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5 Questions the IRS and Administration haven't Answered Regarding Targeting Teaparty Groups

10/24/2013 11:15

by Tom Zawistowski

EVIDENCE ATTACHED AS PDF's :Ohio 1851 Center Letter from IRS, IRS Liberty Township Letter
Jordan-Issa Letter to IRS

Five Questions that the IRS and the Obama Administration Need to Answer about the "Targeting" of TEA Party Groups during last year's election cycle:

1) If the IRS was looking for groups with the word TEA Part and Patriot in their names, why then did they target the Ohio Liberty Council (Now Coalition), Kentucky 912 and 1851 Center for Constitutional Law and many others?

2) If the IRS says this was done by lower level employees, and not condoned by superiors, why did agents tell TEA Party Leaders that these applications were being held up on orders from their superiors and why did Ms. Lerner not stop this activity immediately when it was brought directly to her attention on March 27, 2012 by the attached Letter from Congressman Darrell Issa and Jim Jordan? Why did it take a year to apologize when they clearly knew this was happening, and continued to happen through the Presidential election?

3) If it was not politically motivated, why did prominent Democratic Senators send the attached letter on February 16, 2012, precisely on the day that the Ohio Liberty Coalition made public its intention not to comply with the IRS requests and began drawing media attention to this issue? The letter is asking the IRS to investigate if "social welfare" groups were "improperly engaged in substantial or even a predominant amount of campaign activity". How could this not be politically motivated if groups like unions, which are also 501(c)4 organizations were not asked the same questions and overwhelmingly supported Obama when TEA Party groups were "targeted" because they were a threat to the President's re-election? Reading the Senator's letter, they made certain not to single out conservative groups so why did the IRS interpret it to mean conservative groups only? Did their letter come out AFTER the IRS had already started this campaign to intimidate TEA Party groups in order to provide "cover" for this campaign? Since this letter could not have been the reason for the IRS activity, because it came after the plan was already being implemented, who in the IRS or in the Obama Campaign suggested this plan in the first place? Is it reasonable to believe that low-level IRS employees acted alone, and without authority, and continued to do so through the election when Doug Shulman was sent this letter? If this was not politically motivated, then why ask questions of the Liberty Township Ohio TEA Party about their involvement was with an individual, Justin Binik-Thomas, or ask the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law "Please explain in detail your organization's involvement with the TEA Party." (See attached PDF's)

4) If this additional scrutiny was intended to identify if conservative groups were abusing the tax exempt status of as 501(c)4 "social welfare" organizations by taking part in political activities, then why were they asking for things like donor lists, membership lists, lists of attendees at non-political events, list of speakers with full transcripts of what they said - none of which has anything to do with political activity or qualification for tax exempt status? Political activity involves what is legally defined as "electioneering", donating to candidates or parties. Yet, no questions were asked about our electioneering activity or donations to candidates or parties? Why?

5) Unfortunately, several groups actually closed up because their leaders were intimidated by the IRS, while others complied with these onerous requests, many providing thousands of pages of documentation. Where did the information go that was provided? If it was put into a database, who had access to that database? What was the purpose of these questions, which clearly had nothing to do with tax exempt status or even political activity? What were they REALLY looking to get? Here are the names of IRS Agents in Cincinnati who were asking these questions of TEA Party Groups. These individuals need to be questioned about their activities and if the media can not question them, then we will be demanding that congress compel each of them to testify under oath:

Mitch Steele 513-263-3677

Stephen Seok - 513-263-3625

Joseph R. Herr - 513-263-3725

Carly Young - 513-263-5529

Tags:

Teaparty | IRS

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