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.”
