IRS acted as aider and abettor to liberal stalking

John Eastman:

The world is learning about the corruption of the IRS in targeting conservative groups, including various Tea Party organizations, for heightened scrutiny. But the corruption goes much deeper than harassing groups seeking first time non-profit designations, into actively sabotaging existing non-profit groups by releasing confidential information.

In March of 2012 the Human Rights Campaign published a confidential tax return of the National Organization for Marriage, which was immediately republished byThe Huffington Post and other liberal news media outlets. The HRC and NOM are the leading national groups on opposing sides of the fight over gay marriage. HRC wants to redefine marriage to make it genderless, while NOM wishes to preserve marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

My organization was not the only conservative-linked political group or business that appears to have faced shady actions from IRS employees. ProPublica reported this week that the IRS handed over to them confidential documents of nine conservative organizations whose applications for non-profit status were still pending. Among them: Crossroads GPS, a key group backing Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.

Our case was particularly egregious because the IRS leak of confidential information fed directly into an ongoing political battle. For months before March 2012, the pro-gay marriage HRC had been demanding that my group, NOM, publicly identify its major donors, something that NOM and many other non-profits refuse to do. The reason is simple. In the past, gay marriage advocates have used such information to launch campaigns of intimidation against traditional marriage supporters.

Just as gay marriage proponents were demanding the information, the IRS appears to have illegally given them exactly what they were looking for. The tax return released by the HRC contained the names and addresses of dozens of major donors to NOM. And there's little doubt where the documents came from. The tax returns contained internal coding added by the IRS after the returns were originally submitted.

For the IRS to leak any organization's tax return to its political opponents is an outrageous breach of ethics and, if proven, constitutes a felony. Every organization — liberal and conservative — should shudder at the idea of the IRS playing politics with its confidential tax return information. But the situation here is even more egregious because the head of the HRC was at the time serving as a national co-chair of President Obama's re-election campaign.

The release of NOM's confidential tax return to the Human Rights Campaign is the canary in the coal mine of IRS corruption. Contrary to assertions that the targeting of Tea Party groups was an error in judgment by low-level IRS bureaucrats, the release of NOM's confidential data to a group headed by an Obama campaign co-chair suggests the possibility of complicity at the highest levels of politics and government. This wasn't a low-level error in judgment; it was a conscious act to reward a prominent Obama supporter while punishing an opponent.

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So far the IRS has not shown much diligence in finding the parties responsible  for the breach of privacy.  But this story does demonstrate how corrupt some of the people within the IRS have become.

The IRS is an agency that is desperately in need of new leadership that will come in anc clean house.  That will be hard to do with civil service rules, but it is something that is critical to restoring trust.

I think those who have been subjected to liberal stalking becaus of this breech of trust have a claim against the IRS.