By
Jeffrey Lord
A timeline of tyranny.
Amid the ongoing cascade of stories
focusing on abuses by the Internal Revenue Service, a simple historical truth
is lost.
At its very core, the Left is about
tyranny. Intimidation. The mailed fist.
One can spend endless hours recalling the
bloody tyrannies of the French Revolution, or Communism or the Nazis (aka the
National Socialists) or, in America, the violence visited by leftist groups
from the Ku Klux Klan to this or that labor union to all those 60s radicals who
raced around the country in a murderous rage with bombs and bullets.
But what the massive abuse of the IRS
illustrates is a tyranny of a different sort. A bloodless yet still quite
decided tyranny. A tyranny of the American Left designed not just to chill free
speech — although that is a primary goal. What has evidenced itself in the
Obama era is a tyranny designed not just to silence dissent, but to
deliberately, willfully damage if not ruin outright the reputations and
businesses of Americans across the land.
To scare the living hell out of
people.
To send the message: do what we say — or
else.
One of the horror stories that have
emerged in the last year is the tale of Idaho businessman Frank VanderSloot,
the million-dollar donor to the Romney campaign. Not only did a onetime
investigator for Senate Democrats turn up in Idaho rummaging through the local
courthouse for damaging information about VanderSloot’s divorce, VanderSloot
quickly found himself targeted by the IRS.
The VanderSloot story, we now know, was
not an accident. Some sort of Ripley’s Believe-It-Or-Not twist of fate. What
was happening to Frank VanderSloot has been happening all over America in the
last five years. In one form or another, almost 500 conservative groups were
targeted by the IRS and other federal government agencies. Others, including
prominent television and radio hosts, have been targeted for removal from the
airwaves by leftist groups seeking to use the combined power of government and
pressure on advertisers.
As all of America now knows, the Treasury
Inspector General for Tax Administration has conducted an audit — an audit, not
an investigation — of the IRS. Included in that audit is a timeline of IRS
abuse. That timeline, however, is in reality just a beginning. It addresses
itself only to the IRS — and at that names few names and puts nothing into
context.
So.
We have put together what might be called
a basic “timeline of tyranny.” A timeline that connects the dots of IRS
behavior in the Obama administration not just to the specifics of the IG’s
timeline, but to other events of a similar nature. Events that set the stage
for what was to come, and most importantly events that illustrate the mindset
of the American Left when it comes to free speech, to dissent — and how that
mindset plays out when married not just to money but to a perceived or very
real access to serious government power.
Drawing on the work of, among others, the
Wall Street Journal’s
Kim Strassel, attorney Cleta Mitchell, Mark Levin’s Landmark Legal Foundation,
Jay Sekulow’s American Center for Law and Justice — hat tips to all — what
follows is Part One of what we will call a timeline for:
The VanderSlooting of America
June 5, 2008: The IRS is contacted by the leftist
group Catholics United to “launch a probe of the Catholic League.” The Catholic
League for Religious and Civil Rights, headed by Bill Donohue, is seen by
Catholic leftists as conservative. Donohue says:
“The June 5 letter was sent to the IRS by
lawyers from Catholics United; it was mailed to Director Marsha Ramirez,
director of Exempt Organizations Examinations, and to Lois G. Lerner, director
of EO Division.”
Donohue adds:
“What the IRS did not know was that I had
proof who contacted them to launch the investigation: Catholics United, a
George Soros-funded Catholic organization.”
August 7, 2008: The New
York Times publishes a story (hat tip to the Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel) celebrating a
left-wing group of Obama supporters called “Accountable America.” The Times says the group will be
sending “warning” letters to “10,000 of the biggest donors to Republican
candidates and causes.” The purpose, wrote the liberal paper, is to create “a
chilling effect that will dry up contributions.” The pro-Obama group’s
spokesman said the leftist group was “going for the jugular.”
August 21, 2008: The conservative, 501(c)(4) American
Issues Project runs an ad focused on the ties between Senator Barack Obama, the
Democrat presidential nominee, and ex-Weather Underground radical leader and
bomber Bill Ayers. Obama’s political career began with a meeting in Ayers
living room and the two served together on the board of Chicago’s Woods
Foundation. Bob Bauer, the general counsel of the Obama campaign contacts the
criminal division of the Justice Department, demanding prosecution of the ad
sponsors.
September 8, 2008: Obama counsel Bauer writes a second
letter, demanding the criminal prosecution of Harold Simmons, a Texas
businessman who financed the AIP ad. Bauer demands “certain tax documents” be
turned over to the Obama campaign — a right he has under IRS law. But Bauer
also sends a letter to AIP demanding confidential information to which the
Obama campaign had no legal right.
October 3, 2008: The $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief
Program (TARP), which has the U.S. government trying to resolve the subprime
mortgage crisis, is signed into law by President George W. Bush.
October 20, 2008: The Catholic League’s Bill Donohue issues a news release titled “George Soros Funds Catholic
Left.” The release says, among other things, this:
Much
to its surprise, the Catholic League recently learned that left-wing activist
and billionaire George Soros is the man behind two ultra-liberal Catholic
groups, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United. Both
organizations claim to be pro-life while supporting mostly pro-abortion
candidates for public office.
October 23, 2008: Bill Donohue of the Catholic League
writes another press release, this one titled “Catholic Left Scandal
Mounts.” That same day, Donohue says, he was asked to go on CNN and that…when
Catholics United found out, they contacted the station trying to spike the
interview.
The person who did this was the head of
Catholics United, Chris Korzen. He said I was not “an authentic Catholic
commentator and representative of the Catholic Church,” and that they should
either drop me altogether or put me on with Alexia Kelley of Catholics in
Alliance for the Common Good.
The bid to keep me off TV failed.
November 4, 2008: Senator Barack Obama is elected
President of the United States.
November 24, 2008: Bill Donohue is notified by the IRS that
the Catholic League is “under investigation for violating the IRS Code on
political activities as it relates to 501(c)(3) organizations.” Someone at CNN
leaks to Donohue the complaint to the IRS filed by the leftist Soros-funded
Catholics United, the group that headed by Chris Korzen. Donohue writes: “The
document…matches up extraordinarily well with the IRS complaint of November
24.”
January 16, 2009: Rush Limbaugh goes on his popular
syndicated radio show and says:
I
hope he fails…. Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what’s gotten us
dangerously close to the precipice here. Why do I want more of it? I don’t care
what the Drive-By story is. I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined
me all day long: “Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails.” Somebody’s gotta say it.
January 19, 2009: Radio talk show host Glenn Beck begins
his Fox television program. Over the course of the next two years, Beck will
feature exposés and criticisms of President Obama and various White House staff
members. The latter include Van Jones, a onetime self-professed Communist and
supporter of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a convicted killer of a policeman. Other
controversies swirled around Obama White House Communications Director Anita
Dunn (Beck had a clip of Dunn praising Mao as “one of my two favorite political
philosophers” — the being Mother Teresa) as well as the left wing group ACORN.
By March, the Nielsen ratings company says Beck has one of the highest rated
shows at the five o’clock hour, repeatedly beating all his competition combined.
January 20, 2009: Mr. Obama is sworn in as the 44th
President of the United States.
January 21, 2009: Sean Hannity sits down with Limbaugh and
the two discuss the new president and the problems ahead with a liberal
president. Neither backs away from roles as Obama critics.
January 30, 2009: IRS union chief Colleen Kelley of the
National Treasury Employees Union visits the White House while, she tells the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “he
(the President) was signing some executive orders to undo some things the prior
administration did.”
February 15, 2009: IRS union chief Colleen Kelley’s
interview with the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette appears, in which she says her relationship with the
Obama White House is about “collaboration” and “partnership.”
February 17, 2009: The $831 billion American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009 — aka the Obama “Stimulus” is signed into law by the
President. One hundred seven-seven of 178 Republicans voted against; one did
not vote. All but three Senate Republicans (Maine’s Olympia Snowe and Susan
Collins and Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter) vote against.
February 18, 2009: President Obama announces The Homeowners
Affordability and Stability Plan, a $75 billion spending program to help up to
nine million homeowners avoid foreclosure,
February 19, 2009: CNBC’s Rick Santelli’s spontaneous
“rant” about The Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan, broadcast from
the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, calls for a “Chicago Tea Party.”
The Drudge Report features the rant and it goes viral, credited with launching
the national Tea Party movement that is dedicated to halting the surge in
government spending and the expansion of big government. Tea parties begin
appearing across the country, begun spontaneously by Americans at the grass
roots level.
February 20, 2009: A call for nationwide “Tea Party”
protests appears on Facebook.
February 27, 2009: Tea Party protests appear in eight
cities.
March 13, 2009: Glenn Beck launches the 9/12 project.
The “9/12” date refers to the day after the September 11, 2001 terrorist
attacks in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania. The objective is, in Beck’s
words: “to bring us all back to the place we were on September 12, 2001…. we
were not obsessed with red states, blue states or political parties. We were
united as Americans, standing together to protect the values and principles of
the greatest nation ever created.”
March 24, 2009: Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto by
radio talk host and Landmark Legal Foundation president Mark Levin is released.
The book, about “the modern liberal assault on Constitution-based values” and
“a federal government that is a massive, unaccountable conglomerate” is an instant
bestseller, becoming what Congresswoman Michele Bachmann calls “the
intellectual foundation of the Tea Party.”
March 28, 2009: Four days after the release of Liberty and Tyranny, the
first Mark Levin book signing in Tysons Corner, Virginia is mobbed (as seen here).
The book becomes a standard at Tea Party rallies, waved aloft by protestors.
April 15, 2009: Tea Party protests erupt in 800 cities
across the country, with rallies attended by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and
former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The protests are covered extensively by Fox
News and talk radio. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi attacks the Tea Party as
“astroturf” sponsored by “some of the wealthiest people in America….”
April 16, 2009: The Weekly
Standard reports that a senior aide to House
Democrats is circulating a memorandum saying “Tea Partiers Are Racist, Nazi,
Gun Nuts.”
April 29, 2009: President Obama, in an appearance at a
town hall meeting in Missouri, makes his first comment on the rising Tea Party
movement. Obama criticizes protesters by saying “let’s not play games and
pretend that the reason (for out of control government spending) is because of
the recovery act.”
May-August 2009: The Tea Party gains political strength
with hundreds of protests across the country.
June 4, 2009: Alexia Kelley joins the Obama
Administration. The Catholic News Agency reports the story this way:
Washington
D.C., Jun 4, 2009 / 02:31 pm (CNA).- Alexia Kelley, Executive Director of
“Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good,” one of the pro-Obama Catholic
organizations that strongly supported the appointment of the former Kansas
governor Kathleen Sebelius as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS), has been named Director of Faith-Based and Neighborhood
Partnerships for the HHS.
Kelley
co-founded Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (CACG) in 2005 and
co-authored with Chris Korzen, “A Nation for All: How the Catholic Vision of
the Common Good Can Save America from the Politics of Division.
By early 2011, Kelley is deputy director
of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Note:
the co-author of White House staffer Kelley’s earlier book is Chris Korzen, the
man Bill Donohue now says was responsible for trying to bump Donohue from a CNN
show in favor of Alexia Kelley. Kelley’s friend Korzen is also, again according
to Donohue, the man who filed a complaint on Donohue’s group with the IRS.
September 12, 2009: The Taxpayer March on Washington,
organized, among others by Glenn Beck’s 9-12 Project and the Tea Party
Patriots, attracts hundreds of thousands in a march to the U.S. Capitol.
September 30, 2009: Federal Communications Commissioner
Michael J. Copps , following a lunch with a liberal interfaith coalition,
delivered the liberal United Church of Christ’s Everett C. Parker Ethics in
Telecommunications Lecture at the Riverside Church in New York City. Mr. Copps
is perhaps best identified as he was in the Nation
magazine when he authored a March 20, 2008 article there as “a Democratic
member of the FCC and a former assistant secretary of commerce in the Clinton
Administration.”
October 12, 2009: Obama White House Communications
Director Anita Dunn, the wife of Obama campaign counsel Bob Bauer who in 2008
filed criminal complaints against the conservative American Issues Project with
the Justice Department, goes on CNN to declare Fox News “a wing of the
Republican Party.” A campaign to “delegitimize” Fox News begins.
October 16, 2009: Sixteen days after FCC Commissioner
Copps’ trip to New York — UCC members are informed by the UCC Office of
Communications that the UCC is participating in a new group called So We Might
See, and is filing a request for the FCC to “open a notice of inquiry into hate
speech in the media.” A check into funding sources reveals
the group to be partially funded by George Soros through the Media Democracy
Fund.
UCC members are asked to sign this
petition. Seven denominations are joining in this effort: They are: the United
Church of Christ, U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops, the Islamic Society of
North America, United Methodist Communications, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.),
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ),
and “several other faith groups.”
The petition specifically cites Rush
Limbaugh by name. The formal title of this is the: “Petition for Inquiry into
Hate Speech in the Media and Request to update report on The Role of
Telecommunications in Hate Crimes.”
Linked on the electronic media package
are videos supplied by the left-wing Media Matters accusing Fox’s Bill O’Reilly
and Glenn Beck, as well as CNN’s Lou Dobbs, of hate speech. Support is also
solicited to remove Lou Dobbs from television and intimidate sponsors of Glenn
Beck’s TV show into pulling their advertising.
October 18, 2009: “White House senior adviser David
Axelrod said Sunday that the Fox News Channel is ‘not really a news station’
and that much of the programming is ‘not really news.’”
October 21, 2009: IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman meets
with President Obama in the Oval Office, as recorded this way (bold print for
emphasis) on the White House visitors log:
Shulman, Douglas Potus 10/21/2009 10:00
Description: Econ PDB
Meeting Room: Oval Office
Note: During the recent House
congressional hearings, Shulman was said to have visited the White House 118
times. Other than the meeting listed above with the President, he is frequently
listed as meeting with Sarah Fenn, seen here in this 2011 photograph of a
White House corridor leading to the Oval Office and listed as “special assistant to the
deputy chief of staff.” At the time the White House deputy chief of staff is
listed as Obama aide Jim Messina. In 2012, Messina is the Obama re-election
campaign manager.
October 22, 2009: The White House bans Fox News from the White House
Press Pool before an interview with Obama “Pay Czar” Kenneth Feinberg.
November 10, 2009: After more protests across the country
in the rest of September, all of October and early November, the last three
recorded Tea Party protests of 2009 occur in Augusta and Brunswick, Georgia,
and Beaufort, South Carolina.
November 11, 2009: CNN’s Lou Dobbs, the target of a liberal
effort to force CNN to “Drop Dobbs,” announces he will end a 30-year career with
the network effective that night.
November 13, 2009: Bob Bauer, the Obama campaign counsel
who demanded tax documents from Obama opponents and contacted the Criminal
Division of the Justice Department to recommend prosecution of the sponsors of
an anti-Obama ad, is appointed White House Counsel to
replace the outgoing Greg Craig. Bauer is married to White House Communications
Director Anita Dunn. Dunn, a frequent target of Glenn Beck, resigns from her
White House post on November 30.
December 3, 2009: Colleen Kelley, the President of the
National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) which endorsed Obama in 2008, attends
a White House Christmas party with other labor activists as the guest of
President and Mrs. Obama. In 2008, the NTEU, which represents IRS employees,
gave 96% of its money (NTEU raised a total of $641,950) to Democrats.
December 9, 2009: President Obama issues Executive Order
13522, which is specifically designed to “allow employees and unions to have
pre-decisional involvement in all workplace matters” — including the IRS as
represented by the NTEU.
January 8, 2010: Fox News reports that:
Last
year, the “tea party” movement succeeded in capturing national headlines with
its boisterous anti-government protests. This year, based on what’s on the
calendar for the start of 2010, tea party activists and affiliated groups are
looking to gain even more influence and momentum.
The
first major event of the year is set for Jan. 20, when tea party activists plan
a national strike marking the one-year anniversary of President Obama’s
inauguration.
January 21, 2010: The U.S. Supreme Court issues its
decision in Citizens United,
ruling that “a provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act prohibiting
unions, corporations and not-for-profit organizations from broadcasting
electioneering communications within 60 days of a general election or 30 days
of a primary election violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment to
the United States Constitution.” There is an uproar on the Left, with the New York Times writing angrily:
The
Supreme Court has handed lobbyists a new weapon. A lobbyist can now tell any
elected official: if you vote wrong, my company, labor union or interest group
will spend unlimited sums explicitly advertising against your re-election.
January 27, 2010: President Obama delivers his State of
the Union message and attacks the Supreme Court for its ruling in Citizens United. Says the
President:
Last
week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for
special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in
our elections. Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by
America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should
be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and
Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong.
Television cameras show Supreme Court
Justice Samuel Alito silently replying: “Not true.”
March-April 2010: “The (IRS) Determinations Unit began
searching for other requests for tax exemption involving the Tea Party,
Patriots, 9/12, and I.R.C. (Section) 501 (c)(4) applications involving political
sounding names, e.g., ‘We the People’ or ‘Take Back the Country.’” Source:
IG Report. Page 30.
Around March 1, 2010: “The (IRS) Determinations Unit Group
Manager asked a specialist to search for other Tea Party or similar
organizations’ applications in order to determine the scope of the issue. The
specialist continued to complete searches for additional cases until the
precursor to the BOLO (Be On the Look Out) listing was issued in May 2010.
Determinations Unit personnel indicated
that they used the description Tea Party as a shorthand way of referring to the
group of cases involving political campaign intervention rather than to target
any particular group. The specialist used Tea Party, Patriots, and 9/12 as part
of the criteria for these searches.”
Source: IG Interview. Page 31.
March 16-17, 2010: “Ten Tea Party cases were identified. The
Acting Manager, Technical Unit, requested two more cases be transferred to
Washington, D.C.
“Not all of the ten cases had Tea Party
in their names.”
Source: IG Report of IRS E-Mail. Page 31.
March 20, 2010: During the health care debate, Rep.
Andre Carson (D-IN) and Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), allege that they were verbally
assaulted by Tea Party protesters hurling the “N-word” at them as they walked
out of the Cannon House Office Building during a “Kill the Bill” rally.
March 27, 2010: Andrew Breitbart offers a $100,000
reward to be given to the United Negro College Fund if anyone can produce video
proof of the Tea Party racism at the much-filmed event at which Carson and
Lewis were present. No one comes forward, but the charge of racism is widely
spread in the liberal media.
March 30, 2010: Fox and radio host Sean Hannity releases
his book Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama’s Radical Agenda
During the 2008 campaign, author Zev Chafets would later reveal in a biography of Fox chief
Roger Ailes, Obama had revealed a paranoia not just about Fox but specifically
about Hannity. Wrote Chafets:
After
some pleasantries, Obama got to the point. He was concerned about the way he
was being portrayed on Fox, and his real issue wasn’t the news; it was Sean
Hannity, who had been battering him every night at nine (and on his radio show,
which Fox doesn’t own or control). Ailes didn’t deny that Hannity was
anti-Obama. He simply told the candidate not to worry about it. “Nobody who
watches Sean’s going to vote for you anyway,” he said.
March 31, 2010: IRS union chief Colleen Kelley visits
the White House for a session on Workforce Flexibility attended by President
and Mrs. Obama. She says she never spoke to the President. Over the course of
the 2010 election cycle, the NTEU will raise $613,633, from its members in
“voluntary” contributions, 98% of which will go to Democrats.
April 1-2, 2010: “The new Acting Manager, Technical Unit,
suggested the need for a Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party cases. The
Determinations Unit Program Manager agreed.”
Source: IG Report of IRS E-Mail. Page 31.
April 5, 2010: “A Determinations Unit specialist
developed a list of 18 identified Tea Party cases during a search of applications.
Three had already been approved as tax-exempt. While the heading of the
document listing these 18 cases referred to Tea Party cases, not all of the
organizations listed had Tea Party in their names.” Source: IG report of
IRS E-Mail. Page 31.
June 7, 2010: “The IRS Determinations Unit ‘began
training its specialists on emerging issues to watch for, including an emerging
issue referred to as Tea Party Cases.’” Source: IG Report, Documentation.
Page 32
July, 2010: “Determinations Unit management requested
its specialists to be on the lookout for Tea Party applications.” Source:
IG Report. E-Mail. Page 32.
July, 2010: Catherine Engelbrecht, an American
citizen from Houston, Texas and owner with husband Bryan of Engelbrecht
Enterprises, a small manufacturing business, decides to create two Tea
Party-style groups: King Street Patriots and True the Vote. Engelbrecht files
the required applications to the IRS that grant tax-exempt status.
August 28, 2010: Fox TV and talk radio host Glenn Beck
hosts a massive “Restoring Honor” Washington rally calling for Americans to
turn to God and celebrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King. The rally
features former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Dr. King’s niece Alveda King.
September 28, 2010: Sen. Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat
who chairs the Senate Finance Committee — which oversees the IRS — sends a
three-page letter on Senate Finance letterhead (found here) to IRS Commissioner Douglas
Shulman. Baucus demands: “I request that you and your agency survey major
501(c)(4)” groups for “possible violation of tax laws.” In 2008, Baucus
received a $2,500 contribution from the IRS union, the NTEU.
October, 2010: “The (IRS tax exempt status) team of
specialists stopped working on potential political cases from October 2010
through November, 2011, resulting in a 13-month delay…” while waiting for
assistance from the IRS Technical Unit. Source: IG report, page 12.
October 14, 2010: The liberal New York Times sounds the alarm in liberal quarters
with this headline:
Tea Party Set to Win Enough Races for Wide Influence
The story begins by waving a red flag of
the coming influence the Tea Party may be achieving through the electoral
process:
Enough
Tea Party-supported candidates are running strongly in competitive and
Republican-leaning Congressional races that the movement stands a good chance
of establishing a sizable caucus to push its agenda in the House and the
Senate, according to a New York Times analysis.
The Times
also writes this notable line, bold print added for emphasis:
Several candidates advocate abolishing the Internal Revenue
Service entirely.
November 2, 2010: The Obama administration suffers a
massive defeat as 82.5 million Americans turn out in the fall elections,
returning the U.S. House to the GOP with a win of 63 seats, the largest since
1938. The GOP wins 6 Senate seats, 29 of 50 governors and 680 seats in state
legislatures.
November 3, 2010: The Tea Party victories are headline
stories across the country and in the liberal media. The Washington Post headline is typical:
Victories give force to tea party movement
Two
more unlikely people it would be hard to imagine.
One
consorts with a man who heads a country the State Department describes
as having “repeatedly provided support for acts of international
terrorism.” This man is also the half-brother of….the President of the United
States.
The
other? The other is a woman
who with her husband built a small manufacturing business in
Houston and decided to start a couple of local Tea Parties.
And
whom does the IRS target? Whom does the FBI Domestic Terrorist Unit target?
That’s
right, the woman in Houston. The woman who is not related to the President of
the United States. The woman who has zero connections to terrorists.
And
Catherine Engelbrecht was far from alone.
Earlier
this week we wrote up Part One of what was termed a timeline of tyranny — “The
VanderSlooting of America.” A timeline that focuses not just
on the Treasury IG report of IRS abuses or the birth of the Tea Party and the
struggle ignited by battles over massive government spending and health care
but expands outward to illustrate the mindset of the Left at work. Using Big
Left Money (i.e., George Soros) and/or the power of government to go after
conservatives in religion (Bill Donohue’s Catholic League) or in the media
(Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Lou Dobbs) or, as revealed the last
few weeks, just plain ordinary American citizens across the land.
We
will finish up that timeline in today’s Part Two. A hat tip here to attorney
Cleta Mitchell, Mark Levin of the Landmark Legal Foundation, Jay Sekulow of the
American Center for Law and Justice, and Walid Shoebat and Ben Barrack.
January
5, 2011:
Nearly 100 new members of Congress are sworn in with their colleagues. Many of
the new members have support from the Tea Party.
January,
2011:
The FBI’s Domestic Terrorist Unit has more questions for Catherine Engelbrecht,
the co-founder with husband Bryan of Engelbrecht Manufacturing. The questions
are about an attendee at one of Engelbrecht’s two Tea party groups, the King
Street Patriots. The first contact from the FBI came in December of 2010.
Engelbrecht had filed for tax exempt status for her Tea party groups — True the
Vote and the King Street Patriots — in July of 2010.
January,
2011:
The IRS audits the 2008 and 2009 Engelbrecht Enterprises tax returns.
March,
2011:
Catherine Engelbrecht receives and responds to IRS questions on her nonprofit
application for True the Vote, the first round of such questions for this
group.
May,
2011:
The FBI Domestic Terrorism Unit calls Catherine Engelbrecht again for “a
general inquiry about the King Street Patriots.”
May
30, 2011:
The Barack H. Obama Foundation, run by the President’s Kenyan half-brother
Malik Obama, applies to the IRS for tax-exempt status. (Here is a photo of Malik Obama with
President Obama in the Oval Office.)
As
noted here in an investigation by the
former Muslim Brotherhood member-turned-peace activist Walid Shoebat and his
colleague Ben Barrack:
It has been learned
that the relationship between President Barack Obama’s half-brother Malik Obama
and Sudan’s President Omar Al-Bashir is much closer than previously thought.
Malik is the Executive Secretary of the Islamic Da’wa Organization (IDO) as
reported by all major Saudi press, including Okaz.
How significant is
this?
Very significant. The
IDO has been created by the Sudanese Government, which is considered by the
U.S. State Department as a terrorist state. This places Malik Obama in bed with
terrorists and working as an official with a terrorist state.
We have the evidence
to prove it — meetings, photos, et al.
Bashir is wanted by
the International Criminal Court (ICC) on seven counts relating to crimes
against humanity. As such, Bashir is the head of a country that the U.S. State
Department has identified as a State Sponsor of terrorism, a designation issued
in 1993.
Now, bearing in mind
the issue here is the IRS, follow this trail.
Here is a photo of Bashir (the balding man
dressed in black on the right) at the 2010, Islamic Da’wa Organization (IDO)
conference in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan.
Write
Shoebat and Barrack:
One of the objectives
of the IDO is to spread Wahhabist Islam across the African continent.
Bashir wasn’t just
present at the conference; he supervised it. In this photo, from the Barack H.
Obama Foundation (BHOF) website, headed by Malik, Bashir can
be seen dressed in black, to the right. Another man to take notice of is seated
directly to the right of Bashir; his name is Suar Al Dahab…”
Catch
that?
The
photo of Bashir — the man who heads
a country, the Sudan, that is labeled by the U.S. State Department as a
terrorist state — is featured on the Barack H. Obama Foundation website. You
will find that photo at that website as the fifth photograph labeled beneath
the photo this way: “Photo:Munadhamat Dawa Al-Islamia (MDI) Board of
Directors Conference 2010, Khartoum, Sudan.” So too is this photo featured
of Malik Obama addressing the 2010 IDO conference, found here with his boss Suar Al Dahab
watching from the same rostrum that, in another photo, the photo mentioned
above, has Malik Obama’s boss and the boss of terrorist Sudan sitting side by
side from the rostrum of the IDO conference. And here, from Shoebat’s site, are
photos of Malik Obama’s boss posing with the Prime Minister of Hamas, Ismail
Haniyeh and the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi. And
of course, here is Malik Obama with his boss.
Hamas — and remember again the issue here is the IRS — is listed (here) by the U.S. State Department
as a “terrorist organization.”
June
1, 2011:
Two days after the Obama Foundation applies for tax-exempt status, the
Leadership Institute (LI), which trains conservative organizers, is notified by
the IRS that its tax return for 2008 is being audited. The Leadership
Institute, founded in 1979 by longtime conservative activist
and Reaganite Morton Blackwell and located in Arlington, Virginia “…teaches
conservatives the nuts and bolts of how to succeed in the public policy
process. ….To accomplish this, the Institute identifies, recruits, trains, and
places conservatives in government, politics, and the media.” What happened
to them?
In
their own words:
On June 1, 2011, LI
received notice of an audit of its tax return and activities in 2008.
What followed was a
more than year-long investigation of more than 23,430 pages of records and
requests for items like:
— a list of
2008 interns and their future employers;
— sample emails
between employers and LI regarding ConservativeJobs.com; and
— how LI’s more than
300 trainings are advertised.
Ultimately, the IRS
accepted the Institute’s tax return as filed.
“The IRS’
indefensible behavior is worse than we first thought, as it targeted both new
and existing conservative groups in politically motivated attacks,” said Morton
Blackwell, president of the Leadership Institute. “Fortunately my Leadership
Institute had the resources to stand up to the government’s bullying and intimidation.
Other groups, including grassroots and tea party groups we’ve helped train, did
not. Defending ourselves from the harassing audit cost my organization more
than $50,000 in legal fees alone.”
June,
2011:
Catherine and Bryan Engelbrecht’s personal tax returns for 2008 and 2009 are
audited by the IRS.
June,
2011:
The FBI Domestic Terrorism Unit calls Catherine Engelbrecht yet again with a
general inquiry about King Street Patriots.
June
26, 2011:
Lois Lerner, the Director of Exempt Organizations for the IRS, signs the final
approval for the Barack H. Obama Foundation run by the President’s half-brother
Malik. Elapsed time between filing and approval: 28 days.
Stop.
Stop right here.
Notice
anything just a tad on the odd side? Within a mere 28 days of filing for an
application, Malik Obama’s foundation — named after the President — is approved
by the IRS — specifically by Lois Lerner herself. Malik Obama has been
identified by Walid Shoebat as having a “much closer than previously thought”
relationship with Sudan’s President Omar Al-Bashir. Al-Bashir’s Sudan being
identified — by the U.S. State Department!- in 1993 (!) “as a State
Sponsor of terrorism.” Malik Obama’s pal Bashir “is wanted by the International
Criminal Court (ICC) on seven counts relating to crimes against humanity.” And
Malik Obama’s boss is pictured above not only benignly seated at the head table
of an Islamic conference with Bashir, the head of terrorist Sudan, but proudly
posing with the Prime Minister of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh. That would be the
Hamas identified by the U.S. State Department as a “terrorist organization.”
And
yet whom does the FBI Domestic Terrorist Unit investigate? An investigation
that kicks in only after she applies for an IRS tax-exempt status? That’s right
— the FBI zeroes in on Catherine Engelbrecht of the King Street Patriots and
True the Vote in Houston, Texas. And whom do Lois Lerner and the IRS put
through the process wringer? That would be Catherine Engelbrecht in Texas — and
among others Morton Blackwell in Virginia. But Malik Obama’s Foundation? Run by
the President’s half-brother who spends his time literally associating with the
head of a terrorist state while his boss proudly poses with same?
No
problem. Lois Lerner clears in 30 days.
June
29, 2011:
Lois Lerner is first briefed on the Tea Party cases.
July,
2011:
“Criteria changed to ‘Organizations involved with political, lobbying, or
advocacy for exemption under 501 (c) (3) or 501 (c) (4)’ based on the concerns
the Director, EO, raised in June 2011.”
Source:
IG Report
October,
2011:
Catherine Engelbrecht receives and responds to more questions from the IRS, a
second round from the IRS on True the Vote.
November,
2011:
Catherine Engelbrecht gets still another call from the FBI Domestic Terrorism
Unit for a general inquiry about King Street Patriots.
December,
2011:
Catherine Engelbrecht gets a sixth call from the FBI with another “general
inquiry” about the King Street Patriots.
January
25, 2012:
The IRS Exempt Organizations division revises its BOLO issue description
criteria — BOLO is IRS-speak for “Be On the Look Out” — to “political action
type organizations involved in limiting/expanding government, educating on the
Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform/movement.”
January
26, 2012:
Bill Williams of the Tea Party group “Ohio Liberty Council Corp.” receives a
letter from the IRS saying, “We need more information before we can complete
our consideration of your application.” The group is given until February 16 to
reply and presents 9 very detailed questions, several with multiple subsets of
questions labeled alphabetically.
February,
2012:
Catherine Engelbrecht receives and responds to a third round of IRS questions
on her nonprofit application for True the Vote.
February,
2012:
Catherine Engelbrecht receives and responds to a first round of questions from
the IRS on the King Street Patriots.
February,
2012:
Engelbrecht Manufacturing, a small company owned by Catherine and Bryan
Engelbrecht, receive an unscheduled audit from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco
and Firearms.
February
14, 2012:
A Tea Party group called “Linchpins of Liberty” in Franklin,
Tennessee, founded by entertainment lawyer Kevin Kookogey, receives a letter
from the IRS in response for tax-exempt organization status. Signed by IRS
“Exempt Organizations Specialist” Mitch Steele of the Cincinnati IRS office, it
says: “Unfortunately we need more information before we can complete our consideration
of your application.” Steele’s letter gives the group a response date of March
6, the letter asks 31 very detailed questions, several with multiple subsets of
questions labeled alphabetically (from “a” through “f” etc.)
February
29, 2012:
The Rush Limbaugh-Sandra Fluke controversy begins. The episode launches a
massive liberal attempt to remove Limbaugh from the air by threatening Limbaugh
advertisers.
March
2, 2012:
Congressman Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, writes IRS Commissioner Douglas
Shulman requesting that “the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to investigate
whether any groups qualifying as social welfare organizations under section
501(c)(4) of the federal tax code are improperly engaged in political campaign
activity.” In 2010, Congressman Welch, who sits on the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee that oversees the IRS, received a $1,000
contribution from the IRS union. He won with 64.6% of the vote. In 2012, Welch
received another $1,000 contribution and won with 72%.
March
12, 2012:
Senate Democrats Charles E. Schumer (NY), Michael Bennet (CO), Sheldon
Whitehouse (RI), Jeff Merkley (OR), Tom Udall (NM), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), and Al
Franken (MN) write IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman to demand an
investigation into “the amount of political spending by
tax-exempt, nonprofit groups” and demanding the IRS cap the amount of money the
conservative groups were spending. Schumer is the immediate past chair of the
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Colorado’s Bennett will be elected to
the same post in 2013. Six of the seven Democrats received campaign
contributions from the IRS union, the NTEU: Schumer ($2,500 in 2010), Bennet
($8,500 in 2010), Whitehouse ($2,000 in 2012), Merkley ($5,000 in 2008 ), Udall
($10,000 in 2008, $1,000 in 2010), and Franken ($5,000 in 2008).
March
16, 2012:
A Tea Party group named the “Ohio Liberty Council Corp.” receives IRS
notification through their attorney Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law
and Justice. The IRS tells Sekulow’s client that in spite of the group’s
earlier response to a January letter, the IRS needed “additional information”
which must be supplied by May 15. The letter is signed by “Lois Lerner,
Director of Exempt Organizations.”
March
22, 2012:
IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman testifies to Congress, answering a question
from Congressman Charles Boustany. The question: “Can you give us assurances
that the IRS is not targeting particular groups based on political leanings?”
To which the IRS Commissioner replies: “Yes. I can give you assurances. There’s
absolutely no targeting.”
March
23, 2012:
Mark Levin of the Landmark Legal Foundation “requests an immediate
investigation into possible misconduct by the Internal Revenue Service’s Exempt
Organization (EO) Division that calls into question the integrity of federal
tax administration and IRS programs.” The filing is made with the Treasury
Inspector General for Tax Administration.
April
2, 2012:
Two IRS agents interview Mark Levin regarding the Landmark complaint to the
Treasury IG.
April
20, 2012:
The official website for the Obama campaign’s “Truth Team” posts the name of Idaho businessman
Frank VanderSloot in an article titled “Behind the curtain: A brief history of
Romney’s donors.” The posting describes VanderSloot as part of “a group of
wealthy individuals with less-than-reputable records,” saying specifically of
VanderSloot: “Frank VanderSloot is the national finance co-chairman of the
Romney campaign and, through his company Melaleuca, has donated $1 million to
Restore Our Future.” He is also a “litigious, combative, and a bitter foe of
the gay rights movement” who “spent big” on ads in an “ultimately unsuccessful
effort to force Idaho Public Television to cancel a program that showed gays
and lesbians in a favorable light to school children.”
July,
2012:
Engelbrecht Manufacturing owners Catherine and Bryan Engelbrecht receive an
unscheduled audit from the OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor.
July
25, 2012:
Frank VanderSloot reveals in an interview with Fox News that he has become the
subject of both two IRS audits as well as an audit from the U.S. Department of
Labor. He received the news sixty one days
following the Obama “Truth Team” posted his name and disparaged him as part of
“a group of wealthy individuals with less-than-reputable records.” Reports Fox:
An Idaho businessman
singled out by the Obama campaign for giving $1 million in support of Mitt
Romney is now the focus of IRS and Labor Department audits.
Frank VanderSloot, in
an interview with FoxNews.com on Tuesday, said he received the initial audit
notice from the IRS last month. Two weeks later, he got one from the Labor
Department stating the agency would be looking into records related to foreign
employees working at his Idaho Falls cattle ranch.
It might all be a
coincidence, he said — “but the timing was peculiar.”
The
Associated Press reported the VanderSloot story this way, writing:
Sixty-one days after
the Obama campaign posted the list of Romney donors, Vandersloot said he
received a letter from the IRS, his first-ever audit from the agency.
“It’s all fine and
well,” Vandersloot told The Associated Press Wednesday. “I am not claiming
there is a connection, and don’t know if there is one.
“But the fact that it
comes right on the heels of being named on the president’s enemies list is
curious to say the least,” he said.
July
27, 2012:
A month before Republican Mitt Romney is officially nominated to be President
Obama’s opponent, Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the
Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, writes a 6-page letter on
official Subcommittee stationery to IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman. Saying
the response from an earlier letter to IRS official Lois Lerner was
unsatisfactory, Levin, among other things, names 12 conservative groups by name
and demanding to know if “they have a) applied for; and if so, b) received the
described exemption for political activity from the IRS?” Levin received a
$3,000 contribution from the IRS union in 2008.
August
28, 2012:
Republicans nominate Mitt Romney for President. The Obama-Romney race for the
White House formally begins.
September
19, 2012:
With the Obama-Romney race now heating up and the polls predicting a close
race, Senator Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat, goes to the floor of the U.S.
Senate to demand in a statement that the IRS
step up its investigations of political nonprofit groups applying for tax
exemptions.
September,
2012:
Frank VanderSloot receives notice of a third audit from the IRS, bringing the
total with the Labor Department audit to four. He spends $80,000 in legal and
accounting fees defending himself and will not be reimbursed.
November,
2012:
Engelbrecht Manufacturing receives an unscheduled audit from the Texas
Commission on Environment Quality.
November,
2012:
Catherine Engelbrecht receives and responds to a fourth round of IRS questions
on the nonprofit application for True the Vote.
November
6, 2012:
President Obama is re-elected.
March
18, 2013:
Senator Carl Levin tells the New York Times he
intends to stay on the IRS and insist the agency go after conservative groups.
Says Levin of the conservative groups he has already listed in his July, 2012
letter to the IRS Commissioner: “We’re going to go after them.”
March,
2013:
Catherine Engelbrecht receives and responds to an IRS question on the tax
filing status for True the Vote.
March
22, 2012:
IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman testifies to the House Ways and Means
Committee that “There’s absolutely no targeting. This is the kind of back
and forth that happens to people.”
April,
2013:
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms conducts a second audit of
Engelbrecht Manufacturing.
May,
2013:
Catherine Engelbrecht’s Tea Party groups, True the Vote and the King Street
Patriots, have still not received their determination of nonprofit status from
the IRS.
May
6, 2013:
Another Tea Party group receives an inquiry from the IRS, states the group’s
lawyer, Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice.
May
10, 2013:
Lois Lerner, the director of the tax-exempt organizations division at the
Internal Revenue Service, addresses the American Bar Association conference in
Washington. An IRS- planted question is used to give Lerner the ability to
announce, in the words of the Washington Post, “that employees in the
IRS’s tax-exempt unit in Cincinnati had improperly scrutinized applications
from dozens of organizations.”
In
a phone briefing for the media Lerner says: “They added the names Tea
Party and Patriot to the list of cases that should be centralized in this
group.”
May
13, 2013:
President Obama addresses the subject of the IRS at a press conference: “I
first learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people
learned about this, I think it was on Friday…”
May
14, 2013:
The Treasury Department Inspector General Russell George releases the IG report
on IRS abuses and confirms that the IRS did in fact use “inappropriate
criteria… to identify tax-exempt applications for review.”
May
15, 2013:
At another public appearance President Obama says “I’ve reviewed the Treasury
Department watchdog’s report and the misconduct that it uncovered is
inexcusable…” Obama orders Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew to ask for Acting
IRS Commissioner Steven Miller’s resignation.
May
20, 2013:
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney says the IRS “misconduct had stopped in
May of 2012…” This contradicts the fact of an IRS letter delivered to one of
Sekulow’s clients on May 6, only 14 days earlier.
May
22, 2013:
Lois Lerner, the Internal Revenue Service’s director of Exempt Organizations —
takes the Fifth Amendment in front of a hearing of the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee.
May
28, 2013:
Catherine Engelbrecht attorney Cleta Mitchell announces Engelbrecht will sue
the IRS. NBC News reports this story (bold print for emphasis):
Cleta Mitchell,
another attorney representing conservative groups that allege they were
targeted, said an IRS agent in Cincinnati told her a “task force” IRS office in
Washington, D.C., was making the decisions about the processing of applications,
and that she subsequently dealt with IRS representatives there.
(The IRS agent in
Cincinnati) told me that in fact the case would be transferred to a special
task force out of Washington, and that he was told — he was the originally
assigned agent — that he wasn’t allowed to make decisions, the decisions were
all going to be made in Washington,” Mitchell said. “I know that this
process was going on in Washington because I’ve dealt with those people.”
One of Mitchell’s
clients, Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote, a conservative
elections monitoring organization, applied for tax-exempt status for the group
in July 2010. She said that when she asked the IRS two years later why it was
taking so long to get a decision, agents told her Washington was to
blame.
So.
What
do we have here?
What
we have is a Breach of Faith. Whatever else is to come, the real
crime here is an all-out attack on the trust of the American people in
their government.
Think
of this.
We
have a “foundation” run by the Kenyan half-brother of the President of the
United States. A half-brother who has been clearly identified as having a “much
closer than previously thought” relationship with the head of a State
Department-identified “terrorist state” (Bashir of The Sudan). A half-brother
who works for an organization headed by a man who associates with the head of
Hamas — the latter identified yet again by the State Department as a “terrorist
organization.”
And
that half-brother’s application for tax exempt status whizzes through the IRS
in a mere thirty days, getting signed by Lois Lerner herself.
Meanwhile,
the IRS — not to mention the FBI Domestic Terrorist Unit, OSHA and the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms — are in hot pursuit of American citizen
Catherine Engelbrecht of Houston, Texas . And Engelbrecht has still not
received the tax exempt status she applied for three years ago. A tax exempt
status granted to Malik Obama in a mere thirty days and signed by Lois Lerner
herself.
Then
there was the IRS targeting of Morton Blackwell and the venerable conservative
Leadership Institute — which is busily turning out conservative leaders in
public policy, campaigns and the media. Young conservative leaders who would
doubtless, in 2012, be taking to the field to oppose Barack Obama.
And
that’s before one gets to the IRS treatment of Frank VanderSloot of Idaho, Bill
Williams of the Ohio Liberty Council or Kevin Kookogey at the Linchpins of
Liberty group in Tennessee.
Not
to mention Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, the target of a Soros-funded
group that tried to both bully Donohue off CNN when not having the IRS do their
dirty work for them, as Donohue himself has documented.
Not
to mention all the other almost 500 Tea Party groups who have been subjected to
the same treatment.
Not
to mention that massive but failed effort to get Rush Limbaugh pushed off the
air in March of 2012.
Earlier
this week, in the first part of this two-part series on “The VanderSlooting of
America” we began to see the true pattern of the Left at work in America.
What
we have assembled is what we called here a timeline of tyranny.
Perhaps
the best way to close this long two-part list is with this quote from — yes —
Ronald Reagan. In fact, let’s use the Reagan close to Mark Levin’s presciently
titled — and Tea Party favorite — Liberty and Tyranny:
Freedom is never more than one generation away from
extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be
fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we
will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children
what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
Enough
said.
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