Soros’s hand in the IRS scandal
20 May 2013
By Russ Jones (OneNewsNow.com) Monday, May 20, 2013
New details regarding the IRS scandal that found the nation’s top tax office intentionally targeting conservative groups are surfacing. Like, for example, the fact that George Soros-funded organizations sent letters encouraging the IRS to investigate conservative organizations.
According to findings reported by the Media Research Center (MRC), Soros gave $6.1 million to liberal groups who urged the Internal Revenue Service to investigate conservative non-profit organizations, including various tea party and Christian groups.
Dan Gainor, vice president of business and culture for MRC, says the scandal could be traced to a series of letters that two liberal groups — Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and Democracy 21 — sent to the IRS in 2010 and 2011 asking for an “investigation” of political consultant Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS.
“What they need to focus on is this timeline,” Gainor suggests. “We actually carry the timeline here, and the timeline is when these lefty operations sent their letters to the IRS and what the IRS did soon after.”
Pro Publica, The Huffington Post and Mother Jones were just a few of the accomplices that helped instigate IRS investigations. Bit as of 2010, Pro Publica received a two-year contribution of $125,000 each year from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
“It is a who’s who of far-left organizations,” the MRC spokesman offers. “Remember — this is George Soros, who has given $8.5 billion to charity. Of that … that we could track, $550 million has gone to liberal operations here in the United States.”
Applications of nine organizations applying for tax-exempt status that had yet to be approved were sent to Pro Publica. Unapproved applications are not supposed to be made public.
Source: onenewsnow.com
George Soros-Funded Groups Prod IRS to Investigate Conservative Organizations
By Melissa Barnhart
May 16, 2013|6:07 pm
Amid the uproar over shocking revelations that the Internal Revenue Service strategically targeted conservative groups that sought tax-exempt status are new findings that George Soros-funded organizations are sending letters to the IRS prodding them to investigate conservative groups, such as Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS.
President Obama on Wednesday announced the firing of acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, who will leave the IRS in June, following the Treasury Department’s inspector general report that confirmed the biased targeting of conservative groups whose applications included terms like “Tea Party” or “Patriot.”
The Christian Post also reported Wednesday that evangelist Franklin Graham sent a letter to Obama on Tuesday to alert the president that Samaritan’s Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association were also subjects of an IRS probe during the 2012 campaign season.
Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, acknowledged that it had targeted said groups applying for tax exemption under section 501(c)4, or the “social welfare” classification. Lerner then blamed “low level” employees at their Cincinnati, Ohio, office for selecting these groups for additional reviews.
According to Dan Gainor, vice president of business and culture at the Media Research Center, a conservative organization, the IRS’ systematic targeting of conservative groups is not a case of two rogue employees in the Cincinnati office striking out on their own to intimidate these organizations.
Gainor told CP on Thursday that anybody who aligns themselves as politically left or right would look at this situation and immediately know that the IRS’ investigations were not the result of actions taken by two people. “For the IRS to massively misstate things – I’m stunned. We’re talking about multiple violations of the law. The IRS lied to Congress on five separate occasions.”
“The IRS employees also violated the Hatch Act,” Gainor said, “which prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan political activities, left or right, in an effort to protect democracy.” Although the IRS’ actions have no established direct connection to the Obama administration, Gainor believes the scandal underscores what can happen when ideologically like-minded people serve in federal departments and are pressured by outside groups, of the same political ideology, to investigate organizations deemed to hold an opposing viewpoint.
Case in point, Gainor noted 15 letters sent to the IRS by Soros-funded groups, such as Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center, asking them to look into conservative organizations. He believes Americans should be concerned about the money and influence Soros has over the media and political landscape, and said the billionaire philanthropist tramples any influence or money the Koch brothers have given to libertarian and conservative organizations.
With a net worth of $19 billion, Forbes has listed Soros as the richest hedge fund manager in the U.S. And although Soros’ website promotes the fact that he’s given $8.5 billion to charity, “more than $550 million has been given to left-wing nonprofits,” Gainor said. “More than $52 million has gone to left-wing journalism nonprofits – that is scary to me.”
In his opinion, the media is supposed to be the checks and balances of the government; and right now, many members are not, because they’re intertwined with the executive branch of government and left-of-center organizations.
Gainor cited examples such as White House Press Secretary Jay Carney being married to ABC’s Claire Shipman, and media heavyweights such as Steve Kroft of CBS’ “60 Minutes” and ABC News President Ben Sherwood, among others, who serve on the board of the Center for Public Integrity, which has received more than $2.7 million from Soros.
“How can you keep neutral when you’re doing that?” Gainor asked.
Gainor also noted that a study on 501(c)4 groups published by CPI was cited by Mother Jones, which has received $485,000 from Soros, and was then reposted by the blog Alternet that has also received $285,000 in funding from Soros. By Dec. 28, 2011, the study spurred The New York Times to publish an editorial that asked: “When will the Internal Revenue Service crack down on the secret political money already flooding the 2012 campaign from partisan operatives ludicrously claiming to be ‘social welfare’ activists under the tax law?”
“Alternet and Mother Jones are both members of The Media Consortium, which is designed to do exactly what happened here. The Media Consortium was created to be a progressive ‘echo chamber,’ where 63 separate left-wing media outlets can network and share ideas, as well as cross-promote stories. Other members of the Consortium include The Nation, Democracy Now! and The American Prospect. The consortium has also received $675,000 in Soros funds since 2000,” according to the MRC.
The Campaign Legal Center, which tracks campaign finance laws at the federal, state and local level, and has received $677,000 from Soros, has sent 15 letters to the IRS over the past three years on a variety of issues, among them being to ask the IRS to make clear the extent to which groups can get involved in campaign activities.
Paul S. Ryan, senior counsel for the CLC, told CP on Thursday that the organization has not received any direct response from the IRS regarding their letters. “It has been one-way communication,” he said. Ryan added that CLC never objected to groups, such as Crossroads GPS, having a tax-exempt status, but questioned whether they qualify as a 501(c)4 nonprofit organization, or if they should, instead, be classified as a 527.
A 527 is a tax-exempt organization created to elect or defeat a political candidate for federal, state or local office. But, unlike a 501(c)4, a 527 must make public its list of donors, and it cannot accept unlimited non tax-deductible donations.
Ryan said the “CLC cannot object more strongly to the partisan screening” conducted by the IRS. He added that they will continue to urge the IRS to enforce rules pertaining to organizations’ tax-exempt status, but they don’t condone doing so with a partisan or political ideology bias.
The CLC, he emphasized, doesn’t believe the IRS should be investigating “mom and pop Tea Party groups … but the big fish, such as Crossroads GPS.” According to Ryan, the IRS hasn’t made any progress, and the CLC wants the IRS to scrutinize whether these big fish organizations are “in compliance with their tax exempt status.”
Source URL : christianpost.com
Soros Gave $6.1 Million to Groups Linked to Pressure on IRS to Target Conservative Nonprofits
May 15, 2013
By Mike Ciandella, CNS News
As IRS efforts targeting politically-conservative groups gained momentum, George Soros-funded liberal groups repeatedly called on the IRS to investigate conservative nonprofit organizations.
While the first reported instances of extra IRS scrutiny for conservative groups began in Cincinnati in March of 2010, the attacks began to pick up steam on a national level soon after Soros-funded groups began firing off letters to the IRS in October of that year – following the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling.
The talking points of these groups then bounced around a carefully created progressive “echo chamber,” until they eventually made their way into established media outlets. Key IRS policy changes about how it investigated conservative groups took place soon after it received three separate letters sent by Soros-funded liberal organizations.
Several Soros-funded groups including the Campaign Legal Center, Democracy 21, the Center for Public Integrity, Mother Jones and Alternet have worked to pressure the IRS to target conservative nonprofit groups. The subsequent IRS investigation flagged more than 100 tea party-related applications for higher scrutiny, including applications that included the words “Tea Party” and “patriot.”
The IRS scandal can be traced back to a series of letters that the liberal groups Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and Democracy 21 sent to the IRS back in 2010 and 2011. Both groups were funded by George’s Soros’s Open Society Foundations. The CLC received $677,000 and Democracy 21 got $365,000 from the Soros-backed foundation, according to the Foundation’s 990 tax forms.
The letters specifically targeted conservative Super PACs like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, asking the IRS to scrutinize them more thoroughly to determine whether or not they should retain their tax-exempt status.
On Oct. 5, 2010, when the first letter was sent to the IRS, calling specifically for the agency to “investigate” Crossroads GPS. The letter claimed Crossroads was “impermissibly using its tax status to spend tens of millions of dollars in the 2010 congressional races while hiding the donors funding these expenditures from the American people.” Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer wrote a blog post for the liberal Huffington Post to promote it, and the effort to get the media to notice the anti-conservative campaign began.
On June 27, 2011, a second letter by the CLC and Democracy 21 complained about enforcement of 501(c)(4) tax regulations, asking “that the IRS issue new regulations that better enforce the law.” Two days later, an IRS senior agency official was briefed on a new policy targeting groups which “criticize how the country is being run,” according to a Washington Post story. According to the Post, this policy was later revised.
A third letter by the CLC and Democracy 21, on Sept 28, 2011, got media traction. The letter showed the escalation of the left’s complaint about 501(c)(4) groups. It challenged “the eligibility of four organizations engaged in campaign activity to be treated as 501(c)(4) tax exempt organizations.” The four organizations included Crossroads GPS, Priorities USA, American Action Network and Americans Elect.
The Soros-funded Center for Public Integrity ($2,716,328) published a “study” on 501(c)(4) groups, on October 31, which drew heavily from, and referenced, the CLC and Democracy 21. The Center for Public Integrity has strong media connections and boasts an advisory board that includes Ben Sherwood, president of ABC News, and Michele Norris, an NPR host, as well as a board of directors with such prominent names as Huffington Post CEO Arianna Huffington, Steve Kroft of CBS News’s “60 Minutes” and Craig Newmark (founder of Craigslist).
This study then led to a Mother Jones article about a month later, on November 18, which was reposted on the left-wing blog Alternet on November 21. By December of 2011, the topic had been picked up in a New York Times editorial, and then began receiving other media coverage. That editorial called for “the Internal Revenue Service to crack down on the secret political money already flooding the 2012 campaign from partisan operatives ludicrously claiming to be ‘social welfare’ activists.”
On Jan. 15, 2012, the IRS targeted groups focused on limiting government or educating people about the Constitution and Bill of Rights
Alternet and Mother Jones are both members of The Media Consortium, which is designed to do exactly what happened here. The Media Consortium was created to be a progressive “echo chamber,” where 63 separate left-wing media outlets can network and share ideas, as well as cross-promote stories. Other members of the Consortium include such liberal outlets as The Nation, Democracy Now! and The American Prospect. The consortium has also received $675,000 in Soros funds since 2000. Alternet ($285,000) and Mother Jones ($485,000) have both also received individual funding from Soros’s Open Society Foundations.
This isn’t the only time the IRS has targeted conservative groups recently, nor is it the only connection between the IRS and Soros-funded groups. The IRS gave the left-wing journalism site ProPublica the applications for nine conservative groups pending tax-exempt status.
The IRS also released the confidential donor lists of the National Organization for Marriage to the liberal Human Rights Campaign. Both the Human Rights Campaign ($2,716,328) and ProPublica ($300,000) are also Soros-funded. Despite its blatant liberal leanings, ProPublica boasts a staff of well-known journalists, including veterans of The New York Times and The Wall Street journal, as well as of liberal operations like the Center for American Progress and The Nation, and has even won two Pulitzer Prizes.
Timeline Shows Influence of Soros-Funded Groups
March 1-17, 2010: First ten reported cases of targeting by the IRS against groups that had ties to the “tea party or similar organizations.”
Sept. 16, 2010: TIME article “The New GOP Money Stampede” quotes Wertheimer;
Sept. 23, 2010: DISCLOSE act, a campaign finance disclosure act specifically targeting a Tea Party group, in the writing of which the CLC participated, fails in the Senate;
Sept. 28, 2010: Democrat Senator Max Baucus writes a letter to the IRS, citing the TIME article;
Oct. 5, 2010: Democracy 21 and Campaign Legal Center petition IRS, Wertheimer writes HuffPo article;
Oct. 7, 2010: Legal brief from HoltzmanVogel PLLC against the Democracy 21 petition;
Oct. 14, 2010: Dick Durbin asks IRS to investigate American Crossroads, HuffPo coverage;
June 27, 2011: Second petition to the IRS by CLC and Democracy 21;
June 29, 2011: IRS senior agency official Lois Lerner briefed on efforts to target groups which “criticize how the country is being run”;
Sept. 28, 2011: CLC and Democracy 21 petition IRS again, this time about four conservative groups;
Oct. 31, 2011: CPI “investigation”;
Nov. 18, 2011: Mother Jones article;
Nov. 21, 2011: Alternet repost of Mother Jones Article;
Dec. 29, 2011: New York Times oped;
Jan. 15, 2012: IRS targeted groups focusing on limiting government or educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights;
February 2012: First articles promoting this issue appear in New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times
$6.1 Million in Soros Funding Since 2000
- Center for Public Integrity: $2,716,328
- Campaign Legal Center: $677,000
- Media Consortium: $675,000
- Mother Jones: $485,000
- Democracy 21: $365,000
- ProPublica: $300,000
- Alternet: $285,000
- Human Rights Campaign: $600,000
Source: cnsnews.com
Read more: Soros’s hand in the IRS scandal | The Soros Files sorosfiles.com |
