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On The Daily Show, President Obama blamed Republicans for the IRS scandal: “You’ve got this back office, and they’re going after the Tea Party. Well, it turned out, no, Congress had passed a crummy law that didn’t give people guidance in terms of what it was they were trying to do. They did it poorly and stupidly. The truth of the matter is that there was not some big conspiracy there. They were trying to sort out these conflicting demands. You don’t want all this money pouring through non-for- profits, but you also want to make sure everybody is being...

The IRS’ Washington, D.C. headquarters targeted conservative groups in part due to pressure from Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, according to emails obtained by the watchdog group Judicial Watch and reviewed by The Daily Caller. Levin, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’ permanent subcommittee on investigations, wrote a March 30, 2012 letter to then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman discussing the “urgency” of the issue of possible political activity by nonprofit applicants. Levin asked if the IRS was sending out additional information requests to applicant groups and citing an IRS rejection letter to a conservative group as an example of...

A top former Obama Cabinet member who met with IRS officials at the White House during the targeting scandal is currently out of the country, a White House source told The Daily Caller. Former acting Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Jeffrey Zients has still not returned from an overseas exile that began after his departure from the Obama administration in April, two weeks before the IRS scandal broke. Zients met with then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman and Shulman’s political aide Jonathan Davis and spokesman Frank Keith at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House complex on April...

The Obama appointee implicated in congressional testimony in the IRS targeting scandal met with President Obama in the White House two days before offering his colleagues a new set of advice on how to scrutinize tea party and conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. IRS chief counsel William Wilkins, who was named in House Oversight testimony by retiring IRS agent Carter Hull as one of his supervisors in the improper targeting of conservative groups, met with Obama in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on April 23, 2012. Wilkins’ boss, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, met with Obama on April...

“There are legitimate questions to be asked about political groups that are hiding behind a 501(c)4 status,” Nyhart said in a statement provided to ABC. “It’s unfortunate a few bad apples at the IRS will make it harder for those questions to be asked without claims of bias.” Visitors to the 1133 19th St. NW office floor shared by Common Cause and Public Campaign are greeted at the sign-in desk for Common Cause, with Public Campaign’s office located to the visitors’ left-hand side. Nyhart described the close relationship between the groups in his April 23 eulogy for Edgar on the...

Not only did the former IRS commissioner visit the White House dozens of times during his tenure, but his chief of staff was reportedly making those visits even more frequently. The Washington Examiner reported Friday that Jonathan M. Davis, the chief of staff for former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, appears to have visited the White House campus up to 310 times between late 2009 and early 2013. Sources told the Examiner that Davis, who had little background in tax policy, largely served as a political aide. It's unclear what he was doing at the White House all those times. Shulman,...

WASHINGTON – The explosion of intelligence-gathering scandals is giving the left time to get its story straight, at least, on the IRS scandal. The IRS’ targeting of conservative groups has fallen out of public view, at least momentarily, as the NSA and PRISM data-collection scandals have burst onto the scene. But, behind the scenes, the left is catching its breath and regrouping, having come up with what it says is an explanation for at least 157 visits to the White House by former IRS Director Douglas Shulman between 2010 and 2012.

On Sunday we reported that former IRS Boss Douglas Shulman’s wife, Susan Anderson, is a top ranking executive with a left-wing organization called Public Campaign which could potentially have a lot of interest in who may have been targeted by the IRS. Today the story took another turn toward supporting that hypothesis. It seems that Susan Anderson’s boss, Nick Nyhart, had several visits of his own to the White House. In all he visited seven times with two visits recorded as meetings with President Obama. So let’s do a quick recap. Shulman has 157 White House visits logged. His wife...

Whenever something bad happens to America, look for the connection back to Obama's boss, George Soros. This time, it's the IRS using its considerable muscle to bully conservative organizations with the ultimate goal of voter suppression. Jeffrey Lord, writing for The American Spectator points to Jason Furman, Obama's top economic adviser. It's a position that, by the way, did not require senate approval. While Lord's column was focused on 17 year tax cheat, Charlie Rangel who was never harassed by the IRS, it reveals some interesting facts about Furman as well as former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman. Just last week...

<p>Shulman rallied for Rangel: Jason Furman, Media Matters, Fox News, Jarrett and a job.</p> <p>And the Liberal Dog Whistle Blows.</p> <p>Congressman Charles Rangel of New York.</p> <p>Ex-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman.</p> <p>The new chairman of the president’s Council on Economic Advisors, Jason Furman.</p>

Reflecting on the real-life impact of the IRS "Questionnaire-Gate" scandals… “Congratulations, Restauranteur!” You’ve just signed a lease on a great property. It’s a beautiful restaurant, just the right size, with a modern kitchen, and a terrific location with plenty of parking. You start decorating – painting, ordering window treatments, maybe updating the floor a bit, bringing in a custom bar that you found at an auction, re-upholstering the chairs, no, every other chair, to make it distinctive. You’re making it your own. You’ve had the menu in mind for a while, so you start outfitting the kitchen to meet your...

Yesterday, Stephanie Cutter, Deputy campaign manager for President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, appeared on Jake Tapper’s show The Lead on CNN. During the segment Stephanie Cutter admitted she had attended meetings with then IRS Chief Douglas Shulman at the White House: “A couple of facts here that I think are important for us to stick by, number one, the only reason we know about these visits is because the president makes everything public. Number two, what we’re really looking at some of these visits… What we are looking at the number of times that Mr. Shulman was cleared into...

May 31, 2013 White House defense: Visitor logs too unreliable to reveal whether Shulman actually visited 157 times Vince Coglianese The White House on Friday pushed back against news that former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House at least 157 times from 2009 to 2012.Shulman is a central figure in the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups, having led the agency while those groups were singled out for harassment.When challenged last week by congressional investigators about just 118 of the 157 apparent White House visits, Shulman did not dispute the number, only identifying several reasons why he visited so...

Former IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman admitted this week to his wife, family, and friends, that the REAL reason for his 157 visits to the White House was that he was involved with Michelle Obama in a torrid affair that had lasted for several years......(more)

Federal Election Commission records show that former IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, on whose watch the agency’s targeting of conservative groups began, is a donor to the Democratic party. Shulman made a $500 donation to the Democratic National Committee in October 2004, when George W. Bush was campaigning for reelection against then–Massachusetts senator John Kerry. At the time, Shulman was serving as executive vice president of the National Association of Securities Dealers, a private regulatory agency that monitors Wall Street transactions.  In 2008, Bush appointed Shulman to lead the IRS, serving under then treasury secretary Hank Paulson. According to the Treasury Department inspector general’s...

Former Internal Revenue Service commissioner Douglas H. Shulman, a frequent White House guest during the period when the IRS was targeting conservative nonprofits, is married to the senior program advisor for Public Campaign, an “organization dedicated to sweeping campaign reform that aims to dramatically reduce the role of big special interest money in American politics.”

<p>The White House will not be pushing for a special prosecutor to handle the IRS scandal involving the targeting of conservative groups, even as three-fourths of Americans are calling for one.</p> <p>Asked aboard Air Force One about a Quinnipiac University poll that showed 76 percent of Americans want a special prosecutor to handle the case, White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest said the administration isn’t looking at that option.</p>

Scandal: The attorney for Tea Party groups has intimidating letters from IRS offices around the country, not just Cincinnati, including one signed by the Tax Exempt Organizations director. This is no rogue operation. If the IRS vendetta against Tea Party and conservative political and religious groups were the act of rogue agents in a single office — a discredited alibi some administration defenders cling to — perhaps they can explain what happened to Catherine Engelbrecht. Shortly after Engelbrecht founded True the Vote, which trains election volunteers to help root out voter fraud, and King Street Patriots, a group with ideals...

<p>The former head of the IRS visited the White House more times than any Cabinet member, according to an analysis by The Daily Caller, raising questions about the nature of those visits -- particularly around the time the agency was targeting conservative groups.</p>

Scandal: One IRS commissioner visited Obama's White House 118 times in 2010 and 2011. His successor also dropped in often. But under George W. Bush, the tax chief visited once in four years. Time for an audit.