Originally published August 30 2015
Gestapo tactics: Obama's IRS also targets family members of his political enemies, including Bristol Palin
by J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) A myriad of scandals – nearly too many to track – have plagued the presidency of Barack Obama practically since he took office, and one of the most damaging and frightening involves his Internal Revenue Service.
You may recall that circa 2011-2012, Lois Lerner, the IRS' chief of the Exempt Organizations Unit, which is the division of the IRS that approved tax-exempt statuses for organizations, stood accused of targeting conservative and Tea Party groups at a much higher rate than liberal organizations. In recent days, it was revealed that Lerner, who once characterized conservatives as "crazies" and "a---oles", only approved one conservative group for non-profit status in three years.
USA Today reported recently that Lerner even sought to abuse her post further by meting out undue scrutiny to those she considered political enemies – and their children.
Obvious backlog of conservative tax-exempt groups
The paper noted:
Lois Lerner, the key figure in the controversy over the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups for added scrutiny, once considered opening up an audit into Bristol Palin's compensation from a teen pregnancy charity, according to a new Senate report.
The Senate Finance Committee has released the results of a two-year investigation into the IRS' targeting of conservative groups. The report provided some telling looks into the former IRS official's emails.
One of those electronic communiques, referenced by the chairman of the committee, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, as an "example of Lerner's interest in conservative organizations," asked whether the tax agency should begin an audit of Candie's Foundation, which paid Palin $332,500 in compensation as a celebrity spokesperson. Lerner said she was concerned that the salary might have been in violation of IRS rules against charitable organizations existing for private benefit of individuals, even though lots of tax-exempt organizations pay spokespeople.
Palin is the daughter of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who was Sen. John McCain's 2008 GOP running mate when he lost to Obama. Later, the younger Palin performed on ABC's Dancing with the Stars and was briefly engaged to Marine Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer.
"Thoughts on the Bristol Palin issue?" Lerner wrote to her staff in 2011. "I'm asking because I don't know whether to send to Exam as a referral."
Judging by the Senate report, there is no indication or evidence that an audit was ever opened.
Nevertheless, the bipartisan report concluded that Lerner poorly managed the scrutiny of Tea Party applicants for tax-exempt status while fomenting a dysfunctional culture in the office. However, Republicans and Democrats could not reach an agreement on how far the outsized scrutiny of conservative groups was actually motivated by Lerner's Democratic political leanings.
A "weaponized" IRS
Senate Finance Committee investigators pored over some 1.5 million pages of emails obtained via subpoena from the IRS. Many were emails from Lerner in which she discussed her sometimes unconventional political views.
She wrote to a friend in 2014 after she stepped down from her post and left the IRS that she felt Lincoln was our worst president. She added: "He should [have] let the south go. We really do seem to have 2 totally different mindsets."
As for the dearth of approval of tax-exempt status for conservative groups, the Senate report noted:
Due to the circuitous process implemented by Lerner, only one conservative political advocacy organization was granted tax-exempt status between February 2009 and May 2012. Lerner's bias against these applicants unquestionably led to these delays, and is particularly evident when compared to the IRS's treatment of other applications, discussed immediately below.
Lerner realized around April or May 2010 that the number of conservative Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status was growing dramatically. As the backlog increased, instead of streamlining the process, she added "more layers of review and raised hurdles for applicants to clear," the report says.
The scariest government agency to most Americans is the IRS; when it becomes weaponized, that's even scarier.
Sources include:
NaturalNews.com
OnPolitics.USAToday.com
ATR.org
HuffingtonPost.com
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