Free Republic

“They’ve been burned. They’ve been hammered. They’ve been bludgeoned,” George Washington University law professor Miriam Galston explains to the Washington Post. “They’re trying to survive.” In this heartbreaking discussion during this special time of year, the “they” are the poor, long-suffering folks . . . at the Internal Revenue Service. It is a terrible, too-long-ignored scandal, which should tear at the heartstrings of every American. “Years of conservative attacks on the Internal Revenue Service have greatly diminished the ability of agency regulators to oversee political activity by charities and other nonprofits . . .” posits the recently published Post analysis....

“They’ve been burned. They’ve been hammered. They’ve been bludgeoned,” George Washington University law professor Miriam Galston explains to the Washington Post. “They’re trying to survive.” In this heartbreaking discussion during this special time of year, the “they” are the poor, long-suffering folks . . . at the Internal Revenue Service. It is a terrible, too-long-ignored scandal, which should tear at the heartstrings of every American. “Years of conservative attacks on the Internal Revenue Service have greatly diminished the ability of agency regulators to oversee political activity by charities and other nonprofits . . .” posits the recently published Post analysis....

Four hundred sixty nine different plaintiffs in two class-action lawsuits over Obama-era IRS harassment settled with the Department of Justice Thursday, bringing to a close a dark chapter in the IRS’s history. In 2010 and 2011, the IRS under Lois Lerner, particularly out of the Cincinnati field office, launched what many contended were politically motivated investigations and audits of “Tea Party” and other conservative groups. While no criminal prosecutions ever resulted, hundreds of victims assembled in class-action lawsuits against the federal government. Attorney General Sessions appears to have largely acknowledged the plaintiffs’ claims. In a DOJ press release on the...

Agreement specifically blames Lois Lerner by name for failures The IRS admitted in court Wednesday that it wrongly targeted tea party and other conservative groups for intrusive scrutiny, placing specific blame on former senior executive Lois G. Lerner, and entered into a settlement designed to make sure that kind of political targeting never takes place again. The filing, made in federal court in Washington, D.C., amounts to a stunning apology from the Trump administration for actions taken under President Barack Obama, when hundreds of tea party and conservative groups were singled out for intrusive screening, forced to wait years for...

(snip) But the September 8 letter from the Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Justice Department said it would not even reopen the investigation because officials require “proof beyond a reasonable doubt that a government employee intentionally discriminated against an applicant for a tax-exempt status based on viewpoint.” (snip)

The Justice Department says it will not prosecute former IRS executive Lois Lerner for targeting conservative groups during the 2010 and 2012 elections. In a letter to top Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, Assistant Attorney General Kevin Brady said that after a careful review of the case, DOJ will not pursue charges against Lerner, who oversaw the IRS division that reviewed tax exempt organizations. “After this process, the Department determined that reopening the investigation would not be appropriate based on the available evidence,” Boyd wrote Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, the chairman of the House Ways and Means...

The Trump administration has no plans to charge former IRS official Lois Lerner over her role in the Tea Party targeting scandal, the Justice Department said Friday in response to calls by Republican lawmakers to revisit the case. In a letter to the lawmakers, the Justice Department said that "reopening the criminal investigation would not be appropriate based on the available evidence." This past April, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, and Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., had asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to take a "fresh look" at the case. Despite numerous hearings and inquiries into the...

The Justice Department says it will not prosecute former IRS executive Lois Lerner for targeting conservative groups during the 2010 and 2012 elections. In a letter to top Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, Assistant Attorney General Kevin Brady said that after a careful review of the case, DOJ will not pursue charges against Lerner, who oversaw the IRS division that reviewed tax exempt organizations. “After this process, the Department determined that reopening the investigation would not be appropriate based on the available evidence,” Boyd wrote Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, the chairman of the House Ways and Means...

One of the groups that sued the Internal Revenue Service over its targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups believes there has been a breakthrough that will help them draw a more complete picture of what went on behind the scenes at the agency, four years after it took its case to court. In a lawsuit involving True the Vote, Judge Reggie B. Walton of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the IRS last week to release the names of employees involved in targeting conservative and Tea Party groups. Walton also told the IRS to explain...

An obscure bureaucratic policy that allowed IRS officials to target conservative and Tea Party tax exemption applicants during the 2010 and 2012 election campaigns is still in place, meaning the same abuses may be continuing, according to a nonprofit government watchdog. The federal tax agency’s policy requires IRS officials to stop processing tax-exempt applications that are “likely to attract media or congressional attention,” the Cause of Action Institute said in a report made public Wednesday. The policy also directs IRS officials to prepare “sensitive case reports” for their supervisors and to ignore “the merits of the application” if it involved...

The CIA is in really big trouble now over the whole Russia hack thing. Now Congress is coming after them, not because they lied about it, but because they LEAKED a “top secret� document about it. Congressman Peter King told ABC News, “WE HAVE SUPPOSEDLY [CIA DIRECTOR] JOHN BRENNAN LEAKING INFORMATION TO THE WASHINGTON POST, TO A BIASED NEWSPAPER LIKE THE NEW YORK TIMES — FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS THAT HE’S NOT TELLING THE [HOUSE] INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE.�  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROLXh_llpzg

The Washington Post has unflaggingly stirred up hysteria over so-called "fake news," so it's extra-ironic that the media giant is one of the country's foremost purveyors of the same. In the Post's world, a bunch of guys with Dorito-stained fingers who blog in their parents' basements have done everything from manipulating the election to provoking a nutcase into an attack on a D.C. pizzeria. Meanwhile, the Post's banner headline on Saturday was the innuendo-filled and poorly sourced announcement "CIA: Russia favored Trump," which sounds like fake news, too. If it's true that the CIA concluded that Russia deliberately intervened in...

Vote Notes on Legislation On the Impeachment of John Koskinen as IRS Commissioner: On the motion to lay on the table: NO. On the motion to refer to committee: YES. On December 6, Congressman Jim Jordan moved to impeach John Koskinen as IRS commissioner for actions related to the IRS harassment of taxpayer groups based on their political beliefs. Although Koskinen did not order the harassment, there is considerable evidence that he willfully obstructed a lawful Congressional investigation of the matter and that he lied to Congress. If proven, either of these actions constitutes an impeachable offense. Nancy Pelosi moved...

At a Sunday press briefing in Lima, Peru, President Barack Obama concluded his response to a question referring to how President-Elect Trump might consider handling his extensive holdings during his presidency by saying that "I am extremely proud of the fact that over eight years we have not had the kinds of scandals that have plagued other administrations." Naturally, the establishment press, which is defending and covering for him to the bitter end, is barely reporting Obama's answer, which has to be near the top of any legitimate Howler Hall of Fame list. Among those failing to report the answer: Gardiner Harris...

Yet another judge has ruled against the IRS over its unconstitutional targeting of conservative and tea party groups based on their political views. […] Judge Michael R. Barrett wrote in his decision that the Texas Patriots tea party group had “made a strong showing of a likelihood of success” on its claim that its free speech rights were violated by the IRS lengthy delay in processing its application. “The evidence strongly suggests that the IRS initiated the delay” because the Texas group was affiliated with the tea party, the judge wrote. […] Moreover, in documents recently unearthed by Judicial Watch,...

Clinton Foundation officials quietly refiled three years of tax-related forms this week after the New York attorney general acknowledged the charity had failed to disclose all of its donors in accordance with state law.Two entities operating within the Clintons' sprawling philanthropic network — the Clinton Health Access Initiative and the Clinton Global Initiative — submitted supplementary financial disclosures for different years between 2012 and 2014 while denying Tuesday that the attorney general's office had asked them to do so. "The Clinton Foundation is properly registered to solicit funds under Article 7A, which requires organizations to register before they solicit funds...

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....