Free Republic

Obama IRS Scandal Continues – JW Forces IRS to Disclose New Documents JW Files Lawsuit on Obama’s Illegal Russia Leaks Rutland, Vermont Citizens Oust Mayor Caught in Refugee Dishonesty Obama IRS Scandal Continues – JW Forces IRS to Disclose New Documents We have no intention to allow the extra-legal activities of President Obama’s administration to fade into the sunset now that he is out of office. Particularly egregious was his using the might of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to target groups that disagreed with his political views. And heel dragging at the IRS continues. This week Judicial Watch...

Agency will not commit to a timeframe to make the documents public. The Internal Revenue Service has located 6,924 documents potentially related to the targeting of Tea Party conservatives, two years after the group Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for them. The watchdog group intended to find records regarding how the IRS selected individuals and organizations for audits that were requesting nonprofit tax status. The agency will not say when it will make the documents available to the public. "At this time, the Service is unable to provide an estimate regarding when it will complete its...

Donald Trump hasn’t even been sworn-in yet but the liberal media has obsessed almost over every Trump tweet and controversy. Conversely, Barack Obama’s administration has been full of scandals and gaffes but liberal reporters have insisted that his record is clean as a whistle.  Former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw, after Obama’s January 10 farewell speech gushed: “He’s been scandal free, frankly, in the White House. We haven’t had that what for a while.” Time magazine’s Joe Klein, back in December declared there has been “absolutely no hint of scandal” during his eight years. And in 2013 reporters...

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,...

Full Title : New Documents Reveal Top Obama IRS Official Admitted Cincinnati Office Targeted Groups Based on ‘Guilt by Association’ (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained 1593 pages of new documents from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), including notes from a 2011 interoffice meeting revealing a top IRS official admitted that Cincinnati office agents were targeting organizations requesting tax exempt status based on “guilt by association” and “party affiliation.” According to former IRS Director of the Office of Rulings and Agreements Holly Paz, “they think they know what the org is really doing, rather than...

Former White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler told President Obama this week he should take her name out of consideration for the post of attorney general, White House officials confirmed Friday. “We can confirm the president asked Kathy to consider this, and she was among those the president had been looking at,” said a White House official who asked for anonymity in a written statement, referring to the search to replace retiring Attorney General Eric Holder. “Kathy took this step this week on her own volition—as she always has done, putting the president and the administration first.” The Associated Press first...

The commissioner of the IRS is apologizing to Congress for information his agency lost and inaccurate statements he made during congressional investigations of its treatment of tea party and other conservative groups. John Koskinen is facing an impeachment effort by House conservatives, and he’s set to testify Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee. That panel released his opening statement late Tuesday. …

New FBI IRS Scandal Documents: Obama IRS Waited Years to Tell the Truth Obama Donor/DOJ Prosecutor Compromised Integrity of IRS Scandal InquiryBreaking the Law is an Obama Administration Policy New FBI IRS Scandal Documents: Obama IRS Waited Years to Tell the Truth Following up on some mega disclosures last week, this week we released 105 pages of newly obtained FBI “302” documents revealing that, beginning in 2010 and lasting through the Obama reelection campaign in 2012, the IRS orchestrated a deliberate policy of burying conservative groups’ tax exemption applications in bureaucratic delays. Interviews with numerous Cincinnati IRS employees in...

A federal court ruled Friday that the Internal Revenue Service has not yet demonstrated that officials stopped targeting Tea Party groups in a decision that excoriated the tax agency for its "discriminatory" treatment of conservative organizations. "This is a blistering rebuke to the IRS and its defenders," Walter Olson, senior fellow at the Cato Institute Center for Constitutional Studies, said of the court's ruling. "It takes on squarely the defense the IRS had raised in this case which is, 'Whatever happened, we promise not to do it again.'" "The court goes through and systematically takes that apart in a way...

Editor’s Note: Conservatives know they are under assault. What many may not know (because the media hasn’t told them) is that they are the targets of a coordinated, well-honed campaign by the left to push conservatives entirely out of the political debate. The Intimidation Game is the first real telling of what happened at the IRS—how elected Democrats used that agency to muzzle tens of thousands of Tea Party members during two elections. It's the real story of how a liberal Wisconsin prosecutor used secret subpoenas and predawn raids to silence 30 conservative grassroots organizations in that state. It's the...

Recently obtained documents raise new questions about Lois Lerner’s role in sending confidential tax returns to the Justice Department. It is likely the largest unauthorized disclosure of tax-return information in history: the transfer of some 1.25 million pages of confidential tax returns from the IRS to the Department of Justice in October of 2010. And it was almost certainly illegal. The documents, which consisted chiefly of non-profit tax returns, were transferred to the DOJ’s criminal division from the IRS at the request of Lois Lerner, who wanted to get the information to the DOJ in advance of a meeting where...

House Republicans are aiming at the Internal Revenue Service this week, taking up four bills to ensure integrity in hiring and better customer service. “We have recently learned…that IRS employees that have been fired for misconduct have been rehired” in the last several years, Rep. Kristi Noem (R-S.D.) told a news conference on Tuesday. “Now some of this may involve falsifying documents — they failed to pay their own taxes. They may have been fired for accessing sensitive taxpayer information without permission. In fact, one employee had missed up to eight weeks of work without permission, had actually stamped on...

A federal appeals court spanked the IRS Tuesday, saying it has taken laws designed to protect taxpayers from the government and turned them on their head, using them to try to protect the tax agency from the very tea party groups it targeted. The judges ordered the IRS to quickly turn over the full list of groups it targeted so that a class-action lawsuit, filed by the NorCal Tea Party Patriots, can proceed. The judges also accused the Justice Department lawyers, who are representing the IRS in the case, of acting in bad faith — compounding the initial targeting —...

Judicial Watch Presses Ahead with Fight over IRS Criminal Investigation Facts Department of Homeland Security Releases Documents Showing 1,000 Individuals Removed from Terrorist Watch List Judicial Watch in Court over CongressÂ’s Obamacare Exemption Judicial Watch Presses Ahead with Fight over IRS Criminal Investigation Facts The Clinton email matter is important, and your JW is, of course, at the center of the story. Check out this New York Times article, which shows that the FBI and Judicial Watch are the only two entities in DC likely to get answers and accountability on the Clinton email issue: Last week Judge Emmet...

The Internal Revenue Service may still be unfairly targeting conservative organizations for audit due to flaws within their interior controls, Americans for Tax Reform reported Wednesday.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wants the Justice Department to save documents related to its two-year investigation of allegations that the IRS targeted conservative groups. "This Administration's recent announcement ... has finally made it abundantly clear that the responsibility of ensuring a thorough, fair, and impartial investigation of IRS employees and their potential criminal conduct will fall to the next presidential administration, and relevant materials must be protected accordingly," Cruz, who is running for president, wrote in a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch. He sent the letter Monday, after the DOJ announced last month that it was closing its probe....

Already planning for a GOP president in 2017, Sen. Ted Cruz sent a letter Monday demanding that the Justice Department preserve all documents from its completed investigation into the IRS's tea party targeting, saying too many questions still remain. Mr. Cruz, a Texas Republican who is himself seeking his party's presidential nomination, said the department's decision to close the investigation and clear IRS employees of any wrongdoing was a sign of just how broken the Justice Department has become. "It is important for you and other officials in this Administration to understand that this administration's decisions to neither continue this...

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released new Department of Justice (DOJ) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents that include an official “DOJ Recap” report detailing an October 2010 meeting between Lois Lerner, DOJ officials and the FBI to plan for the possible criminal prosecution of targeted nonprofit organizations for alleged illegal political activity. The newly obtained records also reveal that the Obama DOJ wanted IRS employees who were going to testify to Congress to turn over documents to the DOJ before giving them to Congress. Records also detail how the Obama IRS gave the FBI 21 computer disks, containing...

(Washington, DC ) – Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton made the following statement regarding the Obama Justice Department decision to close its investigation of the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups and other conservative opponents of President Obama’s policies: “President Obama’s IRS was used against his opponents to help him win reelection. So the Obama Justice Department’s decision to shut down its IRS abuse investigation with no prosecutions is as unsurprising as it is corrupt. Judicial Watch’s independent litigation proved the Obama IRS obstructed justice and destroyed evidence. And we uncovered that the IRS and Lois Lerner conspired with the...

From the first days that Barack Obama declared his candidacy, we were told how brilliant he was, how this Harvard trained lawyer, who had run the law review, outshone his peers, and taught constitutional law, was intellectually superior to the other presidential aspirants. Surely he was more attuned to sophisticated legal nuances and more dedicated to the rule of law than the outgoing occupant, who symbolized all that was wrong with the “imperial presidency.” But back in 2008, behind the curtain of “hope and change,” a different agenda was being devised in secret. Channeling Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro, Obama’s...