Posted on 07/02/2016 11:33:19 AM PDT by Kaslin
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 real story of how activists attacked the property and livelihoods of average Californians for daring to support a ballot initiative. It's the real story of liberal campaigns to silence free-market think tanks and companies.
Lois Lerner’s confession at that conference did contain one small truth. The IRS targeting scandal did indeed start in “Cincy”—as D.C. headquarters refers to that outpost. On a cold late February day in 2010, a Cincinnati screener named Jack Koester found himself focused on an application from a local Tea Party group.
The IRS is a vast organization, employing ninety-five thousand people, who enforce a code 3.7 million words long that oversees taxes on everything from income to corporations to employment to estates to gifts to excises. It’s home to agents and auditors and specialists and examiners and investigators and lots and lots and lots of lawyers. It also oversees organizations that are “exempt” from paying taxes. The Exempt Organizations unit at the IRS is in fact a big operation; on any given day it oversees a universe of 1.5 million recognized tax-exempt organizations.
Precisely because the IRS handles so many nonprofit groups, it maintains a dedicated unit in Cincinnati—known as the Determinations unit—that processes initial tax-exempt applications. The Cincy Determinations unit in turn is divided into thirteen groups, one of which handles the initial “screens” of applications. The typical screener spends fifteen to thirty minutes on an application, and completes twenty to thirty a day.
Koester’s eye nonetheless settled for more than a few beats on the Tea Party application in front of him. He forwarded the application to his supervisor, noting, “Recent media attention to this type of organization indicates to me that this is a ‘high profile’ case.” His alert worked its way up the chain, all the way to Cincinnati’s boss of exempt operations, Cindy Thomas. She in turn forwarded it to one of Washington’s senior officials, Holly Paz, asking “whether [Washington] wants this case because of recent media attention.” Paz took less than a day to respond: “I think sending it up here is a good idea given the potential for media interest.”
So Lerner, the IRS, Obama—they were all correct that the targeting fiasco started with a “line agent” in Cincinnati. They just neglected to mention that within twenty-four hours of that agent’s alert—and every minute thereafter—it was political types in Washington running the show.
When Koester talked about “media interest,” he was undoubtedly referring to the wall-to-wall coverage that had just followed the Citizens United decision. He’d likely seen the White House’s furious reaction to the Court’s decision to free up speech rights, and Obama’s dressing-down of the Supremes. He’d likely seen the Democratic Party and its media allies bang on daily about the evils of conservative “nonprofits.” He’d likely taken in the nonstop stories about the Tea Party gearing up in opposition to Obama, and how they were rushing into the (c)(4) realm. And he likely knew those groups were having an effect. Only a month earlier, Scott Brown had won that Senate race, against all odds. Koester was a prime example of how an executive branch—and a political party—can drive a story and make the bureaucracy take notice.
We know that one person in particular took notice: an ambitious partisan by the name of Lois Lerner.
Lerner shocked Washington with her May 2013 admission that her agency had harassed Americans. The shocking thing was that anyone was shocked.
Lerner to this day won’t cooperate with any real investigation; the nation has been denied the opportunity to hear her story. But e-mail is a wondrous thing. Between her records and the recollections of her colleagues, we have a vivid portrait of the former head of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations unit. She was a brassy, self-assured bureaucrat with Democratic leanings and a near-messianic belief in the need for more speech regulations.
And she had a long history. Before landing at the IRS, Lerner spent twenty years at the FEC, rising to become its acting general counsel. Never in all that time did she hide her views that money was a problem in politics and needed more restrictions. She was seen even then as a highly biased FEC enforcer—one who harassed conservative groups that wanted more freedoms in politics.
While head of FEC enforcement, Lerner played a role in the 1990s in going after former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour over a nonprofit group he established called the National Policy Forum, which had been accused of taking illegal foreign contributions. (The Justice Department would later find no evidence of a crime.) She was part of an effort to take down a dozen Republican state party chairmen and the Republican National Committee, over accusations that they had broken finance laws during George H. W. Bush’s 1988 presidential bid. That case stayed open for seven years.
She’d most famously help wage a small war against the Christian Coalition, in one of the largest enforcement actions in FEC history. The coalition was accused (with no proof) of illegally coordinating its advocacy with Republican candidates. Mark Hemingway of the Weekly Standard documented that the harassment cost the conservative group “hundreds of thousands of dollars, and countless hours of lost work.” James Bopp (of later Citizens United fame) handled that case, and he revealed in testimony that the FEC team deposed 48 different people, conducted 81 depositions, put in 127 separate document requests, and sent the group 32 different interrogatories containing hundreds upon hundreds of questions. The agency demanded donor lists, and even inquired into whether people in the group were “praying” for each other. Each of the coalition’s 49 affiliates got document demands; it would ultimately hand over 100,000 pages of information.
So Lerner had a lot of practice in harassment even before she geared up at the IRS. Her e-mails show that she was at home in Democratic politics, with biases against conservatives. There’s a 2004 e-mail with a former colleague in which she’s hopeful she’ll be able to get together to “celebrate” a John Kerry presidential victory. In 2012, a friend would muse to her about the “scary”
Romney/Ryan ticket and ask how a “creep like Romney” was ever elected in Massachusetts. She’d later that year decline an invitation to a party to celebrate Obama’s expected victory, noting that she was nonetheless keeping her “fingers crossed. And, I did vote!”
When told that Democrats had kept control of the Senate in 2012, she responded, “WooHoo! [I]t was important to keep the Senate. If it had switched, it would be the same as a Rep president.” Her husband, Michael Miles, comes off as a passionate liberal who egged his wife on. On election day in 2012, he told his wife that he hadn’t been able to find the “socialist-labor candidates on the ballot, so I wrote them in.” Three days after the 2012 election, he complained to her about the losers, “Well, you should hear the whacko wing of the GOP. The US is through; too many foreigners sucking the teat; time to hunker down, buy ammo and food, and prepare for the end. The right wing radio shows are scary to listen to.” Lerner replied, “Great. Maybe we are through if there are that many assholes.” Conservatives, she explained, were “crazy” and worse than “alien terrorists.”
Right! His half-white side is ignored.
[[Exactly! Evil Obama and his minions stole this election through lies, corruption, and orchestrated attacks against those aligned with his opposition. WORST PRESIDENT EVER!]]
And having young programmers enter lines of code into the electronic voting machines that changed votes.
There is no way that the tons of people voted to send “conservatives” to congress also voted for Obama.
They have no plans to give up power and they will cheat again to get Hitlery in the White House .
I’m sure many freepers have similar stories to mine.
The woman who organized our local tea party was so enthusiastic and full of energy. We attended the first and about five more rallies. Suddenly we got an email saying that due to circumstances in her life she could no longer be the leader of our tea party organization. Chilling to look back on.
Karl Marx has a huge fan club it’s called the democrat party MSM smiles.
After a lifetime of voting in every election, I'll be sitting out the congressional portion this coming November.
There’s always the Ceausescu Protocol.
because she’s a DEMOCRAT WOMAN BABY KILLER WANNA BE!!
yes, Democrats ALWAYS CHEAT at ELECTIONS, however they win because the majority of voters are EVIL!!!
She began an organization called, True the Vote. The IRS was sicked on them. Her and her husbands business came under scrutiny by the IRS as well as OSHA, BATF and I believe the EPA.
The Obozo administration tasked these agencies to shut down conservative voices. The IRS was used as a weapon to alter the outcome of an American election. Highly illegal acts took place all over the country.
Where in sam hell is congress on this? Those smug SOB’s Lois Lerner and that Koskin (whatever his name) ought to have been fired and or brought up on charges.
Folks..we gotta start thinking outta the box here. Our gubbamint is becoming more and more corrupt each day.
The first order of business for Trump is to indict and arrest Lerner and Koskinen for sedition. Make it very public and very noisy. Splash the sedition trial all over DC to warn the federal fascist bureaucracy that this waits for you - indictment, trial, million dollar fines, prison and loss of all benefits, including paychecks and pensions.
Because we allowed it.
We should have been surrounding their buildings and daring them to come out long ago.
Read
“And nothing has been done to this wretch because?”
...she’s a member of the revolution, as in “fundamentally transform”.
IMHO
Lois Lerner abused IRS powers to attack political dissent. She should be in prison for the rest of her sorry life.
She is fundamentally an enemy of democracy and of our Constitution.
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 IRS as early as 2011, and despite the increased attention, the group’s founder and coordinator Carol Davis wanted to correct any misperceptions. Their group did not withdraw their application for 501c4 status.
They did not back down from the IRS when the queries started. In fact, they pushed back.
“We are eight years old now and we are a thriving and growing group, and an officially-recognized 501c4,” Davis wrote.
Indeed, West Suburban Patriots is recognized as one of the largest Tea Party groups in the nation.
“When the Lerner-led inquisition letters started coming in 2011, we soon realized that many other groups around the country were also being targeted as we were. Some groups yielded to the government oppression, but we decided to push back because there were so many of us,” she wrote.
And in her typical inspirational, feisty and unintimidated manner, Carol Davis made this point:
“Yes, standing up to a bloated, out-of-control oppressive government is difficult, but it was the right thing to do! ALWAYS PUSH BACK! DO NOT GO QUIETLY,” she said. “We are now actively and vocally advocating for the impeachment of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, who lied and destroyed evidence.”
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