Wednesday, May 15, 2013

White House: No Comparison Between Obama and Nixon: Bipartisan Congressional Demand: Provide All Communications Between IRS and WH About Targeting Conservatives; Warns: Don't Destroy, Modify or Remove Any Documents


(
 


 

At Tuesday’s White House press briefing a reporter asked, “President Obama has been compared to President Nixon. How does he feel about that?”

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said he did not have a reaction from the president to relay on that matter, but also dismissed the premise of the question.

“I can tell you, people who make those kinds of comparisons need to check their history,” Carney said. “Because what we have here with one issue, Benghazi, clearly we’re learning more and more is a political sideshow, a deliberate effort to politicize a tragedy. The president feels very strongly about that. You heard him address that yesterday.”

Last week, career State Department officials told Congress that their supervisors were not forthcoming about the cause of the attack in Benghazi, and also questioned the department’s internal investigation by the Accountability Review Board. Also, ABC News reported that the talking points for Benghazi were edited 12 times to scrub out mention of a terrorist attack and denied requests for security.

On Friday, IRS officials admitted to targeting tea party organizations, but said it was not a political move and was done by lower level officials. However, later news reports found that the targeting went beyond tea party groups and included other conservative organizations as well.
carney
White House Press Se
cretary Jay Carney. (AP)
Now the IRS matter is subject to an inspector general probe, as well as a forthcoming probe by the House Ways and Means Committee. Obama said on Monday that if the IRS “intentionally harmed” conservative groups, it would be “outrageous.” Other Democrats have condemned the IRS’s actions. On Monday, the AP, the world’s largest news gathering organization, reported that the Justice Department seized the phone records of 20 reporters and editors in April and May 2012 as part of a leak investigation.

Carney insisted Tuesday that the president cannot comment on either the IRS or the AP matter until further details are available.

“On these other issues, these are issues we are finding out about and we need to wait appropriately for independent action to be completed before he can take any action or comment specifically on it,” Carney said.

Nixon is most remembered for being the first president to resign from office in 1974 at the height of the Watergate scandal to avoid impeachment. The second Watergate impeachment article, approved by the House Judiciary Committee, said, “He [Nixon] has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavoured to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposes not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be intitiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/aclj-calls-irs-approve-tax-exempt-status-10-tea-party-groups




IRS Contractor Denies Having Personal Relationship with IRS Employee in $500 Million Contracting Investigation
(AP Photo)
Washington Post columnist George Will’s Monday column was headlined, “In IRS Scandal, Echoes of Watergate.” Carney said this type of discussion was politicized.

“It is a reflection of the rapid politicization of everything that you have that kind of commentary,” Carney said of the Obama-Nixon comparison. “Everything becomes a huge political issue when, if you look at the facts, and I think Benghazi is instructive in this, the real issue that four Americans died and we need to do everything we can, as the president has committed himself to doing, to try to find out who did it, finding out why, and taking the steps necessary to ensure that our diplomatic personnel are protected and what happened in Benghazi doesn’t happen again.”

On the IRS matter, Carney said it was important to wait for the release of the inspector general report.
Peppered with questions on the AP records, Carney said Obama is committed to a balance in protecting the First Amendment and protecting national security.

“We don’t have any knowledge of that. We have independent news reports yesterday on the road,” Carney said. “All I can tell you is I cannot and he cannot comment specifically on an ongoing criminal investigation, or actions that Justice Department investigators may or may not have taken. It would be wholly inappropriate if we did comment on it or if we did have insight into it. You would appropriately ask why and if that is correct procedure because it would not be.”

“I can’t tell you the specifics of that, but I can tell you the president feels strongly that we need the press to be unfettered in its pursuit of investigative journalism,” Carney continued. “When he was a senator, the president co-sponsored legislation that would have provided protections for journalists in this regard. He is also mindful of the need for secret and classified information to remain secret and classified in order to protect our national security interests. There is a careful balance here that must be attained.”

 








CNSNews.com) - Rep. Sander Levin (D.-Mich.), the ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, has joined Rep. Dave Camp (R.-Mich.), the committee chairman, in demanding that the Internal Revenue Service answer by next Tuesday thirteen questions posed by the committee relating to IRS discrimination against conservative and pro-Israel groups and, where relevant, provide all internal agency documents and communications substantiating the answers.

The committee's bipartisan demand for documents includes all communications between the IRS and the White House about the IRS's targeting of conservative groups.

The committee also warns the IRS in the letter not to destroy, modify or remove any of the records the committee is seeking.

This document-and-information demand, sent in a letter dated Tuesday to acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller, ups the ante from a letter that Rep. Charles Boustany (R.-La.), chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight, sent Miller last Friday demanding that the IRS provide the committee by today (May 15) not only with all internal communications using the words “tea party,” “patriot” or “conservative,” but also with the names and titles of all officials involved in discriminating against tea party and conservative organizations.

As of Tuesday, the IRS was not saying whether it would comply with that request from its congressional oversight committee. But, now, the agency must deal with the more comprehensive demand for documents and information communicated directly by the committee’s bipartisan leadership.

Camp's and Levin's letter includes a list of detailed instructions explaining to the IRS the scrupulosity with which the committee expects the agency to respond to the document demand.

"In complying with this request, you shall produce all responsive records that are in your possession, custody or control," the committee instructed the IRS. "Records responsive to the request shall not be destroyed, modified, removed, transferred, or otherwise made inaccessible to the committee."

The most striking question that Democrat Ranking Member Levin and Republican Chairman Camp are asking the IRS goes to the issue of potential White House involvement in the scandal.

Specifically, Levin and Camp ask: “Did the IRS at any time notify the White House of the targeting of conservative or other groups? Provide all documents and communications between the IRS and the White House on this matter.”

Levin and Camp sent this inquiry to the IRS a full day after President Obama publicly declared that he personally had only learned about the IRS targeting of conservative groups when he saw news reports about it at the end of last week.

“I first learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this,” Obama said Monday at a joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron. “I think it was on Friday.”
Levin and Camp also told the IRS that the committee wants all documents and communications relevant to the agency’s reported discrimination against pro-Israel groups.

“Media reports have detailed that the IRS conducted special reviews of organizations whose missions involve Israel,” Levin and Camp wrote. “Did the IRS undertake special reviews of these and other organizations whose activities contradict or are inconsistent with administration policies? If so, provide all documents relating to these practices.”

Levin and Camp additionally directed a question at Acting IRS Commissioner Miller asking why he did not tell the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight about the targeting of conservatives in testimony he delivered to that subcommittee last July.

“In your testimony before the Oversight Subcommittee on July 25, 2012,” Levin and Camp wrote Miller, “you were directly asked about the reports that the IRS had been targeting conservative groups, to which you responded 'I am aware that some 200 501(c )(4) applications fell into this category [the determination letter process]. We did group these organizations together to ensure consistency, to ensure quality.’
“It has come to our attention,” Levin and Camp continued, “that you were  briefed on this issue in May 2012. If at the time of the hearing you knew that IRS personnel had targeted groups for extra scrutiny based on their political beliefs, why didn’t you share all of this information with the subcommittee at that time?”
Miller will testify in the full committee on Friday alongside Russell George, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration whose office has just completed an audit of the IRS on this issue.


Levin and Camp have instructed Miller to answer the questions in their letter and provide the documents the committee is requesting by next Tuesday, May 21.


http://cnsnews.com/news/article/bipartisan-congressional-demand-provide-all-communications-between-irs-and-wh-about



ACLJ Calls on IRS to Approve Tax-Exempt Status for 10 Tea Party Groups

 

(CNSNews.com) – The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which first accused the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of seeking to intimidate Tea Party groups 14 months ago, legally represents 27 such groups and is now demanding that the IRS approve the tax-exempt status of 10 of the groups or face possible legal action.

The ACLJ wants the IRS to respond by this Friday, May 17.  In a May 13 letter to Steven Miller, the acting commissioner of Internal Revenue at the IRS, the ACLJ demands that the agency swiftly approve the outstanding 501c(3) and 501c(4) tax-exemption applications of the 10 Tea Party and similar groups. The letter also calls for disciplining the IRS employees who targeted the conservative organizations.

“We are demanding that the IRS grant our remaining clients tax-exempt status immediately,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the ACLJ, in a statement. “If that does not occur by Friday, we will advise our clients of their right to sue the IRS for the redress of their grievances. The targeting scheme employed by the IRS not only violates their own rules and regulations, but is certain to result in a growing mistrust of the IRS by the American people.”

The 10 groups are: Albuquerque Tea Party, Allen Area Patriots, Greater Phoenix Tea Party Patriots, Greenwich Tea Party Patriots, Laurens County Tea Party, Linchpins of Liberty, Myrtle Beach Tea Party, North East Tarrant Tea Party, Patriots Educating Concerned Americans Now (PECAN), and Unite in Action.

Commenting on the politicization of the IRS, Sekulow said, “This is one of the most abhorrent breaches of trust imaginable. We now know this coordinated intimidation scheme went beyond Tea Party groups to include Jewish organizations and even groups that discussed the Constitution. The IRS must be held accountable for this dishonest and notoriously disgraceful conduct.”
IRS Contractor Denies Having Personal Relationship with IRS Employee in $500 Million Contracting Investigation
(AP Photo)
Fifteen of the 27 groups represented by the ACLJ were earlier granted tax-exempt status by the IRS. Two other groups withdrew their applications out of frustration of dealing with the IRS’s tactics, which leaves the 10 groups still seeking approval.

As for punishing the IRS employees responsible for the problems, the ACLJ letter states, “That the IRS identify and appropriately discipline all IRS employees who either concocted, knowingly carried out, knowingly failed to stop, or knowingly misinformed Congress or the public about, the scheme to target Tea Party and similar groups in violation of IRS rules and regulations, thereby unlawfully politicizing the IRS and its approval process.”

The ACLJ started to legally represent Tea Party and similar groups last year when it became apparent to them that the IRS engaged in an effort to intimidate and silence such groups, said the ACLJ. The IRS was “demanding information that is outside the scope of legitimate inquiry and violated the First Amendment,” said the ACLJ in its statement.

“The IRS demanded that groups reveal the internal workings of their organizations -- including the identification of members, how they are selected, who they associate with, and even what they discuss,” said the ACLJ. Some of the questions posed by the IRS to conservative groups are posted here.

In addition to its letter demanding the approval of the tax-exempt status of the 10 Tea Party groups, the ACLJ has launched a petition calling upon President Obama and Congress to hold the IRS accountable.
The Petition to End IRS Abuse says, “The Internal Revenue Service cannot be used as a weapon against political enemies. There must be a thorough investigation of IRS abuse, and those responsible must be punished. There is no for excuse turning the full power of the IRS on American citizens.”

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/aclj-calls-irs-approve-tax-exempt-status-10-tea-party-groups


 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Obama Cashes In on Wall Street Speeches