Free Republic

Pressing U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to pursue criminal charges against former IRS nonprofits chief Lois Lerner. Senior Republicans on Capitol Hill are pressing U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to pursue criminal charges against former IRS nonprofits chief Lois Lerner. Lerner, whose title was IRS Exempt Organizations Division Director, orchestrated an unprecedented crackdown on Tea Party and conservative groups and then attempted to scapegoat those nonprofits, blaming them for the harsh treatment they received at her instigation.

After Obama administration refused to review IRS conduct, Republicans request fresh look at evidenceHouse Republicans Rep. Peter Roskam (R., Ill.) and Rep. Kevin Brady (R., Texas) wrote a letter to the Department of Justice urging the agency to investigate evidence regarding Lois Lerner's misconduct in the IRS targeting scandal after the Obama administration refused to hold anyone accountable. The IRS began targeting conservative and tea party groups' applications for tax-exempt status based on their political ideology in 2010 and delayed their approval before the 2012 presidential election. Some groups are still waiting for their status to be approved. Lois Lerner,...

Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) went on with Stewart Varney on Thursday morning to discuss recent developments on Capitol Hill.   Roskam told Stewart House Republicans are planning of filing criminal charges against Lois Lerner.     Rep. Roskam: The Obama Administration was very lenient with the crimes that Lois Lerner committed. And those are strong words that I’m using but the House Ways and Means Committee voted out a criminal referral to the Department of Justice which was completely dismissed by the Department of Justice… We think that Lois Lerner did two things wrong. Number one, she denied people...

A Washington-based government watchdog is warning President Trump to “clean house at the IRS as quickly as possible” – or, better yet, eliminate the “corrupt” agency altogether. The Internal Revenue Service admitted to a federal court Wednesday that it has identified nearly 7,000 documents that contain information concerning how the agency targeted tax-exempt applications of conservative political organizations. IRS commissioner John Koskinen has insisted since the scandal broke in 2013 that the agency had cooperated completely in the investigation of its targeting of conservative groups. Now, in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the IRS revealed it has...

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...

The federal government requires structural reform. Because it is very expensive and time-consuming to fire anyone, bad behavior is not just tolerated but propagated. Civil Service protections originally intended to guard against a politicized bureaucracy have now become guarantors of the high-handedness and lack of accountability we saw with Lois Lerner, now retired with a six-figure pension after pleading the Fifth Amendment. Government employee unions have become a mainstay of the Democratic Party, with employee dues, harvested from taxpayers via salaries, laundered into the party’s coffers. So the Democrats will fight like hell, up to and including a filibuster, mass...

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...

New Revelations in Obama IRS ScandalHillary Clinton Keeps Changing Her Story Obama’s Trip To Climate Conference Cost Taxpayers $4,165,068.40 Heroic Judicial Watch Client Sues against Federal Agents Violation of Constitutional Rights New Revelations in Obama IRS Scandal This week we revealed to the public more about the IRS’ historic abuse of power. We released 294 pages of FBI documents showing that top IRS officials in Washington, including Lois Lerner and Holly Paz, knew that the agency was specifically targeting “Tea Party” and other conservative organizations two full years before disclosing it to Congress and the public. Lerner was director of...

CHICAGO Friday, July 29, 2016 Lerner-led IRS investigation didn't deter West Suburban Patriots WASHINGTON - Thursday, the legal group Liberty Counsel released FBI investigation findings that the IRS - while being led by the former IRS Chairman Lois Lerner - began intensifying their efforts against conservative groups with a Tea Party or Patriot connection in 2011. That meant that when a question was planted from the audience at a 2013 conference, the IRS' strategy to discourage the Tea Party movement had been in place for two years. West Suburban Patriots was among several Illinois groups that began getting questions from...

The Left, once the champion of civil liberties, is today orchestrating a coordinated campaign to bully Americans out of free speech. For nearly 40 years, Washington and much of the American public have held up disclosure and campaign finance laws as ideals, and the path to cleaner and freer elections. Yet, as Kimberley Strassel argues and details through first-hand accounts, both campaign finance are disclosure reform have been hijacked as weapons against free speech and free association, becoming one of the most powerful tools of those intent on silencing their political opposition. Through scare tactics and overreach, harassment of conservative...

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...

Justice: IRS official Lois Lerner didn't merely target conservative groups to take away their tax-free status, as first suspected, but also handed over more than a million pages of tax returns to the Justice Department. That's a crime.

More than three years after it admitted to targeting tea party groups for intrusive scrutiny, the IRS has finally released a near-complete list of the organizations it snagged in a political dragnet. The tax agency filed the list last month as part of a court case after a series of federal judges, fed up with what they said was the agency’s stonewalling, ordered it to get a move on. The case is a class-action lawsuit, so the list of names is critical to knowing the scope of those who would have a claim against the IRS. But even as it...

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,...

Cameron Lancaster The House Judiciary Committee will consider impeaching IRS Commissioner John Koskinen in upcoming hearings. The committee will look at Koskinen's alleged misconduct relating to Congress's investigation into the IRS's targeting of political groups. “Despite repeated congressional efforts to get to the bottom of this matter, Obama Administration officials, including the IRS Commissioner, have consistently undermined the investigation," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said. "Over the coming weeks, the House Judiciary Committee will closely examine Commissioner Koskinen’s misconduct and the implications of his actions.” At a Judiciary Committee hearing on May 24, witnesses will present the...

Tea party activists are heartened by a federal appeals court ruling that strengthens their legal push against the Internal Revenue Service for alleged targeting in past election cycles. A three-judge panel of the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals chastised government foot-dragging while ordering the agency to give attorneys for tea party groups details on tax-exempt applicants. A U.S. district court judge in Cincinnati earlier this year certified the case as a class action. …

Gone are the days of sophisticated tax plans offered by international accounting and law firms to their wealthiest clients which the IRS, with the benefit of hindsight, categorized as “tax shelters”. So why is Commissioner Koskinen raising the flag upside-down in a signal of distress in March of 2016? Tax practitioners all around the country know exactly why. Too many taxpayers and a handful of unscrupulous “tax practitioners” are taking advantage of the almost absolute absence of tax enforcement by the IRS. Yes, “Joe the plumber” and other average taxpayers know that no-one is minding the store. What happens when...

Say, do you remember that whole flap over Lois Lerner and the IRS targeting conservative groups applying for tax exempt status a couple of years ago? Good times, my friends. Good times. I’m sure glad that’s all finally behind us, aren’t you?Well guess again. It’s not even close to being over. Some of the affected groups brought suit against the IRS over the matter and that process has been dragging out for years now. They haven’t made as much ground as they might, however, because every time the plaintiffs request certain documents from the IRS, they mysteriously find reasons...

In October 2015 the DOJ announced it was dropping the investigation into the IRS, Lois Lerner, and the unlawful sharing of taxpayer data in the IRS targeting investigation surrounding True The Vote et al.