Obama and the IRS: The Smoking Gun?
WHY THE IRS WENT AFTER CONSERVATIVES
President met with anti-Tea Party IRS union chief the day before
agency targeted Tea Party.
“For me, it’s about collaboration.” — National
Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley
on the relationship between the anti-Tea Party IRS union
and the Obama White House
Is President Obama directly implicated in
the IRS scandal?
Is the White House Visitors Log the trail
to the smoking gun?
The stunning questions are raised by the following set of
new facts.
March 31, 2010.
According to the White House Visitors Log, provided here in searchable
form by U.S. News and World Report, the president of the
anti-Tea Party National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelley,
visited the White House at 12:30pm that Wednesday noon time of
March 31st.
The White House lists the IRS union leader’s visit this way:
Kelley, Colleen Potus 03/31/2010 12:30
In White House language, “POTUS” stands for “President of the
United States.”
The very next day after her White House meeting with the
President, according to the Treasury Department’s Inspector
General’s Report, IRS employees — the same employees who belong to
the NTEU — set to work in earnest targeting the Tea Party and
conservative groups around America. The IG report wrote it up this
way:
April 1-2, 2010: The new Acting Manager, Technical Unit,
suggested the need for a Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party
cases. The Determinations Unit Program Manager Agreed.
In short: the very day after the president of the quite publicly
anti-Tea Party labor union — the union for IRS employees — met
with President Obama, the manager of the IRS “Determinations Unit
Program agreed” to open a “Sensitive Case report on the Tea party
cases.” As stated by the IG report.
The NTEU is the 150,000 member union that represents IRS
employees along with 30 other separate government agencies. Kelley
herself is a 14-year IRS veteran agent. The union’s PAC endorsed
President Obama in both 2008 and 2012, and gave hundreds of
thousands of dollars in the
2010 and
2012 election cycles to anti-Tea Party candidates.
Putting IRS employees in the position of actively financing
anti-Tea Party candidates themselves, while in their official
positions in the IRS blocking, auditing, or intimidating Tea Party
and conservative groups around the country.
The IG report contained a timeline prepared by examining
internal IRS e-mails. The IG report did not examine White House
Visitor Logs, e-mails, or phone records relating to the
relationship between the IRS union, the IRS, and the White
House.
In fact, this record in the White House Visitors Log of a 12:30
Wednesday, March 31, 2010 meeting between President Obama and the
IRS union’s Kelley was not unusual.
On yet another occasion, Kelley’s presence at the White House
was followed shortly afterwards by the President issuing Executive
Order 13522. A presidential directive that gave the anti-Tea Party
NTEU — the IRS union — a greater role in the day-to-day operation
of the IRS than it had already — which was considerable.
Kelley is recorded as visiting the White House over a year
earlier, listed in this fashion:
Kelley, Colleen Potus/Flotus 12/03/2009
18:30
The inclusion of “FLOTUS” — First Lady Michelle Obama — and
the 6:30 pm time of the December event on this entry in the
Visitors Log indicates this was the White House Christmas Party
held that evening and written up here in
the Chicago Sun-Times. The Sun-Times focused on
party guests from the President’s home state of Illinois and did
not mention Kelley. Notably, the Illinois guests, who are reported
to have attended the same party as Kelley, included what the paper
described as four labor “activists”: Dennis Gannon of the Chicago
Federation of Labor, Tom Balanoff of the Service Employees
International Union, Henry Tamarin of UNITE, and Ron Powell of the
United Food and Commercial Workers.
Six days following Kelley’s attendance at the White House
Christmas party with labor activists like herself, the President
issued Executive Order 13522 (text found here, with an
explanation here).
The Executive Order, titled: “Creating Labor-Management Forums To
Improve Delivery of Government Services” applied across the federal
government and included the IRS. The directive was designed to:
Allow employees and unions to have pre-decisional
involvement in all workplace matters….
However else this December 2009 Executive Order can be
described, the directive was a serious grant of authority within
the IRS to the powerful anti-Tea Party union. A union that by this
time already had the clout to determine the rules for IRS
employees, right down to who would be allowed a Blackberry or what
size office the employee was entitled to. The same union that would
shortly be doling out serious 2010 (and later 2012) campaign
contributions to anti-Tea Party candidates with money supplied from
IRS employees. The union, as noted last week
here in this space, already has the authority to decide all
manner of IRS matters, right down to who does and does not get a
Blackberry.
It is the same union whose IRS employee-members were being
urged in 2012 by Senate Democrats (Chuck Schumer, Al Franken,
Max Baucus, and others) to target Tea Party and other conservative
groups.
Which, as the IG records, they did.
Both Mr. Obama and the NTEU’s Kelley have been by turns evasive
and tight-lipped about their roles in the blossoming IRS
scandal.
Kelley refused to open up to the Washington Post. In an
article titled ”IRS, union mum on employees held
accountable in ‘sin’ of political targeting,” the
Post quoted the following:
“NTEU is working to get the facts but does not have any
specifics at this time. Moreover, IRS employees are not permitted
to discuss taxpayer cases. We cannot comment further at this time,”
NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said via e-mail.
A call to the NTEU office in Cincinnati resulted in a similar
response: “We’ve been directed by national office. We have no
comment.”
The President approached things in a more evasive manner.
Last Thursday at the President’s press conference with the
Turkish prime minister, Julianna Goldman of Bloomberg News
asked the following question, bold print for
emphasis:
“Mr. President, I want to ask you about the IRS. Can you
assure the American people that nobody in the White House knew
about the agency’s actions before your Counsel’s Office found out
on April 22nd? And when they did find out, do you think
that you should have learned about it before you learned about it
from news reports as you said last Friday? And also, are you
opposed to there being a special counsel appointed to lead the
Justice Department investigation?”
The President’s response? (Again bold print emphasis.)
“But let me make sure that I answer your specific question.
I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything
about the IG report before the IG report had been leaked
through the press.”
Take note: Goldman’s question was:
“Can you assure the American people that nobody in
the White House knew about the agency’s actions before your
Counsel’s Office found out on April 22nd?”
The President evaded by answering:
“I can assure you that I certainly did not know
anything about the IG report…..”
The question was not whether he knew about the IG report ahead
of time. The question was whether he could “assure the American
people that nobody in the White House knew about the
agency’s actions.”
In response, the President ducked.
In other words, the IRS union chief went to the White House to
meet personally with the president on March 31. The union already
had Executive Order 13522 behind it, issued by the President barely
three months earlier. An Executive Order directing that the IRS
must “allow employees and unions to have pre-decisional
involvement in all workplace matters….”.
The very next day after that March 31 meeting at the White
House, the IRS, with the union involved in its decision-making, was
setting up its “Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party.”
Which raises the famous question from Watergate: What did the
President know and when did he know it?
While potentially explosive now, in fact the Obama
Administration hadn’t been in office a month before Kelley was
boasting of the IRS union’s influence in the White House.
In a February 15, 2009
interview given to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
(Pittsburgh is Kelley’s home town), there was this question from
the PG reporter, with the now Washington-based Kelley boasting as
below, key point in bold print:
Q: Has the Obama staff been receptive?
A: Yes. We have worked with the
transition team, given them suggestions;
and throughout the campaign, President Obama talked about working
with the federal employees and unions. He’s recognized the
contributions federal employees make. I was just at the
White House (Jan. 30) while he was signing some executive
orders to undo some things the prior administration did.
Catch that?
The boast?
“I was just at the White House…”
Which is to say, the election of 2008, in which the union had
endorsed Obama, was no sooner over than the head of the IRS union
had “worked with the transition team” and “given them suggestions.”
Literally ten days after the Obama January 20 inaugural in 2009 —
January 30 the article notes — Kelley was boasting that “I was
just at the White House while he (the President) was signing some
executive orders to undo some things the prior administration
did.”
And what did Kelley see as the IRS union’s relationship with the
White House she had already visited ten days into the President’s
first term?
Kelley responded candidly, again with the bold print added for
emphasis:
“We are looking for a return to what we used to
call partnership. I don’t really care what it’s
called. For me, it’s about collaboration.”
Catch those words?
Collaboration. Partnership.
In addition to Kelley’s three visits to see the President — in
January of 2009, December of 2009, and March of 2010 — she is
listed for three other visits, the contact names those of
presidential aides:
“Kelley, Colleen Weiss, Margaret 11/04/2009
10:00”
“Kelley, Colleen Weiss, Margaret 12/01/2009
12:00”
“Kelley, Colleen Nelson, Greg 01/14/2010
13:40”
The obvious question instantly arises with the revelation that
Kelley was meeting with the President personally — the day before
the IRS kicked into high gear with its “Sensitive Case Report on
the Tea Party”.
Were the President of the United States and the President of the
NTEU meeting in the White House at 12:30 on Wednesday, March 31,
2010 — and engaged in “collaboration” and “partnership”? A
“collaboration” and “partnership” that was all about targeting the
Tea Party?
And did that collaboration and partnership result in the IRS
letting loose the hounds on the Tea Party and conservative groups
— the very next day after the Obama-Kelley meeting?
To add to the administration’s IRS-NTEU woes is the fact that
beyond the Inspector General, there is another IRS-connected agency
in the Treasury Department: the IRS Oversight Board.
And on that board sits a presidential appointee named Robert M.
Tobias. Tobias, oddly, was a Clinton appointee in 2005, confirmed
by the Senate for a five-year term. He is still there. He is the
longtime NTEU general counsel and Kelley’s predecessor as the union
president. Here’s the statement,
from the IRS Oversight Board, on all of this. It is
headed:
IRS Oversight Board Deeply Troubled by
Breakdown in IRS Process in Reviewing Tax-Exempt
Applications.
There was no reference to the influence of the anti-Tea Party
NTEU in the statement. Why would there be when the union’s
ex-president sits on the Oversight Board itself?
Obama’s problem here is considerable.
By not forthrightly answering Goldman’s question, he seems to be
evading the issue in the manner that brought so much trouble in the
form of congressional investigations, special prosecutors, and
impeachment threats to Presidents Nixon and Clinton, with Nixon
being forced to resign the presidency and Clinton brought to a
Senate trial.
The President’s too-clever-by half evasion added to Kelley’s
silence leaves open the question of whether the union and the White
House, not to mention the IRS Oversight Board, are collaborating —
collaborating right now — on a cover-up.
Nixon looked the American people in the television eye and
flatly lied about his personal involvement in the Watergate
scandal, lies that came from a frantic attempt to conduct a
cover-up.
Clinton looked the American people in the eye and famously
wagged his finger as he lied that he “did not have sex with that
woman, Ms. Lewinsky.” In Clinton’s case this extended to lying to a
federal grand jury.
For a good long while, the American people in fact believed both
Nixon and Clinton. The stories are now legion of Nixon cabinet and
staff believing their man, and Clinton’s cabinet and staff
believing their man’s protestations of innocence as well.
Finally, in both cases, the truth was out.
As Washington and the country have long since twice-learned the
hard way, the parsing of presidential words in cases like this, not
to mention looking into the cameras and boldly lying on the prayer
of getting away with the lie, always bodes ill for presidents. It
leads inevitably to that simple question famously uttered by
then-Tennessee GOP Senator Howard Baker and posed of Nixon at the
Senate Watergate hearings: “What did the President know and when
did he know it?”
Twice in recent American history the answer to this question,
once for Nixon and once for Clinton, has landed popular, powerful
presidents in impeachment hot water. Ending Republican Nixon’s
presidency altogether and coming close to doing the same with
Democrat Clinton. Leaving the legacy of each permanently
scarred.
The notion that the players in the IRS scandal did what they did
to get past the 2012 election will only add to an Obama
presidential reputation as borrowing the Nixon playbook on skirting
scandal in a presidential election year.
Ironically re-casting the image of America’s first black
president as the black Nixon.
With the examples of how Nixon and Clinton dodged, evaded, and
lied, Obama’s non-answer to Juliana Goldman’s question at last
week’s press conference comes in for much more scrutiny. Matched to
the silence of Kelley it begins raising obvious questions. Such
as:
• Did the President himself ever discuss the Tea Party with
Kelley?
• Did the President ever communicate his thoughts on the Tea
Party to Kelley — in any fashion other than a face-to-face
conversation such as e-mail, text, or by phone?
• What was the subject of the Obama-Kelley March 31, 2010
meeting?
• Who was present at the Obama-Kelley March 31 meeting?
• Was the Tea Party or any other group opposing the President’s
agenda discussed at the March 31 meeting, or before or after that
meeting?
• Is the White House going to release any e-mails, text, or
phone records that detail Kelley’s contacts with not only Mr. Obama
but his staff?
• Will the IRS release all e-mail, text, or phone records
between Kelley or any other leader of the NTEU with IRS
employees?
• What role did Executive Order 13522 play in the IRS
investigations of the Tea Party and all these other conservative
groups?
Doubtless there are others, considerable others and the list of
questions will grow.
Not to be lost sight of here is the role of the NTEU in raising
money for Democrats in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles — the
exact period when the IRS was busy going after the Tea Party and
the others to curb any possible influence the groups could have in
the elections of 2010 and 2012.
The NTEU, through its political action committee,
raised $613,633 in the 2010 cycle, giving 98% of its
contributions to anti-Tea Party Democrats. In 2012 the
figure was $729,708, with 94% going to anti-Tea Party
candidates. One NTEU candidate after another, as discussed last
week in this space, campaigned vigorously against the Tea
Party.
So the motivations here — defeating the Tea Party in 2010, and
failing at that, making sure that the news of the metastasizing
cancer in the IRS was kept quiet until after the 2012 presidential
election was over — are clear.
What is particularly interesting here are the automatic
assumptions of the mainstream media in all of this.
Like this “given” from the Washington Post’s
Dan Balz, bold print added for emphasis.
The most corrosive of the controversies is what happened at the
IRS, which singled out tea party and other conservative groups for
special scrutiny in their applications for tax-exempt status.
That Obama knew nothing about it does little to
quell concerns that one of the most-feared units in government was
operating out of control.
But if in fact the President did know about it?
Here’s the Washington Post’s “Journolist”
Ezra Klein:
The crucial ingredient for a scandal is the prospect of
high-level White House involvement and wide political
repercussions.…
If new information emerges showing a connection between the
Determination Unit’s decisions and the Obama campaign, or the Obama
administration, it would crack this White House wide open. That
would be a genuine scandal. But the IG report says that there’s no
evidence of that. And so it’s hard to see where this one goes from
here.
Exactly.
Which is why it will be a curious sight indeed to see the
efforts the media will go to ignore/dismiss the tight,
on-the-record connection between the President personally and a
vociferously anti-Tea Party union. A union that has the literal run
of the IRS — and whose union chief is recorded as having met with
the President in the White House the day before the IRS launched “a
Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party cases.” A decision with
which, according to the IG report: “The Determinations Unit Program
Manager Agreed.” Check those words from Mr. Klein again:
If new information emerges showing a connection between
the Determination Unit’s decisions and the Obama campaign, or the
Obama administration, it would crack this White House wide
open. That would be a genuine scandal.
The question now is a simple one.
In 1974, “the smoking gun” was a tape recording that ended the
Nixon presidency.
In 1998, the smoking gun was a blue dress — and it almost undid
Bill Clinton’s White House.
Now the all-too-familiar pattern of scandal and its day-by-day
drip-drip-drip nature has begun to set in. Newsmax is now
quoting
Washington attorney and conservative activist Cleta Mitchell as
saying:
“There were nearly 100 groups across the country that got the
very egregious set of letters from the IRS that were almost
identical and they came from offices all over the country, so I
know of at least 85 to 90, maybe more, organizations.”
Regular American all over the country are coming forward with
their stories. Understanding the relationship between the Obama
White House and the IRS union will be a must for congressional
investigators.
President Obama is coming perilously closer to becoming the new
Nixon. The next Bill Clinton.
And once again, as news of exactly what a president was doing in
the Oval Office on a particular day and time goes public, yet again
the old question becomes new.
What did the President know? And when did he know it?
from http://spectator.org/archives/2013/05/20/obama-and-the-irs-the-smoking/
UPDATE: JULY 17 , 2013
BUSTED: THE 2012 ELECTION WAS A FRAUD. IT MUST NOT STAND! IF NOT ALL THE HEARINGS ARE BULLSHIT!!
OBAMA STAND DOWN...
IRS Chief Counsel Helped Develop Tea Party Targeting Guidelines:
The chief counsel’s office for the Internal Revenue Service
played a role in developing the IRS guidelines that ultimately applied
enhanced scrutiny to Tea Party groups, according to a top IRS attorney,
the Washington Post reports:
In interviews with
congressional investigators, IRS lawyer Carter Hull said his superiors
told him that the chief counsel’s office, led by William Wilkins, would
need to review applications that the agency had screened for additional
scrutiny because of potential political activity.
Previous
accounts from IRS employees had shown that Washington IRS officials were
involved in the controversy, but Hull’s comments represent the closest
connection to the White House to date.
According to a
partial transcript released by House Oversight Committee Chairman
Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the chief counsel’s office also discussed using
a template letter to ask questions about the groups’ activities,
despite Hull’s warning that such a boilerplate approach would be
impractical.
The chief counsel’s office is headed by a political appointee made by President Obama.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that IRS agents flagged
organizations applying for tax-exempt status for further review based on
political or ideological grounds. Applicants with names that included
the words “Tea Party” or “patriots,” described issues including
government spending or tax policy, or whose applications criticized how
the government is being run were directed to a group for further
review.
http://freebeacon.com/irs-chief-counsel-helped-develop-tea-party-targeting-guidelines/
