Amazing: Now IRS ADMITS they targeted conservative groups AND they covered-up

[Apollonian]

BOMBSHELL: IRS Admits Targeting Conservative Groups And How They Did It​

Link: http://refreshingnews99.blogspot.in/2015/06/bombshell-irs-admits-targeting.html


Apparently the IRS not only targeted conservative organizations but also spent a ton of taxpayer money to cover it up.

According to a new report, the IRS literally had hundreds of attorneys working on a special team to try and cover up any wrong doing by Lois Lerner and her pals.

From the Washington Times:


The IRS’s director of privacy, governmental liaison and disclosure division testified Wednesday that the tax agency set up a special team with hundreds of lawyers to handle the probe into whether Tea Party groups were targeted, but repeatedly said she had no idea how it operated.

Mary Howard, who also works as the head Freedom of Information Act officer in the IRS, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that once the “special project team” was created and operational, she never saw requests for information.

“My understanding was that it started soon after the request came from Congress and other investigators asking for documents around this whole issue,” which she surmised meant around spring of 2013.

Asked who was on the team, she said: “My firsthand knowledge of that is none.” But she did say the Chief Council of the IRS — one of only two political appointees in the IRS; the other is the commissioner — was on the “special project team,” as were “hundreds of attorneys.”

Congress held Lerner in contempt after she claimed she did not know about the targeting, but then later took the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering questions. She was never prosecuted by the Justice Department, but two dozen House members want new Attorney General Loretta Lynch to pursue charges.

Can you imagine if organizations like Black Lives Matter or Fight for $15 were targeted by the IRS?

All hell would break loose and you can bet the Obama Administration would be hell bent on finding out who did it.

Of course, these are just conservatives practicing their free speech. Since the Obama Administration hates for voters to actually be informed, he had to not only shut them up but then cover it up.

To this day Lois Lerner has not be prosecuted and rakes in over $200,000 of taxpayer dollars per year as a pension.

Maybe these attorneys should have been spending time prosecuting Al Sharpton to get the over $4 million in back taxes he and organizations he started owe the IRS.

Then again, that would be racist right? And targeting conservative organizations is just par for the course with the most corrupt administration in the history of the United States.

Nothing to see here folks.

 

[Apollonian]

FBI Documents Reveal Orchestrated IRS Targeting, Unravel the Negligence Cover Story​

by Fergus Hodgson | Aug 1, 2016

Link: https://taxrevolution.us/fbi-docs-reveal-orchestrated-irs-targeting-unravel-negligence-cover-story/

Recently released documents show the US Department of Justice was well aware of the Internal Revenue Service’s railroading of advocacy groups as they applied for nonprofit status, specifically those with Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street affiliations. Not only did law-enforcement officials know about the ideological targeting, which began in 2010, they had two years to address the problem before it became known to the public.

The two rounds of documents obtained from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 294 and 105 pages, are the product of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from Judicial Watch. The self-described conservative organization “promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law,” and its president, Tom Fitton, had choice words for federal officials.

“These new smoking-gun documents show [the] Obama FBI and Justice Department had plenty of evidence suggesting illegal targeting, perjury, and obstruction of justice… [They] collaborated with … Lois Lerner and the IRS to try to prosecute and jail Barack Obama’s political opponents.… [Then] the resulting compromised investigation looked the other way when it came to Obama’s IRS criminality.”

Lois Lerner led the Exempt Organizations Unit of the Internal Revenue Service. She resigned in 2013, but there has yet to be a criminal prosecution of her or anyone else over improper targeting of nonprofit advocacy organizations. (@TheValuesVoter)
Lois Lerner led the Exempt Organizations Unit of the Internal Revenue Service. She resigned in 2013, but there has yet to be a criminal prosecution of her or anyone else over improper targeting of nonprofit advocacy organizations. (Photo: Personal Liberty)

Lois Lerner, a former director with the IRS, did resign over her leadership of the Exempt Organizations Unit in Cincinnati, where the wrongdoing took place. However, there has not been a single criminal charge in response to the delayed or rejected approvals of at least 466 organizations.

In 2015, Justice Department officials stated that they had uncovered “substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment, and institutional inertia.” However, in their words, “poor management is not a crime.”

That explanation has not squared well with many people, including elected representatives, who saw these acts as methodical and far beyond mere negligence. The “be on the lookout” (BOLO) lists, which acted as a filter, singled out groups with the words “patriot” and “liberty” in their names, along with “9-12,” which meant groups under an umbrella led by paleoconservative media-personality Glenn Beck.

A small minority of the groups did have “occupy” in their names. However, the attorney representing the NorCal Tea Party and leading a class-action lawsuit against the IRS, believes the targeting of progressives most likely came later, to make their actions appear non-political.

Further, attempts to find out who instigated the strategy — presumably high-level officials — have bumped into roadblocks, and thus provoked a second round of allegations directed at the IRS. That includes “lost” emails, lying to Congress, and deliberate efforts to evade public scrutiny.

The latest revelations, released on July 27 and August 1, now add a third layer: targeting, a cover up, and law enforcement turning a blind eye. That begs the question, does anyone still believe the targeting was mere negligence, an unintentional slip-up?

That story line of no ulterior motives can no longer hold water. Judicial Watch’s latter of the two releases details FBI interviews with IRS employees working in the Exempt Organizations Unit. These individuals, Judicial Watch explains, reveal a deliberate and orchestrated policy of “burying conservative groups’ tax exemption applications in bureaucratic delays.”

Any applications with Tea Party in the name, for example, went straight to “Group 7822” for an extended inventory — a de facto purgatory. Two group managers working in Cincinnati decried a lack of precedent in such handling, and they laid the blame for delays squarely on the directions of the IRS’s Washington, DC, headquarters. In fact, they described the DC office as a “black hole” and explained that the applications of organizations caught by the BOLO list could not be closed by the local screeners/classifiers.

The kicker is the timing of all this, and it is not lost on Fitton in the Judicial Watch press release: “These new [FBI interviews] reveal for the first time just how carefully orchestrated the IRS program for silencing opposition to Obama’s reelection actually was.” Yes, the targeting led right into President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection.

Whether these new revelations will garner sufficient momentum to bring criminal charges remains to be seen. In terms of the harm to the organizations and their opportunities to engage in activism, the damage is already done.

One clear outcome should be a hit to whatever good faith the IRS might have as an institution that flies above politics. Further, the lack of swift response and willingness to bring charges against IRS officials demonstrates the problem of who will police the police — in this case, interconnected federal agencies.

That suggests the need for vastly greater transparency, clarity of approval criteria, and established wait times for processing. Ideally, a restructuring of the Exempt Organizations Unit could make it more accountable to congressional oversight.

 

[Apollonian]

Judicial Watch: FBI Interviews with Cincinnati IRS Employees Reveal DC Headquarters Delayed Tea Party Applications​

AUGUST 01, 2016

Link: http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-...mption-applications-leading-obama-reelection/

‘DC is like a black hole.’ – Cincinnati Group Manager

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released 105 pages of newly obtained Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) “302” documents revealing that, beginning in 2010 and lasting through the Obama reelection campaign in 2012, the Obama IRS orchestrated a deliberate policy of burying conservative groups’ tax exemption applications in bureaucratic delays. Interviews with numerous Cincinnati IRS employees in mid-2013 reveal that “Tea Party” group applications were automatically denied approval and assigned to a special “Group 7822” for an extended “inventory” process while waiting for decisions from IRS headquarters in Washington, DC. One IRS manager “asked why progressive cases were not segregated similar to the Tea Party cases, but she did not get any satisfactory answers.” FBI “302” documents are detailed narratives of FBI investigation interviews. The Obama Justice Department and FBI investigations into the Obama IRS scandal resulted in no criminal charges.

According to a Cincinnati “Group Manager” interview in July of 2013:

Group 7822 was composed of 12 to 15 people and was simply a place for the Tea Party cases to be held in inventory while the agent waited to receive guidance from the Washington office. There had been no precedence previously on these issues. If the case said it supports politics and political activity, it would be put into Group 7822. [Redacted] and then [Redacted] held the cases in inventory.

A second Cincinnati Group Manager interviewed in July 2013 told the FBI 302 interviewers a similar story, pinning the blame directly on the IRS Washington headquarters:

In the 14-month period when [Redacted] had the cases, he would ask for updates on guidance and was told they were still waiting on DC. He recalls receiving emails with contradictory guidance on whether the 501-c-3 or 501-c-4 cases should be denied. It was his understanding that a team would come and work the Tea Party cases when the guidance was provided … Nobody told him directly where the delay was in resolving the Tea Party issue. DC is like a black hole.

The FBI 302 interviews with Cincinnati IRS employees reveal that the agency adopted a series of policies assuring that Tea Party and other conservative group tax exempt applications would not be approved before the November 2012 presidential election. The strategy relied upon the IRS’ multi-tier “bucketing” system that determined from the time an application was received whether it would be quickly approved or indefinitely delayed.

The first bucket – the “incomplete bucket” – automatically kicked the application back to the applicant because of missing documents. The second bucket – the “merit close” – meant the application met all the criteria and was quickly approved. The third and fourth buckets meant that other issues needed to be addressed by the applicant. According to FBI interviews with Cincinnati agency employees, top Washington IRS officials issued directives making certain that no BOLO (Be on the Look Out) Tea Party applications could be put in the “merit closed” bucket.

The strategy began in 2010, when the IRS Washington headquarters created its “BOLO” list and applied the term “Tea Party” to all political advocacy tax exemption applications. According to a Cincinnati Quality Assurance Specialist interviewed by the FBI, “The Tea Party was added to the emerging issues tab of the BOLO list in July or August 2010.”

Another Cincinnati agency official explained to the FBI what this designation meant to Tea Party and other conservative organizations: “If an item was on the BOLO list, that case could not be merit closed by the screeners/classifiers. [Emphasis added] A Cincinnati Grade 13 Revenue Agent explained to the FBI how this ended a Tea Party group’s hopes for early, or perhaps even eventual, IRS approval:

[Redacted] saw a few applications that were Tea Party cases and he sent them to a special group to work. [Redacted] identified cases by seeing if they had the Tea Party name or had verbiage that lined up with the Tea Party beliefs. If he saw this, he sent it for development because he knew he could not approve the case.

The “special group” the Revenue Agent sent the Tea Party applications to was known inside the IRS as Group 7822. As reported to the FBI by a Cincinnati Group Manager, “Group 7822 was composed of 12 to 15 people and was simply a place for the Tea Party cases to be held in inventory while the agent waited to receive guidance from the Washington office.” He added, “In his experience, getting guidance from Washington takes a while; but this seemed to take longer. It was typical for cases to sit and wait until they got guidance on how to apply the tax law.”

Another Cincinnati Revenue Agent explained to FBI 302 interviewers that for those Tea Party groups consigned to Group 7822 to await Washington approval, the wait could be almost interminable:

The cases were old. He did not think that was right because the applicants were waiting so long…. He believes the problem was getting a response from Washington. People developing cases would not receive feedback from Washington for a long time.

A Cincinnati Quality Assurance Specialist told the FBI interviewers in detail of her frustrations with trying to get feedback in order to process Tea Party cases:

They called them “Tea Party cases.” She knew they were conservative groups from the stuff in the news in April 2010. Initially, she was assigned 20 cases. She received instructions from either [Redacted] or [Redacted] to contact EO Technical …

***

It then started to take longer and longer for [Redacted] to respond … By September 2010, he did not get back to her at all.… The Tea Party cases started to backlog since [Redacted] was no longer responding… She knew the Tea Party was vocal in the news, and could see the perception that big government, the IRS, was hold cases. She expressed her frustration about the delay. She felt that every taxpayer deserves as determination, approval or denial.

And an Exempt Organizations Determinations Manager in the Cincinnati IRS office told the FBI 302 interviewers that while she did not think Tea Party organizations were targeted, “The Tea Party designation [in the BOLOs] looks bad, especially since progressive cases were not included in these categories … [Redacted] asked why progressive cases were not segregated similar to the Tea Party cases, but she did not get any satisfactory answers.”

“IRS officials described for the FBI unlawful and purposeful bureaucratic delays orchestrated by top IRS officials in Washington, DC ,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “One IRS official details how concerns about the Obama IRS targeting of conservatives were ignored. We hope a future Justice Department follows up on this information in a renewed criminal investigation.”

Judicial Watch previously released 294 pages of FBI 302 documents revealing that top Washington IRS officials, including Lois Lerner, who was interviewed in June 2013 and again in October 2013, knew that the agency was specifically targeting Tea Party and other conservative organizations two full years before disclosing it to Congress and the public. The Obama Justice Department and FBI investigations into the Obama IRS scandal resulted in no criminal charges.