Let's Wrap This FReepathon Up, Folks!
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.
Has anyone putatively on the left, ever done such a thing to other putative leftists? Not that I’ve heard of. Our own supposed people are actively against us, much less having our backs.
This is atrocious, but not surprising with McCain.
That’s because both parties are part of the evil cabal’s illusion of “left vs. right”.
Trump needs to fire Kerner Monday
Off the Wall Ping!
Contact to be added.
This guy is an arsehole to the very end.
I am sorry I ever defended him.
Ah, McSlime has matching slime workers.
Figures.
I don't know. I kinda think there isn't a piece of filth on the planet that democrats haven't touched.
Johnny, when you go, take Schumer, Pelosi and the rest of yer pals along for the ride.
Absolutely.
Well of course Stalinist Russia is full of such examples. But here, in the US, in the 20/21 century?
McCain’s had a lot to say lately. Anxiously awaiting his latest on this matter. Waiting....still waiting....
Oh that much I surely believe. They have a good thing going on up there, don’t want any of us peons messing it up.
Let's Wrap This FReepathon Up, Folks!
REMEMBER THIS?
Kellyanne Conway violated the Hatch Act. Will she be charged?
by Walter Shaub
November 27, 2017 The special counsel is facing the biggest test of his career. I’m referring not to Robert S.Mueller III but to Henry Kerner of the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), the small agency that investigates Hatch Act violations. That law prohibits executive branch employees from using their government positions to influence elections, which is precisely what presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway did last week. Whether Kerner will enforce the law is another matter.
I don’t think his spokeswomen want to address this.
When mccain fiiiinally dies, many will not feel any sorry.
Trump needs to fire Kerner Monday
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Kerner is simply another knife-in-the-back “gift” from the despicable McCain to the Trump Administration. My guess is that President Trump now clearly understands that the liar McCain is a devoted enemy of MAGA. Have no doubt that McCain hates America and Americans... and always has.
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