Free Republic

A lawyer in the IRS ethics office is facing the possibility of being disbarred, according to records that accuse her of lying to a court-appointed board and hiding what she’d done with money from a settlement that was supposed to go to two medical providers who had treated her client. The disciplinary arm of the D.C. Court of Appeals has recommended that Takisha McGee, a section manager in the IRS Office of Professional Responsibility, lose her law license over the charge, which stems from a personal injury case she worked about a year before she joined the tax agency. Ms....

The IRS filing in federal Judge Emmet Sullivan’s court reveals shocking new information. The IRS destroyed Lerner’s Blackberry AFTER it knew her computer had crashed and after a Congressional inquiry was well underway. As an IRS official declared under the penalty of perjury, the destroyed Blackberry would have contained the same emails (both sent and received) as Lois Lerner’s hard drive. We all know by now that Lois Lerner’s hard drive crashed in June 2011 and was destroyed by IRS. The emails of up to twenty other related IRS officials were missing in remarkably similar “crashes,” leading many to speculate...

Shannon Bream ?@ShannonBream · 8s BREAKING: #TomFitton of @JudicialWatch just told us on @FoxNews DOJ atty told JW atty that IRS/Lerner emails DO EXIST in backup somewhere

Judicial Watch: DOJ Admits Lois Lerner’s Emails Exist By Joel Gehrke August 25, 2014 3:11 PM A Justice Department official admitted that former IRS official Lois Lerner’s apparently missing emails actually exist on a backup server, but the government doesn’t plan to retrieve them. “A Department of Justice attorney told a Judicial Watch attorney on Friday that it turns out the federal government backs up all computer records in case something terrible happens in Washington and there’s a catastrophe, so the government can continue operating,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton told Fox News’ Shannon Bream. “But it would be too...

IRS contractors without background checks had access to sensitive information, potentially putting confidential taxpayer data at risk, according to a federal audit. The Treasury inspector general for tax administration found more than a dozen cases in which the IRS awarded contracts that required access to taxpayer information without background investigations or before those checks were completed. Under IRS policy, background checks are mandatory for contractors who work with that kind of data. "Allowing contractor employees access to taxpayer data without appropriate background investigations exposes taxpayers to increased risk of fraud and identity theft,” said J. Russell George, the inspector general....

Chalk up another victory for out of control government and its related rampant abuse of power. A lawsuit brought by the conservative group “True the Vote” asking to have a forensic expert of the court’s choosing attempt to recover the “lost” Lois Lerner emails has been denied. U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton said in his decision that the plaintiff failed to show “irreparable harm” as a result of the “lost” emails, which, since the contents of them is unknown to those who were not involved in the criminal activities, would likely be an impossible thing to prove before the...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) quietly changed regulations to allow more undocumented immigrants to keep their taxpayer status through a program that is rife with fraud and abuse, and to delay deactivation of immigrant taxpayer status until 2016. The IRS now prevents peoples’ Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) from automatically expiring after five years as previously mandated. Now immigrants can keep their ITIN so long as they pay taxes at least once in a five-year period.

While I was at the recent Napa Institute gathering, I got to know Kristina Arriaga, Executive Director of The Becket Fund, which defends religious freedom. They guided the Hobby Lobby decision to a good conclusion and for that we owe them a lot. I had this note from them today. It included this: [quote] Dear Friends, I grew up in a household where we were expected to pepper all tales with a bit of Cuban exaggeration. This was, after all, essential for good storytelling. So, in a way, I wish I were making this up. Within the IRS, there is,...

Is the Internal Revenue Service a threat to religious liberty? As the IRS continues to come under well-aimed fire for harassing conservative groups, on Friday it secured a final court order formalizing what amounts to a secret agreement to monitor the pulpits of ill-favored churches. The serious danger, as former Justice Department attorney J. Christian Adams told Fox News, is that the IRS will start treating “theology as politics,” and regulate it accordingly. Lovers of liberty should be very concerned. According to a June 27 IRS letter to the Justice Department, 99 churches merit “high priority examination” for allegedly illegal...

Is the Internal Revenue Service a threat to religious liberty? As the IRS continues to come under well-aimed fire for harassing conservative groups, on Friday it secured a final court order formalizing what amounts to a secret agreement to monitor the pulpits of ill-favored churches. The serious danger, as former Justice Department attorney J. Christian Adams told Fox News, is that the IRS will start treating “theology as politics,” and regulate it accordingly. Lovers of liberty should be very concerned. According to a June 27 IRS letter to the Justice Department, 99 churches merit “high priority examination” for allegedly illegal...

A Washington Examiner article asks “Can the IRS be fixed, or should it just be abolished?” The answer is clear to anybody who has followed the IRS scandal or filed a federal tax return. Washington’s individual income tax and its enforcement agency, the IRS, cannot be fixed, repaired, reformed or rehabilitated. They are a cancer eating away at this nation, her taxpayers and our economic engine. Congress created the income tax in 1913, and for 100 years the IRS has operated exactly as intended, as an agent of control with total impunity, even down to the political targeting of individuals...

At his best Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., made short work of a Democrat-friendly law professor testifying before Congress, even offering him some “free litigation advice.” The former prosecutor turned congressman was surgical in his questioning of Professor Charles Tiefer, who was brought before the House Judiciary Committee as an expert witness by Democrats — Tiefer has a history of being of service to the Democratic Party, according to The Blaze. “Professor Tiefer, would you seat a juror who referred to your client as an obscene body part?” Gowdy asked in his opening question.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) grilled a University of Baltimore law professor during a Wednesday House hearing and made a compelling case as to why a special counsel is needed to investigate the IRS scandal. At one point, he even offered the professor some “free litigation advice” when he refused to answer one of his questions that seemed pretty straightforward. Professor Charles Tiefer was brought in by Democrats as an expert to help determine whether the House Judiciary Committee should appoint a special counsel to investigate the IRS scandal. Tiefer, who previously served as solicitor and deputy general counsel of the...

Same link here.

House Republicans have dug up emails from Lois Lerner in which the former IRS official refers to some in the Republican Party as “---holes” and "crazies" – an exchange they say shows her “animus” toward conservatives. The November 2012 emails were released Wednesday by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., as part of his renewed call for the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate. Lerner is the ex-IRS official who led the unit accused of targeting conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status for extra scrutiny. In the email exchange, Lerner appears to be chatting with...

Former IRS official Lois Lerner cursed conservatives in emails released on Wednesday, leading House Republicans to intensify their push for criminal charges. Lerner, in an email conversation with an undisclosed person, suggested that listeners to conservative talk radio were “ass----s.” She followed that up by saying: “So we don't need to worry about alien teRrorists [sic]. It's our own crazies that will take us down.” Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee said the emails showed – not for the first time – Lerner’s bias against conservatives. Other documents released Wednesday also suggest that Lerner used her home computer...

A newly discovered email exchange from Lois Lerner´s official IRS email account "directly demonstrates Ms. Lerner´s deep animus towards conservatives, which she refers to as ´---holes,´" House Ways and Means Committee Chair Dave Camp wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday. In that Nov. 9, 2012 email, Lerner further suggests that conservatives will ruin the country: "So we don´t need to worry about alien teRrorists (sic). It´s our own crazies that will take us down," she wrote.

The IRS recently settled a case against it brought by the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF). As part of the settlement, the IRS has agreed to monitor church sermons for political content. The suit was filed because FFRF apparently did not like an event called Pulpit Freedom Sunday. Apparently once a year a number of pastors preach on political topics, presumably to rebel against the never enforced Federal prohibition on 501(c)(3) political activities. Technically it is illegal for tax exempt non-profits to engage in political activities, presumably this includes commenting on politics from the pulpit. To date there isn’t a...

If ever a federal agency has made ineptitude into an art form, it has to be the IRS. After months of stonewalling and grandstanding and Fifth Amendment privilege-pleading before congressional committees, Lois Lerner and the IRS are now the subject of a federal lawsuit. In response to charges that they unfairly impeded the tax-exempt application of the organization "True the Vote," for political reasons, the IRS is invoking "the dog ate my homework" defense In sworn affidavits filed in court by top IRS muckety-mucks, the IRS maintains that Lois Lerner's computer was sent out to be fixed by a private...

In a sensational press release issued Tuesday afternoon, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) claimed that he had evidence that the Internal Revenue Service destroyed a computer belonging to a key figure in the IRS targeting scandal despite being told by experts that its data was recoverable. Camp also insinuated that the original damage to the computer was done intentionally.