Free Republic

The chief of the IRS fended off Republican demands Wednesday that he should lose his job, telling the House Judiciary Committee that he'd made statements about missing emails that later proved wrong but had done nothing to merit impeachment. At a four-and-one-half hour hearing on whether to oust him, John Koskinen repeatedly said he'd cooperated fully with congressional investigators probing why his agency — before he joined it — subjected tea party groups seeking tax exemptions to excessive scrutiny. Conservatives leading a campaign-year effort to remove him said Koskinen has headed an agency that destroyed emails investigators wanted and he...

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D.-Ill., took a shot at Donald Trump Wednesday by eating Skittles while questioning IRS Commissioner John Koskinen Wednesday during his impeachment hearing. "Every now and then I get a bad Skittle," Gutierrez said, adding that the few "bad" candies didn't persuade him to "ban them all."

The IRS confirmed in a letter it is looking into claims of “pay-to-play” practices at the Clinton Foundation, after dozens of Republican lawmakers requested a review of potential “criminal conduct” at the organization founded by the family at the center of this week’s Democratic National Convention. Commissioner John Koskinen wrote in a July 22 letter to Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn that the issue has been “forwarded” to the IRS “Exempt Organizations Examinations” program in Dallas. “This program considers all referrals and will send you a separate acknowledgement letter when it receives your information,” he wrote, in a letter first reported...

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen referred congressional charges of corrupt Clinton Foundation “pay-to-play” activities to his tax agency’s exempt operations office for investigation, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned. The request to investigate the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation on charges of “public corruption” was made in a July 15 letter by 64 House Republicans to the IRS, FBI and Federal Trade Commission (FTC). They charged the foundation is “lawless.” The initiative is being led by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican who serves as the vice chairwoman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which oversees FTC....

Poor Hillary! Apparently the IRS is just another sexist cog in the vast right wing conspiracy Hillary’s having a rough week. Not only are Trump’s poll numbers climbing, the DNC email leak is overshadowing her convention and now she’s going to have to deal with another investigation. This time it’s the IRS that’s digging into the Clinton’s affairs, by way of their shady slush fund charitable foundation. As the Daily Caller reports in an exclusive:

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen referred congressional charges of corrupt Clinton Foundation “pay-to-play” activities to his tax agency’s exempt operations office for investigation, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned. The request to investigate the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation on charges of “public corruption” was made in a July 15 letter by 64 House Republicans to the IRS, FBI and Federal Trade Commission (FTC). They charged the foundation is “lawless.” The initiative is being led by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican who serves as the vice chairwoman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which oversees FTC....

The House Freedom Caucus, the chamber’s conservative bloc, will file a privileged motion to force a floor vote on whether to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen for his failure to cooperate with congressional oversight of his agency. “There’s a belief across this country that there are two standards: one for the powerful and politically-connected and another for ordinary citizens. The IRS Commissioner – the head of one of the most powerful government agencies – was able to get away with behavior no ordinary American could,” the statement said. “It’s long past time for Commissioner Koskinen to be held accountable for...

House conservatives have taken the first step to force an impeachment vote on IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. […] The hard-line House Freedom Caucus announced Wednesday that two members, John Fleming of Louisiana and Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, were introducing a so-called privileged resolution that could result in an impeachment floor vote on Koskinen. …

2011, while working as a college English instructor and writing articles for this and other sites about corruption in education, I set up a website called Dissident Prof with my own funds and by working in my basement. After one of my long-time readers sent an unsolicited $500 donation, I decided to apply for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. Thus began the ordeal with the IRS. I suffered through fifteen months of stonewalling followed by demands to quickly meet a financial and ideological inquisition. I am now a plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against the IRS, because we now know the...

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen was a no show Tuesday for a House Judiciary hearing accusing him of misconduct. That didn't stop lawmakers from blasting Koskinen and calling for his impeachment. The hearing stems from a 2013 investigation into IRS official Lois Lerner. Lerner was accused of unfairly targeting conservative and tea party groups by delaying their requests for tax-exempt status. Koskinen, who was brought in by President Barack Obama after the scandal unfolded, promised to provide key evidence, including thousands of Lerner's emails to assist Congress in their investigation. Tapes obtaining those emails were destroyed. Although many of the emails...

RS Commissioner John Koskinen has declined to testify in his own defense at a congressional hearing Tuesday, but insisted in a statement that his bungling of a subpoena doesn’t rise to the level of “treason, or high crimes and misdemeanors” needed for him to be impeached. The Judiciary Committee hearing is being viewed by some House Republicans as the precursor to impeachment, with the House’s top investigator saying Mr. Koskinen defied a congressional subpoena that demanded all of former IRS senior executive Lois G. Lerner’s emails be preserved as part of the investigation into tea party targeting. But Mr. Koskinen,...

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen will not appear at a “misconduct” hearing Tuesday where Republicans will lay out a case to impeach him for allegedly failing to comply with a congressional subpoena, the IRS told POLITICO. Lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee summoned the tax chief to answer accusations from the House Oversight panel that he failed to preserve documents Congress requested for its probe of the IRS tea party scandal. They also say he never told the full truth about erased back-up tapes containing copies of emails belonging to former IRS official Lois Lerner. Some Republicans even suspect the IRS...

A self-identified IRS employee admitted he would go after, target and try to end conservative groups who wanted to abolish the IRS, to Cleta Mitchell, an attorney representing those groups, on a Washington Journal segment on C-SPAN. Mitchell, a political law attorney who has represented conservative groups during the IRS targeting scandal since 2010, was a guest on C-SPAN to discuss the possible impeachment of the IRS commissioner John Koskinen. The first caller was a self-identified IRS employee who said he would go after the groups Mitchell represents if their goal was to abolish the IRS. “I am a lowly...

The IRS has seen a surge of scams, see the most recent below. The IRS reminds taxpayers to guard against all sorts of con games that arise during any filing season. Tax Refund Scam Artists Posing as Taxpayer Advocacy Panel A new email scam targeting taxpayers has emerged. According to the Taxpayer Advocacy Panel (TAP), taxpayers are receiving emails that appear to be from TAP about a tax refund. These emails are a phishing scam, where unsolicited emails which seem to come from legitimate organizations -- but are really from scammers -- try to trick unsuspecting victims into providing personal...

Donald Trump says he would like to release his tax returns to the public, but just can't. "I'm being audited now for two or three years, so I can't do it until the audit is finished, obviously. And I think people would understand that," the Republican front-runner said at Thursday night's Republican debate in Houston. The Internal Revenue Service and tax experts, though, say he can. "Nothing prevents individuals from sharing their own tax information," IRS spokesman Anthony Burke said in an email. Audits aren't out of the norm for someone with Trump's wealth, legal experts say, and there's nothing...

Donald Trump, Christian Martyr I was starting to doze off. The debate was all but over, and the exhaustion from the day was catching up with me, as was the scotch. The rush of finally seeing the candidates go after Trump in a serious way was wearing off replaced by a mix of dread and resignation that it may all be too little too late. (Note: I don't think it is, and I won't be giving into despair either, for reasons Charlie explains here.) I was only half listening when Donald Trump came into the spin room on CNN to...

Dr. Ben Carson told the audience tonight at the CNN GOP debate that after he spoke out against Obamacare at the National Prayer Breakfast he was audited by the Obama IRS. Ben Carson Criticized Obama TO HIS FACE At The National Prayer Breakfast In 2013 (MRCTV) Dr. Carason: I never had an audit until I spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast. And then all of the sudden they came in and said, "We just want to look at your real estate dealings." And then they didn't find anything. And then they took a look at the whole year. And they...

In June 2014, the IRS seized $153,907.99 from Ken Quran's bank account - his life savings - even though he did nothing wrong. . . the IRS may seize a person's bank assets if it discovers a pattern of frequent transactions under $10,000. Banks are required to report cash transactions over $10,000 and it's a crime if one tries to avoid that reporting by purposefully keeping all transactions below that amount. The laws are intended to suss out drug trafficking, money laundering and organized crime or terrorist activity. But the IRS doesn't need any evidence of wrongdoing before seizing the...

The ACLJ has secured an important victory in our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case against the IRS on behalf of Citizens for a Strong New Hampshire. After a year of litigation, which followed over four months of waiting for the IRS to respond to its FOIA request, we finally succeeded in compelling the IRS to comply with its obligations under federal law. As we have previously written, Citizens for a Strong New Hampshire issued a FOIA request to the IRS in June 2014 seeking communications between two New Hampshire legislators and certain IRS officials, including Lois Lerner, the IRS's...

Lois Lerner, the central figure in the IRS scandal, is breaking her silence in an unapologetic interview where she says she's not sorry and maintains she “didn’t do anything wrong” -- despite widely documented evidence that her division targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny. The former head of the tax-exempt unit, speaking with Politico, gave her first media interview since the scandal broke 16 months ago. She has twice refused to answer questions before Congress, but used the interview to publicly assert her innocence. "I know I did the best I could under the circumstances and am not sorry for...

House Republicans have dug up emails from Lois Lerner in which the former IRS official refers to some in the Republican Party as “---holes” and "crazies" – an exchange they say shows her “animus” toward conservatives. The November 2012 emails were released Wednesday by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., as part of his renewed call for the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate. Lerner is the ex-IRS official who led the unit accused of targeting conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status for extra scrutiny. In the email exchange, Lerner appears to be chatting with...

Scandal: The tangled web of IRS deceit unravels a bit more with news recycled backup tapes of lost emails still exist and statements before a federal judge that Lois Lerner's hard drive was irreparably damaged were untrue. Deliberately destroying evidence pertaining to the investigation of possible criminal activity is a crime. So is lying about it to Congress and the courts as part of a cover-up of that activity. On July 11, U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton, at a hearing examining a lawsuit against the IRS by the targeted conservative group True the Vote, told Obama administration lawyers he...

Conservative talk radio host Mark Levin’s legal foundation is asking a federal judge to sanction the Environmental Protection Agency for destroying public records. The Landmark Legal Foundation asked federal District Judge Royce Lamberth to sanction the EPA for the destruction of emails and text messages concerning the delay of large new environmental regulations until after the 2012 election.

Scandal: An internationally accredited information-technology asset-management firm says the IRS has some explaining to do as our patience is taxed with tales of even more convenient computer crashes. Private-sector organizations as vast as the Internal Revenue Service typically have redundancy built into their information technology systems, as secure record keeping is the key to managing their businesses and staying in business. Such records, if nothing else, are often required to be kept by law, and often by the IRS itself. As we have noted, Lois Lerner's lost emails from the critical period when the IRS was serving as a political...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is currently claiming that seven different IRS officials experienced computer crashes that erased their emails and made it impossible for the IRS to cooperate with congressional investigations into the IRS targeting matter. The wave of computer crashes apparently struck both Washington, D.C. — where Lois Lerner oversaw the agency’s Exempt Organizations division — and also Cincinnati, Ohio — where agents processed tax-exempt applications. The Federal Records Act requires IRS employees to save all of their emails pertaining to agency business and to also print those emails out in case they have a computer crash.

"Lois Lerner Caught Granting Muslim Brotherhood front groups Tax Exempt status as far back as BUSH ADMINISTRATION" One of the reasons Republicans like Rep. Mike Kelly from Pennsylvania won’t come forward with the truth about Malik Obama’s tax exempt status and Lois Lerner’s role in it likely has to do with what she was permitted to do when a Republican president was in office. Calling attention to Lerner’s signature being at the bottom of the Barack H. Obama Foundation’s (BHOF) approval letter is certain to cause the Republican Party headaches over its complicity in taking the country to where it...

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said Tuesday that IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has done “a terrible job communicating” in the investigation into former IRS official Lois Lerner’s missing emails. “Obviously, I think he is doing a terrible job communicating, and obviously, they made huge mistakes as far as how they’ve retained records and whether or not they’ve been upfront and whether or not those records were available,” McCaskill said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “This guy did a terrible job being arrogant yesterday. We all think of the IRS as being arrogant, and he kind of confirmed that,” she added about his...

Scandal: The IRS canceled a contract with an email storage contractor weeks after Lois Lerner reported lost personal files and before other IRS officials had their hard drives crash as Tea Party-targeting investigations began. Timing is everything, the saying goes, and sometimes the timing of events is also very curious, as in the case of the lost emails of Lerner and at least six other officials at the very same time the IRS canceled its contract to back up and preserve those emails as required by federal law. Lerner's computer supposedly crashed in June 2011, an alleged event the IRS...

On his Monday radio show, conservative talk show Mark Levin reacted to how congressional Democrats in a House Oversight Hearing had conducted themselves earlier over the committee’s inquiry into missing emails related to an investigation of former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner. Levin said it was clear to him the response from congressional Democrats was orchestrated in advance in tandem with the highest level of the Obama White House to obstruct the inquiry into the Internal Revenue Service missing emails congressional hearing. “So let me be very blunt about it – the Democratic Party now is conducting itself as...

One of the reasons Republicans like Rep. Mike Kelly from Pennsylvania won’t come forward with the truth about Malik Obama’s tax exempt status and Lois Lerner’s role in it likely has to do with what she was permitted to do when a Republican president was in office. Calling attention to Lerner’s signature being at the bottom of the Barack H. Obama Foundation’s (BHOF) approval letter is certain to cause the Republican Party headaches over its complicity in taking the country to where it is today.Lois Lerner has been caught granting 501(c)(3) tax exempt status to yet another group that should...

Live link to today's 7:00Est congressional hearing with IRS commissioner http://www.c-span.org/video/?320097-1/irs-targeting-investigation

When the news trickled out a year ago that the head of the IRS union, Colleen ("fat and ugly") Kelley, met with President Obama the day before the agency began targeting the Tea Party, I finally saw the link. The story was picked up by many news sources on the right but did not develop any further. It's my opinion that this is the connection that the "lost" emails are trying to hide. And it's a big connection -- the White House, the POTUS, the union boss, and the government agency all collaborating, and conspiring, to thwart the actions of...

According to a report published late last night in POLITICO, the hard drive belonging to Lois Lerner where the IRS claims her emails to outside agencies and groups like the White House, Department of Justice, FEC, Democrat members of Congress, etc. were stored has been...destroyed. Ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s crashed hard drive has been recycled, making it likely the lost emails of the lightening rod in the tea party targeting controversy will never be found, according to multiple sources. “We’ve been informed that the hard drive has been thrown away,” Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the...

Lois G. Lerner, the employee at the center of the IRS tea party targeting scandal, wanted to recover files from her computer hard drive after it crashed in 2011, but when told it was impossible, she took a philosophical view. “Sometimes stuff just happens,” she said in a 2011 email to the IRS tech staff that tried to recover documents from the hard drive.

The news came late in the day on Friday the 13th.According to the House Ways and Means Committee, the IRS reports having “lost” former IRS manager Lois Lerner’s emails to and from other IRS employees sent between January of 2009 and April of 2011 due to a ‘computer crash.’In light of the disclosure, these are some of the logical requests that should be made of the IRS: Please provide a timeline of the crash and documentation covering when it was first discovered and by whom; when, how and by whom it was learned that materials were lost; the official documentation reporting the crash...

Well, in the Friday afternoon news dump, the IRS slipped i the little tidbit that it had an "OOPSIE!" It had somehow managed to lose all the emails that Lois Lerner had sent prior to 2011. We're already starting to get some interesting reactions...

Catherine Engelbrecht became the face of the IRS scandal with her riveting testimony before Congress on how her group True the Vote was targeted by the IRS for selective persecution and harassment. Recently, it was discovered that Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings had a hand in the IRS targeting True the Vote. You might remember Cummings as the grandstanding Democrat who railed against Darrell Issa’s investigation of the scandal after a Congressional hearing with IRS official Lois Lerner had closed (and then implied that Issa was racist): Further making the situation ironic and unsightly for justice-avoiding Democrats is that emails show...

This may come as a shock to Lois Lerner, but the House of Representatives has the authority to jail her unless she changes her mind about refusing to answer questions about her role in the IRS scandal. Essentially, what is required for that to happen is for a House majority to vote for a motion holding her in contempt and House Speaker John Boehner to then direct the House sergeant at arms to arrest and confine her. Under the Constitution, the House can do that under its “inherent contempt” authority, which was initially exercised in 1795 during the First Congress...

March 15, 2014 Enough! Patriot lawsuit demands money from IRS Tea party challenges 'crushing bureaucracy' unleashed on those who disagree with Obama Bob Unruh Just imagine sending to the Internal Revenue Service a bill for: Actual damages for violating the Privacy Act. The costs of complying with additional demands for information about an application. Loss of donors. Loss of membership fees. Damages for the violation of constitutional rights. Damages for loss of the benefit of tax-exempt status. Damages for impairment of constitutionally protected rights. Punitive damages. Litigation costs. Attorneys’ fees. And more. A case of that kind has been filed,...

Mr. Dershowitz thinks the federal campaign fraud charges against the conservative filmmaker and author are an example of “selective prosecution.” Weighing in on the case Friday in an interview with Law Blog, Mr. Dershowitz was withering in his opinion of the Manhattan U.S. attorney office’s prosecution of Mr. D’Souza, who pleaded not guilty last week to making illegal campaign contributions to a Republican U.S. Senate candidate in 2012. “The idea of charging him with a felony for this doesn’t sound like a proper exercise of prosecutorial discretion,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “I can’t help but think that [D'Souza's] politics have something...

Lois Lerner fears for her life if she testifies openly before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Wednesday, according to her attorney. House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa announced Sunday that Lerner will testify at Wednesday’s hearing, but Lerner’s attorney Bill Taylor said that Lerner will seek to continue invoking her Fifth Amendment rights and will also seek a one-week delay of her testimony. Oversight members are reportedly open to granting Lerner a one-week delay if she petitions for one in person at Wednesday’s hearing. The delay would allow Lerner’s lawyers to continue negotiating for immunity, which they...

Yesterday on Fox News Sunday House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa announced Lois Lerner, former head of tax exempt groups at the IRS, would be back in front of Congress this week to testify about the inappropriate targeting of conservative, tea party and patriot groups. Issa cited Lerner's attorney, William Taylor, as the source of confirmation of her agreement to testify on Wednesday, March 5. Shortly after that appearance, Taylor told POLITICO an agreement Lerner would testify was not made, that he didn't know where Issa was coming from and that Lerner would continue to plead the Fifth. “As...

There are emails between Issa and Lerner’s attorney and now she is asking for more time. She is coming Wed., but may testify at a later time as well. Why did Lerner do what what she did ? We have the evidence and it is save yourself or go down in flames.

House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa (R-CA) appeared on Fox News Sunday this morning with some “late breaking news”: “[Lois Lerner´s] attorney indicates that she now will testify,” Issa said, referring to the chief witness in his investigation of the IRS’ alleged targeting of conservative groups. Lerner, who was the Director of the IRS Exempt Organizations division during the supposed targeting, has thus far invoked the Fifth Amendment in front of Issa’s committee. “We believe the evidence we’ve gathered causes her, in her best interest, to be someone who should testify,” Issa said. Host Chris Wallace even double-checked that Lerner...

Today Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, confirmed that 100% of the established 501(c)(4) groups the IRS selected for audit were conservative. But Obama says their was not a smidgen of corruption in the IRS. The Wall Street Journal reported: A Republican House committee chairman said the Internal Revenue Service targeted tax-exempt conservative groups for audits, widening the scope of GOP ire over the agency’s oversight of political activities. House Democrats pushed back, saying Republicans were seeking to use the IRS controversy to score political points with their conservative base in an election...

Suppose you're President Obama. Who would be your ideal candidate to head up the Justice Department's investigation into IRS targeting of conservative groups? How about someone who gave thousands of dollars to your senate campaign as well as your presidential races? The confidence that the president and AG Holder have in the press ignoring this IRS "investigation" must be so great that they simply don't care who knows that it's set up to be a whitewash.[snip] Bosserman donated a combined $6,750 to President Obama's election campaigns and the Democratic National Committee between 2004 and 2012, according to federal campaign finance...

Bill Elliot was a cancer patient who lost his insurance due to ObamaCare and couldn’t pay the expensive new premiums. He was talking about paying the ObamaCare fine, going without health insurance and “letting nature take its course.�CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO He went on FOX News where his story was picked up by C. Steven Tucker, a health insurance broker who helped him keep his insurance.Now suddenly Bill Elliot is being audited for 2009 with an interview only scheduled in April 2014. Assuming he lives that long. That might be a coincidence, but Tucker is being audited...

I have compiled a list, which some of you have seen, of Obamacare's violations to the Constitution. It is here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3075257/posts I compiled that list with the help of various people and sources, but one of them, #4, states "The Federal government (HHS/IRS) having full access to your bank account against your will, to make sure that you are paying your Obamacare premiums, infringes upon your right to be secure in your person, papers, and effects, as do unreasonable searches into personal health insurance records." Does it really have access to our bank accounts? Under what circumstances, if so?

Embattled IRS official Lois Lerner is retiring from the agency effective Monday, two congressional aides told POLITICO. Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/lois-lerner-retires-irs-97217.html#ixzz2fkIfmJUs Lerner sparked the IRS scandal in May when she acknowledged that the agency wrongly targeted tea party groups applying for a tax exemption. She was placed on administrative leave later that month and is under a subpoena to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

All same-sex couples who are legally married will be recognized as such for federal tax purposes, even if the state where they live does not recognize their union, the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service said Thursday. It is the broadest federal rule change to come out of the landmark Supreme Court decision in June that struck down the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, and a sign of how quickly the government is moving to treat gay couples in the same way that it does straight couples. The June decision found that same-sex couples were entitled to federal benefits,...