Free Republic

Democratic allies gathered downtown Saturday for Chicago’s latest Women’s March, with organizers pushing for participants to help get out the vote ahead of next month’s midterm elections. Organized as a nonprofit — and not specifically endorsing candidates — the group Women’s March Chicago is bankrolled by Democrats and Democratic supporters. Major donors include the Chicago Federation of Labor and Democratic governor candidate J.B. Pritzker’s campaign. Several thousand took part in Saturday’s march and rally, which was the third Women’s March through Chicago. It was a far cry from the roughly 250,000 who marched through the city shortly after President Donald...

President Trump blasted the “Failing” New York Times for writing a “hit piece” on him after the newspaper published a story saying he amassed his billion-dollar fortune by helping his parents “dodge taxes” and through “outright fraud.” “The Failing New York Times did something I have never seen done before. They used the concept of ‘time value of money’ in doing a very old, boring and often told hit piece on me,” the president wrote on Twitter Wednesday. “Added up, this means that 97% of their stories on me are bad. Never recovered from bad election call!” The newspaper, in...

More than three years ago, Sen. Elizabeth Warren told the Internal Revenue Service that she had donated $50,000 in used clothing and "household items" to local thrift stores in 2014. Fifty grand worth of clothes! Donated! In one year. That was the fake Indian’s story and she was sticking to it - until late yesterday afternoon, after we inquired about her rather, uh, profligate spending habits. Suddenly, the fake Indian's story changed. The totals, her flack said, were "entry errors." Hey, Senator, glad I could be of service, in helping you correct your false filing. (And I assume the returns,...

The New York Times posted a lengthy article on President Trump’s tax returns from the late 1990s on Tuesday.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided businesses in Montana and Nebraska on Wednesday, indicting 17 business owners and mangers for fraud and money laundering. The agents in the Homeland Security Investigations arm of ICE led the raids on businesses they allege knowingly hired and improperly treated undocumented immigrants, the Associated Press reported. Authorities took 14 of the people indicted into custody, and are still searching for three others. Special agent in charge Tracy Cormier told the AP that the raids were part of one of the largest operations in the 15 years of the Homeland Security Investigations branch. “The...

A Texas woman plans to challenge a judge's decision to deny her a new trial after sentencing her to five years in prison for voter fraud. Crystal Mason was convicted in March of voting illegally in the 2016 presidential election. Texas law makes the 43-year-old ineligible to vote because she was on probation for tax fraud. Mason says she didn't know about that law. When Mason showed up to vote last November, her name wasn't on the voter roll, so she was asked to fill out and sign a provisional ballot. That's when elections workers discovered she was a convicted...

*snip* The little-known Haiti Development Fund, an LLC incorporated in Delaware in August 2010, was created by the Clinton Foundation with an initial endowment of $20 million from shady Canadian mining mogul Frank Giustra and Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. The Fund was supposed to supply desperately needed seed money to Haitian entrepreneurs after an earthquake devastated the country in January 2010. *snip* “This cries out for an audit or an investigation,” said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center a Virginia-based watchdog group. “Its director was in bankruptcy and there’s almost nothing in the public record showing...

Facing nearly two dozen federal fraud and conspiracy charges, former U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown took the stand in her own defense on Thursday, saying she was left in the dark while her former chief of staff siphoned thousands of dollars from what prosecutors are calling a sham charity. The Florida Democrat told the jury she was betrayed by her former top aide, Elias “Ronnie” Simmons. “I loved Ronnie Simmons like a son,” said Brown, crying. “A lot of young people in this community end up in jail. I never would’ve wanted that to happen to Ronnie.” Federal prosecutors want Brown...

In tax year 2014, according to a report published by the Internal Revenue Service, the federal government hauled in a then-record $1,377,797,136,000 in individual income taxes. Nonetheless, of the 148,606,578 individual income tax return filers that year, 52,062,499 (or 35 percent) filed what the IRS calls “nontaxable returns,” which means they paid no net individual income taxes. Among these 52,062,499 filers who did not pay income taxes in 2014, according to Table 3.3 in the report, were 31,129,405 filers who also received $90,276,007,000 in payments from the federal government for “refundable” tax credits. “In total, taxpayers claimed $105.6 billion in...

Illegal immigrants need only one number to access billions of dollars in free taxpayer cash. The Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN) unlocks an exclusive gateway for non-citizens to receive monies meant for working, low-income Americans. The nine-digit code was created by bureaucrats in 1996 for foreigners who had to deal with the IRS. It allows people without a Social Security number, including those in the country illegally, to file taxes. “It’s just a farce to say it was created to collect taxes,” Robert Rector, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News. “It’s nothing but a welfare program...

A former Rhode Island state lawmaker has agreed to plead guilty to fraud charges, becoming the third former House member in 11 days to be charged with criminal conduct and prompting the U.S. attorney to decry the state’s political culture. The charges filed against Democrat Ray Gallison in federal court Monday include mail fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and filing false tax returns. Gallison, an attorney, acknowledged taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from a dead man’s estate and other misconduct. “This says something about our political culture here, which I think should get our attention,” U.S. Attorney Peter...

Bill Clinton was paid more than $1 million in 2015 by Laureate Education, a global operator of for-profit colleges, according to tax returns released today by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The new figure brings the former president’s total compensation from Laureate to more than $17.5 million for his five-year role as an “honorary chancellor.” His role consisted of advising the company on educational matters and traveling to campuses across the world to speak to young people. Clinton ended his position at Laureate in April 2015 after Hillary Clinton launched her bid for the White House. Laureate International Universities, the company’s international...

Hillary Clinton and her husband Bill deducted $1,042,000 in charitable contributions last year — $1 million of which went to their own family non-profit, the Clinton Foundation. Clinton released her tax forms on Friday in a move that is seen as a way to pressure Donald Trump to release his taxes. The GOP nominee has refused to release the records, saying that he is under a routine audit.

Authorities across the United States this week arrested dozens of gang members who stand accused of making millions of dollars stealing consumer identities in order to file fraudulent tax refund requests with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The arrests highlight the dramatic shift in gang activity in recent years from high-risk drug dealing to identity fraud — a far less risky yet equally lucrative crime.

**SNIP** Much like Clinton’s speech to Salesforce, the former secretary of state’s speech isn’t available online nor would ISRI give video upon request. The speech of ISRI’s 2015 convention speaker, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, appears on the company’s YouTube page, but Bill Clinton’s 2009 speech to the same group does not. But such is the case for almost all of Hillary Clinton’s paid speeches from 2014 — though most were given to massive audiences, almost none are available in their entirety online. What’s clear is that most, if not all, of the companies and organizations that hired Hillary...

Thousands of Ohioans are getting asked some curious questions online and over the phone lately, such as: How old is your grandchild? What brand of car do you have? How long is your mortgage? Many of these people have a question of their own: What is this—some kind of scam? The answer: The quiz is legit, part of an effort by the state to thwart … scams. Specifically, the filing of phony tax returns. Under the new program, some Ohioans who have filed their taxes get letters in the mail from the state Department of Taxation directing them to take...

So far, every for-profit enterprise started by Al Sharpton and known to National Review Online has been shut down in at least one jurisdiction for failure to pay taxes, a review of public records in New York and Delaware reveals. Records show that Sharpton’s beleaguered for-profit entities often overlap and intertwine, some sharing ties with the reverend’s nonprofit organization, National Action Network. Their financial records are copious, confusing, and sometimes outright bizarre, and together, they depict persistent financial woes for Sharpton, who also personally owes New York State nearly $596,000, according to active tax warrants. “He clearly appears — based...

New York Rep. Michael Grimm pleaded guilty to a single count of tax fraud Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court. The guilty plea comes one month after the congressman, a Republican who represents Staten Island, was elected to a third term. In April, Grimm was named in a 20-count indictment that accused him of under-reporting the payroll and earnings of his Upper East Side restaurant, Healthalicious, which he ran from 2007 to 2010. He pleaded not guilty in federal court and was released on bond. Prosecutors alleged Grimm employed a number of immigrant workers who did not have legal status to...

The Rev. Al Sharpton is perhaps best known these days for his MSNBC show. This provides viewers with a daily diet of its host misreading his teleprompter and egregiously overusing the phrase, “I mean, what is he talking about?” But there is much more to Sharpton than his left-leaning political worldview and unimpressive TV skills. He rose to national prominence in the 1980s when he falsely accused white law enforcement officials of raping a teenage African-American girl. After that, he moved on to incite anti-Semitic violence in Brooklyn and Harlem. This was his preparation for a later bid for the...

COBB COUNTY, Ga. — State investigators have arrested a woman accused of seeking a tax refund of more than $94 million. Now investigators say they are looking for the woman's relative, whom they say also filed a fake tax return. Channel 2 Action News was at a Cobb County supermarket as Brigitte Jackson was arrested at the bank counter inside the store. “It doesn’t matter if it’s $94 or $94 million. We’re going to go after you and hold you accountable,” said Georgia Department of Revenue Special Investigations Chief Josh Waites.