IRS: a Weapon in the Hands of the Left

Politico's exclusive report on its sympathetic interview of former IRS official Lois Lerner two days ago has been widely and justifiably criticized. The Washington Free Beacon dubbed it an "epic fail" in journalism. David Harsanyi, in "Sorry, Politico, But Lois Lerner is Not a Victim," pointed out, among other things, that Lois Lerner is already guilty of targeting conservative groups by her own admission and apology.

Lerner told Politico's interviewer:

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Lerner said in her first press interview since the scandal broke 16 months ago. “I’m proud of my career and the job I did for this country.”

In an fair and unbiased world, this claim would be astounding, knowing what we now know of Lerner's acts and misdeeds.

But what if Lerner's world wasn't fair and unbiased?  What if the Internal Revenue Service where she worked for so long no longer treated all taxpayers equally, fairly or just?  What if Lerner is really saying, quite honestly, "I didn't do anything wrong" according to my coworkers in the heavily politicized left-leaning culture that now exists in the IRS?

Cleta Mitchell, who represents several conservative organizations targeted by the IRS, discusses why she believes that the IRS has become too corrupt to be saved and how it has become a bully of an agency and a weapon in the hands of the Democratic Party.


Ms. Mitchell's full remarks and rationale can be viewed here.

How Do Hard Drives Get 'Scratched'?

The latest news on ex-IRS official Lois Lerner's conveniently vanishing email records is that her computer hard drive was only scratched, reports Patrick Howley @ Daily Caller.

Ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s computer hard drive was “scratched” and the data on it was still recoverable. But the IRS did not try to recover the data from Lerner’s hard drive, despite recommendations from in-house IRS IT experts to outsource the recovery project.

The hard drive was then “shredded,” according to a court filing the IRS made to House Ways and Means Committee investigators.

CDs get scratched, but how do computer hard drives cocooned inside hard-cased CPUs and protected from human handling get scratched?

Apparently that question is being pondered by members of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, which noted in its July 22 press release:

It is also unknown whether the scratch was accidental or deliberate ...

Breitbart: New Docs Show IRS, DOJ Collusion to Prosecute Tax Exempt Groups

The IRS abuse of conservatives has expanded to the Department of Justice. From breitbart.com:

Judicial Watch obtained a new batch of internal IRS documents revealing that Lerner directly communicated with the Department of Justice (DOJ) about whether it was possible to criminally prosecute certain tax-exempt entities.

The documents were dragged out of the Obama administration thanks to our October 2013 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the IRS, after the agency refused to respond to four FOIA requests dating back to May 2013.

The newly obtained IRS documents contain a revealing email exchange between Lerner and Nikole C. Flax, then-Chief of Staff, to then-Acting IRS Commissioner Steven T. Miller, discussing plans to work with the DOJ to prosecute nonprofit groups that “lied” (Lerner’s quotation marks) about political activities. The tell-tale exchange includes the following:

• May 8, 2013: Lerner to Flax:

I got a call today from Richard Pilger Director Elections Crimes Branch at DOJ … He wanted to know who at IRS the DOJ folk s [sic] could talk to about Sen. Whitehouse idea at the hearing that DOJ could piece together false statement cases about applicants who “lied” on their 1024s –saying they weren’t planning on doing political activity, and then turning around and making large visible political expenditures. DOJ is feeling like it needs to respond, but want to talk to the right folks at IRS to see whether there are impediments from our side and what, if any damage this might do to IRS programs.

I told him that sounded like we might need several folks from IRS…

• May 9, 2013: Flax to Lerner:

I think we should do it – also need to include CI [Criminal Investigation Division], which we can help coordinate. Also, we need to reach out to FEC. Does it make sense to consider including them in this or keep it separate?

Lerner then “handed off” scheduling the issue to Senior Technical Adviser, Attorney Nancy Marks, who was then supposed to set up the meeting with the DOJ. Lerner also decided that it would be DOJ’s decision as to whether her old co-conspirators from the Federal Election Commission would attend.

Internal Revenge Service

IRS Poster Girl Lois Lerner

The news emerging about the Internal Revenue Service is of a government agency converted into an Internal Revenge Service under the Obama Administration. (That it is also slated to be a major player in every American's access to health insurance is beyond terrifying at this point.)

There is no greater evidence of the need for Congress to completely overhaul the U.S. tax code system and purge the IRS of its opportunity to abuse power than this week's revelations and headlines:

• Ethics Watchdog: IRS Customer Representative Urged Vote for Obama (Politico)
• Displays of Obama, Democratic Support Common At Some IRS Offices (Washington Times)
• IRS Under Fire: Vote for Obama Stickers, Campaign Cheerleading Commonplace (Washington Times)
• Lerner Mentioned Working for Pro-Obama Group Amid Scandal (Washington Post)
• Lerner Mentioned Organizing for Action Job (The Hill)
• IRS Agents: No Liberal Groups Were Targeted (PJMedia.com)
• IRS Agents' Testimony: NO Progressive Groups Were Targeted by IRS (Daily Caller)
• Breaking: Emails Show Lois Lerner Fed True the Vote Tax Information to Democrat Elijah Cummings (Townhall.com)
• Bombshell: Emails Show Democrat on Oversight Committee Was Working with Lois Lerner to Target True the Vote (PJMedia.com)
• Darrell Issa Says Emails Suggest Elijah Cummings Prompted IRS Targeting of True the Vote (Washington Examiner)
• House Committee Votes to Request Criminal Prosecution of ex-IRS Official Lois Lerner (Washington Post)

Attorney Jay Sekulow argues that "the Ways and Means report raises the possibility that Lerner (and perhaps others) violated a number of federal statutes. It's clear — regardess of criminality — that they also violated the Constitution."

The House Ways and Means Committee released a letter Wednesday detailing what it believes to be criminal misconduct by Lois Lerner, the former IRS official at the center of the ongoing IRS Tea Party targeting scandal. For those who want to understand how partisan bureaucrats can manipulate a powerful federal agency, the letter is a must-read.

The list of newly-disclosed acts of political bias and manipulation are astounding:

—After meeting with an outside group (Democracy 21) that claimed both conservative and liberal groups were violating IRS rules, Lerner chose to focus like a laser only on the conservative groups, with particular emphasis on one of the largest, Crossroads GPS.

—In fact, her focus on Crossroads GPS included demanding to know why Crossroads had not yet been audited combined with plans to deny Crossroads’ application for tax exempt status. She showed no such similar interest in liberal groups.

—She showed astounding sensitivity to reporting from ProPublica, a George Soros-funded media nonprofit, at one point forwarding a ProPublica article mentioning conservative groups and demanding a meeting on the status of those groups’ tax exemption applications.

Read the rest at The Lois Lerner Files: A Partisan Bureaucrat at Work (Fox News).

Strassel: The Really Big Money in Politics

While the IRS goes after 501(c)(4)s for such "political activities" as voter registration drives, many wonder why the agency isn't turning its immense firepower on 501(c)(5)s — organized unions that spent $4.4 billion on politics between 2005 and 2011 alone and are the "biggest, baddest, 'darkest' spenders of all" on politics, reports Kimberley Strassel @ the WSJ.

When he recently took to the Senate floor to berate the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch for spending "unlimited money" to "rig the system" and "buy elections," the majority leader clearly meant to be condemning unions. ...

Unions, as 501(c)(5) organizations, are technically held to the same standards [as 501(c)(4)s] against coordination with political parties. Yet no Democrat or union official today even troubles to maintain that fiction. Hundreds upon hundreds of the delegates to the 2012 Democratic convention were union members. They were in the same room as party officials, plotting campaign strategies. The question therefore is how much of that $4.4 billion in union spending was at the disposal of the Democratic Party—potentially in violation of a bajillion campaign-finance rules? ...

As for Mr. Reid's complaint that some "rig the system to benefit themselves," that was undoubtedly a reference to the overt, transactional nature of union money. Nobody doubts the Kochs and many corporations support candidates who they hope will push for free-market principles. Though imagine the political outcry if David or Charles Koch openly conditioned dollars for a politician on policies to benefit Koch Industries?

In the past months alone, unions demanded an exemption to a tax under ObamaCare; the administration gave it. They demanded an end to plans to "fast track" trade deals; Mr. Reid killed it. They wanted more money for union job training; President Obama put it in his budget. Everybody understands—the press matter-of-fact reports it—that these policy giveaways are to ensure unions open their coffers to help Mr. Reid keep the Senate in November. The quid pro quo is even more explicit and self-serving at the state level, where public-sector unions elect politicians who promise to pay them more. If the CEO of Exxon tried this, the Justice Department would come knocking. The unions do it daily.

The unions have had a special interest in funding attacks on conservative groups, since it has led to the IRS's regulatory muzzling of 501(c)(4) speech. Under the new rule, conservative 501(c)(4)s are restricted in candidate support; unions can do what they want. Conservative groups are stymied in get-out-the-vote campaigns; unions can continue theirs. Conservative outfits must count up volunteer hours; not unions.

So now, in addition to a system in which organized labor spends "unlimited money" to "rig the system to benefit themselves" and "buy elections," (to quote Mr. Reid), Mr. Obama's IRS has made sure to shut up anyone who might compete with unions or complain about them.

Mitchell: What FBI Investigation of IRS?

"Let's all be very clear," writes DC attorney Cleta Mitchell, who has represented dozens of groups before the IRS over the years. "The FBI did not conduct an 'investigation' into the IRS scandal. Not unless there are new protocols for investigating potential unlawful activities which discard the quaint notion of speaking to the victims."

• What did the FBI do in terms of investigating the obvious lies to Congress in 2012 by assorted IRS officials who claimed there was 'no targeting' of conservative organizations? Last time I checked, it is a felony to lie to Congress (ask Roger Clemens).
• Did the FBI investigate why Catherine Engelbrecht in Houston was visited by the FBI seven times, was audited by the IRS both personally and in her family business, was visited by OSHA and ATF (twice), all within 18 months of her filing exempt organization applications with the IRS for two conservative groups?
• Did the FBI investigate whether there were illegal political considerations related to the audits of conservative organizations and donors nationwide — and the correlation of that widespread abuse of conservative citizens to the targeting of the conservative organizations?

In short, how can there be any semblance of legitimacy to an investigation when none of the victims were even interviewed?

Cleta Mitchell, pictured above with Institute president Michelle Easton (L), was the Institute's 2013 Woman of the Year.

IBD: FBI As Tainted as IRS

"The FBI says it won't prosecute anyone at the IRS for its admitted targeting of the president's political foes," write the editors of Investor's Business Daily in a scathing editorial. "This just as the agency claims the law is no longer its main mission. So it's a political goon squad now."

According to a leak to the Wall Street Journal, the Federal Bureau of Investigation "didn't find the kind of political bias or 'enemy hunting' that would amount to a violation of criminal law." And so, nobody was likely to be prosecuted for the most blatant politicization of a federal agency within memory.

Per Wall Street Journal reports, none of the several dozen IRS-targeted victim-clients of either Cleta Mitchell, a Washington DC attorney, or The American Center for Law and Justice has ever been interviewed by the FBI during its IRS investigation.

IBD editors conclude:

That the FBI won't get involved in this and is willing to wreck its reputation for apolitical probity suggests this investigation is leading to a place the bureau would rather not go — namely, the White House. [snip]

As for the FBI, its fall is even more disturbing. It was once was known for its squeaky clean image and willingness to enforce the law without fear or favor.

Today, it's slid so far into the Washington morass it no longer considers law enforcement its prime mission. About a week ago, it quite questionably declared its top mission "national security" — an abrogation of its congressionally mandated mission.

As such, can the public now trust the FBI or the IRS?

Obama 'Legalizes' IRS Abuse of Tea Party Groups

Attorney Cleta Mitchell, who represents several conservative organizations abused by the IRS, told attendees at the Institute's 2013 summer DC Intern Seminar:

I'm not surprised that the agents in the IRS decided it was completely appropriate to single out and target, terrorize, and harass conservative organizations. I think we will learn — because I've had enough conversations with conservative and tea party leaders around the country who were visited by the FBI ... I think it will come out at some point that the FBI classified the tea party groups as domestic terrorists, or at least were investigating them to see if they were domestic terrorists.

Yesterday, in an article titled IRS Targeting, Round Two, Kim Strassel @ Wall Street Journal wrote that the Obama "Treasury and IRS are back at it — this time in broad daylight."

In the media blackout of Thanksgiving week, the Treasury Department dumped a new proposal to govern the political activity of 501(c)(4) groups. The administration claims this rule is needed to clarify confusing tax laws. Hardly. The rule is the IRS's new targeting program—only this time systematic, more effective, and with the force of law.

That this rule was meant to crack down on the White House's political opponents was never in doubt. What is new is the growing concern by House Ways and Means Committee investigators that the regulation was reverse-engineered—designed to isolate and shut down the same tea party groups victimized in the first targeting round. Treasury appears to have combed through those tea party applications, compiled all the groups' main activities, and then restricted those activities in the new rule.

AEI Study: Yes IRS Did Blunt Tea Party Ground Game

In a new research paper, Andreas Madestam (from Stockholm University), Daniel Shoag and David Yanagizawa-Drott (both from the Harvard Kennedy School), and I set out to find out how much impact the Tea Party had on voter turnout in the 2010 election. ... We found that the effect was huge: the movement brought the Republican Party some 3-6 million additional votes in House races. That is an astonishing boost, given that all Republican House candidates combined received fewer than 45 million votes. It demonstrates conclusively how important the party's newly energized base was to its landslide victory in those elections, and how worried Democratic strategists must have been about the conservative movement's momentum.

The Tea Party movement's huge success was not the result of a few days of work by an elected official or two, but involved activists all over the country who spent the year and a half leading up to the midterm elections volunteering, organizing, donating, and rallying. Much of these grassroots activities were centered around 501(c)4s, which according to our research were an important component of the Tea Party movement and its rise.

The bottom line is that the Tea Party movement, when properly activated, can generate a huge number of votes—more votes in 2010, in fact, than the vote advantage Obama held over Romney in 2012. The data show that had the Tea Party groups continued to grow at the pace seen in 2009 and 2010, and had their effect on the 2012 vote been similar to that seen in 2010, they would have brought the Republican Party as many as 5 — 8.5 million votes compared to Obama's victory margin of 5 million. [emphasis added]

Read the rest of the article by American Enterprise Institute economist Stan Veuger at Real Clear Politics.

Thank you, Cleta Mitchell!

One of the heroes in identifying and exposing IRS abuses is attorney Cleta Mitchell, who is also a featured speaker at our How to Excel at Your DC Internship seminar on June 14.

In a piece entitled "Cleta Mitchell: How to Investigate the IRS," WSJ editorial page editor James Freeman writes:

The woman who helped expose IRS abuse of conservative activists has more news to share: The abuse continues, and she sees no evidence that the White House, the IRS or the Justice Department is doing anything to end it. "This is not in the past tense. This is still going on," says Cleta Mitchell, perhaps the country's pre-eminent expert on campaign-finance and political tax law.

In 2012, Ms. Mitchell worked to persuade members of Congress that reports of IRS harassment of conservative groups were credible. GOP lawmakers demanded information from the IRS and triggered the internal audit that finally forced the agency last month to acknowledge abuses it had previously denied. Now Ms. Mitchell is determined to end the abuse and identify the culprits.

Don't bet against her. A partner at elite international law firm Foley and Lardner, Ms. Mitchell is sketching out a road map to uncover the truth and force reform—whether or not the Obama administration cooperates...

Among Ms. Mitchell's IRS-abused clients is True the Vote (more here).

Catherine Engelbrecht Has Had Enough

"True the Vote is not only suing the IRS, but also taking action against the IRS employees who participated in the harassment of the voter education and election monitoring organization. Those employees could personally be held liable to pay damages that would be established in litigation," reports Caroline May at the Daily Caller. "Founder and president of True the Vote Catherine Engelbrecht explained in a conference call Thursday morning that in July of 2010 her organization filed an application for tax exemption. The request has been in limbo since then."

But government hasn't been idle in the intervening 34 months. In addition to being subjected to hundreds of questions and requests for thousands of documents by IRS, Engelbrecht and her family have been "audited by the IRS twice, subject to two unscheduled audits by ATF, one by OSHA, and the Texas-branch of the EPA."

UPDATE: Ms. Engelbrecht's organization is being represented by attorney Cleta Mitchell (more here).

Noonan: Stonewalling IRS Corruption and Abuse

"'I don't know'. 'I don't remember'. 'I'm not familiar with that detail'. 'It's not my precise area'. 'I'm not familiar with that letter'.  These are quotes from the Internal Revenue Service officials who testified this week before the House and Senate," writes Peggy Noonan in the WSJ, who argues that "if what happened at the IRS is not stopped now—if the internal corruption within it is not broken—it will never stop, and never be broken."

That is the authentic sound of stonewalling, and from the kind of people who run Washington in the modern age—smooth, highly credentialed and unaccountable. They're surrounded by legal and employment protections, they know how to parse a careful response, they know how to blur the essential point of a question in a blizzard of unconnected factoids. They came across as people arrogant enough to target Americans for abuse and harassment and think they'd get away with it.

So what did we learn the past week, and what are the essentials to keep in mind?

Noonan recounts the story of Catherine Engelbrecht—a nice woman, a citizen, an American.