This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, March 25, 2016:
The list of allegations against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is about to get longer. On Thursday a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals not only turned back an appeal from the IRS that providing a list of Tea Party groups it targeted would be “unduly burdensome,” it also denied a request that sanctions be applied to a lower court judge who ruled against them last year.
Wrote Judge Raymond Kethledge:
Among the most serious allegations a federal court can address are that an executive agency [like the IRS] has targeted citizens for mistreatment based on their political views. No citizen … should be targeted, or even have to fear being targeted, on those grounds.
Yet those are the grounds on which the plaintiffs allege they were mistreated by the IRS … The allegations are substantial….
Kethledge then directed his ire specifically at the IRS:
The IRS has issued an apology, blaming mistakes on low-level employees. Yet it fought for more than five years demands for full disclosure and documents sought by Tea Party groups … at every turn the IRS has resisted the plaintiffs’ requests … eventually to the open frustration of [the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio]….
[That district] court ordered production of those lists, and did so again over an IRS motion to reconsider. Yet, almost a year later, the IRS still has not complied with [that] court’s orders.
That court, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, is headed up by Judge Susan J. Dlott, who got her start with Bill Clinton’s nomination of her to that court back in 1995. It’s where NorCal Tea Party Patriots filed suit against the IRS five years ago, demanding (among other things) a list of other patriot groups the IRS had targeted for special attention. She ordered the IRS to release the list, to no avail. She re-ordered the IRS to comply with her order, again to no avail. This gave rise to the appeal to Kethledge.
NorCal suffered grievously at the hands of the IRS. In July 2010 the group applied for tax-exempt status under Section 501(c) 3 of the Internal Revenue Code. The IRS responded by requesting additional information about the group’s activities. NorCal replied promptly with 120 pages of answers.
Eighteen months later NorCal had not heard anything about their application. Finally, in January, 2012, the IRS responded claiming it needed more information. In a five-page single-spaced letter the IRS demanded answers to 19 more questions, many of which had sub-requests. Explained Kethledge:
Among other things, the IRS requested a list of all NorCal events and activities since July 2010, with detailed information concerning the circumstances of each event and the content of any speeches or presentations made at those events; the names of NorCal’s donors and whether those donors had run for elected office in the past or intended to run for elected office in the future, along with the amounts and dates of every donation; and copies of all newsletters, emails, or advertising materials that the group had sent to its members or to the general public.
The IRS’s letter also reminded NorCal that, “[i]f we approve your application for exemption, we will be required by law to make the . . . information you submit in response to this letter available for public inspection.”
The IRS directed NorCal to respond by February 17, 2012 – three weeks after the date of the letter – and told NorCal that, “[i]f we don’t hear from you by the response due date . . . we will assume you no longer want us to consider your application for exemption and will close your case. As a result, the Internal Revenue Service will treat you as a taxable entity.”
NorCal eventually provided approximately 3,000 pages of responsive material.
But when NorCal sued to get the names of other Tea Party groups abused by the IRS, the IRS claimed that such a request was “unduly burdensome” and refused to provide them.
NorCal’s lawyer, Edward Greim, is hopeful that this time the IRS will give up the list so the lawsuit against the agency can proceed:
What we’ll be able to see is how, starting in the spring of 2010, with the first one or two groups the IRS targeted, we’ll be able to see that number grow, and we’ll even be able to see at the tail end their possible covering up that conduct.
With that new information the lawsuit against the IRS will enter the “discovery” phase, with depositions of IRS employees to follow.
Such targeting of enemies of the state goes back to at least the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, according to Roosevelt’s son Elliott: “My father may have been the originator of the concepts of employing the IRS as a weapon of political retribution.” It was refined by John F. Kennedy’s administration, taking on the moniker the “Ideological Organization Project,” and followed up later with the IRS working in cahoots with the FBI, which investigated The John Birch Society, the NAACP, and the American Communist Party. When Julian Bond, then-NAACP chairman, had the audacity to challenge President George W. Bush on his administration’s position on education, the economy, and the war in Iraq, the IRS targeted the group for special attention.
In a totally unrelated incident, Judge Susan Dlott suffered a home invasion last December when “three black men with guns” threw her husband down the stairs, breaking his back, his pelvis, and causing him to suffer a concussion. Said a neighbor following the incident: “[Susan] and her husband were brutally, brutally attacked. They were both pushed around. This was not just a robbery. It was a violent home invasion.”
After learning that the three thugs were young blacks hopped up on weed and looking for an easy score, this writer is persuaded that this incident is in no way connected to the IRS lawsuit. However, Judge Richard Bernat set bonds at more than $2 million for each of them.
Sources:
List of allegations of misuse of the IRS
WND.com: Tea party beats IRS in federal court
The Washington Times: Court rebukes IRS for tea party targeting, orders release of secret list
The Washington Post: Obama administration’s ‘continuous resistance’ in IRS targeting case slammed by federal appeals court
The Washington Examiner: Federal court smacks IRS for blocking Tea Party over political targeting
Background on the Tea Party IRS targeting scandal
Definition of Writ of Mandamus
Federal Judge Susan Dlott made chilling 911 call after 3 gunmen attacked her, husband Stan Chesley
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