Lois Lerner Wanted To Audit A Group With Ties To Bristol Palin

Embattled ex-IRS official Lois Lerner inquired about auditing a pro-abstinence group with ties to Bristol Palin, the daughter of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, according to a Senate report released on Wednesday.

Senate Finance Committee chairman Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, disclosed Lerner’s email — which she sent in April 2011 — in an addendum to a report detailing the results of a two-year investigation into whether the IRS unfairly targeted conservative groups.

The bi-partisan report concluded that Lerner and the IRS often ignored applications for tax-exempt status submitted by Tea Party organizations and other groups.

According to Hatch, Lerner’s political views influenced the IRS’ handling and processing of tax-exempt applications for the conservative groups.

One example of this was an email Lerner sent to her supervisors asking whether an audit should be conducted on Candie’s Foundation, a nonprofit group which seeks to limit teen pregnancy.

Bristol Palin was paid $332,500 to serve as an “ambassador” for the organization, which was founded by an executive at Candie’s Inc., an apparel company.

After Lerner learned of the payment to Palin from a news article, she wrote in an April 8, 2011, email chain to David Fish, Judith Kindell — two IRS officials — and others:

Thoughts on the Bristol Palin issue? I’m curious that a [private foundation] can pay any amount to someone who is not a [disqualified person]? It is a [private foundation] right? Even if it were a [public charity] – would that be private benefit – what are the consequences? I’m asking because I don’t know whether to send to Exam as a referral.

Hatch noted how unusual it was for Lerner to consider an audit based upon a single news article. He noted that out of 1.5 million IRS records reviewed by his committee staff, there were no other instances where Lerner referred a progressive group for an audit based on a single news article.

“Lerner’s willingness to act on this particular news article – among many that reached her inbox each day – shows that she was paying close attention to conservative politicians and organizations,” Hatch stated in his report.

USA Today noted another partisan comment from Lerner that Hatch cited in his report.

In a March 6, 2014, email exchange Lerner and a friend were discussing the political landscape in Texas. Lerner’s friend criticized Rick Perry and Greg Abbott, the former and current governors of the state, respectively.

“As you can see, the Lone Star State is just pathetic as far as political attitudes are concerned,” the friend wrote to Lerner.

She responded by stating that Abraham Lincoln should have allowed the South to secede from the Union.

“Look my view is that Lincoln was our worst president not our best. He should’[v]e let the south go. We really do seem to have 2 totally different mindsets,” she wrote.

Via: Daily Caller

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Gov't watchdogs urge Congress to reverse Obama administration IG crackdown

WASHINGTON –  Nearly six-dozen watchdog agencies are asking Congress to step in after the Obama administration clamped down on access to government records they say are vital for their investigations into waste, fraud and abuse. 

The Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency sent an Aug. 3 letter to congressional leaders ahead of a hearing scheduled for Wednesday where they will ask lawmakers to pass legislation reversing a controversial decision made July 20 by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel. The OLC is now requiring investigators to get permission to review sensitive documents from the very agencies they are monitoring.

This decision, the letter said, "represents a serious threat to the independent authority" of all inspectors general. 

IGs are assigned to audit and conduct internal reviews of federal agencies, and recently have been responsible for investigating the IRS targeting scandal, TSA security gaps, personal email use at the State Department and other issues. 

The council represents about 70 IG offices across the government, including for the Federal Communications Commission, the National Security Agency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. While the July 20 ruling applies to the DOJ, some are worried it will prompt other departments to set similar restrictions.

DOJ spokeswoman Emily Pierce countered the claims, saying the ruling still allows investigators to get sensitive information.

Via: Fox News

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[VIDEO] We Now Know Where Lois Lerner's Emails and Backup Tapes Were Destroyed

There have been dozens of questions surrounding the disappearance of emails belonging to former IRS official Lois Lerner, the woman at the center of the IRS targeting scandal. Some of Lerner's emails have been recovered, after IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said under oath they were lost forever. Thousands are still missing. But perhaps the most compelling questions that have been asked since the IRS targeting scandal broke in May 2013 are 1) Exactly where were Lerner's emails and backup tapes destroyed? 2) Who destroyed them?

Now, we have an answer. According to Americans for Tax Reform, Lerner's hard drive was destroyed by the IRS "Midnight Unit" in West Virginia: 

Backup tapes containing as many as 24,000 Lois Lerner emails were destroyed by an IRS entity officially known as the "Media Management Midnight Unit" located in Martinsburg, West Virginia, according to documentation released this week by the House Oversight Committee. In all, 422 backup tapes holding the emails were magnetically "degaussed" despite an agency-wide preservation order and congressional subpoena. Degaussing is a process whereby powerful magnets are used to erase data on a storage tape.

The preservation order came from IRS Chief Technology Officer Terence Millholland in response to Congressional subpoenas over Lois Lerner's emails. However, the agency completely failed to ensure the order was followed or understood. According to the House Oversight report:

-"The IRS failed to ensure compliance with the preservation order at each turn. The IRS failed to confirm compliance with the preservation order in February 2014, upon learning of the gap in emails; failed to ensure the Media Management Midnight Unit, the team that destroyed the backup tapes, properly understood the preservation order; and failed to make certain that individuals who ordered the destruction of the specific media, in this instance the backup tapes, properly understood the preservation order."

Keep in mind Lerner's hard drive didn't simply "crash" on its own, but instead hadphysical damage. According to one Treasury Inspector General, the hard drive likely crashed due to "an impact of some sort." The question is who damaged the hard drive and whether it was done on purpose to destroy evidence.

New documentation released by the House Oversight Committee this week again raises questions on how Lois Lerner's hard drive was physically damaged and whether there was some kind of deliberate act to destroy data on it.

The House Oversight Committee report cites an officially transcribed interview with John Minsek, senior investigative analyst with the IRS Criminal Investigations (CI) unit. Minsek examined the Lerner hard drive in 2011. In the transcribed interview, he notes Lerner's hard drive contained "well-defined scoring creating a concentric circle in the proximity of the center of the disk." 

Earlier this week a federal judge threatened to "haul into court the IRS Commissioner to hold him personally into contempt," for ignoring court orders and refusing to turn over emails belonging to Lerner by deadline.

Via: Townhall

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Conservative PAC Calls On IRS To Investigate Democratic Attorneys General Association

A conservative super PAC is urging the IRS to investigate the Democratic Attorneys Generals Association for failing to properly disclose its contributions and expenditures.

Because of that, the organization, known as DAGA, should be slapped with a 35 percent tax on all of its expenditures and contributions, State Conservative Reform Action PAC (SCRAP) chairman J. Chris Jankowski wrote in a letter to IRS commissioner John Koskinen and Tamera Ripperda, the director of the exempt organizations division at the tax agency.

Ripperda’s position is the same one held by Lois Lerner, the retired IRS official accused of targeting conservative groups who had applied for tax-exempt status.

DAGA, which is operated out of Colorado, is a political organization set up to help elect Democratic attorney general candidates. Its largest contribution last year came from the Teamsters Union, which donated $380,000.

Jankowski writes that DAGA failed to disclose its expenditures and contributions on Form 8872. Political organizations are required to file that form unless they are already exempted because they’ve filed similar information with state agencies or are registered as a federal political committee with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Jankowski formed SCRAP last year. The former head of the Republican State Leadership Committee, Jankowski’s group focuses on state-level races and generally supports low tax, small government candidates.

In his letter to Koskinen and Ripperda, Jankowski asserts that DAGA is not exempt at the state level and is not registered with the FEC and that as of July 20, it had not filed Form 8872 reports for the 2014 pre-general election period, the 2014 post-general election period, or the 2014 year-end period.

“Failure to file a required form 8872, or failure to include the information required on the form 8872, is a violation of tax law that is punishable by a tax at the highest corporate rate, currently 35 percent, on the undisclosed contributions and expenditures,” Jankowski writes.

“In light of the foregoing it is imperative that the IRS properly conduct an investigation into the serious and ongoing violations,” he adds. “The IRS should determine and impose appropriate sanctions and penalties for any and all violations, including a tax of 35 percent of the unreported expenditures and contributions.”

Via: Daily Caller

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More paying ObamaCare fines as subsidies go to people who don’t exist

The IRS fined more than 7.5 million Americans who didn’t have health insurance in 2014, even as Obamacare subsidies flowed to people who didn’t even exist.

The Treasury Department reported last week the number of Americans who faced fines because of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate was significantly higher than the Obama administration expected. For 2014, the IRS projected that roughly 6 million would face fines, but the final total was 1.5 million higher.

It was the first year in which buying health insurance was made mandatory under the ACA, with penalties of $95 or 1 percent of total income – whichever was higher – for people who did not comply.

The average penalty collected for the 2014 tax year was about $200, the IRS reported.

“Although we have not yet completed our post-filing analysis, we are committed to conducting additional outreach to taxpayers, including letters to these specific taxpayers who did not have to report or make a payment. These letters will inform them about available exemptions and note that they may benefit from amending their return,” said IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.

Penalties will increase to $395 or 2 percent of income per person in 2015; that will jump to $695 or 2.5 percent of income in 2016.

Those penalties are supposed to force Americans to purchase health insurance — or to at least make it financially wise for them to do so.

Click here for more from Watchdog.org. 

Via: Fox News

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Federal Judge Threatens To Hold IRS Commissioner, DOJ Lawyers in Contempt of Court over Lerner

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced that U.S District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan today threatened to hold the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department attorneys in contempt of court after the IRS failed to produce status reports and newly recovered emails of Lois Lerner, former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the IRS, as he had ordered on July 1, 2015.

During the a status hearing today, Sullivan warned that the failure to follow his order was serious and the IRS and Justice Department’s excuses for not following his July 1 order were “indefensible, ridiculous, and absurd.”  He asked the IRS’ Justice Department lawyer Geoffrey Klimas, “Why didn’t the IRS comply” with his court order and “why shouldn’t the Court hold the Commissioner of the IRS in contempt.”  Judge Sullivan referenced his contempt findings against Justice Department prosecutors in the prosecution of late Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) and reminded the Justice Department attorney he had the ability to detain him for contempt.  Warning he would tolerate no further disregard of his orders, Judge Sullivan said, “I will haul into court the IRS Commissioner to hold him personally into contempt.”

After the hearing, Judge Sullivan issued the following “minute order”:

At the July 29, 2015 status hearing, the Government agreed that the Court’s July 1, 2015 oral order from the bench was clear and enforceable.  Nonetheless, the Government reasoned it inappropriate to file a motion for reconsideration until a written order was issued.  As expressed at the hearing, the Government’s reasoning is nonsensical.  Officers of the Court who fail to comply with Court orders will be held in contempt.  Also, in the event of non-compliance with future Court orders, the Commissioner of the IRS and others shall be directed to show cause as to why they should not be held in contempt of Court.  The Court’s July 1, 2015 ruling from the bench stands: (1) the Government shall produce relevant documents every Monday; (2) the Government’s document production shall be accompanied by a status report that indicates (a) whether TIGTA has turned over any new documents to the IRS, (b) if so, the number of documents, and (c) a timeframe for the IRSs production of those documents. Signed by Judge Emmet G. Sullivan on July 29, 2015.

At a July 1, 2015, status conference, Sullivan ordered the IRS to begin producing, every week, the nearly 1,800 newly recovered Lerner emails responsive to Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.  Despite the court order, the IRS did not produce any Lerner emails until July 15.  The IRS also failed to provide Judicial Watch a status report of the Lerner email production issues, as also ordered by Sullivan.  Last week, Judge Sullivan ordered sua sponte the parties to appear for a status hearing today after Judicial Watch raised concerns about the IRS’ failure to comply with his orders to release the newly discovered Lerner emails and status updates on its production of previously “missing” documents.

The developments come in Judicial Watch’s FOIA lawsuit seeking documents about the Obama IRS’ targeting and harassment of Tea Party and conservative opponents of President Obama (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Internal Revenue Service (No. 1:13-cv-01559)).  Judicial Watch’s litigation forced the IRS first to admit that Lerner’s emails were supposedly missing and, then, that the emails were on IRS’ back-up systems.

Yesterday, Judicial Watch released the first batch believed to be newly recovered emails of Lerner. The new documents show that Lerner and other top officials in the IRS, including soon-to-be Acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller, closely monitored and approved the controversial handling of tax-exempt applications by Tea Party organizations.  The documents also show that at least one group received an inquiry from the IRS in order to buy time and keep the organization from contacting Congress.

“In a dramatic court hearing today, Judge Sullivan made it clear he would personally hold accountable the IRS Commissioner Koskinen and Justice Department attorneys for any further contempt of his court orders in Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.  “The missing and-then-not missing Lois Lerner saga is a stark example of the Obama administration’s contempt for a federal court and the rule of law.  That Obama administration officials would risk jail rather than disclose these Lerner documents shows that the IRS scandal has just gotten a whole lot worse.”

Via: Judicial Watch

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Newly Recovered Lois Lerner Email Shows IRS Tried To Cover Up Tea Party Targeting

The IRS sent one of its intrusive scrutiny letters to a nonprofit group in order to throw up a smokescreen and prevent the group from complaining to Congress about poor treatment, according to one of Lois G. Lerner’s apparently lost emails, which were recovered by auditors and released by an interest group Tuesday.

Judicial Watch, which sued to force the production of the Lerner emails, said the emails confirm that Ms. Lerner, the central figure in the targeting probe, and her colleagues were aware of the sensitive nature of the cases but appeared to hide details of the massive backlog they were amassing as they held up hundreds of tea party and conservative group applications for nonprofit status.

The IRS turned over 906 pages of emails July 15 to Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm, ahead of a Wednesday court hearing. Judicial Watch concluded that the emails were part of the messages Ms. Lerner lost in a computer malfunction, and released them Tuesday.

“This material shows that the IRS‘ cover-up began years ago,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. “We now have smoking-gun proof that top officials in the Obama IRS unlawfully harassed taxpayers just to keep them from complaining to Congress about IRS‘ targeting and abuse. No wonder the Obama IRS has had such little interest in preserving or finding Lois Lerner’s emails.”

The Lerner emails have become almost as big a scandal as the initial targeting. Ms. Lerner, who was head of the division that scrutinized the tea party applications until she retired while under investigation in 2013, suffered a computer hard drive crash that cost potentially thousands of emails that should have been part of the record.

The IRS took routine steps to try to recover the emails but reported that it was unable to do so.

But the agency’s independent inspector general said it was able to find the messages easily on backup tapes stored at remote locations — and that the IRS never bothered to look for those tapes, even as it was tellingCongress that all possible routes for message recovery had been exhausted.

According to the new emails, Ms. Lerner and her colleagues were aware of the growing outcry among nonprofit groups that they were being delayed.

In one Nov. 3, 2011, exchange between Ms. Lerner and Cindy Thomas, a program manager in the Cincinnati office that was handling the cases and was involved in a back-and-forth with Washington, the IRS admitted to having hundreds of cases stacked up and awaiting action.

Afraid of congressional pressure, Ms. Thomas ordered one of the inquiry letters to be sent, just to prevent one of the organizations being held up from complaining.

“Just today, I instructed one of my managers to get an additional information letter out to one of these organizations — if nothing else to buy time so he didn’t contact his Congressional Office,” she wrote in the email released by Judicial Watch.

Ms. Thomas said she feared a judge would get involved soon and order the IRS to move the applications more quickly.

That email exchange did confirm that IRS employees in Washington were deeply involved in making decisions about the nonprofit groups’ cases.

The IRS initially blamed the Cincinnati office for the glitch.

President Obama last week blamed the targeting scandal not on poor management but on “crummy” legislation he said Congress passed that gave his employees confusing instructions, and on funding cuts. He said the IRS wasn’t able to do its best work as a result.

Via: Washington Times

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[VIDEO] Chaffetz: IRS Commissioner John Koskinen Should Be Fired And Impeached

Katie Pavlich | Jul 28, 2015

After years of investigation into the IRS targeting of conservative groups House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz, who took over as chairman after Rep. Darrell Issa earlier this year, has had enough of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. 

Yesterday Chaffetz called on the President to fire Koskinen over allegations of obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence and stonewalling a congressional investigation. He accused Koskinen of lying to Congress when he said last year that backup tapes belonging to former IRS commissioner Lois Lerner, the woman at the center of the targeting scandal, didn't exist. We of course learned shortly after that backup tapes do exist, but that IRS officials didn't bother looking for them in order to turn them over to Congress for scrutiny. It was later revealed that at least some of the available back-up tapes were destroyed, even after a congressional subpoena for the tapes was issued. 

"Congress needs to get more aggressive and stand up for itself. We may hold him in contempt and there are other constitutional remedies that perhaps, one of the things we're exploring is perhaps impeaching the commissioner," Chaffetz said last night On The Record. "He [President Obama] should fire Mr. Koskinen because he's not working with us." 

"We're going to get to the truth no matter where it is no matter how long this takes. We're going to get after it," Chaffetz continued.

Considering President Obama doesn't believe the IRS targeting of conservatives is a scandal at all, I doubt he'll be heeding Chaffetz' calls. However, Congress does have the power of impeachment. Whether that authority will be exercised under current GOP leadership is a different story.

Last week, former Oversight Chairman Issa revealed the IRS is still engaged in targeting of conservative groups.

Via: Townhall

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IRS Says It Won't Propose New Spending Rules For Political Groups Until After 2016 Election

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said the agency does not want to be seen as attempting to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

By Taylor Tyler | Jul 24, 2015 03:59 PM EDT

The consensus seems to be that for the 2016 election cycle, political expenditures will shatter records, with overall spending by candidates, parties and outside groups and individuals expected to approach $10 billion. (Photo : Twitter Photo Section)

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said Thursday that big-money political groups will not have to worry about the agency imposing new rules on their campaign spending activities before the 2016 presidential elections, reports The Associated Press.

At least partially due to not wanting the IRS to be seen as trying to influence the outcome of the election, Koskinen said the agency won't adopt new regulations for the political activities of tax-exempt organizations until 2017.

In 2013, the Treasury Department and IRS proposed new rules that would have clarified how the IRS defined political activity and how much money nonprofits are allowed to spend on that political activity, reported The New York Times.

The rules would have affected social welfare groups such as Crossroads GPS, co-founded by GOP strategist Karl Rove, as well as the pro-Obama Priorities USA, but after significant backlash from both conservatives and liberals, the IRS pulled the regulations and started re-working them, reported Reuters.

The consensus seems to be that for the 2016 election cycle, political expenditures will shatter records, with overall spending by candidates, parties and outside groups and individuals expected to approach $10 billion.

Via: HNGN

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[VIDEO] Jason Chaffetz: Expect News on Probe of IRS 'As Early As Next Week'

Rep. Jason Chaffetz asserts there is evidence that the IRS intentionally targeted conservative groups under Lois Lerner, the former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit at the agency, and said "there will be news … as early as next week."

Chaffetz, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is leading the congressional investigation into the IRS scandal. On Thursday, he told a group at the Ripon Society in Washington, D.C., the IRS destroyed documents requested by the committee in March 2014.

"Probably the biggest thing our committee is looking at is the IRS," the Utah Republican said. "You have political targeting that is factual at this point. There are no ifs, ands or buts. You had groups within the IRS who were politically targeting conservatives and impeding their First Amendment rights. You're going to continue to hear more about this. Because when the targeting became evident, the Oversight and Government Reform Committee put in place a subpoena for the documents — a small window of Lois Lerner's emails.

"Internally, the IRS put a preservation order in place — don't destroy or get rid of any of these documents. These documents and emails were in the possession of the IRS. And on March 4, 2014, they destroyed them."

Lerner resigned from her post at the IRS in September 2013 after she was placed on administrative leave in May of that year following the revelations.

Chaffetz said during his address at the Ripon Society the IRS deliberately defied orders by destroying the documents.

"Imagine if the IRS had given you a summons for you to produce documents," Chaffetz added. "You had them in your possession, and then you destroyed them. What would happen to you? Do you think they would say, 'Oh, darn it!' No, which is why Congress has to stand up for itself. You cannot — with a duly issued subpoena and eternal preservation order in place — go out and destroy documents and say there is no consequence to that; nobody's going to be held accountable, and nobody is at fault.

"And yet that's essentially what we've heard from the president, who has said repeatedly there is not even a 'smidgeon' of corruption. He was on 'The Daily Show' with Jon Stewart the other night and said, 'You know what the real scandal is? The real scandal is that the IRS is underfunded. They need more agents, more people, and Congress passed a bad law.'

"You know this ridiculous law the president is talking about? It was passed in 1913. He makes it look as if we had passed this law. That little detail he said on 'The Daily Show,' you're going to see that surface. We will continue to pursue this, and I promise you — there will be news on the IRS side as early as next week. So stay tuned."

It was recently reported that investigators found more than 1,400 emails tied to Lerner that were thought to have been deleted.

Via: Newsmax

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IRS back under fire on Tea Party targeting

A series of new revelations Wednesday and Thursday put the Internal Revenue Service back under fire for its alleged efforts to curtail the power of conservative nonprofits.

First, the Government Accountability Office uncovered evidence that holes in the tax agency's procedure for selecting nonprofit groups to be audited could allow bias to seep into the process.

Then, during a heated House Ways and Means Committee hearing Thursday morning, lawmakers exposed the lack of safeguards that could prevent IRS officials from going after groups with which they disagreed.

Meanwhile, the conservative watchdog Judicial Watch released documents Wednesday that suggested the IRS targeted the donors of certain tax-exempt organizations.

The controversies focused renewed scrutiny on the embattled agency, which has been fending off allegations of discrimination against conservatives since 2013.

"The burden of proof is on the IRS to show they are not targeting organizations," said Rep. Kristi Noem, R-S.D., during the hearing Thursday.

She noted "up to 34 percent of cases selected for audit were dismissed without documentation," suggesting IRS officials could have given certain groups "preferential treatment" by declining to audit them.

"How do we know that those decisions weren't biased?" Noem asked the IRS commissioner, John Koskinen.

Rep. Peter Roskam, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee's oversight subcommittee, highlighted a finding in the GAO report that indicated one in four audits that were touched off by a complaint had no record of the original allegation on file.

Via: Washington Examiner

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NEW EMAILS: IRS Targeted Donors

Bombshell new emails reveal that the Obama administration’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) used donor lists of nonprofit groups to target donors, and specifically vowed to target the conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The emails, obtained by Judicial Watch, show that Obama’s IRS conspired to revive the “gift tax” — a tax on 501(c)(4) donors that had not been enforced since 1982 following a Supreme Court ruling that effectively invalidated it. Emails between IRS officials show that the agency referred to Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS while discussing how to enforce their new gift tax on donors.

On April 20, 2011, IRS lawyer Lorraine Garder emailed a donor list for a nonprofit group to James Hogan, a manager in the IRS’ Chief Counsel’s office. Judicial Watch noted that the disclosure of the redacted group’s donor list occurred during the period in which officials were discussing Crossroads GPS.

“Does Bob have information about any of the donors [to the group in question]?” Gardner wrote in an email to IRS Estate Gift and Policy Manager Lisa Piehl.

Weeks later, on May 13, 2011 an IRS official whose name was redacted in the documents released to Judicial Watch emailed Gardner and made one of the most stunning admissions of the existence of the IRS conservative targeting program.

“The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a 501(c)(6) organization and may find itself under high scrutiny,” the official wrote. “One can only hope.”

Via: Daily Caller

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Obama Outrageously Denies IRS Targeting Scandal on Daily Show, Nets Censor

President Barack Obama outrageously denied there was anything scandalous about the IRS-Tea Party controversy, in his Tuesday interview on The Daily Show, as he lectured Jon Stewart that: “When there was that problem with the I.R.S. everybody jumped, including you....you got this back office and they’re going after the Tea Party. Well it turned out no.”

 Obama went on to assert “the truth of the matter is there was not some big conspiracy there.” Obama was never challenged by Stewart on this dodge despite the recent bombshell news that Lois Lerner had a meeting with the Justice Department and the FBI to target Obama opponents.  

While all Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) network morning shows, on Wednesday, offered glowing coverage of Obama’s sitdown with Stewart, not one of them picked up on Obama’s scandal denial. 

 CBS This Morning’s Vladimir Duthiers offered the most nostalgic, sentimental coverage when he reminisced, “Like two old friends just enjoying each other’s company, Tuesday night, Jon Stewart and President Obama both reflected on the approaching conclusion of their careers.

” The I.R.S. portion of the video begins after the end of the 7:06 mark. Fast forward or let it play to see second part.

he following is the relevant exchange from the July 21 interview as it was shown on Comedy Central’s official The Daily Show website:  

BARACK OBAMA: When there was that problem with the IRS everybody jumped, including you. 

JON STEWART: What happened with the I.R.S.?

OBAMA: Look, look, you got this, you got this back office and they’re going after the Tea Party. Well it turned out no. Congress had passed a crummy law that didn’t give people guidance in terms of what it was they were trying to do. They did it poorly and stupidly. But that becomes, but, but -

STEWART: Wow! You really only do have a year left. That’s unbelievable! Throwing it out there. 

OBAMA: But hold on Jon - this is important. But the truth of the matter is there was not some big conspiracy there. They were trying to sort out these conflicting demands. You don’t want all this money pouring through non-for-profits but you also want to make sure that everybody is getting treated fairly. Now the real scandal around the I.R.S. right now is that it has been so poorly funded that they can’t go after, they can’t go after these folks who are deliberately avoiding tax payments. And the real scandal is a tax code where multinationals can pay zero taxes making massive profits. 

So we tend to get distracted by the fact that there are going to be elements - because government is a human enterprise - where somebody somewhere is screwing up at any given time. Because it’s a huge system. Overall it works really well to help a lot of people. What is scandalous is the fact that we are not making as much progress as we should on the basic things we know government should be doing. Rebuilding our infrastructure, rebuilding our roads, rebuilding our ports. Setting up a smarter system for distributing energy. 

STEWART: Right. 

Via: Newsbusters

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Try Calling the IRS, Forget It – They Won’t Answer the Phone and Hung Up on 8.8 Million Callers Last Year

Try Calling the IRS, Forget It – They Won’t Answer the Phone and Hung Up on 8.8 Million Callers Last Year

Republican cuts to the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) budget are manifesting as trouble for American taxpayers by degrading the service that they can expect from their government. During this most recent tax season, the IRS hung up on 8.8 million taxpayer, reportedAllGov.com.

According to a report from the National Taxpayer Advocate Service (NTAS), the IRS disconnected from so many people because they lacked enough staff to handle the large call volume. Last year, that number was nowhere near as bad, with 500,000 disconnections. The problem has grown exponentially since then. Last year, the average hold time for callers was 14 minutes. That time increased to 23 minutes by this most recent tax season.

“Millions of taxpayers were unable to reach the IRS by phone; millions did not receive a timely response (if any) to their correspondence; and many more may have had to pay a tax preparer or professional for answers to tax law questions,” wrote NTAS researcher Nina Olson.

Since 2010, Congress has cut IRS funding by $1.2 billion. This effort has been led by Congressional Republicans. The GOP has long been an enemy of the IRS and seeks to find any possible means of dismantling the agency. Having trouble with the IRS? Blame the Republicans.

Via RIng of Fire Radio

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Two Business Owners Fight the IRS to Get Their Seized Money Back

On the last day of Ramadan, which ended Friday, Khalid (Ken) Quran was headed to work.

The owner of a convenience store in Greenville, N.C., Quran works seven days a week with little opportunity for vacation, and has been since he first arrived in the United States in 1997. The ending of the month of fasting was supposed to be a day of celebration for Quran, who worked as a fireman in a town north of Jerusalem before immigrating, but instead it’s just like any other day.

For nearly two decades, Quran has been working to provide for his wife and four children here in the United States. He’s been successful, putting all four of them through college with the money his store makes, and saving for retirement.

But on a June day last year, Quran nearly lost it all after the Internal Revenue Service seized $153,907.99 from his store’s bank account

He was never charged with a crime.

“The United States government—they stole my money,” he said in an interview with The Daily Signal. “I’m working all my life, seven days a week, and they just came in here and took it.”

When two IRS agents came into Quran’s convenience store last year, he didn’t know he’d done anything wrong. But the agents told him he had committed multiple structuring violations, which involves making cash deposits or withdrawals of under $10,000 to skirt reporting requirements.

“The United States government—they stole my money.I’m working all my life, seven days a week, and just came in here and took it,” said Khalid Quran.

When the government officials came into Quran’s store to tell him his money had been seized, they provided him with a form confirming his “consent to forfeit.” Quran, whose first language is Arabic, said he had trouble understanding the form’s legal jargon.

The officers offered to read it for him, Quran recalled, and they ordered him to sign it, yelling in his face. If he didn’t, the IRS agents said they would go to Quran’s wife, Dina, and get her signature instead–which he viewed as a veiled threat.

Via: Daily Signal

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