The Internal Revenue Service scandal regarding the harassment of
tea party groups who sought tax exempt status appears to be exploding as
groups from Billy Graham’s apostolate to the National Organization for
Marriage have come forward to say they were targeted. Meanwhile, the
president’s half-brother received special treatment.
Various
news outlets are reporting that the IRS scandal is burgeoning as new
evidence is found that more than just conservative tea party groups were
targeted for extra scrutiny. This extra scrutiny meant some applicants
had to provide information such as copies of all of their
Facebook
posts, Web pages, blog posts, and social media postings. Some were
asked to provide the resumes of their board members, transcripts of
interviews with the media, or copies of all board meeting minutes since
the creation of the organization. In some cases, the requests were so
onerous the groups gave up and withdrew their application.
Others continued the process and are now suing for relief. For
instance, National Organization for Marriage (NOM) president Brian Brown
announced on Tuesday that his organization plans to sue the IRS for
allegedly leaking their confidential donor information to gay activists.
“Not only has the IRS retaliated against conservative,
small-government and tea party groups as they apply for recognition of
tax exemption and lied about it, but it has criminally released our
confidential tax return including the identity of dozens of major donors
to a political enemy,” NOM President Brian Brown said in a statement.
According to
Politico, both the
Huffington Post
and the Human Rights Campaign, a gay activist group, posted IRS
documents showing contributions made by GOP presidential nominee Mitt
Romney to NOM.
“In addition to being our principal combatant in the war on
traditional marriage, [the Human Rights Campaign’s] president at the
time was serving as a co-chair of President Obama’s reelection
campaign,” Brown said in Tuesday’s statement. “This is a chilling set of
circumstances that should ring alarm bells across the nation.”
Lois Lerner, IRS official at center of scandal
He plans to file suit later this month.
Todd Starnes of
Fox Radio is
reporting that Billy Graham’s ministries such as the Billy Graham
Evangelistic Association and Samaritan’s Purse have also been the
targets of IRS nit-picking, as has the Biblical Recorder, the news
journal of the North Carolina Baptist State Convention.
Pro-life groups have also felt the wrath of the IRS. Peter Shinn,
founder of the pro-life Cherish Life Ministries, said that when he filed
for tax-exempt status, he was told he didn’t qualify because he didn’t
provide information on abortion.
“The representative was telling me I had to provide information on
all aspects of abortion, I couldn’t just educate the church from the
pro-life perspective,” Shinn told
World Net Daily.
In another case, the IRS withheld approval of an application for tax
exempt status for Coalition for Life of Iowa, insisting that they send a
letter to the IRS with signatures of their entire board stating that
under perjury of the law, they would not picket or protest outside of
Planned Parenthood.
According to
Politico, the Jewish organization, Z Street,
sued the IRS in 2010 after being told their application for tax exempt
status was delayed and sent to a “special unit…to determine whether the
organization’s activities contradict the Administration’s public
policies.”
Meanwhile, evidence has surfaced that the president’s half-brother
received his tax-exempt status in record time, even though he had been
operating his organization illegally prior to making application.
The
Daily Caller is
reporting that Lois Lerner, the same IRS official who revealed the
agency’s habit of targeting tea partiers, signed the paperwork that
granted tax exempt status to the Barack H. Obama Foundation, a somewhat
shady charity headed by Abon’go “Roy” Malik Obama, the president’s
half-brother. His application was approved within a month of filing
while some conservative groups have been waiting as long as three years
for their cases to be approved. Not only did he get approval in record
time, but Lerner also granted him retroactive tax status.
As the
Daily Caller reports,
Malik Obama, who was the best man at the president’s wedding, has quite
a history. “In addition to running his charity, Malik Obama ran
unsuccessfully to be the governor of Siaya County in Kenya. He was
accused of being a wife beater and seducing the newest of his twelve
wives while she was a 17-year-old school girl.”
It’s no wonder that the latest
Rasmussen poll found that 55 percent of the American people believe the President or his top aides knew what was going on at the IRS.
In spite of the agency’s repeated insistence that their behavior was
not motivated by politics, the public isn’t buying it. A whopping 57
percent say they believe the agency’s behavior was all about politics.
The people also want to see something done about it to make sure it
doesn’t happen again. Fifty-seven percent want disciplinary action taken
against the perpetrators of the IRS scandal and want them to be either
jailed or fired.
UPDATE: The acting head of the IRS, Steven Miller, announced
yesterday that he is resigning his position over the scandal. However,
Miller was planning to resign his position in June anyway, leading some
to speculate that he was a willing scapegoat used by the Administration
for political purposes.
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