Free Republic

Here’s a detailed summary of Obama’s IRS scandal, explaining how his administration illegally used the IRS to harass conservative organizations. In May 2013, the Washington Post reported that the IRS had illegally targeted conservative groups for additional reviews. Organizations with the words “tea party” or “patriot” were singled out for harassment, such as requiring them to provide a list of donors, details about their internet postings on social networking websites, and information about their family members.When this was first reported by the media in May 2013, Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that had conducted these illegal activities, claimed that...

News we might have missed. Last week Catherine Engelbrecht announced a historic legal victory in her decade long battle against the IRS for targeting her group, True The Vote, as part of the Obama administration’s weaponization program against political opposition. U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton issued a stunning ruling (full pdf below) in favor of True the Vote, and penalized the IRS. Judge Walton forced the IRS to pay maximum attorney’s fees due to discrimination against the conservative organization that stemmed from the Lois Lerner scandal. The financial award is likely to exceed $2 million.

Senator Dan Coats (R-IN) asked Koskinen about the process, and for the commissioner to explain the logic behind giving tax refunds to illegal aliens who have committed a theft of a tax-payer’s identification number. Koskinen’s response, according to the Washington Examiner, was that it was in everybody’s interest to have the illegal aliens pay taxes with stolen id’s.

The Obama administration said Tuesday it will herd uninsured Americans into Obamacare plans this fall by targeting young adults and working with the IRS to root out people who paid a penalty for lacking coverage last year. Officials said people who were fined under the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate can expect to receive a paper notice that explains their coverage options on the law’s web-based exchanges. The state of Massachusetts is already working with its revenue agency to locate the uninsured, and the Obama administration said those efforts appeared to be working. The Health and Human Services Department said...

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released new Department of Justice (DOJ) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents that include an official “DOJ Recap” report detailing an October 2010 meeting between Lois Lerner, DOJ officials and the FBI to plan for the possible criminal prosecution of targeted nonprofit organizations for alleged illegal political activity. The newly obtained records also reveal that the Obama DOJ wanted IRS employees who were going to testify to Congress to turn over documents to the DOJ before giving them to Congress. Records also detail how the Obama IRS gave the FBI 21 computer disks, containing...

President Obama swung by The Daily Show earlier this week and was challenged by outgoing host Jon Stewart over government incompetence on his watch. Pressed on prominent instances of malfeasance and ineptitude that have plagued the federal bureaucracy during his administration — from the VA wait list scandal, to the catastrophic OPM hack, to the IRS targeting affair — Obama breezily dismissed the latter example as a non-scandal, chalking it up to Congress writing “crummy” laws that were merely implemented “poorly and stupidly.” The Washington Times reports: President Obama defended the IRS Tuesday in an interview with “Daily Show”...

The White House told Congress last week it refused to dig into its computers for emails that could shed light on what kinds of private taxpayer information the IRS shares with President Obama’s top aides, assuring Congress that the IRS will address the issue — eventually.

In a shocking revelation, the Treasury Inspector General has identified some 2,500 documents that “potentially” show taxpayer information held by the Internal Revenue Service being shared with President Obama’s White House.

The problem with the IRS abuse scandal, in which the government agency was found to be systematically discriminating against conservative non-profits, is that a complex and vague campaign finance law system gives the government powers it shouldn’t have to decide which citizens are worthy of organizing for political speech and which are not. Lois Lerner, whose boss is an ideological president who was constantly saying Tea Party groups were doing shady things with their money, was in a position to make value judgments about what kind of political speech should be allowed the favor of the federal government. That’s a...

When Obama condemns “phony scandals,” we can assume investigators are getting warm. Back on May 13, President Obama reacted heatedly to news that the IRS had delayed and harassed conservative groups applying for nonprofit status. “I have got no patience with it, I will not tolerate it, and we will make sure that we find out exactly what happened on this,” he told reporters. How is the president living up to that pledge? At best, meh. At worst, we are seeing a slow-motion cover-up. In a speech he made last week, he railed against an “endless parade” of “phony scandals”...

When the FBI finally fires up its criminal investigation of the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups, there is one person the special agent in charge better be sure to interview — former White House Counsel Robert Bauer. The FBI may discover the whole IRS mess leads through the land of campaign finance “reform” and an obsession with speech regulation, an obsession shared by Bauer. Any criminal investigation identifies for further scrutiny those with motive, opportunity, and means, and Bauer deserves no quarter from FBI investigators on those three counts. The Crimes Without any doubt, crimes were committed by IRS...

Lois Lerner, the IRS head of exempt organizations division, will invoke the fifth amendment this week rather than answer questions about the recent IRS scandal, according to a letter sent to Congress by her attorney.

NBC's David Gregory suggested that the White House is blaming the growing IRS scandal on the Treasury Department for not "deal[ing] with this more quickly":

<p>The Internal Revenue Service has been compromised with political operatives. It is no longer a viable and objective government agency. The firing of a few lowly operatives can no longer assure America it has been purged of Democratic and Progressive corruption. Every Republican or Conservative who is singled out for audits may now assume he is the object of political persecution.</p>

WASHINGTON—The Internal Revenue Service may have delivered more than $5 billion in refund checks to identity thieves who filed fraudulent tax returns for 2011, Treasury Department investigators said Thursday. They estimate another $21 billion could make its way to ID thieves' pockets over the next five years. The IRS is detecting far fewer fraudulent tax refund claims than actually occur, according to a government audit that warned the widespread problem could undermine public trust in the U.S. tax system. Although the IRS detected about 940,000 fraudulent returns for last year claiming $6.5 billion in refunds, there were potentially another 1.5...

President Obama today delivered an impassioned attack on what he called Republicans’ “cramped narrow conception” of liberty, during a fiery speech at a campaign fundraiser in Vermont. Before an electrified crowd of 4500 – his largest of the campaign to date – Obama framed the 2012 campaign as a stark choice between two diametrically opposed political and economic philosophies. “Their philosophy is simple: you’re on your own,” Obama said of the GOP. “You’re on your own if you’re out of work, can’t find a job. Tough luck you’re on your own. You don’t have health care: That’s your problem. You’re...