IRS commissioner dares House GOP to hold him in contempt over Tea Party

[one...two...tree 2,762]

ALL 501c organizations should be scrutinized equally. Surely you can agree with that? "Equal protection under the law" and all that? Or is that just a theory to be ignored at will (as the preznit and AG have done so often)

This from Wiki:

It's called profiling. If law agencies investigated everyone equally, Right Wingers would be complaining. The IRS has legal precedent to investigate tax exempt organizations, period. But at the very least, the notion that if any of these tax exempt tea party groups have not broken any tax (not a far fetched idea based on their anti government rhetoric), then they've got nothing to hide. They can and should keep a close eye on anti government groups who believe the president is illegitimate, that federal income tax is unlawful, and that such groups have a constitutional right to violently overthrow the current government.

Edited March 30, 2014 by Porterhouse

[UncleBeer 244]

It's called profiling.

That's strictly against the law. That's why 90 year old nuns have to be thoroughly frisked by the TSA, but Muhamed Ahkbar can waltz right on the plane. Welcome to the PC present.

If law agencies investigated everyone equally, Right Wingers would be complaining.

Certainly not in this IRS case. You're just blabbering.

The IRS has legal precedent to investigate tax exempt organizations, period.

Please read up-thread before you start writing stupid stuff.

if any of these tax exempt tea party groups have not broken any tax (not a far fetched idea based on their anti government rhetoric), then they've got nothing to hide.

Apparently "innocent until proven guilty" doesn't ring any bells for you . . .

They can and should keep a close eye on anti government groups who believe the president is illegitimate, that federal income tax is unlawful, and that such groups have a constitutional right to violently overthrow the current government.

You mistake conservatives for anarchists; not even close to being comparable. "Tea party", apart from it's historical allusion, spells out Taxed Enough Already. Its members feel that in an economic environment of a $17,541,268,000,000 national debt (almost half of which Obama caused all by his lonesome, despite his double-talk),that it's worth discussing whether we all really need to pay for tax breaks for brothel workers' breast implants, or whether spending a billion dollars on a dysfunctional healthcare website is prudent, or whether we need to spend $175,587 to determine if cocaine makes Japanese quail engage in sexually risky behavior. Seriously.

The US government is meant to function in an adversarial fashion, and the Tea Party is only exercising their right to speak their minds. That the 'other side' (aided illegally by official institutions such as the IRS) seek only to silence opposition is nothing short of treason.

Edited March 30, 2014 by UncleBeer

[one...two...tree 2,762]

That's strictly against the law. That's why 90 year old nuns have to be thoroughly frisked by the TSA, but Muhamed Ahkbar can waltz right on the plane. Welcome to the PC present.

Profiling is NOT against the law. You're confusing racial profiling, which is discrimination and illegal, and profiling certain behaviors, action, or endeavors that are red flags. Go buy a couple of hundred pounds of fertilizer and you'll get a better idea. These groups have done enough self incrimination to warrant even the FBI to be profiling them from all their anti-government rhetoric, talking about government overthrow, illegitimacy of the presidency and using violence to achieve their goals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_method_of_profiling

Please read up-thread before you start writing stupid stuff.

Oh, I know how this witch hunt works with Right Wingers. The IRS didn't break any laws by investigating Tea Party organizations that filed for tax exempt status, but when their buddies in Washington started to ponder whether their was a conspiracy to do in the Tea Party, they came after the IRS with pitchforks and torches. When the IRS blinked, the witchhunters said, "Aha! We knew you were hiding something!" Yeah, keep running with that and see where it gets you, Right Wingers.

Apparently "innocent until proven guilty" doesn't ring any bells for you . . .

See profiling, why it is legal and why the it is an effective method for investigating potential criminals.

You mistake conservatives for anarchists; not even close to being comparable. "Tea party", apart from it's historical allusion, spells out Taxed Enough Already. Its members feel that in an economic environment of a $17,541,268,000,000 national debt (almost half of which Obama caused all by his lonesome, despite his double-talk),that it's worth discussing whether we all really need to pay for tax breaks for brothel workers' breast implants, or whether spending a billion dollars on a dysfunctional healthcare website is prudent, or whether we need to spend $175,587 to determine if cocaine makes Japanese quail engage in sexually risky behavior. Seriously.

The US government is meant to function in an adversarial fashion, and the Tea Party is only exercising their right to speak their minds. That the 'other side' (aided illegally by official institutions such as the IRS) seek only to silence opposition is nothing short of treason.

Very telling that instead responding to the rhetoric that the Tea Party is guilty of, you try and justify it like an apologist. Questioning the legitimacy of the presidency, talking about government overthrow, claiming that paying taxes is unconstitutional, and advocating the use of violence to achieve your goals is the very definition of being anti-government.

Edited March 31, 2014 by Porterhouse

[UncleBeer 244]

Oh, I know how this witch hunt works with Right Wingers. The IRS didn't break any laws by investigating Tea Party organizations that filed for tax exempt status, but when their buddies in Washington started to ponder whether their was a conspiracy to do in the Tea Party, they came after the IRS with pitchforks and torches. When the IRS blinked, the witchhunters said, "Aha! We knew you were hiding something!"

Again, read up-thread. The IRS has admitted to wrongdoing. They simply don't feel like releasing subpoenaed documents revealing how high this goes. I can't imagine why . . .

Oh, I know how this witch hunt works with Right Wingers. The IRS didn't break any laws by investigating Tea Party organizations that filed for tax exempt status,

Since they didn't exercise the same scrutiny on progressive groups, they absolutely broke the law. Now you're just trolling.

but when their buddies in Washington started to ponder whether their was a conspiracy to do in the Tea Party, they came after the IRS with pitchforks and torches. When the IRS blinked, the witchhunters said, "Aha! We knew you were hiding something!"

Poorly-written ravings. Maybe try re-reading what you've written before posting?

Very telling that instead responding to the rhetoric that the Tea Party is guilty of

How exactly can one be "guilty of rhetoric"?

Questioning the legitimacy of the presidency, talking about government overthrow, claiming that paying taxes is unconstitutional, and advocating the use of violence to achieve your goals is the very definition of being anti-government.

Again, re-read up thread so you don't sound foolish. The tea party's only concerned with profligate spending. The rest you've conjured out of your fevered imagination.

[UncleBeer 244]

This from Hans A. von Spakovsky, a witness before the House of Representatives, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Job Creation and Regulatory Affairs concerning the IRS' targeting of conservative groups for extra scrutiny. This was part of his testimony.

I spent four years at the Justice Department as a career civil service lawyer, including three years as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. I helped coordinate the investigation of many cases in the voting and elections area. That included working with the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department when there were cases in which there appeared to be both civil rights violations and potential criminal violations of federal election laws. Election cases were the only type of cases I ever saw in which there was a potential intersection between the Civil Rights Division and the Public Integrity Section.

After leaving the Justice Department, I spent two years as a commissioner at the Federal Election Commission. At the FEC, we also worked with the Public Integrity Section in cases in which there were potential civil and criminal violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act.

As this committee is well aware, on May 10, 2013, former IRS official Lois Lerner revealed that the IRS had been targeting Tea Party and other conservative organizations in a presentation at a conference in Washington, D.C. sponsored by the American Bar Association.[2] This was apparently made public because of the pending release of a May 14 report by the Inspector General for the Department of the Treasury detailing the “inappropriate criteria” used by the IRS to identify for review the applications of conservatives organizations for tax-exempt status under Section 501©(4) of the Internal Revenue Code.[3] These reviews “resulted in substantial delays in processing” of their applications, and the organizations were also subjected to “unnecessary information requests.”[4]

On May 14, 2013, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department was opening an investigation and “was coordinating with the FBI to assess whether or not any laws were broken.” Holder at that time called the IRS’s action “outrageous and unacceptable.”[5]

On January 8, 2014, the Washington Times reported that Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa (R-CA) and Subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan (D-OH) had discovered that the head of the Justice Department investigation is Barbara Kay Bosserman, a trial lawyer in the Civil Rights Division.[6] According to Federal Election Commission records, Bosserman has given $6,750 in political donations since 2004, $5,600 to President Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, $500 to the 2012 Obama Victory Fund, and $650 to the Democratic National Committee. The Committee discovered this information only through its own investigative efforts, not from the Justice Department.

A Jan. 8 letter from the Committee to Attorney General Holder outlined the Justice Department’s refusal to provide any information or updates on the status of the Department’s investigation. The letter notes that the FBI offered to meet with Rep. Jordan to do exactly that but later “rescinded” the offer “after [Justice] Department officials apparently interfered.”

It is certainly true that the FBI cannot disclose sensitive information during an ongoing criminal investigation, but an active investigation does not prevent the FBI and the Justice Department from giving Congress basic information regarding the status of an investigation that does not compromise their work. There is no reason why the Justice Department could not have provided this committee with a briefing on how many FBI agents and Justice Department lawyers are involved in the investigation; who the lead lawyer and supervising FBI agent are; what federal statutes the lawyers believe might have been violated; what the general plan is for investigating this matter; without identifying them specifically, what types of witnesses they have already interviewed or intend to interview (such as IRS employees in certain offices; chief officers of affected conservative organizations; investigators in the Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General, etc.).

The Justice Department and the FBI could also have generally described to the Committee how long they expect the investigation to take, what progress has been made to date, and when they expect to complete their preliminary and final review. None of this information would compromise the integrity and confidentiality of the investigation.

Yet lawyers representing dozens of the targeted conservative groups have recently testified before this Committee and have said that their clients have not been contacted or interviewed by any FBI agents.

I find that simply incredible – that nine months after the Attorney General announced he was opening an investigation, neither the FBI nor the Justice Department has conducted basic interviews with the victims to gather information about their dealings with the IRS officials and employees who may have been involved in wrongdoing.

In addition to the unjustified refusal of the Department to provide this Committee with any information about its investigation, there is the troubling selection of a Civil Rights Division lawyer, Barbara Bosserman, as the lead lawyer in the investigation.[7] This scandal involves the possibility of public corruption – misbehavior by federal employees in the Internal Revenue Service. It is the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division – not the Civil Rights Division – that has long been responsible for investigating and prosecuting this type of public corruption.

Bosserman works in the most politicized division within the entire Justice Department. She is a lawyer in the Criminal Section of the Division, whose own website says that it prosecutes cases “involving the violent interference with liberties and rights defined in the Constitution or federal law” through the “use of force, threats, or intimidation.” The website’s list of cases that the Section has prosecuted involve hate crimes, interference with the exercise of religious beliefs, human trafficking, interference with access to abortion services, and official misconduct. The cases listed under “official misconduct” are almost all cases involving violent assaults, rapes, sexual misconduct, and the use of force by police officers and prison officials.[8] As bad as what the IRS did, I don’t think anyone would characterize the actions of IRS employees as “violent.”

It is certainly possible that the IRS practices under investigation may be civil rights violations, but it is curious that Attorney General Holder chose to dip into that talent pool for this particular lawyer to lead this investigation, rather than allowing the Public Integrity Section to conduct this investigation in its entirety. The lawyers there are very experienced in investigating and prosecuting the type of official corruption alleged in the IRS scandal. As its own website reflects, it is the Public Integrity Section that “oversees the federal effort to combat corruption though the prosecution of elected and appointed public officials at all levels of government…Section attorneys prosecute selected cases against federal, state, and local officials.”[9]

General Holder would certainly understand the specific expertise that the Public Integrity Section brings to such an investigation – the very first job he got at the Justice Department when he was hired right out of law school as part of the Attorney General’s Honors Program was in the Public Integrity Section.[10]

The Justice Department’s pick of Barbara Bosserman to lead or be involved in making decisions about this investigation raises the appearance of a conflict of interest because of her extensive political donations to President Barack Obama, who recently said there was “not even a smidge of corruption” in the IRS scandal – even though the investigation is supposedly not complete.[11]

When this first became public, Justice Department spokeswoman Dena Iverson claimed that Bosserman could not be removed from the investigation because “t is contrary to department policy and a prohibited personnel practice under federal law to consider the political affiliation of career employees or other non-merit factors in making personnel decisions.”[12] The problem with this claim is that it is not true.

Taking a lawyer off a particular case because of a possible conflict of interest or the appearance of such a conflict is not a “prohibited personnel practice” like firing, terminating, or changing the pay of someone for political reasons. Indeed, Justice Department regulations clearly state that DOJ lawyers must avoid even “an appearance of a conflict of interest likely to affect the public perception of the integrity” of an investigation or prosecution.[13]

No one questions the right of career employees to make political donations. This is allowed under the Hatch Act and applicable DOJ regulations, as explained by the Justice Department’s Ethics Office.[14]But Bosserman’s considerable campaign contributions certainly raises the appearance of a possible conflict of interest in terms of the public’s perception of her ability to make unbiased, objective decisions in an investigation that could prove very embarrassing to the president she supports – a president who has already signaled through his public statements what he thinks the outcome of the investigation ought to be.

Contrary to Iverson’s claim, the Justice Department has previously acted in the exact way she now says it cannot. During the investigation into the unjustified dismissal of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility removed the first career lawyer assigned to the investigation, Mary Aubry, after reports surfaced that she had contributed more than $7,000 (almost the same amount as Bosserman) to the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates including Barack Obama.[15] In fact, two veterans of the Civil Rights Division told me that DOJ removes attorneys from cases all the time for such perceived potential conflicts of interest. One of them also told me that Bosserman was more of a “research” attorney who almost never goes to court, which seems an odd choice to head up such a significant investigation.

Given the allegations in the IRS case, especially the suspicion that conservative organizations were specifically targeted by IRS officials to help dampen public opposition to President Obama’s reelection, the Justice Department should make every effort to conduct a thorough investigation and avoid any questions about the objectivity of the attorneys and investigators involved in the investigation.

This is particularly true given that the Justice Department’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz sent a memorandum to General Holder in December reminding him that “public trust in the Department, its senior officials, and its employees is essential to every aspect of the Department’s operations.” One of the biggest challenges, according to Horowitz, is the Civil Rights Division, where Bosserman works. The Office of the Inspector General reported that the way the division has handled cases “risked undermining public confidence in the non-ideological enforcement” of federal law.[16]

The involvement of the Civil Rights Division and the appearance of possible bias by one of the supervising, if not lead, lawyers in this investigation is a very serious issue. When combined with the refusal of the Justice Department and the FBI to provide even basic information about the status of the investigation, as well as the seemingly unjustifiable delays in talking to key witnesses in the conservative organizations targeted by the IRS, it raises substantial questions about whether or not a serious, objective, unbiased investigation is being conducted.

This Committee should continue to attempt to get more information about the integrity of the government’s investigation and should pursue its oversight function vigorously. Otherwise, what happened at the IRS will happen again, and federal employees will believe that they can engage in wrongdoing by targeting the political opposition of the administration without fear of any consequences.

[JohnR! 5,495]

Looks like the new IRS Commissioner is not putting up with some of the crazy stuff the Republicans are asking for.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/irs-commissioner-dares-house-gop-to-hold-him-in-contempt-over-tea-party/article/2546339?custom_click=rss&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

The Teaparty has become a mockery of itself. What a joke!

[UncleBeer 244]

The Teaparty has become a mockery of itself. What a joke!

...because a public servant dares a duly authorized oversight committee to do their job?

How did you get that from your article? And where's the Tea Party even mentioned in that piece?

[JohnR! 5,495]

...because a public servant dares a duly authorized oversight committee to do their job?

How did you get that from your article? And where's the Tea Party even mentioned in that piece?

Huh?

[UncleBeer 244]

Huh?

OK. You didn't read your article.

[JohnR! 5,495]

OK. You didn't read your article.

Yeah, sure. I guess we're talking about different things. No harm done.

Edited April 2, 2014 by Gegel

[JohnR! 5,495]

It does not matter. It is real in they minds and that is what counts. Fact and reality matter little for these people.

You mean the fabricated scandal is just that? Fabricated?

[JohnR! 5,495]

Tea party groups should be investigated. It's the law. I personally don't think they deserve tax exempt status. 501c read it knuckleheads, end of story.

How ironic...... Tea baggers cry about government spending, apply for government assistance.

As you should expect, they want less government spending unless they are doing the spending... Every notion they voice apply only to everyone else, never to themselves.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

It does not matter. It is real in they minds and that is what counts. Fact and reality matter little for these people.

I know.

[UncleBeer 244]

Fact and reality matter little for these people.

The ruling regime? Amen, brother!

[JohnR! 5,495]

I know.

You can always have fun with the kvetching and moaning though... It is entertainment for the rest of us in the real world...