Free Republic

Congressman Charles Rangel, whose ethics trial starts tomorrow, appears to have improperly used political-action committee money to pay for his defense. Rangel tapped his National Leadership PAC for $293,000 to pay his main legal-defense team this year. He took another $100,000 from the PAC in 2009 to pay lawyer Lanny Davis. Two legal experts told The Post such spending is against House rules. "It's a breach of congressional ethics," one campaign-finance lawyer said. Washington, DC, political lawyer Cleta Mitchell said there is "no authority for a member to use leadership PAC funds as a slush fund to pay for personal...

Cleta Mitchell, one of Washington’s most respected elections attorneys, told Newsmax she has tangible proof that high-ranking IRS officials in Washington were fully aware of the agency's campaign to target conservative groups for heightened scrutiny, despite their denials. And she thinks the president knew about the practice too. If proven, she said, it could be an impeachable offense. Mitchell, in an interview with Newsmax TV on Tuesday, said she was told by a Cincinnati IRS agent that applications by two of her conservative clients were being processed by—and would ultimately be approved or denied—in Washington. She said she also is...

A Cincinnati-based Internal Revenue Service employee is pushing back against claims by Lois Lerner and other top IRS officials that the agency’s Cincinnati office was responsible for the the targeting of tea-party groups and the botched processing of their applications for tax exemption. Elizabeth Hofacre, who coordinated ”emerging issues” cases for the IRS and handled all tea-party applications between April and August 2010, called Lerner’s May 10 disclosure of the scandal at a tax-law conference ”a nuclear strike” on Cincinnati employees. Hofacre told House Oversight Committee investigators in an interview, the transcript of which has been reviewed by National Review...

It seems that not only is Justice blind in Washington, D.C., but she's been kicked out of town altogether. On Saturday, it was reported that Cindy Thomas just got a big promotion. If you don't know who Cindy Thomas is, she was the IRS official in charge of the exempt organizations office in Cincinnati. This was one of the IRS groups who targeted conservative tea party groups for harassment and intimidation. They also illegally leaked confidential tax information to other agencies and liberal groups. Cindy Thomas is a 35 year veteran of the IRS (bet her pension plan is rocking!)...

An IRS agent in the embattled Cincinnati office is lashing out at the agency's managers for pinning the blame on them for the targeting of conservative groups, describing one official's attempt to pass the blame as a "nuclear strike on us." According to transcripts of interviews that House investigators conducted with two Cincinnati office employees and which Fox News reviewed, agent Elizabeth Hofacre claimed that the idea this program was the work of two rogue agents is "absurd." She said that when Lois Lerner, the high-level official who oversaw the Cincinnati unit and is now on leave over the scandal,...

Hey, remember the IRS scandal? You know, when the IRS specifically singled out conservative tea party groups for extra scrutiny and bullying in order to squash opposition to Barack Obama going into the 2012 presidential election? Remember when President Obama said he was outraged to find out the IRS had been abusing its power to intimidate those who disagree with the administration politically? Yeah...about that. Last week during an interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews, President Obama pretty much dismissed the scandal as faux outrage from conservative groups because they were "on a list." OBAMA: That’s not — that’s not something...

WASHINGTON – A misfired email from an Internal Revenue Service employee in Ohio alerted officials in Washington that conservative groups were being targeted a full year earlier than previously acknowledged, Fox News confirms. Transcripts from interviews held with IRS employees in Cincinnati show that managers in Washington knew about the heightened scrutiny put on Tea Party groups applying for tax-exempt status in July 2010. The transcript, which was initially reviewed and reported by Reuters, apparently shows that Cincinnati IRS official Elizabeth Hofacre was in communication with D.C.-based IRS attorney Carter Hull. Hofacre was put in charge of handling tax-exempt status...

Rep. Elijah Cummings tried to short-circuit his committee’s probe into the IRS scandal by releasing the full transcript of an interview with a mid-level manager, which the ranking Democrat argued made the investigation “case closed.” National Review’s Eliana Johnson argues in today’s Wall Street Journal that the only case that’s closed is that Cummings is running interference for the IRS and the White House. Not only does the testimony of John Shaefer not answer the questions about the extent of the scandal, Shaefer didn’t provide any potential answers at all: Given the media coverage that the tea party was receiving,...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - IRS Scandal Follows Old Obama Illinois PatternPosted By Tom Thurlow On May 24, 2013 @ 12:06 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments Boy, it sure makes a primary or election contest easier when your opponent pulls out, don’t you think?  Barack Obama has been managing to do that since he won the Democratic nomination for state senator in Illinois in 1996, and it helps explain the IRS harassment of conservatives and Tea Party groups since 2010.  Whereas once Obama targeted candidates to get them to pull out, from 2010 onward, he had the...

NBC's David Gregory suggested that the White House is blaming the growing IRS scandal on the Treasury Department for not "deal[ing] with this more quickly":

To understand the moral context of the IRS' admission that it improperly targeted conservative Tea Party and Patriot nonprofits during the 2012 presidential campaign, it helps to know that Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have something in common besides twice being elected to the Oval Office: All three appear to have been quite willing to use the most intrusive powers of the federal government against their political opposition. Nixon was especially craven about it. He made clear to aides that they were to use the IRS against Democratic nominee George McGovern, senior members of McGovern's campaign staff and...

Last night, Barack Obama tried to take control of the narrative on one of the scandals that have rocked his administration by announcing that IRS Commissioner Steve Miller had resigned by request of Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. As it turns out, Miller was leaving in a month anyway, but the outgoing IRS chief took the time to note that the wrongdoing was limited to two IRS employees in the Cincinnati office, who had already been “disciplined” — which directly contradicts the Inspector General’s report, which shows managerial involvement since March 2010 at least, and coordination between multiple offices and units....

CINCINNATI, OH (FOX19) - FOX19 has exclusively learned that as many as four people may be the first Cincinnati Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees to face disciplinary action, and possibly even criminal charges, for allegedly targeting Tea Party and Liberty groups applying for non-profit status. On Wednesday, the IRS announced that it has pin-pointed two employees at the agency's Cincinnati office for being 'primarily' responsible. (Snip) One of FOX19's two sources went on say that these four IRS workers claim "they simply did what their bosses ordered". Keep in mind, as FOX19 reported on Tuesday, the report by the Office...

CINCINNATI, OH (FOX19) -FOX19 has exclusively learned that as many as four people may be the first Cincinnati Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees to face disciplinary action, and possibly even criminal charges, for allegedly targeting Tea Party and Liberty groups applying for non-profit status.

The Obama administration and its defenders have done their best to downplay the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups, and to distance the president from the scandal. But in doing so they have made numerous claims that have that turned out to be grossly misleading — at best. 1. It was a few rogue agents in Cincinnati This claim has crumbled in recent weeks. Lois Lerner, the IRS’s director of Exempt Organizations, who has refused to testify before Congress, was the first to blame “our line people in Cincinnati” for initiating the targeting. Former IRS commissioner Steven Miller said two “rogue”...

<p>How are they named here but in no other source??</p> <p>FOX19) - As we are continuing to look into the case surrounding the IRS and Cincinnati's connection there two big questions.</p> <p>Did the White House know about this scandal sooner than what they have claimed? Could criminal charges be filed against the local agents accused in the case?</p>

Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, told reporters yesterday that investigators have found the IRS targeting scandal did not start in Cincinnati. Cincinnati IRS Agents Say Targeting Orders Came From Washington– (VIDEO-AT-LINK) The Hill reported: The IRS’s singling out of conservative groups did not originate in Cincinnati, the House Republican in charge of tax policy said Wednesday. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) said bipartisan interviews conducted by House investigators had found out that the targeting did not occur in the IRS offices in Ohio that have been at...

From the outset, Internal Revenue Service lawyers based in Washington, D.C., provided important guidance on the handling of tea-party groups’ applications for tax-exempt status, according to both IRS sources and the inspector general’s report released in mid May. Officials in the Technical Unit of the IRS’s Rulings and Agreements office played an integral role in determining how the targeted applications were treated, provided general guidelines to Cincinnati case workers, briefed other agency employees on the status of the special cases, and reviewed all those intrusive requests demanding “more information” from tea-party groups. At times, the Technical Unit lawyers seemed to...

Protesters in Cincinnati Denounce IRS By Dionne Searcey CINCINNATI—About 300 people gathered Tuesday for a short, angry rally outside the federal building here that houses the unit of the IRS embroiled in a scandal over workers improperly scrutinizing the charity applications of politically conservative groups. Holding signs that said “Internal Rigging Service” and “Tyranny” and shouting chants of “You work for us!” and “IRS! KGB!” the group included many members of the local Tea Party organization who demanded punishment for those who were involved. “Heads have to roll here,” said one protester, Kevin Tinsley, who works in advertising sales and...

Judicial Watch has released more documents indicating that the American public has been lied to about the IRS scandal. The entire “rogue agents in Cincinnati” story was an outright fabrication, and the targeting was specifically of groups critical of the administration in the lead -up to an election. One key email string from July 2012 confirms that IRS Tea Party scrutiny was directed from Washington, DC. On July 6, 2010, Holly Paz (the former Director of the IRS Rulings and Agreements Division and current Manager of Exempt Organizations Guidance) asks IRS lawyer Steven Grodnitzky “to let Cindy and Sharon know how...