New FBI IRS Scandal Documents: Obama IRS Waited Years to Tell the Truth
Following up on some mega disclosures
last week, this week we released 105 pages of
newly obtained FBI “302” documents revealing that, beginning in 2010
and lasting through the Obama reelection campaign in 2012, the IRS
orchestrated a deliberate policy of burying conservative groups’ tax
exemption applications in bureaucratic delays.
Interviews
with numerous Cincinnati IRS employees in mid-2013 reveal that “Tea
Party” group applications were automatically denied approval and
assigned to a special “Group 7822” for an extended “inventory” process
while waiting for decisions from IRS headquarters in Washington, DC.
One
IRS manager “asked why progressive cases were not segregated similar to
the Tea Party cases, but she did not get any satisfactory answers.” FBI
302 documents are detailed narratives of FBI investigation interviews.
The Obama Justice Department and FBI investigations into the Obama IRS
scandal resulted in no criminal charges.
According to a Cincinnati “Group Manager” interview in July of 2013:
Group
7822 was composed of 12 to 15 people and was simply a place for the Tea
Party cases to be held in inventory while the agent waited to receive
guidance from the Washington office. There had been no precedence
previously on these issues. If the case said it supports politics and
political activity, it would be put into Group 7822. [Redacted] and then
[Redacted] held the cases in inventory.
A
second Cincinnati Group Manager interviewed in July 2013 told the FBI
302 interviewers a similar story, pinning the blame directly on the IRS Washington headquarters:
In the 14-month period when [Redacted] had the cases, he would ask for
updates on guidance and was told they were still waiting on DC. He
recalls receiving emails with contradictory guidance on whether the
501-c-3 or 501-c-4 cases should be denied. It was his understanding that
a team would come and work the Tea Party cases when the guidance was
provided … Nobody told him directly where the delay was in resolving the
Tea Party issue. DC is like a black hole.
The FBI 302 interviews with Cincinnati IRS employees reveal that the
agency adopted a series of policies assuring that Tea Party and other
conservative group tax-exempt applications would not be approved before
the November 2012 presidential election. The strategy relied upon the
IRS’ multi-tier “bucketing” system that determined from the time an application was received whether it would be quickly approved or indefinitely delayed.
The first bucket – the “incomplete bucket” – automatically kicked the
application back to the applicant because of missing documents. The
second bucket – the “merit close” – meant the application met all the
criteria and was quickly approved. The third and fourth buckets meant
that other issues needed to be addressed by the applicant. According to
FBI interviews with Cincinnati agency employees, top Washington IRS
officials issued directives making certain that no BOLO (Be on the Look
Out) Tea Party applications could be put in the “merit closed” bucket.
The strategy began in 2010, when the IRS Washington headquarters created its BOLO list
and applied the term “Tea Party” to all political advocacy tax
exemption applications. According to a Cincinnati Quality Assurance
Specialist interviewed by the FBI, “The Tea Party was added to the
emerging issues tab of the BOLO list in July or August 2010.”
Another
Cincinnati agency official explained to the FBI what this designation
meant to Tea Party and other conservative organizations: “If an item was
on the BOLO list, that case
could not be merit closed by the screeners/classifiers. [Emphasis added] A Cincinnati Grade 13 Revenue Agent explained to the FBI how this ended a Tea Party group’s hopes for early, or perhaps even eventual, IRS approval:
[Redacted] saw a few applications that were Tea Party cases and he sent
them to a special group to work. [Redacted] identified cases by seeing
if they had the Tea Party name or had verbiage that lined up with the
Tea Party beliefs. If he saw this, he sent it for development because he
knew he could not approve the case.
The “special group” the IRS employee sent the Tea Party applications to was known inside the IRS as Group 7822.
As reported to the FBI by a Cincinnati Group Manager, “Group 7822 was
composed of 12 to 15 people and was simply a place for the Tea Party
cases to be held in inventory while the agent waited to receive guidance
from the Washington office.” He added, “In his experience, getting
guidance from Washington takes a while; but this seemed to take longer.
It was typical for cases to sit and wait until they got guidance on how
to apply the tax law.”
Another Cincinnati IRS employee explained to FBI 302 interviewers that for those Tea Party groups consigned to Group 7822 to await Washington approval, the wait could be almost interminable:
The
cases were old. He did not think that was right because the applicants
were waiting so long…. He believes the problem was getting a response
from Washington. People developing cases would not receive feedback from
Washington for a long time.
A Cincinnati quality assurance specialist told the FBI interviewers in detail of her frustrations with trying to get feedback in order to process Tea Party cases:
They called them “Tea Party cases.” She knew they were conservative
groups from the stuff in the news in April 2010. Initially, she was
assigned 20 cases. She received instructions from either [Redacted] or
[Redacted] to contact EO Technical …
***
It then started to take longer and longer for [Redacted] to respond … By
September 2010, he did not get back to her at all … The Tea Party cases
started to backlog since [Redacted] was no longer responding … She knew
the Tea Party was vocal in the news, and could see the perception that
big government, the IRS, was holding cases. She expressed her
frustration about the delay. She felt that every taxpayer deserves
determination, approval or denial.
And an Exempt Organizations Determinations manager in the Cincinnati IRS
office told the FBI interviewers that while she did not think Tea
Party organizations were targeted, “The Tea Party designation [in the
BOLOs] looks bad, especially since progressive cases were not included
in these categories … [Redacted] asked why progressive cases were not
segregated similar to the Tea Party cases, but she did not get any
satisfactory answers.”
We previously released 294 pages
of FBI 302 documents revealing that top Washington IRS officials, including Lois Lerner, who was interviewed in June 2013 and again in October 2013,
knew that the agency was specifically targeting Tea Party and other
conservative organizations two full years before disclosing it to
Congress and the public. We’ve documented how Lois Lerner and the IRS
worked with Obama Justice Department and FBI in an effort to prosecute the
very groups the IRS was suppressing. Between this and the actual
investigation being compromised by an Obama donor at the Justice
Department (see below), the Obama Justice Department and FBI
investigations into the Obama IRS scandal resulted in no criminal charges.
You
can see how the FBI described the unlawful and purposeful bureaucratic
delays orchestrated by top IRS officials in Washington, DC. That the
FBI learned this concerns at least one IRS official about how the Obama
IRS targeting of conservatives was ignored. It is incredibly corrupt
that no criminal prosecutions were pursued.
Let’s
all be prepared to push the next president’s Justice Department to
follow up on this information in a renewed criminal investigation.
Obama Donor/DOJ Prosecutor Compromised Integrity of IRS Scandal Inquiry
This week we also released a remarkable letter from
the Justice Department admitting that Democratic Party/Obama campaign
donor and Justice Department attorney Barbara Bosserman spent 1,529.25
hours investigating the IRS’ targeting of conservative organizations in
2010 and 2012.
According to Federal Election Commission records,
Bosserman contributed $6,750 to Obama campaigns and the DNC from 2004
to 2012, including 12 separate contributions to Obama for America
between 2008 and 2012. The Obama Justice Department and FBI
investigations into the Obama IRS scandal resulted in no criminal charges.
The letter results from our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) appeal filed
in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on
February 16, 2016, which sought to overturn a lower court’s ruling
allowing the Department of Justice to withhold these records (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 15-5271)).
After over two years, the Justice Department finally agreed to identify
the number of hours just prior to the scheduling of oral arguments
during which the agency would have had to justify the withholding of the
information.
In February 2014 we filed a FOIA request for:
All Justice Department records from the Interactive Case Management
System [a web-based system for storing and accessing information about
contacts, calendars, cases, documents, time tracking, and billing, etc.]
detailing the number of hours DOJ Attorney Barbara Bosserman expended
on the investigation of the Internal Revenue Service targeting
conservative organizations seeking tax-exempt status in the 2010 and
2012 elections cycles.
Subsequently, Judicial Watch sued the agency for failing to respond to the FOIA request. (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:14-cv-01024)).
In what House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darryl Issa (R-CA) called “a startling conflict of interest,
” Bosserman was appointed by then-Attorney General Eric Holder to
oversee the FBI investigation despite her being a substantial
contributor to the political campaigns of Barack Obama and to the
Democratic National Committee (DNC).
This lawsuit forced the Obama Justice Department to confirm the
existence of a criminal investigation into the IRS’ abuses and that
Bosserman, a major donor to Obama’s political campaigns and the
Democratic National Committee, was part of the team of lawyers
criminally investigating the issue.
In a joint letter to Holder on January 8, 2014,
Issa and House Subcommittee on Economic Growth Chairman Jim Jordon
(R-OH) asked that Bosserman be removed from the investigation, charging
that her “conflict of interest has tainted any information she has
gathered.” Holder refused to remove Bosserman, and she failed to appear
at a February 6 House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing titled: “The IRS Targeting Investigation: What is the Administration Doing?”
These numbers, extracted from the Obama administration after two years
of hard fought litigation, show the central role that a conflicted Obama
donor played in the Justice Department investigation of the Obama IRS
scandal.
Is it any surprise that this compromised investigation found no reason to prosecute anyone in the Obama IRS scandal?
Breaking the Law is an Obama Administration Policy
You and I are less safe on the streets these days because President Barack Obama and his Justice Department reward
localities that openly break the law. Our Corruption Chronicles blog has the disturbing story:
The
Obama Administration rewards sanctuary states, counties and cities that
shield violent illegal immigrants from deportation with hundreds of
millions of dollars in federal grants and one of the biggest recipients
recently made headlines for protecting a serial criminal who murdered a
young woman.
The money flows through the Department of Justice (DOJ), the agency
responsible for enforcing the law and defending the interests of the
United States. The DOJ is also charged with providing federal leadership
in preventing and controlling crime, according to its mission statement,
and seeking just punishment for those guilty of unlawful behavior.
Apparently
this doesn’t apply to local governments that support the president’s
broad open borders policies, even when they violate federal law. The DOJ
doled out $342,168,401 to 10 sanctuary states and cities that proudly
reject federal claims for criminal illegal aliens earmarked for removal,
according to the agency’s independent watchdog.
Among
them is Connecticut, a trailblazer in the sanctuary movement that
received more than $69 million in grants from the DOJ. Connecticut has
long protected illegal immigrants with sanctuary policies and even
offers them special drivers’ licenses, known as Drive Only. The state
also gives illegal aliens discounted tuition at public colleges and
universities and authorities work hard to restrict the feds from
deporting illegal immigrants. Last year an illegal immigrant who had
spent 17 years in prison for attempted murder stabbed a 25-year-old woman
to death in Norwich, a city of about 40,000 residents. The murderer had been earmarked for deportation at least three times.
California,
also a renowned sanctuary state that offers illegal immigrants a number
of taxpayer-funded perks, topped the list with $132,409,635 in DOJ
grants. Judicial Watch has investigated the state’s illegal sanctuary
policies for years and back in 2008 launched a California public records
request with the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department to obtain the
arrest and booking information on Edwin Ramos, an illegal alien from El
Salvador who murdered
three innocent American citizens. Ramos was a member of a renowned
violent street gang and had been convicted of two felonies as a juvenile
(a gang-related assault on a bus passenger and the attempted robbery of
a pregnant woman), yet he was allowed to remain in the country.
Last year Judicial Watch obtained records
showing that violent crime—including murder and rape—in the Bay area has
skyrocketed since the San Francisco Sheriff and City Council expanded
illegal alien sanctuary policies in 2013. Under the ordinance San
Francisco law enforcement agencies are required to ignore most U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers. Judicial Watch is
also investigating whether the city violated the law again with its
sanctuary policy that led to the release of Juan Francisco
Lopez-Sanchez, an illegal immigrant deported five times who gunned down
Kate Steinle at one of the most popular tourist spots in San Francisco.
Two cities—New York and Chicago—got $60,091,942 and $28,523,222
respectively from the DOJ and Philadelphia followed with $16,505,312.
South Florida’s Miami-Dade County received $10,778,815, Milwaukee,
Wisconsin got $7,539,572, Cook County, Illinois $6,018,544, Clark
County, Nevada $6,257,9851 and Orleans Parish, Louisiana $4,737,964.
In some cases elected officials in these municipalities brag about defying federal immigration laws – with no consequences.
-
The mayor of Chicago is mentioned in the DOJ Inspector General report
for publicly stating: “We are not going to turn people over to ICE, and
we are not going to check their immigration status.” The city also
prohibits employees from cooperating with federal immigration
authorities, the report says.
- The
Orleans Parish (La.) Sheriff’s Office has an “ICE Procedures” policy
that states the agency shall not initiate any immigration status
investigation into individuals in their custody or provide the feds with
information on an inmate’s release date or address.
-
Philadelphia’s mayor issued an executive order stating that the pending
release of the subject of an ICE immigration detainer shall not be
provided to the agency unless the person has been convicted of a felony.
- New
York enacted a law years ago restricting jail personnel from
communicating with ICE regarding an inmate’s release date, incarceration
status or court dates. The law resulted in ICE closing its office on
Riker’s Island and ceasing operations on any other NYC Department of
Corrections property, the report reveals.
It’s beyond comprehension that these law-breaking local governments are
being rewarded with federal funds distributed by the agency responsible
for enforcing the law.
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The
good news is the Justice Department IG agrees with Judicial Watch’s
legal concerns about sanctuary cities – concerns that we have sued
repeatedly over (most recently in San Francisco
). In city after city, the IG concludes that sanctuary policies that
tie the hands of police cooperation with the feds on immigration matters
are “inconsistent with the plain language of Section 1373 [federal law]
prohibiting a local government from restricting a local official from
sending immigration status information to ICE.”
Because
of this IG analysis – and most importantly pressure from Congressman
John Culbertson (R-TX) – the Obama Justice Department reversed course
and is now requiring recipients of Justice Department grant monies to
certify that they are complying with federal immigration law. Cities
with sanctuary policies can’t do this – so the spigot of tax dollars for
this lawlessness may actually be turned off finally.
We
often criticize how Congress has dropped the ball on immigration
matters and the rule of law. However, Congressman Culberson, head of a
powerful appropriations subcommittee, used the law and the powers
granted to his office under the U.S. Constitution, to force the Obama
administration to comply with and enforce the law. You can see the
details here.
The battle isn’t over yet – and Judicial Watch independently will
monitor the Obama gang’s compliance. In the meantime, you may want to
share your views on Rep. Culberson’s effective work with him directly.
Until next week...
 Tom Fitton President
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