Congress Moves Forward With Impeachment of IRS Commissioner

(Hat tip: KimR) - A resolution to impeach Koskinen was introduced last year by House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz over the stonewalling and obstruction of ongoing congressional investigations into IRS targeting of conservative groups. Now, the House Judiciary Committee will hold two hearings on the resolution and will determine whether to proceed with impeachment. Read more at Townhall.com Read More......

Elizabeth Warren thinks the IRS should fill out your tax returns

(Hat tip: KimR) - With Monday’s tax filing deadline looming over many Americans’ weekends, Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s new bill may seem like a godsend. The Massachusetts Democrat introduced legislation Wednesday that would allow U.S. taxpayers to have the government do their taxes for them—for free. Read more at Boston.com Read More......

Report: IRS May Still Be Targeting Conservative Organizations for Audit

The Internal Revenue Service may still be unfairly targeting conservative organizations for audit due to flaws within their interior controls, Americans for Tax Reform reported Wednesday.

Read more at the Washington Free Beacon
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The IRS Wants Organizations to Collect Donors Social Security Numbers. This Tea Party Group Is Fighting Back

A Tea Party organization is mobilizing its supporters nationwide in an attempt to stymie a proposed regulation from the Internal Revenue Service regarding the disclosures of donor information. --Tea Party Patriots is launching an email and social media campaign using #IRSPowerGrab today, encouraging supporters and conservative leaders nationwide to push back against a rule proposed by the Internal Revenue Service that would give nonprofits the option to collect the Social Security numbers of donors who contribute $250 or more to an organization.

Read more at the Daily Signal
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Secret IRS policy hides identity theft from victims

Why are you here?" I asked. --The whistleblowers looked at each other and smiled. --"Because I love my country. And I just can't do this no more. It's not right," said one of the IRS workers.

Read more at WTHR
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Top Senators Question IRS Use Of Secret Cellphone Tracking Technology

Two top senators Thursday demanded that the Obama administration explain why the Internal Revenue Service is using technology to secretly track cellphones that is normally the domain of law-enforcement agencies. The move by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont followed IRS Commissioner John Koskinen's admission to the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday that the agency uses the technology.

Read more at Newsmax
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How Do You Spell Apparent Fraud? The Clinton Foundation, Shady Accounting and AIDS

The Clinton Foundation has gotten a good deal of unflattering attention as of late, which isn’t surprising given that its best known namesakes are Bill, a former president and chronic philanderer, and Hillary, who hopes to be the nation’s next leader. Furthermore, the foundation portrays itself as do-gooder nonprofit organization but a cursory look reveals questionable and incomplete disclosures of its activities and accounts, as well as incredible misspending of donor money, virtually since its inception.

Read more at Byline.com
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Lois Lerner won't face charges in IRS scandal

Former IRS official Lois Lerner will not face any charges for her role in the scandal of her agency's decision to slow-walk decisions about the tax-exempt status of conservative groups, the Justice Department announced in a letter. --Snip-- The federal government is thus closing its nearly two-year inquiry into the matter without charging anyone. The investigation found "substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia leading to the belief by many tax-exempt applicants that the IRS targeted them based on their political viewpoints." --"But poor management is not a crime."

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IRS Lawyer Who Headed Lerner Email Release Present When Markings on Clinton Emails Changed

Markings on no fewer than four emails contained on Hillary Clinton’s private system were changed to a category that blocks Congress and the public from viewing their contents, according to State Department whistleblowers. --Fox News reported:

The changes, which came to light after the first tranche of 296 Benghazi emails was released in May, was confirmed by two sources–one congressional, the other intelligence.

Read more at the Washington Free Beacon
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Judge to IRS attorneys: I’m about to charge Koskinen personally with contempt

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has had a bad week. Thanks to his efforts to obstruct a Congressional investigation into the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax exempt status, House Republicans have demanded his dismissal by Barack Obama, and have threatened to impeach Koskinen if Obama does nothing. On top of that, a federal judge yesterday got fed up with the IRS’ attempts to obstruct a FOIA demand that he threatened to haul Koskinen into court in order to charge him with contempt. It might be a bad week for the IRS’ attorneys, too:

During the a status hearing today, Sullivan warned that the failure to follow his order was serious and the IRS and Justice Department’s excuses for not following his July 1 order were “indefensible, ridiculous, and absurd.” He asked the IRS’ Justice Department lawyer Geoffrey Klimas, “Why didn’t the IRS comply” with his court order and “why shouldn’t the Court hold the Commissioner of the IRS in contempt.”

Read more at Hotair.com
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Emails: Lois Lerner Is Longtime Friends With Regulator Who Targeted Scott Walker

Lois Lerner, the former IRS official accused of targeting conservative non-profit groups, is longtime friends with a Wisconsin state regulator who helped local prosecutors investigate aides and conservative allies of Gov. Scott Walker. --The Wall Street Journal reports in an editorial ["Wisconsin's Friends at the IRS"] that Lerner and Kevin Kennedy, the director of the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB), were in routine contact via email between 2011 and 2013. --Emails viewed by The Journal show that the two regulators discussed issues ranging from the personal to political. They shared news articles about campaign finance and also discussed dinner plans. The pair have known each other for more than 20 years, Kennedy told The Journal.

Read more at the Daily Caller
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Judicial Watch: New Documents Reveal DOJ, IRS, and FBI Plan to Seek Criminal Charges...

Judicial Watch: New Documents Reveal DOJ, IRS, and FBI Plan to Seek Criminal Charges of Obama Opponents (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.

Read more at Judicial Watch
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Rand Paul calls for 14.5 percent flat tax

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) wants to gut the U.S. tax code and instead install a flat tax, insisting such a plan would “turbocharge” the economy and be fairer for average taxpayers. Paul, who’s running for president in 2016, would put into place one 14.5 percent rate for individual, business and investment income, and remove all but a couple of the tax breaks currently on the books. The current top rate for individuals and many small businesses is near 40 percent, while the corporate rate tops out at 35 percent. --Taxpayers would get to keep the deductions for home mortgage interest and charitable deductions under Paul’s plan, and would also not have to pay any payroll taxes. Plus, the gift and estate taxes would be scrapped, and the first $50,000 of a family of four’s income would be exempt from taxes.

Read more at The Hill
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IRS official: ‘Lois Lerner was the tip of the iceberg’

The IRS’s director of privacy, governmental liaison and disclosure division testified Wednesday that the tax agency set up a special team with hundreds of lawyers to handle the probe into whether Tea Party groups were targeted, but repeatedly said she had no idea how it operated. —Mary Howard, who also works as the head Freedom of Information Act officer in the IRS, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that once the “special project team” was created and operational, she never saw requests for information. —Asked who was on the team, she said: “My first hand knowledge of that is none.” But she did say the Chief Council of the IRS — one of only two political appointees in the IRS; the other is the commissioner — was on the “special project team,” as were “hundreds of attorneys.”

Read more at the Washington Times
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IRS Pummeled by Court for Suggesting it's OK to Discriminate Against Pro-Israel Group

Chief Judge Garland to the IRS's lawyer: 'Go back and ask your superiors whether they want us to represent that the government's position in this case is that the government is free to unconstitutionally discriminate against its citizens for 270 days." --In a highly unusual public thrashing of a government lawyer for the Internal Revenue Service by the second highest U.S. court, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, asked: “You don’t really mean that the IRS is free to discriminate against its citizens, do you?”

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N.C. Small Business Owner: IRS Seized More Than $100K From Me

A North Carolina store owner is fighting to recover more than $100,000 from the IRS. --The feds reportedly seized Lyndon McLellan’s life savings under a banking law designed to stop drug dealers and money laundering. The IRS accused McLellan of structuring – repeatedly depositing money in increments just under $10,000. --The IRS had said it would no longer target deposits unless the money was involved in a separate illegal activity. McLellan, who owns L&M Convenience Mart in Fairmont, hasn’t been charged with anything, yet he hasn’t gotten his money back.

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NEW EMAILS Could Send Democrat Elijah Cummings to Prison for Targeting Voter Rights Group

Last April House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) released a report implicating Democrat Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) in colluding with the IRS and Lois Lerner against the nonpartisan voters rights group “True the Vote.”  Catherine Engelbrecht, the founder of “True the Vote,” testified before Congress in February. She was targeted by FBI, IRS, ATF, and OSHA after she filed for tax exempt status for her voters rights group.

Read more at the Gateway Pundit
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IRS CANCELLED Contract with Email-Storage Firm Weeks After Lerner’s Computer Crash

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) cancelled its longtime relationship with an email-storage contractor just weeks after ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s computer crashed and shortly before other IRS officials’ computers allegedly crashed.  The IRS signed a contract with Sonasoft, an email-archiving company based in San Jose, California, each year from 2005 to 2010. The company, which partners with Microsoft and counts The New York Times among its clients, claims in its company slogans that it provides “Email Archiving Done Right” and “Point-Click Recovery.” Sonasoft in 2009 tweeted, “If the IRS uses Sonasoft products to backup their servers why wouldn’t you choose them to protect your severs?

Read more at the Daily Caller
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No Wonder the IRS Is ‘Losing’ E-mails: It Was Trying to Throw Innocent Conservatives in Jail

Even a small child can connect these dots.

The IRS is announcing the “loss” of mass numbers of e-mails (do they have any computers that don’t crash?) even as the e-mails that do exist are beginning to show the extent of IRS corruption. Let’s take this exchange (previously uncovered by Judicial Watch) between Lois Lerner, the director of exempt organizations at the IRS, and Nikole Flax, then the IRS commissioner’s chief of staff. (To be clear, these are not “low level” employees.)

Read more at the National Review
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GOP fury after report claims IRS 'recycled' Lerner hard drive

The top Republican on one of the House committees investigating the IRS targeting scandal reacted furiously late Wednesday to a report that ex-IRS official Lois Lerner's hard drive had been recycled, making it likely that many emails sent to and from Lerner prior to the summer of 2011 will never be recovered.  The Politico report cited two anonymous sources, as well as Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who confirmed that the Senate Finance Committee had been told that the hard drive had been discarded.

Read more at Fox News
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