The IRS Scandal Now Leads Directly To The White House

While all the oxygen was being taken out of the room by the Trayvon riots, something quite interesting occurred before Rep. Darrell Issa's oversight committee regarding the ongoing scandal of IRS deliberately targeting conservative and pro-Israel organizations for delays in receiving  tax exempt status in order to curtail their fundraising efforts, as well as selective audits of Romney donors and other assorted 'enemies'.

The Administration's story once they were caught red handed at this was that it was limited to a rogue unit in Cincinnati.

That's been a consistent pattern whenever some of the questionable and even illegal doings this president and his friends have been engaged in have come to light - they deliberately lie and then despicably finger the powerless small fish down the ladder for the blame.

Anyone who knows anything about government and the way civil service works realized this was nonsense from the beginning, but now there's proof this came from upstairs...and that there's a solid trail that leads directly to the White House.

When those 'rogue agents' testified in front of the committee they decided to resist being made scapegoats and stated under oath that they were under orders to target conservative and pro-Israel groups for special attention:

Ms. Hofacre of the Cincinnati office testified that when she was given tea-party applications, she had to kick them upstairs. When she was given non-tea-party applications, they were sent on for normal treatment. Was she told to send liberal or progressive groups for special scrutiny? No, she did not scrutinize the applications of liberal or progressive groups. "I would send those to general inventory." Who got extra scrutiny? "They were all tea-party and patriot cases." She became "very frustrated" by the "micromanagement" from Washington. "It was like working in lost luggage." She applied to be transferred.

House investigators soon talked to workers in the Cincinnati office, who said everything they did came from Washington. Elizabeth Hofacre, in charge of processing tea-party applications in Cincinnati, told investigators that her work was overseen and directed by a lawyer in the IRS Washington office named Carter Hull.

Now comes Mr. Hull’s testimony. And like Ms. Hofacre, he pointed his finger upward. Mr. Hull—a 48-year IRS veteran and an expert on tax exemption law—told investigators that tea-party applications under his review were sent upstairs within the Washington office, at the direction of Lois Lerner.

In April 2010, Hull was assigned to scrutinize certain tea-party applications. He requested more information from the groups. After he received responses, he felt he knew enough to determine whether the applications should be approved or denied.

But his recommendations were not carried out.

Michael Seto, head of Mr. Hull’s unit, also spoke to investigators. He told them Lois Lerner made an unusual decision: Tea-party applications would undergo additional scrutiny—a multilayered review.

Mr. Hull told House investigators that at some point in the winter of 2010-11, Ms. Lerner’s senior adviser, whose name is withheld in the publicly released partial interview transcript, told him the applications would require further review:

Q: “Did [the senior adviser to Ms. Lerner] indicate to you whether she agreed with your recommendations?”

A: “She did not say whether she agreed or not. She said it should go to chief counsel.”

Q: “The IRS chief counsel?”

A: “The IRS chief counsel.”


So who is this chief counsel? He's William Wllkins, a loyal Democrat donor, a well connected DC lobbyist and President Obama's personal appointee to the IRS. He also apparently endeared himself to this president by representing Jeremiah Wright's racist Trinity United Church in Chicago pro bono (for free) when they were accused of violating their tax exempt status by endorsing President Obama and turning the church into what almost amounted to a campaign headquarters.

We also know that Wilkins visited the White House on numerous occasions during the time period in question according to the White House visitor's log. I doubt he was there to discuss golf.

As a matter of fact, Wilkins met with Obama a mere two days before helping his IRS colleagues formulate a new set of guideline on flagging and scrutinizing Tea Party, pro-Israel and conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status:

IRS chief counsel William Wilkins, who was named in House Oversight testimony by retiring IRS agent Carter Hull as one of his supervisors in the improper targeting of conservative groups, met with Obama in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on April 23, 2012. Wilkins’ boss, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, visited the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on April 24, 2012, according to White House visitor logs.

On April 25, 2012, Wilkins’ office sent the exempt organizations determinations unit “additional comments on the draft guidance” for approving or denying tea party tax-exempt applications, according to the IRS inspector general’s report.

Between 2010 and 2012, the IRS sent letters demanding groups’ training materials, personal information on groups’ donors and college interns, and even the content of a religious group’s prayers.

Wilkins’ meeting with Obama on April 23 was attended by 13 people.

The White House deliberately lied when they called this a “rogue” operation. This was official policy designed to retard and curtail fundraising on the part of opposition by denying them the tax exempt status that was rushed through for Left wing groups and those supporting the president, and President Obama's personal appointee to the IRS had a huge role in creating and implementing that policy.The IRS was used as a political weapon that only targeted President Obama’s political enemies and the whole thing was done cleverly, using endless delays and tying the targets up in paperwork rather than in outright refusals which could have been appealed.

Chew on this for a minute. Here we have a situation where half the country is being shown that the IRS, the revenue-gathering arm of its federal government responsible for taxing them with almost unbelievable police powers to back it up is politically corrupt, and that they can very easily be made targets if they vote wrong, donate wrong or oppose the regime in power in any way openly.

This is not America.

Normally, the next step would be a special prosecutor named by the Attorney General. We all know that isn't going to happen. The House is going to have to confront Wilkins and use it's subpoena powers to get him to testify under oath. And they are going to have to name their own prosecutor via the courts since the U.S. Office of the Independent Counsel people like Kenneth Starr operated out of no longer exists as of 1999 and has been replaced by the Justice Department controlled Office of Special Counsel, run by an Obama appointee.

In any event, this is not something that can or should be swept under the rug. The stakes are too high.