Tag Archives: Jay Sekulow

The re-weaponization of the IRS

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Figure 1: 45th President of the United States of America, Donald John Trump.

Not Hillary Rodham Clinton. And from November 9th on the Demorat, Leftist and American Media Maggot side, insanity reigned supreme. To this day. To this second.

We saw the IRS weaponized against Conservatives and, specifically, the TEA Party (so few remember what TEA stood for: “Taxed Enough Already.”) beginning in 2010 when the Obama/Lois Lerner Internal Revenue Service unfairly scrutinized them based on their political leanings when they sought a tax-exempt status.

This wasn’t just specious bong water. (Hey, doesn’t that sound like the name of some new garage band?) Court documents showed it. In a 27 month span, over 300 Conservative groups were targeted and not one of them — in the Obama Administration, under Lois Lerner as Director of the Exempt Organizations — not one of them was able to acquire tax exempt status. Why? Power and political bias. But wait; there’s more. Another specific person was involved.

Remember when the IRS’s Lois Lerner took the fifth with regard to the issue?

But what does that mean? And why would you not want any of your testimony revealed for any reason whatsoever? How is it that your testimony is any more valuable or worthy of redaction or elimination than that of anyone else? Does that not demand the questions “What are you hiding and why are you hiding it?”

So what happened to various TEA Party groups?

There’s a massive clue. The ACLJ — American Center for Law and Justice, under Jay Sekulow, sued the IRS. Then there was this in 2017 from Reuters.com:

Justice Department settles with conservative groups over IRS scrutiny

(Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department has reached a settlement with dozens of conservative groups that claimed the Internal Revenue Service unfairly scrutinized them based on their political leanings when they sought a tax-exempt status, court documents showed.

In a pair of lawsuits filed in federal court in 2013, the conservative groups accused the IRS of targeting organizations with such words as “Tea Party” or “patriots” when they applied to the agency for tax-exempt status starting in 2010.

The sides asked the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on Wednesday to issue a declarative judgment in one of the cases involving 41 plaintiffs that would say the IRS was wrong to apply the United States tax laws based on an entity’s name, position or association with a particular political movement.

“We hope that today’s settlement makes clear that this abuse of power will not be tolerated,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement on Thursday.

More importantly:

The IRS admitted it was wrong when it based screenings of the groups’ applications on their names or policy positions, subjected the groups to heightened scrutiny and delays and demanded unnecessary information from the groups, the agreement in the Washington case said.

The IRS “expresses its sincere apology,” it said.

Senior management within the IRS’s Exempt Organizations Division “was delinquent in its responsibility to provide effective control, guidance, and direction over the processing of applications for tax exempt status filed by Tea Party and other political advocacy organizations,” the settlement document said.

A request to halt the other case, a class action suit involving 428 members, was filed in a federal court in Ohio.

Republicans claimed the targeting of conservative groups showed political bias in the IRS under former Democratic President Barack Obama. House Republican investigators found no connection to the Obama administration, according to a 2014 report.

More pointedly:

But the report did blame IRS officials for mistreating conservative organizations who sought tax-exempt status and that IRS officials covered up the misconduct and misled Congress.

The officials included former Commissioner Douglas Shulman, former acting Commissioner Steven Miller, and Lois Lerner, the former head of the unit overseeing applications for tax-exempt status.

Bottom line?

No criminal charges were ever filed against IRS officials.

Why would there? No bias here. Nothing to see. Move along. This isn’t the corruption you’re looking for under the first actual black president of the United States.

The situation led to this, where Commissioner John Koskinen was rightly accused of running the “most corrupt and deceitful IRS in history.”

It took years, but finally:

Jay Sekulow: Victory! IRS admits Tea Party, other conservative groups were targets during Obama era

by Jay Sekulow

It took many years to resolve. But I am delighted to report that we have just obtained a resounding victory in our legal challenge to the IRS’s political targeting of conservative organizations.

In an unprecedented victorious conclusion to our four year-long legal battle against the IRS, the bureaucratic agency has just admitted in federal court that it wrongfully targeted Tea Party and conservative groups during the Obama administration because of their political viewpoints and issued an apology to our clients for doing so. In addition, the IRS is consenting to a court order that would prohibit it from ever engaging in this form of unconstitutional discrimination in the future.

In a proposed Consent Order filed with the Court yesterday, the IRS has apologized for its treatment of our clients — 36 Tea Party and other conservative organizations from 20 states that applied for 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) tax-exempt status with the IRS between 2009 and 2012 — during the tax-exempt determinations process. Crucially, following years of denial by the IRS and blame-shifting by IRS officials, the agency now expressly admits that its treatment of our clients was wrong.

Reuters reported:

Justice Department settles with conservative groups over IRS scrutiny

(Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department has reached a settlement with dozens of conservative groups that claimed the Internal Revenue Service unfairly scrutinized them based on their political leanings when they sought a tax-exempt status, court documents showed.

In a pair of lawsuits filed in federal court in 2013, the conservative groups accused the IRS of targeting organizations with such words as “Tea Party” or “patriots” when they applied to the agency for tax-exempt status starting in 2010.

The sides asked the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on Wednesday to issue a declarative judgment in one of the cases involving 41 plaintiffs that would say the IRS was wrong to apply the United States tax laws based on an entity’s name, position or association with a particular political movement.

Along with digging and suits administered by the ACLJ, there was another element to the weaponization of the IRS, and that was John McCain. It’s no secret that I am not an admirer of McCain, a “Republican” who was one of the most dishonest men in politics. I would have respected McCain had he been candid and clear by changing his (R) to a (D), which he truly was. He actually threatened to do so in 2010 because he wasn’t getting his way. Tantrums.

I’m sure his family at least tolerated him at home, he didn’t set stray kittens on fire (although it’s admittedly difficult to prove a negative), and he was never caught acting like an actual Conservative. That much is true.

But in addition, it was John McCain who in fact helped to weaponize the IRS against TEA Party operations.

Judicial Watch reveals the following via the WashingtonTimes.com:

McCain’s office urged IRS to use audits as weapons to destroy political advocacy groups – UPDATED

A new report from Judicial Watch reveals a concerted effort from Sen. John McCain’s office to urge the IRS under Lois Lerner to strike out against political advocacy groups, including tea party organizations.

Thanks to the results of an extensive Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that has been delayed for many years, Judicial Watch has obtained several key emails from 2013 that chronicle McCain’s and Democrat Sen. Carl Levin’s efforts to reign in the advocacy groups that sprouted immediately following the Citizens United decision from the Supreme Court.

Let’s be clear. McCain didn’t get his way with the Supreme Court in re McCain-Feingold.

The point of this post isn’t about the McCain-Feingold bill. It was about McCain’s reaction to the SCOTUS decision. And McCain’s willingness to light the ass of the IRS on fire and set it on TEA Party. Weaponizing the IRS.

Watch McCain’s reaction regarding what he perceives to be his personal loss at SCOTUS. Because, as you know, it’s all about McCain.

McCain-Feingold was invalidated by the Supreme Court. Say what you will about his bill, McCain took it — like everything else in his political life — personally. McCain then somehow concluded it was time to tender a steaming dump on TEA Party groups because he was foiled.

The documents uncovered by Judicial Watch include notes from a high-level meeting on April 30, 2013 between powerful members of McCain’s and Levin’s staffs and Lerner, then-director of tax exempt organizations at the IRS under Barack Obama. The notes reveal the suggestions from McCain’s former staff director and chief counsel on the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee, Henry Kerner who urges Lerner to use IRS audits on the advocacy groups to financially ruin them.

Because if McCain couldn’t have his, you couldn’t have yours. With McCain, it was all about McCain.

Less than two weeks after the April 30 meeting, Lerner revealed that her staff had purposely discriminated against conservative tea party groups seeking 501(c)4 tax exempt status because they represented and advocated for conservative political positions. 

McCain doing the work of the Demorats as per normal.

“The Obama IRS scandal is bipartisan – McCain and Democrats who wanted to regulate political speech lost at the Supreme Court, so they sought to use the IRS to harass innocent Americans,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The Obama IRS scandal is not over – as Judicial Watch continues to uncover smoking gun documents that raise questions about how the Obama administration weaponized the IRS, the FEC, FBI, and DOJ to target the First Amendment rights of Americans.”

Absolutely correct. But perhaps you thought that solved everything. The IRS would never be weaponized again. Think again. Now that Trump surveillance has been proven, now that there is a crisis at our border, now that the Mueller report failed to result in Trump clapped in handcuffs and his comb-over shaved off, what’s left?

Oh yeah. Taxes taxes taxes Trump taxes taxes taxes. But first, a critical question: what is the federal statute requiring presidents to turn over their tax returns? Answer: there is no such thing.

Trump ran on and won the presidency based upon refusing to disclose his tax returns. I didn’t care then and I don’t care now. Nixon began the “tradition” if you will and Trump may be the one to end it.

Obama failed to release his college transcripts or his passport. Obama’s years at Columbia are an absolute mystery. No one remembers him. Why? Moreover, do I really care? No, I don’t.

Fast forward to today. Trump is still made of Teflon, a material Leftists, Demorats and the American Media Maggots wish never existed. Nothing sticks to Trump. Not even the rhetorical or written napalm meant to incinerate him and everyone around him, including his family.

Two years down the drain and Bob “The Savior” Mueller turns out to be, well, everything but. As I said for the past year-plus, all Mueller had were crimes of process that would never have come to light save the investigation itself. Translation: he created those crimes with an investigation that would otherwise have not occurred. Now all the LDAMM have sworn to stop sending Bobbie any Christmas cards at all. #Lonely.

Michael Avenatti, Trump’s most vocal nemesis, the darling of CNN, MSNBC and CNBC, turns out to be the poster child for — as Tucker Carlson says — a Creepy Porn Lawyer. If anyone got napalmed, it was Mikey. He was the Bernie Madoff of unconscionable lawyers. Yeah. “Avenatti 2020.”

I just couldn’t help but place the video. It’s too good to pass up. Back to taxes.

Bernie Sanders said he would release his taxes and, this past weekend, he did. What we discovered is that Bernie Sanders is precisely what he excoriates: part of the 1%. Translated: he’s a millionaire. Wait. That doesn’t compute. How can Socialist Bernie Sanders be a member of the very group he — I guess, now — pretends to hate?

Further, Sanders said he made money on his book; a very good book you see. You should read it. He crowed about writing it during the Town Hall meeting hosted by Bret Baier and Martha McCallum. He says he won’t apologize for writing a book. He’s promoting entrepreneurship, it seems.

Reminded by the Times reporter that he is now someone of considerable means, Sanders retorted: “I wrote a best-selling book. If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too.”

If that isn’t an advocacy for entrepreneurship — what is?

“If anyone thinks I should apologize for writing a bestselling book, I’m sorry, I’m not going to do it,” Sanders said in a fiery Fox News town hall Monday night. He defended his earnings and insisted he does not attack the wealthy.  

Of course Bernie Sanders doesn’t attack the wealthy. Which is 1) bullshit, he has (see below), and 2) more recently because it has been exposed that he himself is a millionaire.

Wait. Doesn’t he despise millionaires and billionaires?

Bernie Sanders said his wealth isn’t even the American Dream.

Then Bret Baier, one of the Fox moderators, asked Mr. Sanders, “When you wrote the book and you made the money, isn’t that the definition of capitalism and the American dream?”

“No,” Mr. Sanders replied.

The bottom line is this: there is no law requiring those running for president to release their taxes. There is no law requiring presidents to release their taxes.

If President Trump declines to release his taxes, absent a law, that is his right.

Because it’s involving Trump, and because Leftists, Demorats and the American Media Maggots have abjectly failed to blow Donald Trump out of the Oval Office on so many levels and via so many ways — it will be proven most of them illegal — it’s now time to focus on taxes. The very item that those who elected him in 2016 couldn’t give one oozing, pustulant crap about.

And don’t now either.

Weaponizing the IRS.

But only against Conservatives or anyone who dares, like Trump, to push against the DC Norm.

Trump is a threat, he has caused fear, he is pushing envelopes, and to this point the LDAMM have been entirely unsuccessful in dismantling his success.

The LDAMM cannot even concede one success Trump has acquired for America because, to do that, they would have to recognize that, on a larger more overarching level, he really is making America greater.

Worse yet: greater than Barack Hussein Obama.

The LDAMM will do everything they possibly can to acknowledge even one Trump success. And if the United States or its citizens have to suffer because of their refusal, well, you can go straight to hell.

Atonement, expiations, the minimization of American power. Self-loathing.

“There’s nothing exceptional about America.”

A loathing of the United States of America.

That’s the goal of Demorats.

Started by Obama.

Desired in 2020.

BZ

 

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Why you can trust the FBI

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Oh wait; no you can’t.

From the ACLJ.org:

by the ACLJ

After twice denying their existence – first lying to the ACLJ, and then once caught, claiming it had turned over all documents to the ACLJ – the FBI Deep State has just admitted in federal court that is has found new documents – 16 pages and 2 text messages – that it will be forced to turn over to the ACLJ by the end of the month.

In recently filed court documents, the FBI finally admitted – on its supposedly third search attempt – that it has located another batch of documents responsive to the ACLJ’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for information relating to former Attorney General Lynch’s suspiciously timed and highly secretive meeting with former President Clinton on a tarmac in Arizona just days before it publicly exonerated Hillary Clinton.

Come on. Isn’t that just a tad severe, calling it “lying”? Maybe the agents or their IAs (the FBI employs what are termed Investigative Assistants, civilians who do an assload of background/scut-work for agents) were just feeling a bit lethargic those days. Bad allergies. Delayed borborygmus. Ankle swelling. Pimples. Who knows?

Specifically, the FBI reported that it has located an additional 16 pages and 2 text messages. The FBI informed the court that it will produce these documents to the ACLJ on or by May 31, 2018.

Hallelujah! It’s a miracle! They’re feeling fine now.

As we reported a few weeks ago, just days before the FBI was to file a response to the ACLJ’s motion for summary judgment challenging the adequacy of the FBI’s search for documents, the FBI, instead, filed a motion with the court requesting that summary judgment proceedings be stayed while the FBI conducted a third search for documents. Yes, you read that right. A third search.

Because, after all: nobody’s perfect. Right? Just try lying to an FBI agent during an interview. “Hey look, I wasn’t really lying. I was just sort of, well, you know.”

The FBI’s earlier searches were less than sufficient to comply with federal requirements under FOIA. In fact, following its first supposed search, the FBI claimed that “no records” existed responsive to the ACLJ’s FOIA request. The ACLJ later obtained evidence that proved the FBI’s claim false, and the ACLJ demanded another search. While a second search was conducted by the FBI, which produced some documents, it quickly became clear that the search was, again, inadequate.

Oh come on. No one’s perfect. We’re the US government. We have standards.

Right. Standards that we expect others to uphold — just not us. Or the U.S.

Nonetheless, the FBI did not volunteer to conduct another search for documents. The ACLJ had to demand another search in federal court. In fact, when it finally was forced to conduct this third search, we learned that it was going to be searching the FBI’s “Central Records System” – for the FIRST time. It was that bad.

Here is the ACLJ’s Jay Sekulow from August 4th of last year.

Kevin D. Williamson wrote on January 28th this year for NationalReview.com:

Why Trust the FBI?

There is a reason for the crisis of faith in our institutions

One thing about which thoughtful progressives and conservatives generally agree is that institutions matter. It is important to have a First Amendment and other protections for a free press, but you also need the New York Times, National Review, Wired, CNN, and, the times being what they are, In Touch Weekly and its Stormy Daniels coverage — or else the First Amendment is only a hypothetical. The irreplaceable nature of functioning institutions is why we can’t just drop off copies of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in Somalia and Afghanistan and expect to find thriving constitutional republics there a few years later. The right to a speedy trial doesn’t mean much if your courts are corrupt or inept. The right to petition the government for redress of grievances means nothing if the government is impotent or indifferent.

As the Washington Post is these days wont to say, “Democracy Dies In Darkness.” BZ suggests, instead, that “Democracy Dies In DC.”

When the IRS was in trouble for targeting tea-party organizations and other conservative groups in the run-up to the 2012 election, thousands of emails — evidence under subpoena — went missing. John Koskinen, then acting commissioner of the IRS, lied to Congress about how and why that happened, a fact he was later forced to acknowledge. As a legal question, the result of all that malfeasance — destroying evidence — was precisely squat. Lois Lerner walks the streets a free woman with a fat federal pension, and John Koskinen is perfectly comfortable showing his face in the daylight. And now it is the FBI’s turn. With serious questions being posed about the bureau’s activities during the 2016 election — about whether the bureau protected Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama in the matter of their habit of using off-the-books email communications to avoid ordinary oversight — the FBI has suddenly discovered months’ worth of communication between FBI counterintelligence specialist Peter Strzok and his paramour, FBI lawyer Lisa Page. The two exchanged politically charged messages about Trump and the Clinton email investigation, and Strzok wrote darkly of developing an “insurance policy” against Trump’s election, still regarded as highly unlikely at that time.

Ruh-roh. Actual damned questions. I sense some quivering from the Left Coast.

The texts went missing, and then were recovered. Or some of them were recovered. All of them? Whose word would you take on that? And why would you take the FBI’s word? Aaron Blake, writing in the Washington Post, argued that the “insurance policy” message looked bad, but not as bad as some on Trump’s side insisted. Well. He allowed that “it’s 100 percent true Mueller and his probe aren’t above reproach.”

And that, of course, is really what this is all about.

And that, of course, is factually correct.

It means, at the very least, not destroying evidence in a federal investigation. And no sane person believes for a nanosecond that those “lost” communications represent anything other than willful obstruction of justice. If you are on the FBI’s radar and you got a parking ticket in Sheboygan in 1983, the FBI knows whether you paid it. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is a federal bureau in the business of conducting investigations.

Stand by for focusing like a laser beam.

No one believes that the IRS or the FBI is above reproach. No one seriously believes that the editors of the New York Times would have treated a President Hillary Clinton and a President Donald Trump in the same way. (One likewise wonders what Fox News would have made of partially documented claims that President Bill Clinton had paid $130,000 in hush money to a porn star who says she had an affair with him.) President Obama’s so-called scandal-free administration was in fact rife with abuses of power, from the IRS to the ATF to the EPA to the NLRB. Trump may sometimes attack our institutions without good cause; the Obama administration gave critics good cause to attack our institutions.

James Comey leaked. Let’s be honest.

Former US Attorney Joe diGenova nails it. “Comey, the dirtiest cop in America.”

James Kallstrom weighs in again. He is a former FBI Assistant Director who has his own thoughts on his former-beloved agency.

If there is anyone who should love the FBI, it is Kallstrom, a man who ascended into the heavens like Zeus. But then somehow managed to crash to earth like Daedalus.

What do agents think of the FBI’s situation?

But wait. Wasn’t it all the Leftists, Demorats and American Media Maggots who insisted that we must trust all the alphabet agencies? Hashtag #BecauseTrust?

James Clapper lied before Congress. He cannot even hold his head high whilst he lies.

Rand Paul stated so.

James Comey clearly lied.

And this.

But wait; most recently we discovered, courtesy of SaraACarter.com:

Former FBI Director Comey Consulted with Mueller on Russia Testimony

by Sara A. Carter

Judicial Watch discovers emails revealing coordination

A government watchdog group revealed Thursday that former FBI Director James Comey was advised by senior FBI officials to seek Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s advice prior to testifying before “any congressional committee” about President Donald Trump’s campaign and its alleged collusion with Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election, according to new emails obtained by Judicial Watch.

Nothing like the FBI again indicating its politicization and bias.

Comey was also advised to seek Mueller’s counsel on the circumstances surrounding his firing by Trump before providing testimony to Congress, the Department of Justice emails obtained by Judicial Watch reveal. It is the first time evidence reveals there was coordination between the Special Counsel and Comey in the long drawn out controversial Mueller investigation.

This not navel-gazing. This is proof. The only collusion is between the Deep State vs President Donald John Trump, et al.

“These documents show that James Comey, who was fired by the president, nevertheless had easy, friendly access to the FBI as he prepped his infamous anti-Trump testimony to the Senate,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, in a press release. “This collusion led to Comey’s attacking President Trump and misusing FBI records as part of a vendetta against the president.”

This is about keeping our country free because, as all Leftists, Demorats and American Media Maggots know, as well as Lucifer:

The devil is in fact in the details.

But wait; it’s not even ending there. From FoxNews.com:

Strassel: Did FBI outright spy on the 2016 Trump campaign?

We could go here.

There are so many other places.

Perhaps it’s simply time to stop now.

It is, frankly, just so bad for the FBI.

BZ

 

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