By Hugh Hewitt
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
On Tuesday night the report of the Treasury Inspector
General for Tax Administration on the great Tea Party purge was released.
This is a terrible report. Just begin reading it and you
will quickly realize that you are in the the swamp of obfuscation and CYA.
On the "Highlights" page there are more
questions raised than answered --questions such as who ordered "donor
information received in response to a request destroyed" and who at the
IRS, specifically, rejected some of the IG's recommendations and
"alternative corrective actions?" Mixed into the first page of
sanitized disclosures is the "request that social welfare activity
guidance be developed by the Department of the Treasury," an invitation to
Obama Administration appointees and senior bureaucrats to issue regulations
that include or exclude groups from tax exempt status --from the very same
agency that has been unable to stop a campaign of intimidation against Tea
Party groups that reached far and wide and which extended back to "[e]arly
in Calendar Year 2010."
What is most remarkable about the report is the wholesale
lack of detail about who, what, where and when? Take page 3, for example, when
the report states "During the 2012 election cycle, some members of
Congress raised concerns to the IRS about selective enforcement and the duty to
treat similarly situated organizations consistently." There is no footnote
citing which members or to copies of their complaints or to transcripts of
hearings at which such concerns were voiced. Readers are thus unable to judge
if the report is referring to a couple of complaints that arrived via form
letter from low level Congressional staffers or if this reference is intended
to cover the willful deception of Senator Hatch.
On page 4 the report states that this "review was
performed at the EO function Headquarters office in Washington, D.C., and the
Determinations Unit in Cincinnati during the period June 2012 through February
2013." No detail is provided on the IG personnel who conducted it, who was
interviewed by those personnel and when those interviews occurred, and who was
kept informed of the progress of the report. No list of interviews, no record
of transcribed depositions --if any occurred-- and no schedule of meetings
between investigators and IRS personnel is included. No one can read this and
conclude whether the investigation is a complete whitewash and cover-up or a
bureaucratic exercise in carefully calibrated CYA.
No one can read it and say "Well, they certainly got
to the bottom of that!"
Beginning on page 5 comes the maddening use of
non-specific terms like "the Determinations Unit." This is creepy,
Orwellian cant, and instead of learning "that on June 21, 2010, Joe
Bag-of-Donuts in the Cincy office ordered Sally Slow-starer to make a pile of
all the Tea Party apps," we learn instead that the "Determinations
Unit developed and began using criteria to identify potential political cases
for review that inappropriately identified specific group..."
More of the same follows:
"EO function officials stated that, in May 2010, the
Determinations Unit began developing a spreadsheet that would become known as
the "Be On The Look Out" listing (hereafter referred to as the BOLO
listing), which included the emerging issue of Tea party applications."
Who in the "EO function" stated that? When did
the EO function become aware of this spreadsheet? Did anyone at anytime realize
this was at a minimum wrong and quite possibly a federal crime? Did anyone in
the "EO function" call the DOJ and blow a whistle?
On page 31 we learn that on April 1-2, 2010 (!) the
"new Acting Manager, Technical Unit, suggested the need for a Sensitive
Case Report on Tea Party cases. The Determinations Unit Program Manager
agreed." Who was this "new Acting Manager," and was he or she a
long-time IRS GS 10 employee with a stellar record promoted to fill a vacancy,
or a new hire from the non-federal workforce, and if the latter, why was he or
she hired and by whom? This April 1-2, 2010 sequence appears to be the "original
sin" and it is astonishing that no detail is provided on this incident and
people involved with it. Imagine not knowing who broke into the Watergate Hotel
and not caring?
The heart of this mostly meaningless exercise in CYA is
on pp. 6 and 7, which gives the barest of outlines of what happened within the
IRS, and the announcement of the most cursory of inquiries into political
motivation:
We asked the Acting Commissioner, Tax Exempt and
Government Entities Division; the Director, EO; and Determinations Unit
personnel if the criteria were influenced by any individual or organization
outside the IRS. All of these officials stated that the criteria were not
influenced by any individual or organization outside the IRS. Instead, the
Determinations Unit developed and implemented inappropriate criteria in part
due to insufficient oversight provided by management.
Right. No names, no dates, no transcripts of the
questions. Nothing to worry about, just imprecise guidance. No record of
whether senior IRS management told anyone outside of IRS about the
"low-level" practices in Cincy, and no details on who developed the
policies in the first place and whether those people were lifers in the IRS or
relatively recent hires.
What we know from this report is that the IG of IRS
labored a long time at a very slow pace to produce a nearly worthless report.
We also know that the Congress has a lot of work ahead of it, and that lawyers
from the DOJ will conduct an investigation into a very old crime scene long
after the elections impacted by the suppression of legitimate political
activity have passed, and long after the stories have been straightened out and
files dumped and emails deleted.
We need a Special Prosecutor, period. Congress should
insist and hammer Eric Holder and President Obama until they consent. Use all
tools to accomplish this, as the American people understand the threat posed by
a politicized IRS and they understand why the Chicago gang cannot be trusted to
investigate this. The IRS is an enormously powerful agency and one that causes
quite a lot of fear in Americans. It went badly off the rails, and credibility
has to be restored. It won't be restored by the Obama-Holder DOJ. If Speaker
Boehner has to use the debt limit to force this, it is a show down worth
having. The vast majority of IRS employees are hard-working, ethical civil
servants and they will rally to any genuine effort to clear their own names and
restore the agency's credibility. If the agency has been infiltrated by
political hacks, they will be quick outed by the serious career people if the
career folks are protected along the way.
On Friday the House Ways and Means Committee holds the
first of what will be many Congressional gearings into this scandal. The House
GOP members need to tamp down their desire for some air time and YouTube video,
and ask very specific questions about the conduct of the IG investigation,
getting into the details about who knew the investigation was underway and why
it took so long, who was interviewed, by whom, and under what circumstances.
Crucially, we need the names of the people who came up with the criteria, and
dates on when they were interviewed and answers on whether those interviews
were recorded.
The Democrats want this to be a story of bad management and
incompetent front-line staff "that did not consider the public perception
of using politically sensitive criteria when identifying these cases." (p.
7) Perhaps that is all it is --that is how the New York Times is spinning it
this morning-- but it could be much, much more sinister, and getting to the
answer of what it was and what went on will never emerge if this pace and these
techniques are used as the cover-up ball is lateraled to DOJ.
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