Free Republic

Our Declaration of Independence was not only illegal, it was an act of treason. Like today, most men in 1776 worldwide equated that which is legal with justice. Who could argue against the idea that justice is joined with statutory law? Equate the legal with the just, and the law can be whatever presidents for life, oligarchs, or a majority say it is. Mankind can be fragmented into a welter of nations, each with its own morality. Might makes right. Justice is rendered relative among the nations of the world. Since there is no single standard of justice, all standards...

FULL TITLE: BREAKING: Deep State Unmasked, IRS Officials – “You Should Give Increased Scrutiny” to Conservative Groups, “… I don’t give a s**t if that is a crime” ============================================================================ IRS Tax Examiner: Target Conservative Groups Because They Are “… just f***ing fronts for the Koch brothers.” Deleting IRS Emails is “… so cool… [conservatives] could not hold any evidence against… ” Former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen “…I don’t give a s**t if that is a crime.” IRS Attorney on Lerner Scandal: “All that stuff we saw in the news, yeah mistakes were made.” IRS is Comfy Gig, Democratic Socialist of...

Rettig will take over from Trump Treasury official David Kautter, who has been running the IRS on an interim basis since the departure last fall of John Koskinen, an Obama appointee who was despised by Republicans. In confirmation hearings, Rettig said that his overriding goal would be to restore confidence in the IRS, which has for years been the objection of conservative suspicion and faced significant budget cuts. Rettig will be tasked with implementing the new tax law passed by Republicans and signed into law by Trump in December. The IRS was afforded a modest increase in funding this spring...

A Major Victory: State Releases Clinton Server Emails from Weiner’s Laptop! Judicial Watch Opposes Secrecy in Obama IRS Scandal Happy New Year! A Major Victory: State Releases Clinton Server Emails from Weiner’s Laptop! Today, the U.S. Department of State began releasing Huma Abedin’s work-related documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that were found on her estranged husband Anthony Weiner’s personal laptop. This is a major victory. After years of hard work in federal court, Judicial Watch forced the State Department to finally allow Americans to see these public documents. We have been following this case closely because...

IRS commissioner John Koskinen’s last day on the job is Thursday, but he appears to have decided to bestow one final gift on the business community on his way out. This year, the IRS will strictly enforce the ObamaCare employer mandate for the first time since its inception, the agency confirmed to The Wall Street Journal Opens a New Window. on Tuesday, suddenly handing out penalties to companies with 50 employees or more that fail to provide affordable insurance to full-time employees and dependents. The letters also date back to 2015, which mean companies could be on the hook for...

President Donald Trump on Thursday tapped David Kautter, a senior tax official at the Treasury Department, to become acting IRS commissioner, starting Nov. 13.Kautter will temporarily take over the top job at a critical time for the agency, as Republicans work on a major tax code overhaul and an IRS audit of the president’s own taxes continues. He will succeed Commissioner John Koskinen, the embattled IRS chief whose term ends Nov. 12. If a landmark GOP tax bill passes before the end of the year, as top Republicans intend, Kautter would have the monumental task of implementing the first major...

President Trump made it official on Thursday that embattled IRS Commissioner John Koskinen will be out of a job next month. Trump tapped David Kautter, the Treasury Department’s assistant secretary for tax policy, to serve as interim IRS commissioner, beginning Nov. 13. Koskinen’s term ends on Nov. 12. He was eligible for reappointment, but Koskinen is fiercely opposed by congressional Republicans. Members of the House Freedom Caucus attempted but failed to impeach Koskinen last year, largely over his handling of the scandal involving former IRS official Lois Lerner. Prior to Koskinen’s tenure, Lerner was accused targeting conservative groups who applied...

Lost emails, destroyed hard drives, foot dragging, stonewalling, and a smirking, sneering IRS commissioner doing his best to obscure the truth -- this has largely been the response by the Internal Revenue Service to investigations by Congress and FOIA requests from conservative groups trying to discover the truth about the IRS targeting scandal. But one federal judge appears to be just as curious as the rest of us about what exactly the IRS was up to when it targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny in approving their tax-exempt status. Washington Examiner: Judge Reggie B. Walton of the U.S. District Court...

One of the groups that sued the Internal Revenue Service over its targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups believes there has been a breakthrough that will help them draw a more complete picture of what went on behind the scenes at the agency, four years after it took its case to court. In a lawsuit involving True the Vote, Judge Reggie B. Walton of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the IRS last week to release the names of employees involved in targeting conservative and Tea Party groups. Walton also told the IRS to explain...

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the IRS to name the specific employees the agency blames for targeting tea party groups for intrusive scrutiny and said the government must prove it has ceased the targeting. Judge Reggie B. Walton also said the IRS must explain the reasons for the delays for 38 groups that are part of a lawsuit in the District of Columbia, where they are still looking for a full accounting of their treatment. Judge Walton approved another round of limited discovery in the case and laid out six questions that the IRS must answer, including the employees’...

The Internal Revenue Service rehired 213 employees who ducked taxes, falsified documents, were convicted of theft, or made unauthorized use of taxpayer data, an inspector general’s report says. The Office of Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which also first discovered the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups in 2013, examined the agency’s hiring from January 2015 through March 2016. For these 15 months, the IRS official in charge was Commissioner John Koskinen, an appointee of resident Barack Obama. House Republicans for months sought to impeach Koskinen for obstructing a congressional probe into the agency’s targeting of the applications for tax-exempt...

Does IRS chairman John Koskinen have superpowers?  Or does he know things so incriminating about everyone that he not only retains his job (in the face of demands for his firing), but flaunts his ability to offer succor to abusive bureaucrats? Ali Meyer reports in the Washington Free Beacon: The Internal Revenue Service rehired employees who were previously involved in agency misconduct such as falsifying documents or having unauthorized access to sensitive taxpayer information, according to an audit from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. Considering that identify theft is a major concern, auditors wanted to inspect the agency to ensure the...

Judicial Watch Launches New Election Integrity Lawsuit IRS Records Missing Court Update: Weiner Laptop Documents Uncovered Judicial Watch Launches New Election Integrity Lawsuit This week saw the first official meeting of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity , which is under attack from leftists who want to preserve the ability to steal elections. Also this week, your Judicial Watch filed a new lawsuit that could serve to get key information about the integrity of election rolls in Maryland (one of the states “resisting” inquiries from the Advisory Commission on Election Integrity). We filed the lawsuit simply to gain...

The Internal Revenue Service, which is responsible for collecting federal taxes and enforcing federal tax law, was unable to accurately deal with its own complex rules governing the payment of its own employees and ended up overpaying more than 600 IRS workers about $4,200,000, according to an audit report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. The IRS also underpaid more than 900 employees about $2,700,000, according to TIGTA’s estimate. The inspector general found that the IRS’s rules for how it determines the correct pay for one of its own employees when he or she is promoted to a...

In a major victory in the ongoing Lois Lerner scandal at the IRS, non-profit election integrity organization True the Vote defeated an IRS motion to quash discovery in True the Vote v. IRS. The ruling means that everyone involved in the scandal could be compelled to submit every document related to the case and be deposed by True the Vote's legal team.From their press release: Judge Reggie Walton of U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia just issued a critical order in True the Vote v. IRS case. The order compels the IRS to submit to discovery and...

Unhappy that their favorite whipping boy is still in charge of the IRS, House Republicans asked President Donald Trump on Wednesday to fire Commissioner John Koskinen. Fifteen Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee sent Trump a letter asking him to can Koskinen. They said trust in the IRS has hit rock bottom and that under Koskinen, the IRS destroyed evidence when Congress was investigating the tax agency for inappropriately singling out conservative groups for extra scrutiny. “He also misled Congress in the process, intentionally degraded customer service at the agency, and has since lost the trust of the...

Congress’s top tax expert led Republicans Wednesday in demanding President Trump fire IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, saying the tax agency cannot be repaired as long as he’s at the helm. “Trust in the IRS is hitting rock-bottom,” the Republicans, led by Rep. Kevin Brady, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a letter calling on Mr. Trump to take action. The 15 committee Republicans said not only did the IRS destroy evidence from key figure Lois G. Lerner’s computer in the tea party targeting probe, but the agency also “intentionally” made the tax experience painful for customers...

Full title: Judicial Watch Obtains 695 Pages of Obama IRS Scandal Documents – Records Not Produced in Initial Congressional Investigation First Batch of Records from 7,000-Page Cache Uncovered Last Month (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released 695 pages of new documents from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that contain admissions by IRS officials that the agency used “inappropriate political labels” to screen the tax-exempt applications of conservative organizations. Other records reveal that the IRS was going to require 501(c)(4) nonprofit organizations to restrict their alleged political activities in exchange for “expedited consideration” of their tax-exempt applications. The documents were...

Here is a list of the top ten holdover Obama loyalist bureaucrats President Trump can either fire immediately or remove from their current positions (civil service). 1) John Koskinen, Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service 2) Richard Cordray, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director 3) John Lansing, CEO of Broadcasting Board of Governors 4) Amanda Bennett, Voice of America Director 5) Kenneth Tota, Acting Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, Department of Health and Human Services (civil service) 6)Anastasia Brown, Acting Deputy Director for Refugee Programs, Office of Refugee Resettlement, Department of Health and Human Services (civil service) . ....

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen did not make a good impression at hearings of the House oversight committee on the agency's targeting of conservative groups. He was arrogant, unresponsive, and made snide comments about GOP members of the committee. Although appointed by the president to a term that ends this November, Koskinen has said he will step aside if the Trump White House requests it. If that's the case, you would think Koskinen would be one of the first Obama holdovers to lose his job. But more than 60 days into the Trump administration, Koskinen is still pulling down a generous...