s what happened in Wisconsin.

Religious liberty expert David French writes about it in National Review.

Excerpt:

It was still dark outside when “Jonah” (not his real name) heard the pounding on his front door. As luck would have it, he was awake — or mostly awake. He’d gotten up at 4:00 a.m. on October 3, 2013, to see his parents off to the airport. They were leaving on a quick trip to raise money for the children’s charity his father runs. Jonah was 16 at the time, old enough to stay home alone for a short time, but not old enough to deal with what awaited him on the other side of the door.

The pounding continued, and Jonah peered out the window to discover its source. To his horror, he saw uniformed officers, their guns drawn. “Police,” they yelled. “We have a warrant.” An officer shined a flashlight on a document Jonah couldn’t read. Unsure what to do, but unwilling to defy the authorities, he let them in.

The officers sat him down, read him the entire search warrant, and ordered him not to tell anyone about the raid — not even school officials. He asked if he could call his parents. They said no. He asked if he could call a lawyer. They said no.

Then, they proceeded to turn his house “upside down.”

[…]The pretense for the October raids was suspected “coordination” between various conservative organizations and Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s campaign — activity that a trial court has held constituted nothing more than entirely legal “issue advocacy,” if it even occurred. Because they’d had the temerity to engage in this issue advocacy — constitutionally protected free speech — multiple conservative citizens were subjected to so-called John Doe proceedings by Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, a Democrat.

[…]As a prominent Wisconsin conservative and political consultant, Jonah’s father was one of Chisholm’s targets.

Obviously, Jonah’s father’s career was negatively impacted when news of this raid got out. But even more interesting than the  professional damage was the psychological damage:

Even reliving the experience of the raid in an interview was difficult for Jonah. He has a “deep sense” that his home is no longer safe. His family lives in a rural part of their county, and cars — especially dark SUVs — approaching their driveway now cause him deep, immediate anxiety. His family used to be more politically active; now, they watch what they say. They used to be more trusting, especially of police; now, they assume the worst.

And his mother continues to be terrified by the thought of what could have happened in the raid.

“We’re so fortunate that he’s okay,” she says. “He could have been in the shower. They could have broken the door down. He could have been shot. Over politics.”

You know, we have all these stories of secular leftist regimes in the Soviet Union, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, etc. and we imagine to ourselves “well, that can’t happen here, because secular leftists are different here”. No they aren’t. They just have to operate within a legal framework that puts the brakes on what they’d really like to do to people who disagree with them. Historically speaking, the left does shoot people over politics. They have shot millions and millions of people over politics in the last 100 years. That is not my opinion, that’s the record of leftist political regimes in the 20th century. There is no right-wing regime that shoots people over politics – to be right-wing means to be for free enterprise, free speech, freedom of religion, marriage and family, right to life, private property, self-defense, and so on. People on the right value individuals, businesses and families. Conservatives oppose big secular government breaking down people’s doors at 4 AM, with guns drawn.

Previously, I blogged about some of Chisholm’s other victims. One of them has now filed a civil rights lawsuit against him, which is good news – although criminal charges would be better. And criminal charges would also be good for the IRS leaders who persecuted conservative groups just ahead of the 2012 election.

IRS Chief Fascist Lois Lerner
IRS Chief Fascist Lois Lerner

And there is actually more news about the IRS targeting of conservatives, from The Stream.

Excerpt:

Newly released documents show Department of Justice officials, Internal Revenue Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation officials were discussing prosecuting nonprofit organizations for allegedly engaging in illegal political activity.

An official “DOJ Recap” document obtained by the group Judicial Watch details an Oct. 8, 2010 meeting between DOJ, IRS and FBI officials, including Lois Lerner, where the administration employees discussed “several possible theories to bring criminal charges under FEC law” against groups “posing” as tax exempt nonprofits.

Those groups are, of course, the Tea Party groups – groups that could have affected the re-election of Barack Obama.

More:

Judicial Watch says another document shows that just prior to the October 2010 meeting the IRS began giving the FBI confidential taxpayer information on nonprofits. The document obtained by Judicial Watch says the IRS gave the FBI some 21 disks with 1.25 million pages of taxpayer records.

“These new documents show that the Obama IRS scandal is also an Obama DOJ and FBI scandal,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “The FBI and Justice Department worked with Lois Lerner and the IRS to concoct some reason to put President Obama’s opponents in jail before his reelection. And this abuse resulted in the FBI’s illegally obtaining confidential taxpayer information. How can the Justice Department and FBI investigate the very scandal in which they are implicated?”

Does anyone in the leftist media care about this? Of course not. They like that government is criminalizing conservatives. They are 100% on board with it, and that’s why they cover it up.

News

New report: IRS used hundreds of lawyers to hide IRS persecution of conservatives

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IRS Chief Fascist Lois Lerner
IRS Chief Fascist Lois Lerner

This is from the Washington Times. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

The IRS’s director of privacy, governmental liaison and disclosure division testified Wednesday that the tax agency set up a special team with hundreds of lawyers to handle the probe into whether Tea Party groups were targeted, but repeatedly said she had no idea how it operated.

Mary Howard, who also works as the head Freedom of Information Act officer in the IRS, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that once the “special project team” was created and operational, she never saw requests for information.

“My understanding was that it started soon after the request came from Congress and other investigators asking for documents around this whole issue,” which she surmised meant around spring of 2013.

Asked who was on the team, she said: “My first hand knowledge of that is none.” But she did say the Chief Council of the IRS — one of only two political appointees in the IRS; the other is the commissioner — was on the “special project team,” as were “hundreds of attorneys.”

She said her office did not interact with the White House, but asked whether the “special project team” did, said: “I have no personal knowledge of how that team acted except that I know they amassed hundreds of attorneys to go through the documents and redact them.” 

[…]Congress held Lerner in contempt after she claimed she did not know about the targeting, but then later took the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering questions. She was never prosecuted by the Justice Department, but two dozen House members want new Attorney General Loretta Lynch to pursue charges.

Just to be clear – “go through the documents and redact them” means conceal information from Congressional oversight.

This is the very definition of a cover-up. As if we did not have enough scandals in this administration already. We must be up to about a dozen Watergates already.

The ACLJ notes that this is not the first shifty behaviour from the IRS lawyers – delaying the applications of Tea Party groups for years:

According to multiple IRS attorneys in D.C., including tax law specialist Carter Hull, who oversaw the review of the Tea Party cases, Lois Lerner, former Director at the Exempt Organizations Division, and her top advisor directed that certain Tea Party applications as part of a “test” group be sent to her office and IRS Chief Counsel for review in the winter of 2010-2011.

Chief Counsel’s office, after months more of delay, then demanded Mr. Hull make further inquiries of the Tea Party.  According to the testimony, it was Chief Counsel’s office that was demanding to know more information about the conservative groups’ activities “right before the [2010] election period.  In other words, immediately before.”

In addition, the testimony indicates that the Chief Counsel’s office was heavily involved in preparing a template for handling these cases, something Mr. Hull testified was impractical “because these organizations, all of them are different.  A template wouldn’t work.”  Yet, as he testified, a template was prepared by someone in Chief Counsel’s office in conjunction with other tax law specialists.  Even more disturbing he testified that after three years, IRS Chief Counsel’s office had not made a determination about these “test” Tea Party cases, even though in 2011, Mr. Hull had all the information he needed to make a recommendation as to their request for tax-exempt status.

The ACLJ has an ongoing lawsuit on behalf of many of the conservative / pro-life / Christian groups that were targeted by the IRS. It’s times like this where I wonder what my friend the evangelical woman who voted twice for Obama would say. She is the one who is for environmentalism and big government, you remember. Well, there’s your big government right there, Jessica. Surprise! They don’t like Christians or conservatives.