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House GOP: Obama, Holder Undermining IRS Investigation; Special Counsel Needed

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Jonathan Ernst

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Jonathan Ernst

House Republicans Friday introduced a resolution calling on Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special counsel to investigate the IRS targeting scandal, blasting Holder for purposely failing to seriously investigate the agency.

Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, accused President Obama and his administration of having “publicly undermined the investigation on multiple occasions.”

“The Attorney General says he won’t share any information with Congress about the investigation, but looked the other way when information was leaked to the media signaling that no one would face criminal charges,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, who introduced the resolution. “This resolution calls for a real investigation by an unbiased investigator to get to the truth and hold those responsible for this illegal targeting accountable for their actions.”

The resolution has six cosponsors including House Oversight chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte, and House Ways and Means chairman Rep. Dave Camp, South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, and Louisiana Rep. Charles Boustany.

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The Heavy Hand of the IRS Seizes Innocent Americans’ Assets

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Earnest moralists lament Americans’ distrust of government. What really is regrettable is that government does much to earn distrust, as Terry Dehko, 70, and his daughter Sandy Thomas, 41, understand.

Terry, who came to Michigan from Iraq in 1970, soon did what immigrants often do: He went into business, buying Schott’s Supermarket in Fraser, Mich., where he still works six days a week. The Internal Revenue Service, a tentacle of a government that spent $3.5 trillion in 2013, tried to steal more than $35,000 from Terry and Sandy that year.

Sandy, a mother of four, has a master’s degree in urban planning but has worked in the store off and on since she was 12. She remembers, “They just walked into the store” and announced that they had emptied the store’s bank account. The IRS agents believed, or pretended to believe, that Terry and Sandy were or conceivably could be — which is sufficient for the IRS — conducting a criminal enterprise when not selling groceries.

What pattern of behavior supposedly aroused the suspicions of a federal government that is ignorant of how small businesses function? Terry and Sandy regularly make deposits of less than $10,000 in the bank across the street. Federal law, aimed primarily at money laundering by drug dealers, requires banks to report cash deposits of more than $10,000. It also makes it illegal to “structure” deposits to evade such reporting.

Because 35 percent of Schott’s Supermarket’s receipts are in cash, Terry and Sandy make frequent trips to the bank to avoid tempting actual criminals by having large sums at the store. Besides, their insurance policy covers no cash loss in excess of $10,000.

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Lois Lerner’s Attorney: It Would Be ‘Un-American’ to Hold Her in Contempt

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Photo Credit: Townhall

Photo Credit: Townhall

Earlier this month, the House Oversight Committee voted to hold former head of tax exempt groups at the IRS Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress. The full House is set to vote on contempt charges for Lerner in May.

[A] memo from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said the contempt vote would proceed unless Lerner agrees to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about the targeting scandal.

“Thorough investigations by the Oversight and Government Reform Committee as well as the Ways and Means Committee have revealed findings that indicate that Ms. Lerner played a central role in the illegal targeting of conservative groups by the IRS,” the memo reads.

Now her attorney, William W. Taylor III, is asking for the opportunity to defend her in front of Congress before the vote is taken. Taylor is arguing it would be unfair and “un-American” to hold Lerner in contempt.

“Holding Ms. Lerner in contempt would not only be unfair and, indeed, un-American, it would be flatly inconsistent with the Fifth Amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court,” Lerner’s lawyer, William W. Taylor III, wrote in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

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Intelligence Agency Fails to Report Admissions of Criminal Conduct by Employees and Contractors

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Photo Credit: Human Events

Photo Credit: Human Events

Here’s a nasty little companion piece to today’s story about tax-delinquent employees of the Internal Revenue Service receiving big performance bonuses, courtesy of McClatchy News, which has been working on the story for years:

The nation’s spy satellite agency failed to notify authorities when some employees and contractors confessed during lie detector tests to crimes such as child molestation, an intelligence inspector general has concluded.

In other cases, the National Reconnaissance Office delayed reporting criminal admissions obtained during security clearance polygraphs, possibly jeopardizing evidence in investigations or even the safety of children, according to the inspector general report released Tuesday , almost two years after McClatchy’s reporting raised similar concerns.

Child molestation? And not just an old incident, either. It turned out that the contractor in question was still actively in contact with the victim:

In one instance, one of the agency’s top lawyers told colleagues not to bother reporting confessions by a government contractor of child molestation, viewing child pornography and sexting with a minor, the inquiry by the inspector general for the intelligence community revealed.

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IRS Employees with Tax and Conduct Issues Still Got Awards, Watchdog Report Finds

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

IRS employees who had been disciplined for tax and conduct issues were nonetheless rewarded with monetary awards or time off, according to a watchdog report released Tuesday.

The report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that while for the most part the reward program for IRS workers complied with federal regulations, employees who had themselves failed to pay their federal taxes and had discipline problems were also rewarded.

“While not prohibited, providing awards to employees who have been disciplined for failing to pay federal taxes appears to create a conflict with the IRS’s charge of ensuring the integrity of the system of tax administration,” Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George said.

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IRS Revokes Conservative Group’s Tax-Exempt Status Over Anti-Clinton Statements

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The Internal Revenue Servicehas revoked the tax-exempt status of a conservative charity for making statements critical of Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Kerry, according to a USA Today report.

The Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty, based in Manassas, Va., “has shown a pattern of deliberate and consistent intervention in political campaigns” and made “repeated statements supporting or opposing various candidates by expressing its opinion of the respective candidate’s character and qualifications,” according to a written determination released Friday by the IRS.

The IRS said the center acted as an “action organization” by publishing alerts on its website for columns written by its president, former FBI agent Gary Aldrich, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

The IRS pointed out a column that appeared to be published by Townhall on April 2, 2004, in which Mr. Aldrich wrote, “if John Kerry promises otherwise ill-informed swing-voters lower gas prices at the pump, more than a few greedy, registered ignoramuses will follow him anywhere,” the Free Beacon reported.

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A New, More Sinister IRS Scandal

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Photo Credit: PJ Media

Photo Credit: PJ Media

Yesterday was a significant day in the IRS abuse scandal. The scandal evolved from being about pesky delays in IRS exemption applications to a government conniving with outside interests to put political opponents in prison.

Emails obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act reveal Lois Lerner cooking up plans with Justice Department officials to talk about ways to criminally charge conservative groups that are insufficiently quiet.

Larry Noble, a law professor now with the Soros-funded Campaign Legal Center, was cited in the emails as someone agitating to jail conservatives who “falsely” report on IRS forms that they are not engaged in political speech. Lerner talked about setting up meetings with Justice Department election lawyers who wanted to talk about making Noble’s dreams a reality — this after Senator Sheldon Whitehouse raised the idea of criminal charges for conservatives who are not sufficiently quiet, charges that they falsely completed an IRS tax exemption form.

Their theory is a favorite among speech regulators in the Soros-funded left and academia. It goes like this: “Too much speech is bad (unless unions do it.) Groups who talk about things leftists find uncomfortable are necessarily political and thus should never have 501(c) tax exempt status. Criminally charge any group that said on their IRS tax exempt form that they were not political if they say things the left finds uncomfortable. Get Eric Holder’s Justice Department on the case.”

The emails obtained by Judicial Watch reveal this is essentially what was going on behind the scenes at the IRS, DOJ, and with outside leftist interests.

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Issa: IRS Probe Will Continue Despite White House Roadblocks

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Photo Credit: Reuters / Landov

Photo Credit: Reuters / Landov

Rep. Darrell Issa said on Thursday that the congressional investigation into the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS will proceed despite any obstacles from embattled former supervisor Lois Lerner or the Obama administration.

“Whether Lois Lerner breaks her silence and testifies or is simply held to account when the full House of Representatives votes her in contempt, this president has been put on notice that the targeting investigation will move forward,” Issa said in an op-ed piece in the Orange County Register. “Try as this administration might, this investigation will not go away until we get the full truth.”

Issa, the two-term California Republican, is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The panel has been investigating the targeting scandal of tea party, conservative, and religious groups starting in 2010 through the 2012 presidential election.

The scandal led to Lerner’s suspension and retirement last year — and several other Internal Revenue Service employees have been fired or put on administrative leave. Others face congressional investigation.

Lerner was also held in contempt by Issa’s committee after twice invoking the Fifth Amendment in questioning on the scandal.

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Ron Paul Group to Defy IRS

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Photo Credit: AP / Steve Helber

Photo Credit: AP / Steve Helber

Ron Paul’s nonprofit Campaign for Liberty will fight the Internal Revenue Service’s demand that it reveal its donor list to the agency, despite having already been fined for refusing to do so.

“There is no legitimate reason for the IRS to know who donates to Campaign for Liberty,” Megan Stiles, the communications director at Campaign for Liberty, told the Washington Examiner in an email on Tuesday. “We believe the First Amendment is on our side as evidenced by cases such as NAACP v. Alabama and International Union UAW v. National Right to Work. Many 501(c)(4) organizations protect the privacy of their donors in the very same way as Campaign for Liberty. For some reason the IRS has now chosen to single out Campaign for Liberty for special attention. We plan to fight this all the way.”

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WATCH: MSNBC Blames Conservative Groups for IRS Targeting and Says Lerner the ‘Real Victim’

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Photo Credit: Getty/AFP

Photo Credit: Getty/AFP

On MSNBC last night, host Alex Wagner continued her ongoing “leave the IRS alone” theme with a defense of the organization and its key players that tread into the territory of virtuosity in the art of reversing the spin. Not only, Wagner would have you believe, is the IRS not guilty of anything, not only were conservative groups not harmed or hampered in any way, but in fact it is the IRS who is truly the victim of unjust targeting. They are not the aggressor but the innocent victim, the simple, plainspoken agency that gosh darnit just wants to do its job for America and can’t because Republican meanwiches.

Wagner spends a great deal of time in the heady throes of indignant hysterics. Throwing around terms like “shameless,” circus,” and “witch hunt.” Republicans, she reasonably explains, are following Darrell Issa on a “dark mission.” Are you scared yet?

You see, Issa’s “insanity” has buried the “real story’ she claims. That real story being that the IRS, and not the conservative groups it singled out, are the ones who are really being targeted. Her stinkiest comparison of all, however, is to McCarthyism. Yes, investigating the IRS is the same as The Red Scare.

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