Democrats are making good on their promise to investigate President Donald Trump&#8217;s finances, despite Special Counsel Robert Mueller&#8217;s finding that the Trump 2016 presidential campaign did not collude with Russian officials to affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
Late Wednesday, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) announced that he has formally requested that the IRS turn over at least six years worth of Donald Trump&#8217;s personal tax returns &#8212; those returns filed between 2013 and 2018. <a href="http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/04/03/neal.letter.to.rettig.signed.2019.04.03.pdf">According to his official letter to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin</a> made public Thursday morning, Neal has also requested financial documents related to Trump&#8217;s trusts, holding and acquisition companies, and his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club.
Neal has apparently done his research; he made the request under a little-known statute, Internal Revenue Code 6103(f), that allows the Chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means (or the chair of any finance committee in Congress), specifically, to request the personal tax records of any individual, provided that, once produced, they are kept secret and confidential.
There&#8217;s a catch on the confidentiality, too: if the records make their way to regular members of Congress, who end up reviewing them, the seal of confidentiality is broken, and Trump&#8217;s records could then be made public, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/judge-andrew-napolitano-democrats-can-legally-obtain-and-publicize-trumps-tax-returns">according to Fox News</a> legal expert, Judge Andrew Napolitano.
<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/04/politics/donald-trump-tax-returns-unseen-secret/index.html">Even CNN describes the request</a> as &#8220;rooted in a legal technicality.&#8221;
Trump brushed off the request Thursday, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/03/politics/trump-tax-returns-house-democrats-request/index.html">telling reporters</a>, &#8220;Is that all? Oh, usually it&#8217;s 10 so I guess they&#8217;re giving up.&#8221;
He added that he does not believe the Treasury Secretary or the IRS has to provide Congress with his tax returns so long as he is under audit, as he currently claims to be.
&#8220;Now, we&#8217;re under audit, despite what people said. We&#8217;re working that out as &#8212; I&#8217;m always under audit it seems. But I&#8217;ve been under audit because the numbers are big and I guess when you have a name you&#8217;re audited. But until such time as I&#8217;m not under audit I would not be inclined to do that,&#8221; Trump added.
Neal told CNN that he believes his request will be fulfilled, though perhaps not without a fight.
&#8220;I am certain we are within our legitimate legislative, legal and oversight rights,&#8221; Neal said in a statement emailed to news outlets, adding that his request is about &#8220;policy not politics.&#8221;
&#8220;My preparations were made on my own track and timeline, entirely independent of other activities in Congress and the administration,&#8221; Neal added. &#8220;My actions reflect an abiding reverence for our democracy and our institutions, and are in no way based on emotion of the moment or partisanship. I trust that in this spirit, the IRS will comply with federal law and furnish me with the requested documents in a timely manner.&#8221;
Of course, such a suggestion &#8212; that Neal&#8217;s motivation has nothing to do with partisanship &#8212; seems patently false. Democrats have been promising a full investigation into Donald Trump&#8217;s finances since Trump first took office, and activist groups have only clamored more forcefully for Trump&#8217;s tax returns in the wake of the Mueller report, which dashed their hopes of a quick and easy impeachment.
Democrats in the House have made multiple requests for Trump&#8217;s taxes as well, and both Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) have said they will issue subpoenas not just to the IRS but to various banks that had dealings with Trump and his companies.

Democrats Make Good On Threat, Demand Six Years Of Trump Tax Returns

Democratic Party

Donald Trump

Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

Steve Mnuchin

Taxes

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is already facing internal allegations of racism and sexism, but now the organization&#8217;s non-profit status has been called into question by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR).
In <a href="https://www.cotton.senate.gov/files/documents/2019%20SPLC%20Cotton%20Letter%20VF.pdf">a letter</a> sent Tuesday to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, Cotton requested an investigation into the organization&#8217;s classification as a 501(c)(3), accusing SPLC of &#8220;fundrais[ing] off of defamation.&#8221;
&#8220;This business model has paid well. The SPLC has accrued more than $500 million in assets,&#8221; Cotton wrote. &#8220;According to the group&#8217;s most recent financial statement, it holds $121 million offshore in non-U.S. equity funds. The SPLC uses these assets to pay its executives lavish salaries far higher than the comparable household average.&#8221;
Cotton suggested the organization&#8217;s tax-exempt status be investigated over the money as well as the racism and sexism charges, writing that taxpayer dollars should be protected &#8220;from a racist and sexist slush fund devoted to defamation.&#8221;
Cotton goes on to explain how the SPLC engages in defamation, by claiming its &#8220;hate map,&#8221; which includes nearly universally accepted examples such as the Ku Klux Klan, also includes &#8220;mainstream political opponents and faith-based groups,&#8221; such as the Family Research Council and the Alliance Defending Freedom. The Arkansas senator also pointed to the group&#8217;s claim that Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an &#8220;anti-Muslim extremist&#8221; because she speaks out against issues relating to Islam such as forced marriage and female genital mutilation (Ali herself is a former Muslim).
The group also had to pay Maajid Nawaz, a British political activist, $3.375 million after he sued for defamation.
&#8220;The SPLC&#8217;s defamation has not just damaged the reputation of these mainstream organizations and individuals by lumping them in with the Ku Klux Klan and Nation of Islam; it has resulted in injury and the threat of the loss of life, including an attempted mass murder,&#8221; Cotton wrote before reminding the IRS of a 2012 incident where Floyd Lee Corkins targeted the FRC because of the SPLC&#8217;s designation. A security guard was injured in the shooting but thankfully no one died.
&#8220;Perhaps the SPLC was founded for noble purposes and decades ago performed some good work, but what is left of the SPLC is no longer operating in a manner consistent with IRS guidelines and applicable law,&#8221; Cotton concluded.
Last week, as issues surrounding the group&#8217;s racism and sexism scandals made headlines, SPLC Board Member Bryan Fair posted an article on the organization&#8217;s website that explained what the group was spending so much money on. He cited several court cases where the SPLC is fighting against President Donald Trump&#8217;s policies in addition to other legal battles.
Fair also said the SPLC had hired 200 additional people since Trump&#8217;s election and opened four new offices in the &#8220;Deep South.&#8221;
In recent weeks, SPLC co-founder Morris Dees and President Richard Cohen have both resigned, along with others in leadership positions. The Daily Signal <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/04/02/tech-giants-run-silent-as-shake-up-hits-southern-poverty-law-center/">reported</a> that tech giants &#8212; except for Twitter and Facebook &#8212; did not respond to inquiries about their partnerships with the SPLC amid the growing scandals. Twitter said the organization is not on its Trust and Safety Council and has not been a recent partner of SPLC. Facebook said that no single outside group defines their policies.
Full Disclosure: I previously worked for the Heritage Foundation, which publishes the Daily Signal. I have several articles published under the Daily Signal banner.

SPLC Non-Profit Status Questioned By GOP Senator Amid Racism, Sexism Allegations

Racism

Sexism

Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

Women who exchange nude videos, photos, and other sex-related services online for goods and money are apparently being mass-reported to the IRS by the so-called &#8220;thot crusade&#8221; or &#8220;thot police&#8221; for not paying taxes on their income. A flurry of so-called &#8220;cam girls&#8221; and &#8220;sex workers&#8221; complained and warned others in the field about the reporting while men doing the alleged reporting encouraged others to do the same and set up a Facebook page called &#8220;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/Sex-Worker-Revenue-Service-2164278623786476/">Sex Worker Revenue Service</a>.&#8221;
A &#8220;thot,&#8221; according to Dictionary.com, is &#8220;a woman considered to be sexually provocative or promiscuous; a slut or whore.&#8221; Thot is an acronym for &#8220;that h** over there.&#8221; &#8220;Cam girls&#8221; are women on the internet who exchange nude photos or sexually-natured videos for goods or money.
A viral <a href="https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=722973838079026&amp;id=100010992481290">Facebook post</a> from cam girl Alice Mae warned fellow sex workers about the man supposedly behind the mass reporting to the IRS, David Wu. &#8220;This guy is reporting girls [sic] premium snapchat and has reported 10 girls to the IRS. &#8230; First of all, the IRS does not need any help to find out if you are not paying your taxes &#8230; Second of all, [sex workers] are always paying their taxes,&#8221; she wrote in the post, before plugging her services and her Patreon account.
Wu&#8217;s Facebook intro reads, &#8220;Please report &#8216;sex-workers&#8217; to the IRS or the local law-enforcement, thank you!&#8221; His Facebook page includes posts bragging about reporting sex workers. In a video post, for example, Wu superimposed his face on a male figure in a video game dismembering a female figure labeled &#8220;sex workers.&#8221; Here&#8217;s another example:
<div class="embed"><iframe allow="encrypted-media" frameborder="0" height="594" width="500"></iframe></div>
The Daily Wire reached out to Wu for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
In a <a href="http://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/194403628?fbclid=IwAR3R-X59Z1qWTk45soaRMUCnePcRNnDxa9OejTjol9KxCdxSc0u_61uC14A#bottom">4Chan thread</a> started on Friday, users were encouraged to &#8220;report all twitch thots/premium snapchat sluts/etc. etc. to the IRS for tax audit, do your duty as an American citizen to report any tax evaders.&#8221;
&#8220;Report all camw***** no matter where they are hosted,&#8221; said one user. &#8220;I f***ing love this. keep calling us incels you c****,&#8221; wrote another.
&#8220;Incel&#8221; is a mocking term for the &#8220;involuntarily celibate.&#8221;
According to the official website for the <a href="https://www.irs.gov/">IRS</a>, individuals who successfully report tax evasion are eligible for a reward:
<div>
<blockquote>
The IRS Whistleblower Office pays money to people who blow the whistle on persons who fail to pay the tax that they owe. If the IRS uses information provided by the whistleblower, it can award the whistleblower up to 30 percent of the additional tax, penalty and other amounts it collects.
</blockquote>
</div>
Some sex workers complained about the reporting and dubiously claimed sex workers are generally exempt from paying taxes on such income.
&#8220;PSA to all sex workers, dancers, FSSW, 18+ Snapchatters: You DO NOT have to pay taxes in the US until you make more than $20,000 a year. Don&#8217;t worry about incels reporting you to the IRS because they actually can&#8217;t do anything without digital proof of your income,&#8221; said one account called &#8220;protect sex workers.&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
PSA to all sex workers, dancers, FSSW, 18+ Snapchatters: You DO NOT have to pay taxes in the US until you make more than $20,000 a year. Don&#8217;t worry about incels reporting you to the IRS because they actually can&#8217;t do anything without digital proof of your income.
&#8212; PROTECT SEX WORKERS (@DammieItsCammie) <a href="https://twitter.com/DammieItsCammie/status/1066355225760534528?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
However, according to the IRS, this is untrue. Self-employed cam girls would have to file a tax return if they exceed just $400 in net earnings. &#8220;You have to file an income tax return if your net earnings from self-employment were $400 or more. If your net earnings from self-employment were less than $400, you still have to file an income tax return if you meet any other filing requirement listed in the Form 1040 instructions (PDF),&#8221; <a href="https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/self-employed-individuals-tax-center">says</a> irs.gov.
Cam girls &#8220;Kandi Curves&#8221; and &#8220;Mistress Nicci&#8221; mocked the &#8220;incels&#8221; allegedly reporting sex workers:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
You must not follow many <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/camgirls?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#camgirls</a> if you think we don&#8217;t pay taxes. March is nothing but tax filing posts and pics of boxes full of receipts. Most of us follow the rule of putting 30% of each check away for taxes. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ThotAudit?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ThotAudit</a>
&#8212; Kandi Cane (@kandi_curves) <a href="https://twitter.com/kandi_curves/status/1066433997511815169?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
So apparently incels are reporting sex workers to the IRS to get them audited and they wonder why no woman would ever want to fuck them. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/losers?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#losers</a>
&#8212; Mistress Nicci (@mistressnicci) <a href="https://twitter.com/mistressnicci/status/1066780455368708096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 25, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
Others used a <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23thotaudit&amp;src=typd">#ThotAudit hashtag</a> to either encourage the mass reporting, complain about them, or simply opine on the general feud.

‘Thot Crusade’ Mass Reports Cam Girls, Sex Workers To IRS For Not Paying Taxes

Democrats had barely wrested control of the House Tuesday night when they demanded President Donald Trump turn over his tax returns. Wednesday morning, Democrats declared that investigating Trump&#8217;s personal financial records would be the first item on their agenda come January. 
Democratic Representative Richard Neal (MA) told MSNBC Tuesday night that he plans on using his newfound power as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee to force the President to turn over his tax returns, and that he&#8217;ll subpoena the records if necessary.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
MSNBC: House Democrats request Trump&#8217;s Tax Returns
Tonight. No, I&#8217;m not kidding.
&#8212; Mickey White (@BiasedGirl) <a href="https://twitter.com/BiasedGirl/status/1060016152930385921?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 7, 2018</a></blockquote>
Neal declared his intentions back in October, <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-tax-returns-democrats-will-demand-presidents-records-house-1205085">Newsweek reports</a>, and claimed then that he could use an obscure 1924 provision in the United States tax code, that allows the Ways and Means Committee to view any American&#8217;s tax returns upon request, to obtain Trump&#8217;s records straight from the IRS (though he&#8217;d prefer it if the President simply complied with his wishes).
&#8220;I think we would all be comfortable if this was done on a voluntary basis,&#8221; Neal said. &#8220;If they would resist the overture then I think you could probably see a long and grinding court case.&#8221;
It&#8217;s not clear what Neal hopes to learn from Trump&#8217;s tax returns, but the President hasn&#8217;t exactly been willing to turn over his financial information, either, perhaps leading Democrats to suspect he&#8217;s hiding valuable information on how his finances and his position as President intertwine. During the 2016 campaign, Trump broke with tradition and did not disclose details of his or his corporation&#8217;s finances, claiming that he and his company were under audit by the IRS. 
The IRS does not comment on whether there is an ongoing investigation, but other evidence seemed to suggest that wasn&#8217;t true &#8212; and the IRS noted, publicly, that individuals under audit were under no obligation to keep their returns secret.
If he moves forward with his plan, Neal will have to fight fellow Democrats for the honor of issuing the subpoena, if it comes to that. Rep. Elijah Cummings, who will likely take over the House Oversight Committee, has expressed a desire to see Trump&#8217;s tax returns and investigate whether Trump has run afoul of the Constitution&#8217;s Emoluments clause, which prohibits elected officials from receiving gifts from foreign entities while in a position to direct policy without the express consent of Congress. 
Rep. Maxine Waters, who will now chair the House Financial Services Committee, hasn&#8217;t said outright that she plans on investigating the President, but it&#8217;s not likely she&#8217;ll pass on the opportunity.
In addition to Trump&#8217;s financials, Democrats have, in recent weeks, suggested that they plan on initiating an investigation into whether Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted young women while a teenager in suburban Washington, D.C., and re-opening a probe into whether members of the Trump Presidential campaign actively colluded with Russian officials to impact the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election.
Trump won&#8217;t be taking the investigations sitting down, a point he made clear on Twitter Wednesday morning.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
If the Democrats think they are going to waste Taxpayer Money investigating us at the House level, then we will likewise be forced to consider investigating them for all of the leaks of Classified Information, and much else, at the Senate level. Two can play that game!
&#8212; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1060155917059219461?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 7, 2018</a></blockquote>
&#8220;If the Democrats think they are going to waste Taxpayer Money investigating us at the House level, then we will likewise be forced to consider investigating them for all of the leaks of Classified Information, and much else, at the Senate level. Two can play that game!&#8221; Trump tweeted.
If Neal does demand Trump&#8217;s IRS records, the President is expected to initiate aggressive litigation in response.

Not Even 24 Hours: Democrats Say They’ll Demand Trump’s Tax Returns As Soon As They Take Over The House

Elijah Cummings

Nancy Pelosi

A former special agent with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was sentenced on Tuesday to more than four years in prison for tax fraud.
Alena Aleykina of Sacramento, CA was sentenced to 51 months after filing six false tax returns in three years, stealing money from the government, and obstructing the investigation into her crimes. A <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-irs-ci-special-agent-sentenced-over-four-years-prison-filing-false-tax-returns">press release</a> from the U.S. Attorney&#8217;s Office for the Northern District of California said the false tax returns were filed between 2009 and 2011.
&#8220;According to the evidence introduced at trial, Aleykina, who is also a Certified Public Accountant and holds a master&#8217;s degree in business administration, filed six false tax returns: three personal tax returns for years 2009, 2010, and 2011 and three in the names of trusts she created for years 2010 and 2011,&#8221; the release said.
Aleykina, 45, falsely claimed a head of household status on her personal tax returns, on which she also listed false dependents and fraudulently claimed education deductions.
But Aleykina apparently didn&#8217;t stop there. She also petitioned the California Superior Court for Yolo County for a fraudulent legal separation from her husband so the couple could claim rental real estate loss deductions, according to the press release. She also told her employer that she was taking English classes from a trust registered to her sister in order to receive $4,000 from the IRS&#8217;s Tuition Assistance Program.
On a trust tax return, Aleykina claimed she was paying her mother and sister to take care of her son and father.
Oh, and then she lied to investigators about where her government-issued laptop was. She also deleted dozens of files from the laptop once the authorities left.
&#8220;In sentencing Aleykina, Judge [John A.] Mendez stated his concern that defendant was a federal law enforcement officer and emphasized the importance of that fact when considering the defendant&#8217;s betrayal of the public&#8217;s trust,&#8221; the release stated. &#8220;Judge Mendez stated that such fraud and misconduct from a federal agent cannot be tolerated and that the defendant&#8217;s behavior shocked the conscience. In addition to the term of prison imposed, Judge Mendez ordered Aleykina to serve three years of supervised release and to pay $4,000 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service.&#8221;
Aleykina was found guilty on June 15, 2018, by a federal jury in the Eastern District of California after a two-week trial.
The IRS has had its fair share of scandals in recent years. Earlier this year, a Boston-based IRS agent <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/boston-irs-agent-released-after-pleading-not-guilty-to-forcing-gun-deep-into-mouth-of-drunk-intern-and-raping-her">pled not guilty</a> to handcuffing and raping a 21-year-old female intern while shoving a gun down her throat. Another IRS agent, this one from Philadelphia, PA, was arrested in September 2017 <a href="https://www.phillymag.com/news/2017/10/23/gregory-floyd-irs-agent-arrested-sexual-assault/">for second-degree sexual abuse</a>. Yet another agent, from Boise, ID, was sentenced last December <a href="https://www.kpvi.com/news/local_news/former-irs-agent-sentenced/article_afd245ac-de9b-11e7-8cb9-53751dcbbfe7.html">for distributing methamphetamine</a>.
Aleykina isn&#8217;t even the first IRS agent arrested in recent history for tax fraud. In 2015, a former IRS agent was arrested for orchestrating a tax-refund scheme that may have <a href="https://www.wowt.com/home/headlines/Former-Omaha-IRS-Agent-Arrested-for-Tax-Fraud-Scheme--363335751.html">generated $1 million in false claims</a>. In 2009, a California IRS agent <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/29972289/ns/us_news-weird_news/t/irs-agent-admits-cheating-his-own-taxes/">pled guilty to tax fraud</a>.

Former IRS Agent Sentenced For Tax Fraud

Crime

On Monday, in a major victory for conservative groups, the Treasury Department announced that some tax-exempt groups that participate in politics <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-17/many-political-tax-exempts-no-longer-required-to-report-donors">will no longer have to disclose their donor</a>s to the Internal Revenue Service. Those groups include Section 501(c)4 groups; conservative Section 501(c)4 groups were targeted by the IRS during the Obama Administration.
In October 2017, after a four-year-long struggle by conservative groups to prove that the IRS during the Obama Administration had targeted them, the IRS <a href="http://media.aclj.org/pdf/17.10.25-Proposed-Consent-Order-FILED.pdf">finally admitted in court</a> that the charges were true. The consent order acknowledged, &#8220;The IRS admits that its treatment of Plaintiffs during the tax-exempt determinations process, including screening their applications based on their names or policy positions, subjecting those applications to heightened scrutiny and inordinate delays, and demanding of some Plaintiffs&#8217; information that TIGTA determined was unnecessary to the agency&#8217;s determination of their tax-exempt status, was wrong. For such treatment, the IRS expresses its sincere apology.&#8221;
In 2013, the Obama Administration had issued proposed guidance targeting 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations. Newsmax <a href="https://www.newsmax.com/bradleyblakeman/obama-501c4-nonprofit-tax/2013/12/02/id/539412/">reported</a>:
<blockquote>
The proposed guidance, issued by the Treasury Department and the IRS, seeks to provide more definitive rules regarding the types of activities that may qualify as political activity by creating a new term &#8212; &#8220;candidate-related political activity.&#8221; Under the proposed regulations, such &#8220;candidate-related political activity&#8221; would not promote an organization&#8217;s social welfare purpose, and as a result, the organization would be limited in the amount of time and money it could spend on such activities.
</blockquote>
Now, with the Treasury Department&#8217;s announcement, although charities and political groups will still be required to provide the names and addresses of donors, some tax-exempt groups will not have to provide the donors&#8217; names and addresses. Among those groups are an arm of the National Rifle Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin stated, &#8220;Americans shouldn&#8217;t be required to send the IRS information that it doesn&#8217;t need to effectively enforce our tax laws, and the IRS simply does not need tax returns with donor names and addresses to do its job in this area. This change will in no way limit transparency. The same information about tax-exempt organizations that was previously available to the public will continue to be available, while private taxpayer information will be better protected.&#8221;
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell added, &#8220;The IRS&#8217;s decision is a move in the right direction to end activist regulators&#8217; culture of intimidation to silence political speech.&#8221;
The GOP House passed a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/house-votes-to-ban-irs-from-requiring-nonprofit-donor-lists-1465936842?mod=article_inline">bill to eliminate the requirement</a> for revealing names and addresses in 2016, but the Obama administration blocked it. That same year, as <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-treasury-restricts-donor-disclosure-requirement-for-some-nonprofit-groups-1531788345">The Wall Street Journal</a> notes:
<blockquote>
In 2016, a federal judge blocked then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris&#8217;s demand for Americans for Prosperity&#8217;s donor list, saying she needed it for investigative purposes. <a href="http://www.thenonprofittimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/AFP-v.-Harris.4.21.16.pdf?mod=article_inline">In his ruling</a>, the judge pointed out that the state&#8217;s &#8220;pervasive, recurring pattern&#8221; of accidental Schedule B disclosures to the public made it impossible to believe the attorney general would keep Americans for Prosperity&#8217;s donor list confidential.
</blockquote>

TAKE THAT, OBAMA: Treasury Department Will Permit Non-Profits To Protect Names And Addresses Of Donors

Barack Obama

Department of the Treasury

On Thursday, <a href="https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-obtains-irs-documents-revealing-mccains-subcommittee-staff-director-urged-irs-to-engage-in-financially-ruinous-targeting/">Judicial Watch</a> released <a href="https://www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/jw-v-irs-01559-unredacted-documents-pg-19-29/">internal IRS</a> documents showing that in 2013, Sen. John McCain&#8217;s former staff director and chief counsel on the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee, Henry Kerner, urged top IRS officials, including then-director of exempt organizations Lois Lerner, to &#8220;audit so many that it becomes financially ruinous.&#8221;
Prior to the April 30, 2013 meeting at which Kerner recommended targeting tax-exempt groups, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) had expressed their concerns that the IRS was not reining in political advocacy groups. Their concern had been triggered by the Supreme Court&#8217;s decision in Citizens United, which overturned parts of the McCain-Feingold Act.
Notes from IRS employees who attended an April 30, 2013 meeting recorded Kerner telling Lerner and other high-ranking IRS officials, &#8220;Maybe the solution is to audit so many that it is <a href="https://www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/jw-v-irs-01559-unredacted-documents-pg-19-29/">financially</a> ruinous.&#8221;
Kerner inquired how to deal with tax-exempt groups that claimed section 501 (c)(4) but were designed to be primarily political. Lerner answered that the system worked but not in real time. Kerner said the tax-exempt groups didn&#8217;t disclose donors. Lerner said that if the tax-exempt groups didn&#8217;t meet the requirements, the IRS could revoke their status; IRS official Nan Marks said the system didn&#8217;t work if the tax-exempt groups didn&#8217;t disclose donors, prompting Kerner to say perhaps the answer was to audit so many of the tax-exempt groups that it would be financially ruinous for them.
As Judicial Watch (JW) has<a href="https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-irs-documents-reveal-lerner-knew-targeting-criteria-of-nonprofit-groups-might-raise-questions/"> reported</a> on the 2013 meeting, Senator McCain <a href="https://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=A7956992-F2AB-4BBD-A9CA-D48E8E8BD8FC">then issued a statement</a> decrying &#8220;false reports claiming that his office was somehow involved in IRS targeting of conservative groups.&#8221; Judicial Watch notes, &#8220;The IRS previously blacked out the <a href="https://www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/jw-v-irs-13-01559/">notes of the meeting</a> but Judicial Watch found the notes among subsequent documents released by the agency.&#8221;
JW also points out, &#8220;The April 30, 2013 meeting came just under two weeks prior to Lerner&#8217;s admission during an ABA meeting that the IRS had &#8216;inappropriately&#8217; targeted conservative groups. In her <a href="http://electionlawblog.org/?p=50160">May 2013 answer</a> to a <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/05/17/exclusive-woman-who-asked-irss-lois-lerner-scandal-breaking-question-details-plant">planted question</a>, in which she admitted to the &#8216;absolutely incorrect, insensitive, and inappropriate&#8217; targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups, Lerner suggested the IRS targeting occurred due to an &#8216;uptick&#8217; in 501 (c)(4) applications to the IRS but in actuality, there had been a <a href="http://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2013reports/201310053fr.pdf">decrease</a> in such applications in 2010.&#8221;
Ten days after the April meeting, Lerner admitted that the IRS had improperly and deliberately delayed applications for tax-exempt status from conservative non-profit groups.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton concluded, &#8220;The Obama IRS scandal is bipartisan &#8211; McCain and Democrats who wanted to regulate political speech lost at the Supreme Court, so they sought to use the IRS to harass innocent Americans. The Obama IRS scandal is not over &#8211; as Judicial Watch continues to uncover smoking gun documents that raise questions about how the Obama administration weaponized the IRS, the FEC, FBI, and DOJ to target the First Amendment rights of Americans.&#8221;

McCain’s Staff Director Urged IRS To Make It ‘Financially Ruinous’ For Tax-Exempt Political Groups

John McCain

On Tuesday, it was revealed that Stormy Daniels&#8217; attorney Michael Avenatti has reportedly defaulted on over $440,000 in back taxes, penalties and interest that he had personally promised to pay the Internal Revenue Service. <a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-avenatti-bankruptcy-20180522-story.html">The Los Angeles Times</a> reported, Avenatti had promised to pay the money as part of a bankruptcy settlement for his law firm.
The Times wrote, &#8220;Under the Jan. 30 bankruptcy settlement, Avenatti personally agreed to pay the IRS $2.4 million in back taxes, penalties and interest, court records show. Nearly $1.3 million of that was for payroll taxes that his law firm withheld from employees, but did not turn over to the government. Avenatti has paid $1.5 million of what was due, but missed the deadline last week for paying the next installment of $440,291, according to the U.S. attorney&#8217;s office in Los Angeles.&#8221;
In another bankruptcy issue for Avenatti&#8217;s firm, the Times stated the Eagan Avenatti law firm was ordered to pay a $10 million judgment because Avenatti and his firm failed to pay Jason Frank, a lawyer who used to work for them. Avenatti reportedly personally promised to pay Frank $4.85 million; Avenatti allegedly agreed that if he missed the deadlines he would accept a Bankruptcy Court judgment ordering his law firm to pay Frank $10 million. That includes the $4.85 million that he&#8217;d personally guaranteed.
Avenatti had reportedly personally guaranteed that the firm would pay Frank last week, but that didn&#8217;t eventuate.
Avenatti responded to the Times&#8217; accusations by asserting that they were &#8220;purposely confusing me with a separate legal entity that has no role in the Daniels case.&#8221; Regarding the $10 million judgment, he added, &#8220;Irrelevant. Over blown. Sensational reporting at its finest. No judgment against me was issued nor do I owe any taxes.&#8221;

Stormy Daniels’ Lawyer Reputedly Defaulted On Almost Half A Million Dollars In Back taxes

Michael Avenatti

Stormy Daniels

It looks like someone poisoned the entertainment well with conservative ideology. On Sunday morning, former NFL star and Kim Kardashian-boyfriend Reggie Bush went into a conservative line of questioning over the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
&#8220;This might be a dumb question so I&#8217;m apologizing ahead of time but who audits the IRS?&#8221; Bush asked via Twitter. &#8220;How do we know exactly where our tax dollars go and that they are being used the right way?&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
This might be a dumb question so I&#8217;m apologizing ahead of time but who audits the IRS? How do we know exactly where our tax dollars go and that they are being used the right way?
&#8212; Reggie Bush (@ReggieBush) <a href="https://twitter.com/ReggieBush/status/990656910280933376?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 29, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
Bush, aligning himself with the principle of fiscal responsibility, makes a great point about the abundance of monetary waste and lack of real transparency in our federal tax system.
In March, superstar rapper Cardi B made a similar argument in a video rant that went viral on social media.
&#8220;Aight, so you know the government is taking 40 percent of my taxes, and Uncle Sam, I want to know what you&#8217;re doing with my f****** tax money, because you know what I&#8217;m sayin&#8217;, like, when you donate, like, when you donate to a kid from a foreign country, they give you updates of what they doing with your donation,&#8221; she <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/28608/cardi-b-just-made-best-argument-fiscal-ben-shapiro">said</a> in the video, adding, &#8220;I want to know what you&#8217;re doing with my f****** tax money, because I&#8217;m from New York and the streets is always dirty, we was voted the dirtiest city in America. What is y&#8217;all doing?&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Cardi B is getting into tax policy now. She says she&#8217;s paying 40% of her income in taxes and wants to know where the money is going&#8230;&#8221;when you donate to a kid in a foreign country, they give you updates on what they&#8217;re doing with your donation&#8230;.I want updates on my tax money.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/E1hITGNqee">pic.twitter.com/E1hITGNqee</a>
&#8212; Yashar Ali (@yashar) <a href="https://twitter.com/yashar/status/977015247793016832?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 23, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
Solid questions.
As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/28608/cardi-b-just-made-best-argument-fiscal-ben-shapiro">noted</a> by Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro, Congress could help this problem by ending &#8220;the process of tax withholding and instead force everyone to sign a check personally to the government. Then we might be ready for some real conversations about serious spending.&#8221;
Moreover, the new wildly successful &#8220;Roseanne&#8221; reboot also shook-up the entertainment world, showcasing a family where there are actual Trump supporters who aren&#8217;t depicted as despicable racists but human beings.
But perhaps the biggest shake-up in the entertainment world has been from rapper Kanye West. Recently, the performer and fashion designer has advocated for freedom of thought, aligned himself with conservative thinkers, and even dared to question the stronghold the Democrat Party has on black Americans.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/30053/kanye-tweets-about-democrats-being-party-slavery-amanda-prestigiacomo">Kanye Tweets About Democrats Being The Party Of Slavery And The Left EXPLODES</a>

CULTURE SHIFT: NFL Star Reggie Bush Gets Conservative On Twitter

Hollywood

Kanye West

Did you fail to make the midnight deadline to file your taxes for 2017, and pay the federal government for the pleasure of wasting your hard-earned money in ways you&#8217;d never anticipate? Well, you&#8217;re in luck, because you have an extra day, thanks to that same federal government&#8217;s complete lack of foresight.
Just as millions of Americans were logging on to e-fail their 1040s, the IRS e-file website &#8212; built, apparently, without regard to its actual purpose or without the capacity to handle a totally expected flood of users trying to file ahead of the April 15 midnight deadline &#8212; melted down and was unavailable most of the day.
<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/17/treasury-secretary-mnuchin-says-online-tax-filers-will-get-extension-after-irs-payment-website-outage.html">According to NBC News</a>, the site didn&#8217;t come back online until after close of business &#8212; at 5:05pm EST.
While tax filers could sill manage to send the IRS their paperwork, the IRS wasn&#8217;t accepting the most important thing: the payment. &#8220;The outage affected the &#8220;Direct Pay&#8221; link, a free service for paying taxes via bank accounts, and the &#8220;Payment Plan&#8221; page, where filers can pay their tax bill in installments,&#8221; NBC reported.
Americans have until midnight Wednesday night to file their completed tax returns, with payment, or file for an extension, which will put the deadline for filing in early October. Business taxes are typically due the day after personal income taxes. Those can now be filed all the way up until midnight Thursday.

OOPS: Americans Have An Extra Day To File Their Taxes Thanks To An IRS Disaster

The last group targeted in an ongoing, anti-conservative campaign within the Internal Revenue Service has received an official apology, bringing the saga that once starred Lois Lerner and other high-profile Obama Administration officials, to a close.
Pro-Israel non-profit group Z Street was swept up in the IRS dragnet that delayed or denied 501(c)(3) tax exempt status to hundreds of Tea Party, conservative, or conservative-sounding organizations while Obama officials searched for a &#8220;dark money&#8221; connection between the groups, and tried to force organizations to disclose major conservative donors.
Z Street applied for non-profit status in 2009, a review process that typically takes around six months. The group waited a shocking seven years for the IRS to handle their application. Around a year into the application process, Z Street&#8217;s executives asked the IRS what the problem was, only to learn that they&#8217;d been targeted for &#8220;heightened scrutiny&#8221; because officials were concerned that Z Street&#8217;s &#8220;policy positions conflicted with those of the Obama administration.&#8221;
Specifically, officials wanted to know whether Z Street was &#8220;funding terror&#8221; &#8212; a concern that&#8217;s not typically within the purview of the Internal Revenue Service.
<a href="http://www.govexec.com/oversight/2018/02/justice-department-settles-final-case-irs-targeting-dispute/145687/?oref=govexec_today_nl">Now Government Executive reports</a> that Z Street, the last remaining group of 427 organizations suing the IRS, has received its settlement and been issued a personal apology from Acting Internal Revenue Commissioner David Kautter. The apology is mostly complete, though it does mention that no court has yet found the IRS actually guilty of any kind of discrimination.
Z Street&#8217;s settlement follows two other &#8220;substantial&#8221; settlements, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/10/27/560308997/irs-apologizes-for-aggressive-scrutiny-of-conservative-groups">inked back in October</a>.

Pro-Israel Group FINALLY Gets An Apology For IRS’ Anti-Conservative Targeting Program

Lois Lerner

In case you don&#8217;t hate the Internal Revenue Service enough already, America&#8217;s tax collecting agency is giving you another reason.
The agency reportedly spent $20 million &#8212; of your tax money, by the way &#8212; to collect $6.7 million in tax debts.
&#8220;Private debt collectors cost the Internal Revenue Service $20 million in the last fiscal year, but brought in only $6.7 million in back taxes, the agency&#8217;s taxpayer advocate reported Wednesday. That was less than 1% of the amount assigned for collection,&#8221; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/10/business/economy/irs-debt-collection.html?module=WatchingPortal%C2%AEion=c-column-middle-span-region&amp;pgType=Homepage&amp;action=click&amp;mediaId=none&amp;state=standard&amp;contentPlacement=2&amp;version=internal&amp;contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&amp;contentId=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2018%252F01%252F10%252Fbusiness%252Feconomy%252Firs-debt-collection.html&amp;eventName=Watching-article-click">The New York Times</a> reported.
<blockquote>
What&#8217;s more, private contractors in some cases were paid 25 percent commissions on collections that the I.R.S. made without their help, according to the annual report by Nina E. Olson, who heads the Taxpayer Advocate Service, an independent office within the I.R.S.
While Republicans have been the most vocal proponents of privatizing public services, congressional Democrats are equally responsible for the I.R.S.&#8217;s program. Despite the pointed failure of similar efforts in the past, Congress passed a law in 2015 requiring the I.R.S. to use outside contractors to make a dent in the $138 billion that taxpayers owe the government.
The outsourcing began last April. Since then, the report stated, &#8220;the I.R.S. has implemented the program in a manner that causes excessive financial harm to taxpayers and constitutes an end run around taxpayer rights protections.&#8221;
</blockquote>
Some lawmakers say the federal government underfunds the IRS, which gets 95 million phone calls a year. The agency also complains about not having enough staff to handle the collection of taxes.
Those problems could be exacerbated by the new tax cuts passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump.
&#8220;A preliminary estimate by the I.R.S. figured that the new law would require an additional $495 million over the next two fiscal years to handle tasks like updating programming, answering phone calls, drafting and publishing new forms, revising regulations and training employees on the new code,&#8221; the Times wrote.
During Barack Obama&#8217;s terms in office, the agency targeted conservative and tea party groups, denying or delaying for years their requests for tax-exempt status while doling the same status out to liberal groups. Last October, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that groups with names involving &#8220;Tea Party&#8221; or &#8220;Patriots,&#8221; or groups that argued policy positions concerning government spending, were subject to &#8220;inappropriate criteria&#8221; to &#8220;screen&#8221; applications.
&#8220;The IRS&#8217;s use of these criteria as a basis for heightened scrutiny was wrong and should never have occurred. It is improper for the IRS to single out groups for different treatment based on their names or ideological positions,&#8221; he said.
Sessions announced that the department had made legal settlements with Tea Party groups whose tax-exempt status was significantly delayed by the IRS dating back to 2013, &#8220;based solely on their viewpoint or ideology.&#8221; The department&#8217;s settlement would pay the claims of each of the over 400 groups in the case.

IRS Paid $20 Million to Collect $6.7 Million in Tax Debts

Jeff Sessions

During a recent appearance on CBS&#8217; &#8220;This Morning,&#8221; former Vice President Joe Biden declared that Barack Obama&#8217;s presidency didn&#8217;t have &#8220;a hint of a scandal.&#8221;
Biden made the claim in response to a question by the show&#8217;s hosts about his friendship with the former president. After praising Obama as the most virtuous president he&#8217;s met in his decades of serving the people, Biden said that not only was the former president spotless, so was his presidency.
&#8220;I&#8217;ve served with eight presidents and I&#8217;ve gotten to know four of them very well. I&#8217;ve never met any president that has more character, more integrity, and more backbone than this guy does,&#8221; Biden claimed. &#8220;And eight years, not a hint &#8212; not a hint &#8212; of a scandal.&#8221;
WATCH:
<div class="embed video fluid-video">
<blockquote data-lang="en">
Joe Biden: Obama Admin Without &#8216;A Hint Of A Scandal&#8217;
Billions to Iran 
Iran Deal 
IRS targets Tea Party 
Obama &amp; Hillary&#8217;s private server 
Spied on AP reporters 
Obamacare lies 
Operation fast &amp; furious 
Benghazigate 
Bergdahl 
Eric Holder held in contempt of Congress 
NSA spying 
Solyndra <a href="https://t.co/pT3hZSR3zN">pic.twitter.com/pT3hZSR3zN</a>
&#8212; Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/941943527566536705?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 16, 2017</a></blockquote>
</div>
Biden&#8217;s claim is, of course, false. Obama&#8217;s presidency was littered with scandals, and newly discovered scandals from his administration are still being unearthed. Here are just a few of the biggest scandals that occurred under the Obama administration:
1. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/24826/shock-obama-helped-hezbollah-secure-bogus-iran-ryan-saavedra">Helping Hezbollah to get the Iran Deal done</a> &#8212; A bombshell report from Politico released on Sunday revealed that the Obama administration intentionally derailed a massive federal investigation into the Iranian-backed terrorist organization Hezbollah so that they could pass the Iran deal. One federal agent said that Obama&#8217;s actions allowed Hezbollah &#8220;to become one of the biggest transnational organized crime groups in the world.&#8221;
2. <a href="http://freebeacon.com/national-security/iran-may-received-much-33-6-billion-cash-gold-payments-u-s/">Billions to Iran</a> &#8212; The Obama administration reportedly might have paid Iran &#8220;an additional $33.6 billion in secret cash and gold payments facilitated by the Obama administration between 2014 and 2016, according to testimony provided before Congress by an expert on last summer&#8217;s nuclear agreement with Iran.&#8221;
3. <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-18/obama-s-alternative-facts-on-the-iran-nuclear-deal">The Iran Deal</a> &#8212; The Iran Deal is a disastrous, one-sided deal that Obama pushed through for political purposes that&#8217;s been described by top nuclear experts as a complete &#8220;joke.&#8221;
4. <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/10/26/jay-sekulow-victory-irs-admits-tea-party-other-conservative-groups-were-targets-during-obama-era.html">IRS targets Tea Party</a> &#8212; &#8220;In an unprecedented victorious conclusion to our four-year-long legal battle against the IRS, the bureaucratic agency has just admitted in federal court that it wrongfully targeted Tea Party and conservative groups during the Obama administration because of their political viewpoints and issued an apology to our clients for doing so.&#8221;
5. <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/441430/wikileaks-hillary-clinton-barack-obama-emails-more-evidence-president-lied">Obama &amp; Hillary&#8217;s private server</a> &#8212; &#8220;WikiLeaks has released e-mails showing Hillary Clinton&#8217;s advisers knew there was a problem when President Obama denied knowledge of Clinton&#8217;s private e-mail system.&#8221;
6. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/15/opinion/spying-on-the-associated-press.html">Spied on AP reporters</a> &#8212; &#8220;The Obama administration, which has a chilling zeal for investigating leaks and prosecuting leakers, has failed to offer a credible justification for secretly combing through the phone records of reporters and editors at The Associated Press in what looks like a fishing expedition for sources and an effort to frighten off whistle-blowers.&#8221;
7. <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/new-york-times-claims-obama-only-told-18-falsehoods-during-his-whole-presidency-here-are-18-he-told-in-selling-obamacare-in-2009-alone/article/2643666">Obama told at least 18 lies on Obamacare</a> &#8212; Obamacare broke a lot of key promises (at least 18) that Obama made both on the campaign trail and throughout his presidency.
8. <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/06/07/fast-and-furious-report-slams-holder-doj-for-deception-in-gun-running-scandal.html">Operation Fast &amp; Furious</a> &#8212; &#8220;Members of a congressional committee at a public hearing Wednesday blasted former President Barack Obama and his attorney general for allegedly covering up an investigation into the death of a Border Patrol agent killed as a result of a botched government gun-running project known as Operation Fast and Furious.&#8221;
9. <a href="https://gop.com/benghazi-report-confirms-obama-and-clinton-put-politics-before-duty/">Benghazi</a> &#8212; &#8220;In the weeks and months after the attack, as multiple authorities tried to get to the bottom of what happened, the Obama administration was busy stonewalling at every turn. With the 2012 presidential election nearing, the Obama administration had every incentive to prevent the public from knowing exactly how they had failed so badly.&#8221;
10. <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/343785-newly-declassified-memos-detail-extent-of-improper-obama-era-nsa">NSA spied on Americans</a> &#8212; &#8220;The National Security Agency and FBI violated specific civil liberty protections during the Obama administration by improperly searching and disseminating raw intelligence on Americans or failing to promptly delete unauthorized intercepts, according to newly declassified memos that provide some of the richest detail to date on the spy agencies&#8217; ability to obey their own rules.&#8221;
11. <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/aug/26/solyndra-misled-government-get-535-million-solar-p/">Solyndra scandal</a> &#8212; &#8220;Solyndra, the solar panel manufacturer who took more than $500 million from President Obama&#8217;s stimulus then went bust, sticking taxpayers for the loss, lied to federal officials to secure the loan, the Energy Department&#8217;s inspector general said in a report released Wednesday. But the Obama administration goofed too, and may have cut corners in fully vetting the project because of &#8216;political pressure&#8217; from top Democrats and Solyndra itself, the investigators said in their report, which took four years to complete.&#8221;

WATCH: Joe Biden Claims Obama Never Had Any Scandals, Ignores These 11 Major Scandals

Benghazi

Iran

Joe Biden

Obama Administration

Terrorism

Sen. John Thune&#8217;s (R-SD) bill easing regulations for independent contractors and freelance workers may be added to the tax reform proposal that is being debated in the House due to the sponsorship of Congressman Tom Rice (R-SC).
According to Thune&#8217;s <a href="https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2017/7/thune-introduces-bill-to-add-certainty-to-worker-classification-rules">website</a>, the New GIG Act would &#8220;create a safe harbor based on objective tests, which if satisfied, would ensure that the service provider (worker) would be treated as an independent contractor, not an employee, and the service recipient (customer) would not be treated as the employer. In the context of the gig economy where an internet platform or app facilitates the transactions and payments, that third party would also not be treated as the employer.&#8221;
The bill aims to create objective tests to help independent contractors and freelancers. It also establishes new IRS reporting rules and creates &#8220;retroactive reclassification&#8221; to ease the confusion surrounding these jobs. 
&#8220;Today&#8217;s fast-growing &#8216;gig economy&#8217; has made it easier for people to offer unique services, like home repair and cleaning, child care, food delivery, or ride sharing, through easy-to-use mobile applications that can be opened with a simple swipe of a finger,&#8221; Thune said in a statement. &#8220;While these gig economy companies have created thousands of new jobs, they&#8217;ve also faced new challenges when it comes to how the service providers are classified by the IRS.&#8221;
He added, &#8220;My legislation would provide clear rules so these freelance-style workers can work as independent contractors with the peace of mind that their tax status will be respected by the IRS.&#8221;
The New GIG Act has been met with support from several conservatives who have praised its efforts to ease the burden on the American worker. 
Matt Feeney of the Cato Institute said, &#8220;The new and growing gig economy is an exciting new feature of modern life, but it has unfortunately run up against numerous challenges posed by outdated tax law. Tax reforms that account for the gig economy would allow for workers to engage in mircro-entrepreneurship without worrying about running afoul of the IRS.&#8221; 
Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots added, &#8220;The reform proposed by Senator Thune and Congressman Rice would simplify the tax code for Gig Economy companies and their independent contractors, and therefore incentivize more people to participate and succeed in these new jobs. There&#8217;s no cost to taxpayers and it&#8217;s true reform.&#8221;
The New GIG Act was initially proposed to the Senate in July.

Senator Thune’s New GIG Act May Be Added To GOP Tax Reform

Conservatism

Economy

House Republicans

Republican Party

Trump Administration

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

<div>
&#8220;The power to tax involves the power to destroy.&#8221; &#8212; Daniel Webster
Lost in the never-ending Russia-gate saga the past few days was one of the most grossly under-reported stories by the mainstream media (which may as well be Obama&#8217;s Praetorian Guard). The DOJ has settled with several conservative groups who rightfully claimed they&#8217;d been specifically targeted by the IRS for harassment and frivolous yet expensive and time-consuming actions, as well as denial or delay of tax-exempt status due to their political leanings in opposition to the Obama administration.
Court records show that IRS admitted wrong-doing and offered this astounding apology for what in less acerbically political times would be considered by both the Left and the Right to be one of the most sinister and egregious exercises of punitive State power to suppress free speech and deny first amendment rights to U.S. citizens in living memory.
Said the IRS: &#8220;The IRS admits that its treatment of Plaintiffs during the tax-exempt determination process, including screening their applications based on their names or policy positions, subjecting those applications to heightened scrutiny and inordinate delays, and demanding some Plaintiffs&#8217; information that TIGTA determined was unnecessary to the agency&#8217;s determination of their tax-exempt status, was wrong. For such treatment, the IRS expresses its sincere apology.&#8221;
One can only imagine if this was a Republican administration weaponizing the IRS to attack its liberal political opponents. (Recently there was a resolution in the Munk Debates in Canada that read: &#8220;Resolved, Donald Trump is threat to American Democracy.&#8221; It appears the resolution came one administration too late.)
Liberty can be taken away not just by force of arms, but by the metastasizing scope and power of faceless, agenda-driven bureaucrats doing the bidding of their political bosses against whom the citizenry have no recourse, and no way to elect them out of their positions. The IRS has within its auspices enormous power. It can by the stroke of a pen upend the lives of any American it so pleases, with little oversight, and cost them dearly in money, time, and stress levels. It can, in fact, ruin anyone at any time as it has the power to confiscate your money possessions at gunpoint. To use such an omnipotent government agency to forward one political narrative over another is the very antithesis of the Revolution&#8217;s founding ideals. And it says much about the dark cynicism and the previous administration and its belief that it had the power and the right to operate under its own set of rules.
More disconcerting, the fact that IRS Director and chief culprit Lois Lerner, who first plead her innocence before taking the Fifth (which was an act of contempt of Congress) walked away from this scandal with a full pension and $129,000 in bonus money rather than a jail term sets a dangerous precedent that federal accountability is arbitrary.
To wit: for my friends, whatever they need . . . for my enemies, the law.
Consider: Yale law professor Stephen Carter writes: &#8220;70 percent of American adults have committed a crime that could lead to imprisonment.&#8221; Carter noted that&#8217;s in part because &#8220;there are 300,000 or more federal regulations that may be enforceable through criminal punishment.&#8221; As such, this expansive minefield of legal booby traps we all must navigate sans map or compass every day has placed a powerful weapon in the hands of those who wish to punish those with whom they simply disagree. Lavrentiy Beria comes to mind: &#8220;Show me the man and I&#8217;ll show you the crime.&#8221; The regulatory state is perhaps the most dangerous existential threat to the American system in modern times. The IRS scandal, and the media&#8217;s unwillingness to cover it as it took place during their term of their favorite son, is just further proof.
</div>

Obama’s IRS … The Other Scandal

Former President Barack Hussein Obama proved again that all the rhetoric of &#8220;hope and change&#8221; and moving &#8220;forward&#8221; was nothing more than pandering to his left-wing base. According to reports, he and former First Lady Michelle Obama have become the most expensive ex-presidential couple in modern history. 
Stephen Dinan of The Washington Post <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/31/obama-will-top-bush-most-costly-ex-president/">writes</a>:
<blockquote>
Former President Barack Obama is about to become the most expensive ex-president, costing taxpayers $1,153,000 next year, according to a new Congressional Research Service memo looking at the official allowances for the five living former chief executives.
His $1,153,000 budget request for 2018 is more than $100,000 higher than George W. Bush&#8217;s request for next year and nearly $200,000 more than Bill Clinton&#8217;s expected budget. George H.W. Bush is slated to get $942,000, while Jimmy Carter will get less than half that, at just $456,000.
</blockquote>
Obama is not simply spending the money on lavish vacations for himself and Michelle to hobnob with European socialists and their celebrity friends. They are also renting a Washington, D.C.-based office space that is over 8,000 square feet for $536,000, all at the taxpayer&#8217;s expense. 
His pension payment is the highest of all living presidents, costing Americans $236,000 a year.
Obama presented himself as a&#8221;&#8216;man of the people&#8221; who understood the troubles of the middle and lower class. As more details about his past and behind-the-scenes activities came to light, this has proven to be false. 
During his administration, he directed the government to spend millions of dollars on global warming research, gender studies, lavish vacations, golfing trips, and prosecuting his political enemies with the IRS and the Department of Justice. Meanwhile, Americans fell deeper into poverty and veterans suffered at the hands of an ambivalent VA Department. 
Even though he has been out of the White House, Obama is still taking advantage of the perks of his office at the expense of the American taxpayer.

MAN OF THE PEOPLE: Barack Obama Is The Most Expensive Ex-President Ever

Bill Clinton

Department of Veterans Affairs

Europe

George H.W. Bush

George W. Bush

Golf

Hillary Clinton

According to <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2017/07/08/mom-pop-fights-back-irs-taking-selling-entire-inventory">The Dallas Morning News</a>, an elderly Thai couple and their bridal shop were targeted by the IRS under the Obama Administration in March 2015. They were forced out of business despite never being formally accused by the federal government of violating any laws.
Mii&#8217;s Bridal &amp; Tuxedo, in Garland, Texas, owned by Tony Thangsongcharoen, 68, and his wife, Somnuek Thangsongcharoen, 72, was seized by IRS agents, prompting the Thai couple to file a lawsuit against the federal government in March for more than $1.8 million.
The Thangsongcharoens started their business in 1983 after emigrating to the United States. An IRS agent got authorization for the seizure from a U.S. district court. The owners&#8217; lawsuit alleges that IRS agents arriving at the store informed the owners they had to cough up a $10,000 check within two hours or their roughly 1,600 &#8220;designer&#8221; gowns, worth more than $615,000, would be sold.
The IRS claims it has the right to act swiftly if it decides the goods seized could &#8220;perish or waste&#8221; or lose their value, or if storing the property would cost the IRS &#8220;great expense.&#8221; This was justification for not posting advance public notice of the Mii&#8217;s sale or waiting at least 10 days before selling the goods, the usual procedure.
The sale yielded roughly $17,000, which didn&#8217;t measure up to the roughly $31,400 in tax debt alleged by the government. The lawsuit alleges, &#8220;The agents auctioned off, before their very eyes, the family&#8217;s entire life savings for pennies on the dollar.&#8221;
Anya Bidwell, an attorney for the <a href="http://ij.org/">Institute for Justice</a>, told The Dallas Morning News that the IRS has a &#8220;history of aggressively interpreting federal laws to seize property,&#8221; adding, &#8220;No one in the United States should lose property without being convicted of a crime or without a proper due process hearing.&#8221;
The lawsuit alleges other improprieties during the sale: &#8220;The lead agent brought four children to join the armed agents and tag along during the entire process.&#8221;
The Thangsongcharoens claim they didn&#8217;t owe the IRS any taxes; the government claims the couple intentionally made cash deposits just under the $10,000 limit in 2005, 2008 and 2010. 
The lawsuit claims that the IRS agents marked down the inventory to roughly $6,000 so they could claim it would cost more to store the goods than they were worth; that would amount to less than $4 per dress.
As <a href="https://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/07/09/irs-wipes-out-elderly-couples-dress-shop-sells-everything-and-the-details-are-infuriating/">The Blaze</a> noted:
<blockquote>
In 2015, the Institute for Justice, an organization that has actively fought against lenient IRS seizure policies, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2016/06/24/irs-structuring-policy/#f8cd3141a871">published a study</a> showing from 2005 to 2012, the IRS took from people more than $43 million in 600 cases in which the people whose assets had been taken had not been suspected of any criminal activity except for having made deposits slightly below the $10,000 threshold.
</blockquote>

Obama’s IRS Seized Elderly Couple’s Bridal Shop Without Accusation Of Them Breaking The Law

On Tuesday, the Tax Division of the Department of Justice announced that a federal grand jury has charged an Atlanta-based IRS employee of stealing taxpayers&#8217; personal identification information and filing fraudulent tax returns seeking refunds in their names. The incident is yet <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-edca/pr/two-sentenced-fresno-area-identity-theft-ring-involving-over-250-victims-and-12-million">another example </a>of how easily IRS employees can abuse their access to taxpayers&#8217; sensitive information. 
The case was brought before a grand jury in the Northern District of Georgia, which indicted IRS employee Stephanie Parker of &#8220;wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.&#8221; The <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/irs-employee-indicted-stealing-taxpayers-ids-and-filing-fraudulent-returns">DOJ</a> provides some details of the case:
<blockquote>
According to the indictment, since November 2010, Stephanie Parker of Atlanta, Georgia, worked at the IRS and had access to taxpayers&#8217; personal identifying information, such as social security numbers and dates of birth. The indictment alleges that between September 2012 and April 2013, Parker exploited her IRS accesses to steal such personal information, which she then used to file tax returns seeking refunds in the names of other individuals. Parker allegedly directed the fraudulently obtained refunds into nominee bank accounts and used some of those funds to purchase money orders.
</blockquote>
The crimes carry stiff penalties including up to 20 years in prison for each count of wire fraud and two years for each aggravated identity theft charge. 
The DOJ stresses that an indictment is an allegation of the crime and Parker is presumed innocent until proven guilty, however it&#8217;s clear that the Tax Division feels confident in their investigation: 
<blockquote>
Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Goldberg and U.S. Attorney Horn commended special agents of IRS &#8211; Criminal Investigation and Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), who conducted the investigation, and Trial Attorneys Michael Boteler and Melanie Smith of the Tax Division, who are prosecuting this case.
</blockquote>
The charges brought against Parker are the same charges that were brought in 2014 against the &#8220;<a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-edca/pr/two-sentenced-fresno-area-identity-theft-ring-involving-over-250-victims-and-12-million">identity theft ring</a>&#8221; of IRS employees in the Fresno-area, which the DOJ reports &#8220;misused the personal information of approximately 250 victims and attempted fraudulent credit card charges of over $1.2 million.&#8221; The investigation resulted in cases against four former IRS employees, three of which have already been sentenced to multiple years in prison, and one of which is still to by tried. The DOJ provides a summary of the four cases:
<blockquote>
Two Fresno residents, Daniel Miranda, 26, and Roberto Martinez Jr., 34, were sentenced today [Dec 7, 2015] for conspiring to commit mail fraud, bank fraud, and wire fraud, and for aggravated identity theft, United States Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner announced. Miranda was sentenced by Senior United States District Judge Anthony W. Ishii to seven years and 10 months in prison, and Martinez was sentenced to three years in prison.
According to court documents, from about June 2012 to January 2014, Miranda and Martinez, along with co-conspirators Lilliana Gonzales and Viririana Hernandez, obtained personal information from victims through various methods. Without the victims&#8217; permission, they opened credit card accounts in the victims&#8217; names or added themselves as &#8220;authorized users&#8221; of the victims&#8217; existing accounts. The conspirators then used the accounts to buy goods and services at locations throughout the Fresno area, as well as in Modesto and in Riverside County. &#8230; 
Hernandez previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy and aggravated ID theft, and was sentenced to four and a half years in prison on November 2, 2015. Gonzales previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy and aggravated ID theft, and is scheduled to be sentenced on January 11, 2016. 
</blockquote>
H/t <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2017/04/26/another-irs-employee-charged-literally-robbing-taxpayers/">HotAir</a>

DOJ Cracks Down On Another IRS Employee Scandal

Department of Justice

<a href="http://nationalactionnetwork.net/featured/we-shall-not-be-moved-march-on-washington-jan-14-2017/">Last Saturday</a>, hundreds of mostly black participants in front of Washington, D.C.&#8217;s Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial gathered to fuse communist slogans with phrases historically associated with the Civil Rights Movement.

Organized by Al Sharpton&#8217;s National Action Network (NAN) &#8211; a neo-Marxist racial agitation group aligned with the Democrat Party &#8211; on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day long weekend for the purpose of opposing President-elect Donald Trump&#8217;s forthcoming inauguration, the event featured elements of racial black nationalism and socialism/communism. Blacks were framed as a neo-proletariat under the oppression of widespread anti-black racism in order to reinforce black racial perceptions of grievance and perpetuate the Quixotic struggle for &#8220;social justice.&#8221;

NAN operative Mary-Pat Hector attempted to co-opt the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. in pushing the political agenda of her organization and the broader Democrat Party.

Hector combined mantras from the Civil Rights Movements with communist slaganeering. &#8220;We will not be moved!&#8221; was shouted alongside &#8220;we have nothing to lose but our chains!&#8221; <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1117306-it-is-our-duty-to-fight-for-our-freedom-it">(subsequently appropriated and expanded</a> by racial black nationalist and neo-Marxist terrorist Assata Shakur):

 
<blockquote>
&#8220;There&#8217;s a war on women in this country. There&#8217;s a war on black and brown bodies in this country. There&#8217;s a war on justice in this country&#8230; We will not be moved.

&#8230;

It is our duty to fight for our freedom! It is our duty to win! We must love each other and support each other! We have nothing to lose but our chains.&#8221;
</blockquote>
&#8220;We won&#8217;t go back!&#8221; shouted several of the event&#8217;s featured speakers, implying that Republicans and the broader right intended to segregate blacks from whites and subsequently enslave blacks for the benefit of whites. Vice-President Joe Biden <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUjXlDzBfoA">expressed a similar sentiment</a> during the 2012 presidential election season.

 
Hector called for a &#8220;second wave of the Civil Rights Movement&#8221; to oppose President-elect Donald Trump.

Sybrina Fulton &#8211; the mother of the late Trayvon Martin &#8211; delivered brief remarks furthering the racial narrative of blacks being violently oppressed by anti-black racism she implied was with police services and the criminal justice system.

&#8220;Criminal justice reform&#8221; was repeatedly called for by many of the event&#8217;s featured speakers as a euphemism for the implementation of racial and ethnic quotas in the justice system (per arrests, prosecutions, convictions, and sentencing).

Sharpton listed four &#8220;non-negotiable&#8221; issues as essential to black well-being: &#8220;voting rights, criminal justice and police reform, equal and fair economic justice, and the Affordable Care Act.&#8221;

<a href="http://www.naacp.org/cornell-william-brooks/">Cornell William Brooks</a>, the president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), attempted to integrate the Civil Rights Movement with the contemporary leftism of Democrats and the broader left:

 
<blockquote>
&#8220;Across this republic, there&#8217;s a chill wind that blows. A chill wind of fear for women&#8230; who heard a candidate for the presidency talk in the most vulgar terms about grabbing a woman&#8217;s genitalia.

&#8230;.

This is a campaign in which we saw racism regularized, homophobia routinized, xenophobia made the order of the day. It&#8217;s a campaign in which we heard over and over and over again, our people being marginalized, our people being otherized&#8230; it is a campaign in which many of us felt disrespected.&#8221;
</blockquote>
Other refrains and themes of the event included calls for &#8220;social&#8221; and &#8220;economic justice,&#8221; &#8220;no justice, no peace,&#8221; &#8220;voter suppression,&#8221; and calls for raising the federal minimum wage. 

Service Employees International Union (SEIU) posters and yellow ponchos were visible in the crowd, indicating the leftist union&#8217;s involvement in the event.

<img alt height="1665" src="https://dw-wp-dev.imgix.net/2019/09/seiu_0.jpg" width="2923" />

Red, black, and green Pan-African racial black nationalist imagery was also present at the event:

<img alt height="3840" src="https://dw-wp-dev.imgix.net/2019/09/redblackgreen.jpg" width="5760" />
<img alt height="3670" src="https://dw-wp-dev.imgix.net/2019/09/tyranny_sign.jpg" width="5505" />
<img alt height="2160" src="https://dw-wp-dev.imgix.net/2019/09/redblackgreen1.jpg" width="3240" />
Other prominent neo-Marxist and racial agitators were featured at the event, including former Ohio state senator OhioNina Turner, Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson, and National Urban League (NUL) President Marc Morial.

Dyson&#8217;s drew on his latest book &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tears-We-Cannot-Stop-America/dp/1250135990">Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America</a>: &#8211; published this past Tuesday &#8211; as he called on whites to join the left:
<blockquote>
&#8220;And what we must tell our white brothers and sisters is, You go to learn from us as well. Don&#8217;t be hoodwinked and snookered by investing in white supremacy and the unconscious reflex of bigotry.

&#8230;

Disinvest in your innocence. Disinvest in your amnesia. Disinvest in your fragility, and learn that you and I must struggle together.&#8221;
</blockquote>

<a href="https://colorofchange.org/">Color of Change</a> (COC) &#8211; a neo-Marxist racial agitation movement founded in part by left-wing CNN Democrat Van Jones &#8211; also deployed a speaker to deliver remarks at the event.
Despite operating as de facto political action committees and get-out-the-vote operations targeting blacks for the electoral benefit of Democrats, the NAN, NAACP, NUL, and COC (as well as most of their subsidiary organizations) enjoy tax-exempt statuses via with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The NAN, NAACP, NUL, and COC are all registered with the IRS as either <a href="https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/exemption-requirements-section-501-c-3-organizations">501(c)(3)</a> or <a href="https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/other-non-profits/types-of-organizations-exempt-under-section-501-c-4">501(c)(4)</a> organizations. 

Although Sharpton has been an informal adviser, strategist, and ally of President Barack Obama, host of an MSNBC program, and radio host, left-wing and Democrat-aligned media outlets neglected to conduct any meaningful reporting on the NAN-organized event. CNN did, however, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/16/politics/white-nationalists-trump-losing-faith/">produce a report</a> on fringe white nationalists and their supposed relationship with Trump.

Sharpton executed a vanity project in which he circulated an image of himself to be signed by the event&#8217;s attendees:

<img alt height="3723" src="https://www.dailywire.com/sites/default/files/uploads/2017/01/sharpton2.jpg" width="5585" />

Watch the entire event <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?421836-1/reverend-al-sharpton-hosts-preinauguration-rally">here</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NUp7hgzS44">here</a>.

Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k">Twitter</a>.

seiu_0

Sharpton’s DC Rally Features Communism, Black Nationalism

Al Sharpton

Black Nationalism

Media

Media Bias

MSNBC

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

Valerie Jarrett, who has been the <a href="http://townhall.com/tipsheet/aaronbandler/2015/06/25/fbi-has-files-detailing-valerie-jarretts-familiy-ties-to-communism-n2016823">Rasputin</a> of the Obama administration, offered a laughable line to ring in the new year: President Barack Obama&#8217;s presidency has been free of scandals.
&#8220;The president prides himself on the fact that his administration hasn&#8217;t had a scandal and he hasn&#8217;t done something to embarrass himself,&#8221; Jarrett <a href="http://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2017/01/02/your-first-hee-haw-of-2017-valerie-jarrett-of-all-people-says-obama-had-no-scandals-while-president/">told</a> CNN on Sunday. &#8220;That&#8217;s because that&#8217;s who he is &#8212; that&#8217;s who they are &#8212; and I think that&#8217;s what really resonates with the American people.&#8221;
Jarrett&#8217;s assertion is demonstrably false, as the Daily Wire has highlighted. Below are 13 of Obama&#8217;s top scandals, the first 11 of which are excerpted from our <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/10982/obama-says-hes-had-scandal-free-administration-aaron-bandler">previously compiled list</a>:
<blockquote>
1. Operation Fast and Furious. This egregious example of a reckless government endangering lives and then scrambling to cover it up has haunted Obama for years. As <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/2752/guess-who-ended-gun-courtesy-obama-administrations-aaron-bandler">Daily Wire has explained</a>, &#8220;Operation Fast and Furious involved the Obama administration arming drug cartels and thugs south of the border as a means to undermine the Second Amendment. The program resulted in the death of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. One of the Islamic terrorists in the Garland, Texas, attack also used a gun that was obtained through the Fast and Furious program.&#8221; &#8230;
2. Benghazi. The terror attacks in Benghazi, Libya resulted in <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/4739/hillarysoqualified-trends-here-are-7-reasons-shes-aaron-bandler">four brave Americans dying</a> despite the fact that help could have been sent, but wasn&#8217;t. Requests for security prior to the attack were repeatedly denied, and after the attack Obama and Hillary Clinton falsely blamed it on a video considered offensive to Muslims. During the election, Benghazi became associated with Clinton&#8212;and rightly so&#8212;but it is also Obama&#8217;s scandal as well. It is still not known what Obama was doing that night.
3. The <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewsubcategory.asp?id=1935">IRS</a> targeted conservative organizations. In 2013, Lois Lerner, who directed the Internal Revenue Service&#8217;s Exempt Organizations Unit, admitted that Tea Party organizations were targeted under the agency, but blamed it on lower-level employees. Such organizations were heavily scrutinized with invasive questions. Since then, Lerner and IRS commissioner John Koskinen have denied any wrongdoing and have stonewalled congressional efforts to investigate the matter, citing computer crashes for being unable to turn over related emails.
Meanwhile, a <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/court-finds-irs-may-still-be-targeting-conservatives/article/2598741">federal court</a> concluded in August that conservative groups might still be facing targeted scrutiny from the IRS. It has also been <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/8389/report-doj-knew-2011-irs-targeted-tea-party-groups-aaron-bandler">reported</a> that the Department of Justice (DOJ) knew about the IRS&#8217;s targeting of conservative groups as early as 2011.
4. The DOJ seized Associated Press phone records as well as phone and email records from Fox News reporter James Rosen. In the AP&#8217;s case, the DOJ was investigating a story involving &#8220;a CIA operation in Yemen that foiled an al-Qaeda plot in the spring of 2012 to set off a bomb on an airplane headed to the United States,&#8221; according to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/under-sweeping-subpoenas-justice-department-obtained-ap-phone-records-in-leak-investigation/2013/05/13/11d1bb82-bc11-11e2-89c9-3be8095fe767_story.html">Washington Post</a>. The DOJ seized two months of phone records from the AP without informing the news outlet. &#8230;
In the Rosen case, the DOJ was investigating a story Rosen did involving North Korea and tracked &#8220;his movements and conversations,&#8221; according to <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05/23/correspondents-association-concerned-government-too-aggressive-in-tracking.html">Fox News</a>, including phone numbers belonging to Rosen&#8217;s parents. The DOJ had listed Rosen as a &#8220;co-conspirator&#8221; under the Espionage Act in regards to the story&#8212;allegedly pressing a source for classified information. Rosen was never charged with a crime. &#8230;
5. The NSA conducted mass surveillance against American citizens without a warrant. Thanks to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/10/nsa-spying-scandal-what-we-have-learned">leaking</a> from former government contractor Edward Snowden, it was revealed that the National Security Agency had been conducting mass surveillance against American citizens&#8212;a clear violation of <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/nsa-and-how-the-fourth-amendment-stops-government-abuses/article/2565387">the Fourth Amendment</a>. In 2015, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsas-bulk-collection-of-americans-phone-records-ends-sunday/2015/11/27/75dc62e2-9546-11e5-a2d6-f57908580b1f_story.html">NSA eventually ended</a> their bulk data collection of phone records.
6. The Obama administration paid ransom to Iran for hostages, and lied to the American people about it. As the <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/8148/5-ways-tell-obamas-lying-about-iranian-ransom-aaron-bandler">Daily Wire</a> has explained, the Obama administration claimed that they were giving a total of $1.7 billion to Iran to settle a failed arms deal with the previous Iranian regime, and it just happened to coincide with the release of four American hostages. The Obama administration also didn&#8217;t reveal the details of the agreement to Congress. It was obvious though that it was a ransom deal and the Obama administration lied about it. 
7. Hillary&#8217;s email scandal. Clinton&#8217;s <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/2881/heres-everything-you-need-know-about-hillary-fbi-aaron-bandler">use of a private email server</a> that was unapproved and unsecured has been written about extensively, but it is also Obama&#8217;s scandal as well, since it has been revealed that not only did Obama know about her private email server, he also <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/9470/obama-used-fake-name-send-emails-hillarys-private-michael-qazvini">communicated with her under the use of a pseudonym</a>. If their email exchanges involved classified information, then <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/440380/obama-email-alias-clinton-why-fbi-didnt-prosecute-hillary">Obama also would have violated the Espionage Act</a>.
8. The Environmental Protection Agency poisoned a Colorado river. The EPA breached the Gold King mine in the state and &#8220;mistakenly dug at the bottom&#8221; as well as didn&#8217;t test for pressure, leading to &#8220;three million gallons of toxic mine waste&#8221; being dumped into a river, according to <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/15/here-are-epas-mistakes-that-poisoned-western-rivers/">The Daily Caller</a>. The EPA <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/2016/07/24/gold-king-mine-spill-animas-river-one-year-later/">has not been held accountable</a> for this.
9. The EPA also broke federal law in promoting a regulation. The <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/1882/hey-look-its-another-obama-administration-scandal-aaron-bandler">Daily Wire reported</a> in 2015 that the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office concluded that the EPA broke the law in using Thunderclap to tout their &#8220;Waters of the United States&#8221; regulation as well as their use of &#8220;hyperlinks to the [Natural Resources Defense Council] and Surfrider Foundation webpages provided in the EPA blog post.&#8221;
10. The GSA scandal. The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gsa-chief-resigns-amid-reports-of-excessive-spending/2012/04/02/gIQABLNNrS_story.html?tid=a_inl">General Services Administration</a> was busted in 2012 for spending $823,000 on an extravagantly decadent conference in Las Vegas, and it became a shining example of government waste. Several people in the agency were <a href="http://www.govexec.com/management/2015/01/where-are-they-now-where-players-gsa-scandal-have-landed/103743/">fired</a>, with one facing an indictment. Despite the scandal, <a href="http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2015/04/years-after-gsa-las-vegas-conf-scandal-agencies-still-hold-lavish-events/">lavish spending still occurred</a> within federal agencies under the Obama administration.
11. The Secret Service scandal. The Secret Service was caught in 2012 engaging with prostitutes during a trip to Cartegena, Columbia, with one Secret Service agent emailing another: &#8220;Swagg cologne-check/Pimp gear-check/ Swagg sunglasses-check/Cash fo dem hoes-check.&#8221; They &#8220;also left sensitive government documents unprotected in their Cartagena rooms,&#8221; according to <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2015/12/03/cash-for-dem-hoes-check-and-more-disturbing-new-details-in-secret-service-scandals/">The Daily Caller</a>.
</blockquote>
Below are two other scandals that occurred under the Obama administration.
12. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) placed veterans on <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/686/hillary-says-va-scandal-no-big-deal-heres-why-shes-aaron-bandler">secret waiting lists</a> so agency executives could enrich themselves with bonuses. The veterans placed on these lists would languish without receiving the care they needed and around 307,000 have reportedly died as a result. Yet department executives would claim bonuses up to $400 million a year deceptively stating that waiting times had declined. The VA has yet to be held to any serious accountability and face structural reforms, and the problems the agency are ongoing.
13. The Department of Energy (DOE) fired one of their chief scientists because she advocated for a program that would divert money from Obama&#8217;s Climate Action Plan. Dr. Noelle Metting, who managed the Low Dose Radiation Research Program, said that the DOE terminated her because she refused to repeat their propaganda and stated the factual results of the program instead.
&#8220;DoE placed its own priorities to further the president&#8217;s Climate Action Plan before its constitutional obligations to be candid with Congress,&#8221; the House Committee on Science, Space Technology <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/11803/another-scandal-obama-attacked-department-energy-hank-berrien">stated in a report</a>. &#8220;The DoE&#8217;s actions constitute a reckless and calculated attack on the legislative process itself, which undermines the power of Congress to legislate. The committee further concludes that DoE&#8217;s disregard for separation of powers is not limited to a small group of employees, but rather is an institutional problem that must be corrected by overhauling its management practices with respect to its relationship with the Congress.&#8221;

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