It appears that the IRS targeting people affiliated with the Tea Party, Patriot or 9/12 groups was known much earlier than first reported. Imagine living in a United States where the government targets patriots or people who are standing up for the Constitution.
The line in the sand was crossed after the suspension of Liberty in Boston. You can add this to the list of transgressions but at some point, you will have to come to the realization that the individual is the answer to restoring Liberty. Or Patriotgate can become the rallying point for our future.
David DeGerolamo
IRS Conservative Witchhunt Started In 2011 With High-Level Officials Involved
The IRS conservative targeting scandal is going from bad to worse.
Following the Friday revelations that despite all prior appeals to the contrary, the IRS did in fact apply political bias and prejudice in targeting conservative groups who had applied for exempt status (and who knows what other prejudice when targeting non-liberals entities – perhaps it is time to do an analysis of what the ratio of conservatives to liberals audited each year is?), culminating with the farcical response by an IRS official during the Friday press meeting…
…this may be just the beginning of a major political scandal which in addition to tangential fallout crushing the alleged “impartiality” of the Obama administration, additionally validates many of the heretofore right-wing “conspiracy theories.” And as Zero Hedge has shown time and again, it is not a conspiracy theory if it is a conspiracy fact.
What makes things worse for the IRS, the US Treasury, its then-head Tim Geithner, and of course, Barack Obama, is that according to a draft report prepared by the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration, expected to be released this week, and seen by AP, is that senior IRS officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups as early as the spring/summer of 2011, well before the 2012 election as we announced before. What makes matters worse, is that it was not only “low-level” employees as the IRS tried to justify its prejudice on Friday, but high level personnel, among which at least one head of division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, and likely all the way to the very top, that were well aware of the witch hunt.
The IRS apologized Friday for what it acknowledged was “inappropriate” targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status. The agency blamed low-level employees, saying no high-level officials were aware.
But on June 29, 2011, Lois G. Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, learned at a meeting that groups were being targeted, according to the watchdog’s report. At the meeting, she was told that groups with “Tea Party,” ”Patriot” or “9/12 Project” in their names were being flagged for additional and often burdensome scrutiny, the report says. The 9-12 Project is a group started by conservative TV personality Glenn Beck.
Lerner instructed agents to change the criteria for flagging groups “immediately,” the report says.
