The IRS scandal is linked to the Obama campaign of the 2012 election, which illegally received the IRS tax returns of political opponents including the National Organization for Marriage (NOM).
As previously reported by The Inquisitr , IRS scandal’s Obama connection are just now being discovered. The IRS even leaked documents on conservative groups to progressive groups . Even Obama’s cousin was targeted by the IRS for writing articles critical of President Obama, and Obama’s cousin even claims he lost his job because of it. On the other hand, President Obama’s half-brother allegedly received preferential treatment from the IRS , receiving tax exempt status retroactively within one month while Tea Party groups waited years.
So far, the document trail leads to Washington but President Obama has denied any knowledge of the IRS scandals. Even so, 55 percent of Americans says Obama is involved in the IRS scandal .
Based upon Federal law, it’s a criminal offense to misuse for political gain any information submitted by a taxpayer, an entity, or anybody who submits any information to the IRS. IRS agents are supposed to be limited in what they say, ask, or do with the information. Before Nixon and Watergate, breaking these IRS laws was only a misdemeanor. Afterwards, the laws were changed to being a criminal offense with five years of jail time.
Before the 2012 election, the Obama campaign attacked Mitt Romney with IRS documents that “came directly from the Internal Revenue Service and was provided to NOM’s political opponents, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC),” which is the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization. The document showed Romney donated $10,000 to NOM, which supports traditional marriage. The documents also listed all the other donors, including their addresses and other private information.
The HRC’s president at the time, Joe Solmonese, was serving as a Co-Chair of President Obama’s reelection campaign. Coincidentally, the IRS tax returns of NOM were allegedly leaked days after Joe Solmonese joined Obama’s campaign.
NOM president Brian Brown believes this other IRS scandal benefited President Obama politically:
“The American people are entitled to know how a confidential tax return containing private donor information filed exclusively with the Internal Revenue Service has been given to our political opponents whose leader also happens to be co-chairing President Obama’s reelection committee. It is shocking that a political ally of President Obama’s would come to possess and then publicly release a confidential tax return that came directly from the Internal Revenue Service. We demand to know who is responsible for this criminal act and what the [Obama] Administration is going to do to get to the bottom of it.”
Talking to Mike Huckabee on his radio show today, Brian Brown described how these leaked IRS tax returns were used to target NOM’s contributors. In response, NOM filed for an investigation with the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration and when that didn’t help they also applied for relevant documents to be released under the Freedom of Information Act.
Brian Brown says the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has been stonewalling these requests. First, the IRS passed them back and forth between departments, with each department claiming the other had access to the information being requested. When the information was not released to NOM they sent a second request, which was then denied because the IRS said they’d already answered the request.
Finally, when NOM attempted to find out who was behind this part of the IRS scandal the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration responded by saying that the laws that make it illegal to misuse IRS documents for political gain also protect the criminal from being outed. According to Brian Brown, this last response by the IRS is forcing NOM to file a forthcoming lawsuit: “The IRS position most recently is the criminal who did this is a taxpayer, so his name is protected. [This is an] an orchestrated campaign to keep the identity of that person from disclosure and criminal prosecution.”
What do you think the IRS scandal being linked to the Obama campaign by NOM means?