Free Republic

A whistleblower made this shocking allegation to me last week: the IRS was tipping off members of Congress to corporate takeovers so the elected officials could profit from insider trading. My snitch also charged that higher-level employees of the IRS also used that information to enrich themselves. This may sound crazy but remember: Up until a few years ago members of Congress were allowed to trade stock based on information they got while performing their public duties. It wasn’t until 2012, during President Obama’s tenure, that the practice was banned.

How Were Bruce and Nellie Ohr, Christopher Steele, and Fusion GPS Plotting? Judicial Watch Battles in Court this Week for IRS Scandal Transparency Dossier Author Steele Was Deemed ‘Not Suitable For Use’ as Source Court Orders DOJ to Preserve Comey Personal Email How Were Bruce and Nellie Ohr, Christopher Steele, and Fusion GPS Plotting? Recently, Republican lawmakers indicated that Bruce Ohr , the former Associate Deputy Attorney General, is becoming more central to their investigation of the soft coup against President Trump. Moreover, newly released emails and memos show that Ohr continued to receive information from former British spy...

A judge late Wednesday signed off on the settlement between the IRS and hundreds of tea party groups, closing out the last major legal battle over what all sides now agree was unwarranted and illegal targeting for political purposes. The IRS agreed to pay $3.5 million to groups that were wronged by the intrusive inspections, and insists it’s made changes so that political targeting can’t occur in the future. A few issues are still being fought over in the courts — including whether former IRS senior executive Lois G. Lerner will be allowed to forever shield her deposition explaining her...

The IRS has reportedly recognized the Pussy Church of Modern Witchcraft as a legitimate church. The Maryland-based group is dedicated exclusively to lesbian feminists. Peter Reilly, a CPA for over 30 years focusing on taxation, first reported the new designation in a blog post for Forbes. "The IRS recognized it as a 501(c)(3) organization and went the extra step of recognizing PCMW as a church, the most enviable of all tax statuses exempt not only from income tax but also from the transparency that filing Form 990 creates," Reilly wrote. "A church does not have to apply for exempt status,...

Full title: U.S. District Court Grants Judicial Watch Motion to File Amicus Curiae Brief for the Unsealing of IRS Officials Lerner, Paz Depositions Hearing set for Thursday, August 9 (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today announced that the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio (Western Division) issued an order granting a Judicial Watch motion to file an amicus curiae brief that asks the court to unseal the depositions of former IRS officials Lois Lerner and Holly Paz. The court also granted a hearing to be held Thursday, August 9, at 1 pm ET. Both Lerner and Paz...

For one of the most punitive agencies in the federal government, the IRS sure is forgiving with its own employees. Rep. Kristi Noem, R-S.D., has proposed a bill that would prevent the IRS from rehiring employees fired for misconduct or poor performance. The bill, titled the Ensuring Integrity in the IRS Workforce Act, follows a recent Treasury inspector general report that shows the IRS rehired more than 200 fired workers in a little over a year. A previous inspector general report proves this problem dates back to at least 2009. According to the Treasury Department’s inspector general, the IRS did...

Years of questions about how so many DC scandals never ended up with any accountability are now slowly beginning to make sense. Henry Kerner is a missing piece of a very frustrating puzzle… Thanks to the efforts of Judicial Watch, we now find a name at the very heart of some of the most controversial investigative collapses in modern political history. The same John McCain staffer who told the IRS to weaponize their database to target Tea Party groups, was intimately involved in Fast-and-Furious, Benghazi, IRS and now -under the Trump administration- “Spygate”. If you wanted to control or cover-up...

Out of Control: Without question, the IRS can be one of the most punitive and punishing of all federal agencies. A government running a chronic multi-trillion dollar debt needs every penny it can get. But should American taxpayers have to shell out millions of dollars annually to pay shoddy, underperforming, and — in many cases — dishonest and threatening workers? Apparently so.

Special counsel Robert Mueller's prosecutors reportedly plan to call witnesses from the FBI, IRS and Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network during former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's trial. Politico reported that one of the lead investigators made the announcement at a pretrial hearing on Tuesday as the judge presiding over the case laid out broad parameters to potential jurors, including a timeline of Manafort's alleged crimes. On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III ordered Mueller to turn over its full witness list of about 30 people, Politico noted. The news site reports that Ellis said on Tuesday...

Some nonprofit groups will no longer have to give the IRS the names of donors who give them $5,000 or more. Among the groups that will no longer have to report donors are the National Rifle Association, various chambers of commerce, and groups focused on particular issues, such as Americans for Prosperity, which has been closely associated with the Koch brothers. But the ruling also applies to groups like the NAACP, labor unions and volunteer fire departments. Huh? Why the headline focus on the NRA, then? The headline could have just as easily read "NAACP and some other nonprofits" or...

Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview on Thursday about his new legislation that would prevent illegal immigrants from using Americans’ Social Security numbers, protect citizens’ privacy, and deter illegal immigration. On Wednesday, Rep. Carter introduced H.R. 6333, Tax Identity Protection Act, which would direct the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to help protect Americans from illegal immigrants from fraudulently using their Social Security numbers. In his press release this week, the Georgia Republican said that he contacted the IRS and the agency told him that they were not “in the position to notify victims” that their...

This is actually a good news story, but only if you’re a law-abiding, taxpaying American citizen.If, however, you’re among more than a third of a million Americans in a tax delinquent category, well, then this is not a good news story.It seems Congress passed a law three years ago requiring the Internal Revenue Service to cull out Americans who have more than $51,000 in overdue back-tax debts. Then, the IRS sends those names in batches over to the State Department where they file the names to deny those folks new passports or passport renewalsEventually, they may be cancelling existing...

Bill and Cathy Stapp stand on the deck of their sailboat Kruzin’ Kitty in Alameda. After being told they were eligible for the Covered California health care plan, they learned their income was too high to qualify for subsidized coverage

IRS officials provide new details on enforcement of law Congress passed in late 2015 At least 362,000 Americans with overdue tax debts will be denied new or renewed passports if they don’t settle these debts, the Internal Revenue Service says. Recently IRS officials have provided new details on the enforcement of a law Congress passed in late 2015. It requires the IRS and State Department to deny passports or revoke them for taxpayers who have more than $51,000 of overdue tax debt. Enforcement began in February. An IRS spokesman says the 362,000 people are current tax debtors who are affected...

UBS, the world's largest wealth manager, is facing embarrassment over fresh revelations going back to the tax investigation that led to the collapse of Swiss banking secrecy. Two significant events are looming before UBS. The first is the possibility of a public trial in France, featuring UBS whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld, concerning historic tax evasion allegedly orchestrated by the bank. That could happen this year. The other is the publication this October of Birkenfeld's scathing new book, Lucifer's Banker, which covers his time at UBS. The tax evasion controversy, which was first highlighted in 2005, subsequently involved the US Department of...

The GOP's long-promised change is an offshoot of a tax overhaul last year that cut corporate rates and winnowed down the number of individual tax brackets. On Friday, the Treasury Department and IRS unveiled the new postcard, which will replace the current forms 1040, 1040A and 1040 EZ.

McCain’s Subcommittee Staff Director Urged IRS to Target Conservative Groups JW Sues for Mueller Deputy Andrew Weissmann’s Text Messages Judicial Watch Seeks Obama-Era Records on Refugee Resettlement Sites The Strange Case of McAuliffe & McCabe — Another Clinton/FBI Scandal McCain’s Subcommittee Staff Director Urged IRS to Target Conservative Groups Little is as unnerving as trouble with the IRS, especially if you haven’t done anything wrong. That happened repeatedly during the Obama administration, as his IRS enthusiastically targeted conservative groups. We’re now understanding why the Congress didn’t do much of anything about it. We just released internal IRS documents revealing...

In documents recently released under the Freedom of Information Act, Judicial Watch found that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was actively colluding with the IRS to harm the TEA Party groups that he mendaciously courted in his successful 2010 reelection bid. These groups are believed to have played a significant role in Republicans capturing a majority in Congress. A Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress enabled the passage of the Affordable Care Act (which came to be known as Obamacare) on a straight party line vote in late 2009. The loss of this majority constituted a serious impediment to the...

Headline: Judicial Watch Obtains IRS Documents Revealing McCain’s Subcommittee Staff Director Urged IRS to Engage in “Financially Ruinous” Targeting Judicial Watch today released newly obtained internal IRS documents, including material revealing that Sen. John McCain’s former staff director and chief counsel on the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee, Henry Kerner, urged top IRS officials, including then-director of exempt organizations Lois Lerner, to “audit so many that it becomes financially ruinous.” Kerner was appointed by President Trump as Special Counsel for the United States Office of Special Counsel. The explosive exchange was contained in notes taken by IRS employees at an...

It has long been suspected; the footprints and fingerprints were always present; McCain repeatedly denied it…. now the evidence surfaces.For those who remember the issues when the IRS, White House and DOJ organized the post 2010 election “shellacking” targeting of Tea Party groups, the latest discovery from Judicial watch is confirmation of a long-held opinion.  John McCain was instrumental in supporting the weaponization of the IRS to target tea party groups.WASHINGTON DC – […]  In the full notes of an April 30, 2013, meeting, McCain’s high-ranking staffer [Henry] Kerner recommends harassing non-profit groups until they are unable to continue operating....