FBI Launches Probe of IRS

grpaul Well-Known Member

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FBI Launches Probe of IRS

WASHINGTONâ€”Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday the Justice Department has opened a criminal probe of the Internal Revenue Service's treatment of tea-party groups, while an investigative report blamed the agency's managers for allowing the practices to continue for more than 18 months.

On Tuesday night, President Barack Obama termed the audit findings "intolerable and inexcusable" and said he directed Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew to hold those responsible accountable.

Mr. Holder said Tuesday he ordered the department's probe Friday after the IRS apologized for what it said was inappropriate scrutiny of tax-exemption requests by conservative groups with "Tea Party" or "patriot" in their names.

"The FBI is coordinating with the Justice Department to see if any laws were broken in connection with those matters related to the IRS," Mr. Holder said at a news conference. "Those were, I think, as everyone can agree, if not criminal, they were certainly outrageous and unacceptable."

The report delivered to Congress Tuesday by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said beginning in 2010 "ineffective managementâ€¦allowed inappropriate criteria to be developed and stay in place for more than 18 months" and resulted in substantial delays in processing certain applications, and allowed unnecessary information requests to be issued.

"The IRS must apply the law in a fair and impartial way, and its employees must act with utmost integrity," President Obama said. "This report shows that some of its employees failed that test."

He said he told Secretary Lew to make sure the inspector general's recommendations are implemented quickly.

In a separate statement, Mr. Lew said he expects the IRS to implement the recommendations without delay.

The inspector general's report left unanswered a key questionâ€”how exactly IRS workers came to focus excessively on conservative groups. "We could not specifically determine who had been involved in creating the criteria" that led to selection of so many applications from conservative groups for extra review, the report said in a footnote.

The report called on the IRS to better document the reasons for choosing groups for extra review, request better guidance on rules by the Treasury Department, and quickly resolve casesâ€”some of which "have been in process for three years." "Although the IRS has taken some action, it will need to do more," the report said.

The IRS generally agreed with the recommendations and said that "while flaws in our process were corrected last year based on our own review," it held off on publicly discussing them because the agency was awaiting the inspector general's report. "There was no intent to hide this issue," an IRS statement said.

The IRS didn't respond to a request for comment on the DOJ probe. IRS acting Commissioner Steven Miller said in an op-ed published Tuesday in USA Today that, "mistakes were made, but they were in no way due to any political or partisan motivation."

IRS officials have previously said agency workers have stopped using the inappropriate standards for scrutinizing applications and politically neutral criteria are now being used. They blame the problems on bureaucratic shortcuts.
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grpaul, May 15, 2013 IP

grpaul Well-Known Member

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On Tuesday night, President Barack Obama termed the audit findings "intolerable and inexcusable" and said he directed Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew to hold those responsible accountable.
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The IRS generally agreed with the recommendations and said that "while flaws in our process were corrected last year based on our own review," it held off on publicly discussing them because the agency was awaiting the inspector general's report. "There was no intent to hide this issue," an IRS statement said.
Click to expand...

The IRS didn't respond to a request for comment on the DOJ probe. IRS acting Commissioner Steven Miller said in an op-ed published Tuesday in USA Today that, "mistakes were made, but they were in no way due to any political or partisan motivation."
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Last edited: May 15, 2013

grpaul, May 15, 2013 IP

Obamanation Well-Known Member

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PRESIDENT OBAMA: Unfortunately, you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They'll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can't be trusted.
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How prophetic those words

This from the left leaning Slate magazine this morning:

It must get confusing in the IT department at the Associated Press: Are you talking about the hackers who hacked our Twitter account or the Justice Department hackers who hacked our phones? Monday, the Associated Press reported that the Justice Department had secretlyobtained two months of records of phone conversations by its reporters. Meanwhile, theWashington Postrevealed that the Internal Revenue Serviceâ€™s targeting of conservative groups was more widespread than first reported. Someone at the IRS also leaked informationabout conservative groups to ProPublica. The Environmental Protection Agencymay also have made it easierfor environmental groups to file Freedom of Information Act requests than conservative organizations.

The Obama administration is doing a far better job making the case for conservatism than Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, or John Boehner ever did. Showing is always better than telling, and when the government overreaches in so many ways it gives support to the conservative argument about the inherently rapacious nature of government.
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Obamanation, May 15, 2013 IP

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FBI Launches Probe of IRS

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