Posted on 06/23/2018 11:49:01 AM PDT by jazusamo
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 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.” President Trump, presumably unaware of these new facts, appointed Kerner as Special Counsel for the United States Office of Special Counsel.
The explosive exchange was contained in notes taken by IRS employees at an April 30, 2013, meeting between Kerner, Lerner, and other high-ranking IRS officials. Just ten days following the meeting, Lois Lerner admitted that the IRS had a policy of improperly and deliberately delaying applications for tax-exempt status from conservative non-profit groups.
Lerner and other IRS officials met with select top staffers from the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in a “marathon” meeting to discuss concerns raised by both Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) that the IRS was not reining in political advocacy groups in response to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. Senator McCain had been the chief sponsor of the McCain-Feingold Act and called the Citizens United decision, which overturned portions of the Act, one of the “worst decisions I have ever seen.”
In the full notes of an April 30 meeting, McCain’s high-ranking staffer Kerner recommends harassing non-profit groups until they are unable to continue operating. Kerner tells Lerner, Steve Miller, Nikole Flax, then chief of staff to IRS commissioner, and other IRS officials, “Maybe the solution is to audit so many that it is financially ruinous.” In response, Lerner responded that “it is her job to oversee it all:”
We previously reported on the 2013 meeting. Senator McCain then issued a statement decrying “false reports claiming that his office was somehow involved in IRS targeting of conservative groups.” The IRS previously blacked out the notes of the meeting , but we found the notes among subsequent documents released by the agency.
We separately uncovered that Lerner was under significant pressure from both Democrats in Congress and the Obama DOJ and FBI to prosecute and jail the groups the IRS was already improperly targeting. In discussing pressure from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (Democrat-Rhode Island) to prosecute these “political groups,” Lerner admitted, “it is ALL about 501(c)(4) orgs and political activity.”
The April 30, 2013 meeting came just under two weeks prior to Lerner’s admission during an ABA meeting that the IRS had “inappropriately” targeted conservative groups. In her May 2013 answer to a planted question , in which she admitted to the “absolutely incorrect, insensitive, and inappropriate” targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups, Lerner suggested the IRS targeting occurred due to an “uptick” in 501 (c)(4) applications to the IRS but in actuality, there had been a decrease in such applications in 2010.
On May 14, 2013, a report by Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration revealed: “Early in Calendar Year 2010, the IRS began using inappropriate criteria to identify organizations applying for tax-exempt status” (e.g., lists of past and future donors). The illegal IRS reviews continued “for more than 18 months” and “delayed processing of targeted groups’ applications” in advance of the 2012 presidential election.
All these documents were forced out of the IRS as a result of an October 2013 Judicial Watch Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit filed against the IRS after it failed to respond adequately to four FOIA requests sent in May 2013 ( Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Internal Revenue Service (No. 1:13-cv-01559)). Judicial Watch is seeking:
The Obama IRS scandal is bipartisan – McCain and Democrats who wanted to regulate political speech lost at the Supreme Court, so they sought to use the IRS to harass innocent Americans. The Obama IRS scandal is not over. We continue to uncover smoking gun documents that raise questions about how the Obama administration weaponized the IRS, the FEC, FBI, and DOJ to target the First Amendment Rights of Americans.
I wasn’t just Songbird McCain, you can bet your last nickel a lot of Senators and Congress critters were involved.
Also in the IG report is 2 unidentified top FBI agents discussing the economic pain of going through the fall of the republic but were willing to put up with it. It’s like that old commie saying, the ends justify the means.
This conversation reveals the takedown of our Constitutional Republic was REAL and this IRS tyranny against conservatives was just all part of that. Sane democrats and liberals (if there are any left, LOL) are going to have to wake up to just how traitorous their leaders really are just like most Republicans have woken up to the Republicans who helped them and are just as guilty.
The takedown of our Republic was REAL and the enemedia plays a big part of trying to cover up the treason or worse. It’s all slowly being exposed and justice IS coming for them. Thank God for President Donald J Trump and all his work behind the scenes to expose these traitors.
CGato
There definitely were many others in on this.
Now they are doing the same thing through the Mueller investigation. Anyone associated with Trump is getting the “treatment”. Also McCain had his hand in the fake dossier. That POS needs to die.
In Third World satraps, tinpot dictators us the govt against people——the McCain effort to financially ruin Americans is being funded with YOUR tax dollars.
God I wish the Senate would recess, Trump could FIRE Sessions and Appoint Tom Fitton as AG.
My wife and I were audited, most likely because we itemized deductions and listed 5-6 conservative non profits, Judicial Watch among them. After appealing their initial decision, I provided the IRS with around 100 pages of supporting documents within the allottted time period. My next contact from the IRS was a letter simply stating that I still owed them money. No mention was made of the supplied documents which, by the way, indicated that we were owed a greater return than originally filed. To shorten this story, I had to engage my CPA in the dispute and pay him an additional $1,800 just to have my initial return (prepared by him) accepted as filed. In the words of my CPA, we were either targeted or stumbled upon the worst (and least knowledgeable) IRS auditor ever (based on the items questioned and failure to follow procedure).
Based on my experience, I do not trust government. I find it easy to believe that Obama or the Deep State weaponized our legal system. All of this is happening when new protests seem to be erupting on a weekly basis. Is this a coincidence? Could it be that Trump’s surprise election so wounded a plan to alter the United States that they were forced to take retaliatory actions against him?
bump
I find that easy to believe also.
The liberals thought they were breezing their way to an easy win and President Trump ruined their grand plan.
Everyone knows about 0bama’s penchant for getting even, he wasn’t bashful about it and even stated it publicly.
The minions in his administration had years of practice in following his example.
It’s no coincidence, in my view.
Bump!
McStain is really an appropriate descriptor for John.
Everything that man has touched has been fouled.
Make it common.
The staffer in question is now in the Trump administration.
Flake, Corker, Hatch, Heller, Alexander, Graham, McCain, Murkowsky, Hoeven, Rubio, Tillis, Burr, Lankford, Gardner, Cornyn, Hyde-Smith, Collins, Sasse, Kennedy, Shelby, Ernst, Blunt, McConnell, Wicker, Portman, Isakson, Johnson, Toomey, Rounds, Capito, Thune, Gaines, Barasso and Enzi are all Bush League Republicans hell bent on making America into North Mexico.
Great post... Trump was right about McCain all along.
Precisely...He sure was.
Yep, and that should end today.
McCain was a CHEAP LABOR EXPRESS thug... He hated the ‘little people’ - hated the American worker - hated the Tea Party and all of us who fought corrupt ‘elites’.
I’s thankful Trump was able to trash him when they were both running for President. To start the process of unmasking the jerk...
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