The Albuquerque Tea Party. BTW the IRS and the Treasury Department admitted wrong doing and fired employees over it.
---------------------
Another Judge Confirms: IRS Targeted Tea Party Groups
By Hans Bader | November 21, 2016 | 4:29 PM EST
Yet another judge has ruled against the IRS over its unconstitutional targeting of conservative and tea party groups based on their political views. As USA Today noted, a federal judge found this month that there was “strong” evidence that the IRS “ had discriminated against conservative groups because of their political stances.” Judge Michael R. Barrett wrote in his decision that the Texas Patriots tea party group had “made a strong showing of a likelihood of success” on its claim that its free speech rights were violated by the IRS lengthy delay in processing its application. “The evidence strongly suggests that the IRS initiated the delay” because the Texas group was affiliated with the tea party, the judge wrote.
As USA Today reported, “IRS officials in 2013 acknowledged they had singled out conservative-leaning ‘public interest’ groups for extra attention while reviewing their applications for nonprofit status … That led to a major scandal and several investigations by Congress … It also caused the resignations or firings of several top IRS officials, including then-Commissioner Steven Miller as well as other administrators tied to the targeting.”
Ad Feedback
But since then, the Obama administration has falsely claimed there was no discrimination against conservative or Tea Party groups. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has said it was a “ phony scandal.” He claimed the IRS did not target conservative groups, and that any delay in their applications involved “equal opportunity bad judgment” that affected not just “conservative groups” but also “progressive groups.” After initially suggesting that the IRS’s targeting of conservatives was “outrageous,” Obama later denied that any targeting had taken place. As the New York Post notes, Obama initially stated “that the harassment was ‘inexcusable’ and made him ‘angry’ on May 15, 2013.” But “less than a year later, when the heat was off, he said there was ‘not even a smidgen of corruption.’” Similarly, Congressional Democrats claimed that the IRS’s delay in processing conservative applications for non-profit status merely reflected “mismanagement” and that the IRS treated all applicants for nonprofit status in the same poor manner regardless of ideology.
But these denials were untrue. Even according to liberal NPR, the list of targeted groups was “top-heavy with conservative groups”: “282 conservative groups were on the IRS list, about two-thirds of the total number of groups that got additional scrutiny.” (NPR’s analysis understated the IRS’s bias, since NPR classified liberal groups like the League of Women Voters as ideologically neutral.)
Moreover, in documents recently unearthed by Judicial Watch, a top Obama IRS official admitted it targeted groups based on “guilt by association.” Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, which is counsel to the Texas Patriots, says “We’re getting document after document showing the IRS both in Washington and Cincinnati knew that [IRS employees] were doing things outside the rules … they were asking inappropriate questions based on guilt by association or party affiliations.”
This recent ruling follows earlier court decisions against the IRS. Two federal appeals courts have also ruled against the IRS in unanimous decisions. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals pointed out that:
Ad Feedback
“Among the most serious allegations a federal court can address are that an executive agency has targeted citizens for mistreatment based on their political views. No citizen—Republican or Democrat, socialist or libertarian —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 here. The allegations are substantial: most are drawn from findings made by the Treasury Department’s own Inspector General for Tax Administration. Those findings include that the IRS used political criteria to round up applications for tax-exempt status filed by so called tea-party groups; that the IRS often took four times as long to process tea-party applications as other applications; and that the IRS served tea-party applicants with crushing demands for what the Inspector General called ‘unnecessary information.’”
Similarly, in reviving a lawsuit against the IRS by other conservative groups it targeted, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals noted in True the Vote v. IRS (2016) that:
ack
“Instead of processing these applications in the normal course of IRS business, as would have been the case with other taxpayers, the IRS selected out these applicants for more rigorous review on the basis of their names, which were in each instance indicative of a conservative or anti-Administration orientation[. … This] was admitted by the Department of Treasury in the 2013 report of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).”
............
https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/hans-bader/another-judge-confirms-irs-targeted-tea-party-groups
------------------------------------------
.......
Last month, the ACLJ secured an important victory when District Judge Reggie Walton ordered that the IRS stop delaying determinations on outstanding tax-exempt applications of Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations and gave the agency 30 days to comply. Judge Walton also determined that the IRS must disclose the details of its scheme to target Tea Party organizations.This includes answering questions regarding the determination process prior to the targeting, how and why the targeting began, how the applications were treated during the targeting, and what the agency is doing to prevent further retaliation or discrimination.
............
https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/24644-irs-denies-tea-party-groups-tax-exempt-status-after-lengthy-wait
|
