Official Says Treasury Dept. Knew of I.R.S. Inquiry in 2012

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department’s inspector general told senior Treasury officials in June 2012 he was investigating the Internal Revenue Service’s screening of politically active organizations seeking tax exemptions, disclosing for the first time on Friday that Obama administration officials were aware of the matter during the presidential campaign year.

At the first Congressional hearing into the I.R.S. scandal, J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, told members of the House Ways and Means Committee that he informed the Treasury’s general counsel of his investigation on June 4, and Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin “shortly thereafter.”

It remained unclear how much the disclosure would affect the broader debate over the I.R.S.'s problems. Complaints from Tea Party groups that the I.R.S. was singling them out became public in 2012, through media accounts.

NY Times article

This is big, because...

The Department of the Treasury is an executive department and the treasury of the United States federal government.

That means the executive branch AKA the White House knew in some capacity. If indeed no one ran this up the ladder (As Nixon liked to claim during Watergate) then he is at the very least incompetent. Though I smell something much bigger coming soon.

Good topic and nobody is commenting

Obama many times uses the "excuse" that he finds things out first on the news.

This issue was in the news last year and then downplayed.

That means Obama knew ALL about the targeting.

Another noticeably absent name in all these recent scandals is the snake in the grass Valerie Jarrett.
She is a Senior Advisor to the President of the United States and Assistant to the President for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs. Her associations with Barrack and Michelle go way way back. She is the watchdog.

She has much control of many things emanating from the White House.

I bet She is behind all the "editing" and recent commotion and I bet the Benghazi botch-up was caused in part by Her.

She is a raving jealous maniac and will do anything to shift blame.

Originally posted by xuenchen

Good topic and nobody is commenting

Obama many times uses the "excuse" that he finds things out first on the news.

This issue was in the news last year and then downplayed.

That means Obama knew ALL about the targeting.

Yeah no one is commenting.. And I understand exactly why this is happening.

Anyways, I heard about this yesterday, and also that it was published some time ago. But you see, there were a lot of instances where things that were very illegal were published. But nothing was ever done because the MSM still had their "Obama admin blinders on". I really do feel that the MSM contributed to the scandals.

Yesterday I was looking for the article but got distracted. I will try again.

Oh sweet baby! I found the goods! But I need a lot more time to work on this! I had to leave the US websites to find this!

Looks like I have been scooped on another website while I was out to dinner. So I need to find something even better. If it is there, I will find it.

reply to post by thesungod


Eventually Obama wont be able to play the plausible deniability act.

Smoke?

The fire is still burning.

I have been a tax professional for 25 years. Non-profit organizations are one of the biggest areas of tax abuse in this country. The abuses are generally covered up because placing scrutiny on groups that are abusers leads to this situation, it is considered politically incorrect, and the IRS gets torched.

Example, there are numerous religious groups who have tax exempt status that have pastors that make millions and pay zero taxes because the group is "tax exempt". Many of these are well known public figures on both the right and left of the political spectrum. If the IRS targeted them, the IRS would be scrutinized for attacking God. Well, when these jerks are living lavish lifestyles that most of us could only dream of and not paying 1 cent in taxes because we have defanged the IRS we have only ourselves to blame.

So now we have a situation where Tea Party groups were claiming 501(c)(3) status which gives its donors the right to claim charitable contribution deductions for their donations when in fact most of these groups should have claimed political organization status, for which its donors should not be allowed a charitable tax deduction. The IRS rightfully rejected many of these applications and investigated some that may have been granted based on false applications and then it gets attacked. Clearly the IRS should have went after both parties organizations. But, if the IRS gets defanged for going after these organizations, it is opening up an area for further abuses.

I am no crying liberal here. In fact, I am a Republican through and through. Its just that we have a situation where someone that was cheating cries foul on the person that caught him and we are going to punish the person that caught the cheater. Probably not a good idea.

I understand everyone hates the IRS and their potential to abuse power. I have witnessed it many times personally over the years as a result of my profession. But, when you defang the IRS, people will cheat. How many of you remember when the IRS was called on the carpet for going after poor people claiming the earned income credit? After they were called on the carpet, there were millions of people claiming their dogs on their tax returns as dependents in order to claim earned income credits they weren't entitled to. There was no fear of being audited since the IRS wasn't about to go back there after being publicly flogged. Congress was incredulous that dogs could be claimed and how this could happen. To prevent that, they made infants have Social Security Numbers at birth to be claimed as a dependent. The cycle is about to repeat itself. Sigh...

reply to post by dougie6665


But the targeting was done in more ways than one. It is all just starting to come out, and there is more than I can remember without checking my old threads. Just now? They are investigating people that were targeted for audits just for being critical of Obamacare and having their info submitted to a snitch page created by the Whitehouse. And what about all those confidential tax forms, that only the IRS would have, being released to the press? What about Obamas foes being audited multiple times? One such person was audited a second time 5 days after they won the first one! Or how about a reporter being audited after giving Obama a rough interview. Etc..

Yes there are some dishonest individuals. But you can't dismiss the governemts dishonesty because of this. Besides, we should be able to trust our government to not be criminals.

Here, have a copy of a PRIVATE tax form that was mailed to an opponent of Romney’s. The Free and Strong America's donation for $10,000 was Romney's. Since when should politics involve a companies private tax info?

NOM's Private Tax Form