SCANDAL: IRS Leaked Confidential Records To Liberal Media

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The IRS scandal is not going away any time soon, much to the chagrin of the Obama administration. After the initial media bombshell about the Internal Revenue Service targeting Tea Party, patriot, and other conservative groups dropped, more information about politically motivated misdeeds have surfaced.

Yesterday Off The Grid News was among the first to publish details about the amazingly quick IRS processing of Malik Obama’s, Barack H. Obama Foundation tax-exempt application. The foundation garnered non-profit status in just a single month, despite telling potential supporters that their donations were tax exempt for several years prior to even requesting review by the IRS.

The IRS scandal is not just limited to group application requests for non-profit status. A prominent Catholic professional also feels they were selected for an audit based upon political bias. Professor and author Dr. Anne Hendershott was the target of an IRS audit in 2010. Hendershott had been publicly critical of President Barack Obama and his deep-pockets pal George Soros. The sociology professor disapproved of Soros’ donations to liberal Catholic groups.

The IRS was apparently not satisfied with merely placing unnecessary and possibly illegal hurdles in front of Tea Party and conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. The federal agency allegedly leaked confidential request details to a left-wing media website.

Confidential information about 31 conservative groups was reportedly leaked to ProPublica during the 2012 presidential campaign. The tax-exempt status request of nine of the Tea Party requests had not yet been completed, making it illegal to share the details. President Barack Obama has pursued more press agencies to unearth a government leak than all modern administrations combined, yet this breach of protocol has gone unquestioned by federal officials.

A ProPublica release issued about the receipt of IRS Tea Party non-profit forms reads:

“The same IRS office that deliberately targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 election released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year. In response to a request for the applications for 67 different nonprofits last November, the Cincinnati office of the IRS sent ProPublica applications or documentation for 31 groups. Nine of those applications had not yet been approved — meaning they were not supposed to be made public. We made six of those public, after redacting their financial information, deeming that they were newsworthy.”

Prior to the 2012 presidential election, ProPublica reportedly spent months investigating claims that scores of social welfare charities had misled the Internal Revenue Service about both their tax returns and political activities. Ironically, the organization run by Malik Obama (the president’s half-brother) does not appear to be among the non-profit groups highlighted by ProPublica.

ProPublica claims that non-profit groups which did not have to report their donors contributed $322 million to election coffers. The liberal media organization also alleges that 84 percent of such political donations stemmed from conservative groups like the Tea Party. The liberal media outlet reportedly averages only around 348,000 unique views per month. Why the IRS would choose such a low-traffic venue to share the confidential conservative groups’ IRS forms with may have a lot to do with donors to the ProPublica website.

ProPublica was created in 2007 with fiscal backing from the Sandler Foundation, among others. The Sandler Foundation was founded with funds from World Savings Bank CEO Herb Sandler. The banker and his late wife, Marion Sandler, were reportedly among the top donors to left-wing institutions and causes. DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, also a ProPublica donor, reportedly gave $2 million to the Priorities USA PAC, a pro-Obama group.

During an interview with The Blaze, Dr. Anne Hendershott said she was called to the IRS office for an audit and told to come alone. The professor was shocked that she could not bring an attorney or accountant and was especially surprised that, since she files taxes jointly with her husband, he was excluded from the meeting as well. Only Anne Hndershott’s finances and political associations were called into question, not her husband’s.

Dr. Hendershott had this to say about her experience with the IRS:

“The IRS calls my house and says ‘I just wanted to let you know that we’re going to be auditing your business,’ and I said ‘My businesses?’ and he said, ‘You know the expenses you take off for writing.’ I don’t make a lot of money from writing. In fact, most years I don’t show a profit. Every question had to do with bank deposits we made. Every single question. What is this money? And I didn’t know a lot of it. We had to go to our bank and get deposits back. We had to get records showing where the money came from.”

When the IRS agent asked Dr. Hendershoot about the numerous bank deposits over the course of the tax year, he also wanted to know if the money came from organizations and, if so, what the group’s politics were. During a legitimate audit, it would be reasonable to question bank deposits, but not the political mindset of those remitting payment for services rendered.

During the same time period, the professor had been writing for multiple Catholic groups and media outlets. She had also recently completed a Wall Street Journal opinion piece critical of the president and his policies. Other groups which Hendershott had taken issue with included Catholic Democrats, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, and Catholics United. Using a government agency which can seize control of all your money and assets to silence members of the press and political dissent from groups flies in the face of everything America stands for.

Chris Korzen, one of the Catholics United founders, often reportedly targeted Dr. Hendershott on the group’s website. Prior to the IRS audit, Anne Hendershott had questioned Korzen’s $84,821 salary for a 40-hour work week from Catholics in Alliance while still being listed as the director of Catholics United at the same time.

Hendershott had this to say about the IRS neglecting to go after Catholic groups she considers liberally-minded and fake in nature:

“I had the tax return in front of me and read off the amounts that Chris Korzen was getting paid from Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good — a Soros-supported fake Catholic group. I started writing articles like crazy saying these are fake Catholic groups. He [Chris Korzen] was getting paid by one organization and working for another. The IRS should have gone after them.”

Although Dr. Hendershott has no proof the IRS audit was political in nature, she strongly suspects her vocal opposition to Obama administration policies prompted the review by the federal agency. She has not written for the Catholic Advocate since the audit because she said the IRS review was very frightening. Hendershott also recalls feeling like the IRS could not find the information they wanted about her activities and just kept requesting more and more details about her activities.

Do you think the IRS has become the retaliatory arm of the Obama administration?