ALG's Daily Grind - Lois Lerner pleads the Fifth

May 22, 2013

Lois Lerner pleads the Fifth

Lawyer asked she be excused from testifying; Issa issues subpoena.

Editorial: Tornados caused by cold air colliding with warm air, not carbon emissions

NASA climatologist: "Anyone who claims more tornadoes are caused by global warming is either misinformed, pandering, or delusional."

Labor nominee Perez versus the rule of law

Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: Thomas Perez has demonstrated  a "willingness, time and again, to bend or ignore the law and to misstate the facts in order to advance his far-left ideology lead me and others to conclude that he'd continue to do if he were confirmed."

Hemingway: IRS's Lerner Had History of Harassment, Inappropriate Religious Inquiries at FEC

Who is Lois Lerner, who is taking the Fifth before Congress today? Learn of her appalling history of harassing religious groups while she served at the Federal Election Commission.

NHGOP DEMANDS SHAHEEN EXPLAIN LETTER CALLING FOR MORE IRS INVESTIGATIONS

Concord – The New Hampshire Republican State Committee demanded that Senator Jeanne Shaheen explain her 2012 letter to the IRS commissioner calling for increased investigations of social welfare organizations (full letter here). The IRS is engulfed in a major scandal after reports surfaced that the agency was inappropriately targeting conservative social welfare organizations that opposed President Obama’s big government agenda. 

“Senator Shaheen’s 2012 letter to the IRS commissioner raises concerns that must be addressed immediately. Shaheen and her Democrat colleagues have consistently attacked conservative organizations, but said nothing about the liberal ‘social welfare’ groups that have supported their campaigns. There are very serious questions about whether Shaheen’s partisan effort to pressure the IRS to increase investigations of 501(c)(4) organizations contributed to the outrageous practices that took place at the agency,” said NHGOP Executive Director Matthew Slater.

In a letter sent to former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman on February 16, 2012, Shaheen requested investigations of 501(c)(4) organizations. The letter was co-signed by Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Al Franken (D-MN), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Jeff Merkely (D-OR) and Tom Udall (D-NM).

“We write to inquire if the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) is investigating or intends to investigate whether groups designated as “social welfare” organizations, and thus receiving tax and other advantages under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC), 26 U.S.C. § 501(c)(4), are improperly engaged in a substantial or even a predominant amount of campaign activity,” the letter read. 

The Washington Examiner (5/13/13) reports that the letter was announced in a February 16 news release distributed by Senator Bennet’s office. The letter specifically singled out organizations lead by conservatives as examples of groups that the IRS should investigate.

“[L]ong-time partisan operative Karl Rove is a senior official behind a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” charity, yet it’s common knowledge that his organization exists to elect and defeat specific political candidates,” the news release read. “Elections operations such as Mr. Rove’s should not be allowed to masquerade as charities to take advantage of their tax exempt status and hide their donors from the public.”

In 2010 Shaheen’s colleague, Democrat Senator Max Baucus also urged the IRS to specifically investigate conservative organizations (Politico, 9/29/10). 

Shaheen has been a consistent critic of conservative 501(c)(4) organizations, yet she has failed to criticize liberal ‘social welfare’ groups like MoveOn.org that have supported her campaigns. According to Opensecrets.org, Shaheen has accepted $81,524 in campaign donations from MoveOn.org’s political arm.

NRSC - Shaheen, Senate Democrats Pushed IRS to Act on Political Groups, Threatened Legislative Action

May 15, 2015

Several of the Democratic Senators - including New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen - that are complaining about the IRS this week were pressuring the IRS to act on many of the same groups as recently as a year ago, even threatening legislative action against the agency. Perhaps that's why so many are today trying to quell the storm by joining in the outrage.

The same Democratic Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee Max Baucus who this week is calling for hearings into IRS activities, specifically called on the IRS to engage in that very conduct back in 2010. And he wasn't the only one. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer  and Jeanne Shaheen led the charge to call on the IRS to investigate many of these groups for political activity.

As the New York Times reported back in 2010: With growing scrutiny of the role of tax-exempt groups in political campaigns, Congressional Republicans are pushing back against Democrats by warning about the possible misuse of the Internal Revenue Service to audit conservative groups….And the Republicans are also upset about an I.R.S. review requested by Senator Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who leads the Finance Committee, into the political activities of tax-exempt groups. Such a review threatens to "chill the legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights," wrote two Republican senators, Orrin G. Hatch of Utah and Jon Kyl of Arizona, in a letter sent to the I.R.S. on Wednesday. ... Democrats dismissed the Republicans' complaints as groundless.

The New York Times also reported just one week before they sent this letter: The Internal Revenue Service is caught in an election-year struggle between Democratic lawmakers pressing for a crackdown on nonprofit political groups and conservative organizations accusing the tax agency of conducting a politically charged witch hunt.

Voters in New Hampshire may be interested to learn that Jeanne Shaheen was a leading Democratic Senator that pressured the IRS to investigate these organizations.

IRS Watching Watchdog.org

White House, IRS show interest in Watchdog in January

President Barack Obama’s executive staff reviewed Watchdog’s news website in record numbers at precisely the moment when Internal Revenue Service visits to the same site spiked, Watchdog.org’s analytics show.

A similar report reveals that the Executive Office of the President and IRS were the source of a similar January traffic spike on the website of Watchdog.org, the online news network of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.

The White House has said that IRS reviews of conservative nonprofits were procedurally “inappropriate on the part of fairly low-level agents.

This new data suggests at least a coincidence of interests in Watchdog. 

Read the full story here!

ALG - Senate Democrats ordered IRS in 2010 to investigate 501(c) groups, letter shows

"Senate Democrats were complicit in the IRS scandal targeting the

tea party and other groups, per Baucus' explicit letter to Shulman.

The Senate majority must therefore recuse itself from any ensuing

investigation in order to ensure that the public's trust in the inquiry's

findings is not tainted."—ALG President Nathan Mehrens

ALG calls for special counsel to be appointed to prosecute case

May 14, 2013, Fairfax, VA—Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) in a 2010 letter requested that then-Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner Douglas Shulman deeply investigate 501(c) non-profit political organizations.

The letter called on Shulman to "survey major 501(c)(4), (c)(5) and (c)(6) organizations involved in political campaign activity to examine whether they are operated for the organization's intended tax exempt purpose and to ensure that political campaign activity is not the organization's primary activity" and to "to determine whether they are acting as conduits for major donors advancing their own private interests regarding legislation or political campaigns, or are providing major donors with excess benefits."

In his own letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Americans for Limited Government President Nathan Mehrens noted, "Considering the invasive questions the IRS was asking the targeted organizations, it appears that Sen. Baucus got exactly what he asked for, which was a witch-hunt."

Baucus' letter also instructed Shulman that "Possible violation of tax laws should be identified as you conduct this study. Please report back to the Finance Committee as soon as possible with your findings and recommended actions regarding this matter."

Baucus specifically referenced a Sept. 16, 2010 Time article, "The New GOP Money Stampede" reporting that "Democrats fear [what] could be a $300 million Republican spending blitz this year." The story detailed allegations that local tea party groups were actually "shadow Republican groups formed by longtime party officials." The article referenced the tea party, but also American Crossroads, American Action Network, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as forming a wider campaign front for the 2010 Republican election campaign effort, financed "in the form of secret undisclosed contributions."

Baucus also referenced "a group transforming itself into a non-profit under 501(c)(4) of the tax code," ensuring, as the Time article put it, that the group would "not have to publicly disclose any information about its donors." That "group" Baucus referenced was actually Crossroads GPS.

"The Time article Baucus so prominently referenced was all about the financing of Republican election efforts and right of center political and advocacy organizations," Mehrens noted in his letter, adding, "It did not scrutinize any left-wing groups. Nor did Baucus include in his letter to Shulman any footnotes to articles that detailed Democrat campaign activities or left of center groups. The implicit task was to investigate the political right from start to finish. And that's exactly what the IRS did."

Yesterday, Baucus issued a statement suggesting "Targeting groups based on their political views is not only inappropriate but it is intolerable, promising a "full investigation into this matter by the Senate Finance Committee."

But that is not possible, Mehrens said, considering Baucus' letter to Shulman. "Senate Democrats were complicit in the IRS scandal targeting the tea party and other groups, per Baucus' explicit letter to Shulman. The Senate majority must therefore recuse itself from any ensuing investigation in order to ensure that the public's trust in the inquiry's findings is not tainted."

The only good option, Mehrens wrote, was for Senate leaders to call on Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special counsel to prosecute the case. "Just as the Senate majority cannot be trusted to investigate its own complicity in this affair, neither can the Obama Administration."

He concluded, "These targeted attacks by the IRS were not about restoring 'transparency' to our political process, they were a part of a brazen partisan assault using the instrumentalities of the state to harass political opponents and stifle dissent to achieve a partisan end. It is beyond Nixonian in its flagrant disregard for the rule of law. Only a special counsel can get to the bottom of this."

Mehrens joined others, including the Republican Governors Association, who today also demanded a special prosecutor be appointed.

To view online: http://getliberty.org/senate-democrats-ordered-irs-in-2010-to-investigate-501c-groups-letter-shows/

Attachments:

Americans for Limited Government letter to Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, May 14, 2013 at http://getliberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/IRSScandalLetter-5-14-13.pdf

Letter from Sen. Max Baucus to then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, Sept. 28, 2010 at http://www.politico.com/static/PPM176_100929_irs.html

"The New GOP Money Stampede," by Michael Crowley, Time Magazine, Sept. 16, 2010 at http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2019611,00.html

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Americans for Limited Government is a non-partisan, nationwide network committed to advancing free market reforms, private property rights and core American liberties. For more information on ALG please call us at 703-383-0880 or visit our website at www.GetLiberty.org.