Homeland Security Monitors Tea Party Protests at Chicago, Los Angeles, and St. Louis IRS Offices

On Tuesday, an estimated 175 Tea Party activists protested outside the IRS office in the suburban Chicago community of Downers Grove. Here’s a report from someone who attended the event:

What surprised many was a Homeland Security vehicle came past the protest twice. As you can see from the picture, the vehicle had tinted windows so we are unsure if there were any cameras inside. Were pictures taken of the attendees? Will any of the attendees now be further targeted by the IRS or Homeland Security?

Downers Grove, Illinois was not the only Tea Party protest at IRS offices that experienced scrutiny from federal authorities on Tuesday.

At the IRS offices in St. Louis, the Department of Homeland Security stationed a fleet of vehicles and several armed guards to keep a watchful eye over the St. Louis Tea Party protest.

In Los Angeles, one eyewitness (as reported by Gateway Pundit) described Department of Homeland Security efforts to intimidate Tea Party protesters, which apparently included observation by overhead helicopters:

Read more here.

THE AMERICAN TEA PARTY: SILENT NO MORE!

IRS Scandal: Armed Police ‘Escort’ Reporters Through Cincinnati Office

Monday afternoon, ABC News released a chilling report that details what journalists have faced while trying to get some answers from the Cincinnati IRS office, which is where a majority of the Tea Party targeting took place.

According to ABC, an “armed uniform police officer with the Federal Protective Service” “escorted” reporters through the public building. ABC says if the intent wasn’t to “scare off” employees who might talk, “it was the effect.”

ABC News is also hearing conflicting reports from Cincinnati IRS employees and the IRS Headquarters in Washington. A Washington spokesman told ABC that press queries are “referred to the press office,” but that “people have First Amendment rights, they are entitled to speak.”

An employee in OH said that is not the case and that staffers have been threatened with their jobs if they are caught talking to the media:

Read more here.

Is This the ‘Smoking Gun’ That Will Cause the Obama Regime to Fall?

A new story from The American Spectator that has been gaining steam begins with this startling intro:

Is President Obama directly implicated in the IRS scandal?

Is the White House Visitors Log the trail to the smoking gun?

The stunning questions are raised by the following set of new facts.

The story focuses on Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union (i.e. the union for IRS employees), and her meeting with President Obama on March 31, 2010 — one day before the IRS started targeting conservative groups.

White House visitor logs available on TheBlaze show the visit:

Read more here.

IRS Official in Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office

The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.

Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.

Her successor, Joseph Grant, is taking the fall for misdeeds at the scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012. During at least part of that time, Grant served as deputy commissioner of the tax-exempt unit.

Grant announced today that he would retire June 3, despite being appointed as commissioner of the tax-exempt office May 8, a week ago.

Attention All Tea Party Groups: Now Is the Time to Speak Out – Now Is the Time to Stand Up Against This Horrid Assault on Liberty

In 2009 Barack Obama promised to remake America.
We had other thoughts.

We stood united against this destructive regime.

Because of that we were attacked by the media, unions, far left groups, politicians and the IRS.

Today, once again, we must stand up against the public assault on our freedoms.

Now is the time to speak out.

The breadth and scope of the IRS scandal is growing as details continue to trickle out almost by the hour. Initially, the IRS, the White House and the MSM tried to shape this as an isolated incident in a single location. It is directly because of the bravery of Patriots from across the nation willing to share their stories on the record that that narrative is being defeated and the depths of the scandal is only now beginning to be seen.

Additional stories continue to be shared with me but many are afraid to go public with the information in fear of additional, and possibly even more invasive, punishment at the hands of the IRS.

Those fears are understandable. But the time has come for all of us to step out of the shadows the left is trying so desperately to push us into. There is strength in numbers and we need to provide those pushing for investigations an overwhelming and specific body of proof of this assault on liberty so that the IRS, the Obama administration and the MSM are unable to either ignore this scandal or try to minimize it.

The truth is, had the Benghazi whistle blowers not come forward, or had it been a single testimony, that scandal would already have been swept under the rug. It is the essential bravery of these fellow Americans that kept that from happening.

We need conservative and Tea Party groups from across the Nation to step forward and share, publically, the examples of IRS abuse that they have been subjected to either as political organizations or individuals facing further personal or business scrutiny for their associations.

Remember, when Obamacare is fully implemented, this is the agency charged with oversight. If we sit by quietly, silenced by fear and bullying, the reach and ability of this agency and its cohorts on the left will become more powerful and more silencing.

Read more here.

The IRS wants YOU — to share everything

The Internal Revenue Service asked tea party groups to see donor rolls.

It asked for printouts of Facebook posts.

And it asked what books people were reading.

A POLITICO review of documents from 11 tea party and conservative groups that the IRS scrutinized in 2012 shows the agency wanted to know everything — in some cases, it even seemed curious what members were thinking. The review included interviews with groups or their representatives from Hawaii, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas and elsewhere.

The long-awaited Treasury Department inspector general report released Tuesday says the agency itself decided some of its questions to conservative groups were way over the line — especially the one about donors.

The report shows that top IRS officials put a stop to some of the questions in early 2012, including the ones that asked tea party groups who their donors were, what issues were important to them and whether their top officers ever planned to run for office. And they told the investigators they planned to destroy the donor lists that had already been sent in.

But interviews with members of the groups paint a more dramatic picture than the bland language of the report, which just says the IRS “requested irrelevant (unnecessary) information because of a lack of managerial review, at all levels, of questions before they were sent to organizations seeking tax-exempt status.”

“They were asking for a U-Haul truck’s worth of information,” said Toby Marie Walker, the president of the Waco Tea Party.

Read more here.

IRS to Tea Party Group: “Provide Details of Your Planned Event With NEWT GINGRICH

Yes, the Obama IRS actually demanded a California Tea Party group to provide details of a rally with Newt Gingrich. The group was that was seeking non-profit status.
This question was asked of one to a Tea Party groups by the IRS:

29.) Provide details regarding the townhall(sp) planned on February –, 2012 with Newt Gingrich.

Unreal.
Here’s a copy of the questionnaire:

Read more here.

Treasury IG Releases Report on IRS Targeting of Tea Party, Conservative Groups

The Inspector General of the U.S. Treasury has released its 54-page report on the targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Earlier Tuesday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Department of Justice would be opening a criminal probe into the IRS scandal, though the White House declined to condemn the IRS action, despite expressions of outrage by President Barack Obama.

The Treasury report does not conclude that the review of certain organizations’ tax-exempt status was inappropriate, but rather that the selection criteria used to identify these organization were wrong.

Other important findings include:

70% of applications for tax-exempt status by all organizations of any kind were approved in fiscal year 2010
Over an 18-month period, all applicants with the words “Tea Party” in their names were reviewed; later, “Patriots” and “9/12″ were added; other names included “We The People”

Read more here.

IRS Admits to Targeting Conservative Groups During 2012 Election

The story has taken yet another weird turn. The IRS in an attempt to explain itself released the following statement:

Between 2010 and 2012, the IRS saw the number of applications for section 501(c)(4) status double. As a result, local career employees in Cincinnati sought to centralize work and assign cases to designated employees in an effort to promote consistency and quality. This approach has worked in other areas.

However, the IRS recognizes we should have done a better job of handling the influx of advocacy applications. While centralizing cases for consistency made sense, the way we initially centralized them did not. Mistakes were made initially, but they were in no way due to any political or partisan rationale.

We fixed the situation last year and have made significant progress in moving the centralized cases through our system. To date, more than half of the cases have been approved or withdrawn. It is important to recognize that all centralized applications received the same, even-handed treatment, and the majority of cases centralized were not based on a specific name.

In addition, new procedures also were implemented last year to ensure that these mistakes won’t be made in the future. The IRS also stresses that our employees – all career civil servants — will continue to be guided by tax law and not partisan issues.

Read more here.