This is a partial list of allegations of misuse of the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which traces its roots to the creation of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue in 1862. Examples of political profiling controversies include cases in which IRS employees or government officials have allegedly used IRS resources to target individuals and groups for espousing or expressing particular political beliefs.
Use of the IRS for political targeting has been alleged as far back as the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. To discredit political opponent Huey Long and damage his support base, Roosevelt had Long's finances investigated by the Internal Revenue Service in 1934. [1]
"My father," Elliott Roosevelt observed of his famous parent, "may have been the originator of the concept of employing the IRS as a weapon of political retribution." [2]
The most famous Kennedy administration project allegedly deploying tax-related targeting was called the "Ideological Organizations Project". This was a project which allegedly investigated, intimidated, and challenged the tax-exempt status of right-wing foundations. [3]
Many instances of alleged political profiling were coordinated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), sometimes under COINTELPRO. [4] The IRS provided the FBI with free access to tax returns, which the FBI used to investigate groups as ideologically varied as the John Birch Society, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the American Communist Party. [5]
Beginning in the 1950s and continuing into the 1960s, the IRS audited civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. numerous times. [6] [7] In addition to King himself, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and several of King's lawyers were subjected to audits.
On 16 July 1969, counselor to the President Arthur F. Burns met with IRS Commissioner Randolph W. Thrower; according to a memo of Thrower's, Burns conveyed that "[t]he President had expressed to him great concern over the fact that tax-exempt funds may be supporting activist groups engaged in stimulating riots both on the campus and within our inner cities." Burns questioned "whether there possibly might be some ideological bias" from the IRS to "the more liberal organizations." [8]
Eight days later the IRS established the Activist Organizations Committee "collect relevant information on organizations predominantly dissident or extremist in nature and on people prominently identified with these organizations." The committee was later renamed the Special Services Staff (SSS); the Committee and the SSS operated out of the Room 3049 in the Internal Revenue Service Building, under "Red Seal Security". Differences emerged between the service and White House over the purpose of the SSS, as the latter pushed for gathering "valuable intelligence-type information" through field audits and curtailing the activities of certain groups through "administrative action." The IRS held that the SSS worked to "provide a greater degree of assurance of maximum compliance with the Internal Revenue laws by those involved in extremist activities and those providing financial support to these activities." At that time the SSS had information on 1,025 groups and 4,300 individuals. [8]
Under executive office pressure the SSS expanded its list of "radicals" to 2,873 organizations and 8,585 individuals with information provided from the Justice Department, FBI, Secret Service, Army intelligence, Airforce intelligence and "sometimes even press clippings." J. Anthony Lukas said "[s]ome 78 per cent of the files were ultimately found to have 'no apparent revenue significance or potential.'" IRS Commissioner Thrower and the White House came into conflict over the appointment of John Caulfield as ATF Director, which Thrower resisted. He refused another push to appoint Caulfield as head of a proposed "quasi-autonomous" enforcement branch of the ATF, which he termed a "personal police force." Thrower continued to rebuff the White House, threatening to resign after a direct order. Later in 1971 he resigned as Commissioner, saying the "introduction of political influence into the IRS would be very damaging to him and his administration, as well as to the revenue system and the general public interest." [8]
The new commissioner Johnnie Mac Walters was bypassed by the "President's men"; Roger Barth who was close to Nixon served as a "back-door channel" in the roles of special assistant to the commissioner and later deputy counsel, while John Caulfield had a 'channel' to assistant commissioner for inspection Vernon Acree. In July 1971, Caulfield was able to obtain a copy of the Brookings Institution's tax returns after the White House "became agitated" over the Institution. Caulfield also called for an audit of Emile De Antonio, producer of the film Millhouse: A White Comedy which satirized Nixon. In October 1971, the newspaper Newsday published an investigate series on one of the President's friends; this led to White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman telling Counsel John Dean the senior editor of Newsday "should have some [tax] problems." The White House also "apparently obtained confidential tax information" on journalist James Polk after he had written articles on the President's lawyer, Herb Kalmbach. According to John Dean, President Nixon asked tax issues "be turned off on friends of his," including Billy Graham and John Wayne who had their IRS audits "looked into" by Caulfield. [8]
IRS Commissioner Walters refused the request of John Dean to investigate 490 staffers and contributors to the George McGovern Presidential campaign. Before the 1972 elections Nixon said "We have to do it artfully so that we don't create an issue that we are using the IRS politically. And there ways to do it, goddamnit. Sneak in one of our political appointees." After the election he remarked "I look forward to the time that we have the agents in the Department of Justice and the IRS under our control after November 7." [8]
The SSS was dissolved in August 1973 after the details of its operation became public. [8]
In 1974, a Bill of Impeachment against President Richard Nixon was approved by the House Judiciary Committee that included charges that his administration attempted to use the IRS in a discriminatory manner:
Conservative groups, including The Heritage Foundation, the National Rifle Association of America, and Judicial Watch alleged that the Clinton administration subjected them to politically motivated audits. [10]
In September 1992, Paula Jones who had filed a civil lawsuit against Bill Clinton alleging sexual harassment was audited by the IRS and alleged it was politically motivated. Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry denied that the White House had any involvement. [11] [12] Juanita Broaddrick who accused Clinton of raping her was also audited by the IRS and told the New York Post, “I do not think this was a coincidence”. Broaddrick's lawyer Larry Klayman filed a complaint with the inspector general of the Treasury Department. [13]
In May 1993, Clinton's associate White House counsel William H. Kennedy met with FBI agents at the White House, where he asked them to investigate Billy Dale, who had been fired from the White House travel office. The agents hesitated investigating Dale, saying that there was not sufficient evidence to justify an investigation, but they agreed to investigate after Kennedy told them that he would turn to the Internal Revenue Service for help if they didn't investigate. Republican Party opponents of the Clintons alleged that Kennedy pressured the agents. A White House internal review criticized Kennedy's actions. [14]
The NAACP was audited in 2004 after its chairman criticized then-President George W. Bush for failing to address the group, becoming the first president to do so since Herbert Hoover. [15] The IRS informed the NAACP that the audit was prompted by then-NAACP-chairman Julian Bond's speech, which "condemned the administration policies of George W. Bush on education, the economy and the war in Iraq." [16] Although the IRS maintained that the audit was an attempt to determine whether the NAACP had involved itself in a political campaign, the NAACP and Democratic Party representatives characterized the audit as an attempt to stifle criticism of Bush, intimidate NAACP members, and harm the NAACP's get-out-the-vote campaign. [15] [16]
According to the Huffington Post in 2004, the Wall Street Journal reported that the IRS audited the liberal group Greenpeace at the request of Public Interest Watch, a group funded by Exxon-Mobil. [17] Exxon-Mobil said it was not aware of the IRS audit, nor did it have a role in initiating the audit. [18]
According to the Tampa Bay Times PolitiFact the allegation that the IRS during the Bush administration targeted liberal groups is "Mostly False". [19]
In May 2013, the IRS admitted it had subjected conservative political groups to closer scrutiny in their applications for tax-exempt status based on particular keywords in their names. The agency has maintained that low-level employees took it upon themselves to do this. [20] [21] However, Republicans argue that the refusal of Lois Lerner (at the time was Director of the IRS's Exempt Organizations Unit) to testify before Congress, twice citing her Constitutional right against self-incrimination, suggests involvement by higher-level employees.[ citation needed ] An internal report by the agency's Inspector General cited "ineffective management" as the cause and indicated that the IRS "will need to do more so that the public has reasonable assurance that applications are processed without unreasonable delay in a fair and impartial manner in the future." [22] Congress continues to investigate the possibility that Lerner or other high-level officials were involved in improper political targeting. Republican lawmakers say the IRS has improperly withheld and destroyed evidence, while Democrats argue that Republicans are attempting to keep the controversy alive for political purposes.[ citation needed ]
James Comey and Andrew McCabe were both audited during the Trump administration. A watchdog group determined these audits were random and the NPR program was used to select tax returns at random to be audited and is working as designed. [23]
"Nixon's Enemies List" is the informal name of what started as a list of President of the United States Richard Nixon's major political opponents compiled by Charles Colson, written by George T. Bell, and sent in memorandum form to John Dean on September 9, 1971. The list was part of a campaign officially known as "Opponents List" and "Political Enemies Project".
In politics, opposition research is the practice of collecting information on a political opponent or other adversary that can be used to discredit or otherwise weaken them. The information can include biographical, legal, criminal, medical, educational, or financial history or activities, as well as prior media coverage, or the voting record of a politician. Opposition research can also entail using trackers to follow an individual and record their activities or political speeches.
The White House FBI files controversy of the Clinton Administration, often referred to as Filegate, arose in June 1996 around improper access in 1993 and 1994 to FBI security-clearance documents. Craig Livingstone, director of the White House's Office of Personnel Security, improperly requested, and received from the FBI, background reports concerning several hundred individuals without asking permission. The revelations provoked a strong political and press reaction because many of the files covered White House employees from previous Republican administrations, including top presidential advisors. Under criticism, Livingstone resigned from his position. Allegations were made that senior White House figures, including First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, may have requested and read the files for political purposes, and that the First Lady had authorized the hiring of the underqualified Livingstone.
Judicial Watch (JW) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit American conservative activist group that files Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits to investigate claimed misconduct by government officials. Founded in 1994, Judicial Watch has primarily targeted Democrats, in particular the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, as well as Hillary Clinton's role in them. It was founded by attorney Larry Klayman, and has been led by Tom Fitton since 2003.
The National Security Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located on the campus of the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1985 to check rising government secrecy, the National Security Archive is an investigative journalism center, open government advocate, international affairs research institute, and the largest repository of declassified U.S. documents outside the federal government. In the four decades of its history, the National Security Archive has spurred the declassification of more than 15 million pages of government documents by being the leading non-profit user of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), filing a total of more than 70,000 FOIA and declassification requests.
The White House travel office controversy, sometimes referred to as Travelgate, was the first major ethics controversy of the Clinton administration. It began in May 1993, when seven employees of the White House Travel Office were fired. This action was unusual because executive-branch employees typically remain in their posts for many years.
James Brien Comey Jr. is an American lawyer who was the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 2013 until his termination in May 2017. Comey was a registered Republican for most of his adult life but in 2016 he stated he was unaffiliated.
Mark Whitty Everson is an American politician who is currently the Vice Chairman of alliantgroup and served as the 46th Commissioner of Internal Revenue from 2003 until 2007. Prior to his appointment as Commissioner of the IRS, Everson held a number of federal government positions in the administrations of George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, as well as at the state level within the administration of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels.
Randolph William Thrower was an American attorney. He served as Commissioner of Internal Revenue under President Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1971.
Operation Sandwedge was a proposed clandestine intelligence-gathering operation against the political enemies of U.S. President Richard Nixon's administration. The proposals were put together by Nixon's Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, domestic affairs assistant John Ehrlichman and staffer Jack Caulfield in 1971. Caulfield, a former police officer, created a plan to target the Democratic Party and the anti-Vietnam War movement, inspired by what he believed to be the Democratic Party's employment of a private investigation firm.
Donald Crichton Alexander was an American tax lawyer and Nixon administration official.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory tax law. It is an agency of the Department of the Treasury and led by the commissioner of Internal Revenue, who is appointed to a five-year term by the President of the United States. The duties of the IRS include providing tax assistance to taxpayers; pursuing and resolving instances of erroneous or fraudulent tax filings; and overseeing various benefits programs, including the Affordable Care Act.
In 2013, the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS), under the Obama administration, revealed that it had selected political groups applying for tax-exempt status for intensive scrutiny based on their names or political themes. This led to wide condemnation of the agency and triggered several investigations, including a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) criminal probe ordered by United States Attorney General Eric Holder. Conservatives claimed that they were specifically targeted by the IRS, but an exhaustive report released by the Treasury Department's Inspector General in 2017 found that from 2004 to 2013, the IRS used both conservative and liberal keywords to choose targets for further scrutiny.
Lois Gail Lerner is an American attorney and former United States federal civil service employee. Lerner became director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 2005, and subsequently became the central figure in the 2013 IRS targeting controversy in the targeting of politically aligned groups, either denying them tax-exempt status outright or delaying that status until they could no longer take effective part in the 2012 election. On May 10, 2013, in a conference call with reporters, Lerner apologized that Tea Party groups and other groups had been targeted for audits of their applications for tax-exemption. Both conservative and liberal groups were scrutinized. Only three groups—all branches of the Democratic group Emerge America—had tax exemptions revoked. Lerner resigned over the controversy. An investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation, completed in 2015, found "substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia" but "found no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt, or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution".
The resolution H.Res. 565, "Calling on Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., to appoint a special counsel to investigate the targeting of conservative nonprofit groups by the Internal Revenue Service," was passed by the United States House of Representatives during the 113th United States Congress. The simple resolution asks U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special counsel to investigate that 2013 IRS scandal. The Internal Revenue Service revealed in 2013 that it had selected political groups applying for tax-exempt status for closer scrutiny based on their names or political themes.
H.Res. 574, officially titled Recommending that the House of Representatives find Lois G. Lerner, Former Director, Exempt Organizations, Internal Revenue Service, in contempt of Congress for refusal to comply with a subpoena duly issued by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, was a simple resolution that passed in the United States House of Representatives during the 113th United States Congress. The resolution was in response to the testimony of Lois Lerner, a former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employee, who was at the center of the then-ongoing 2013 IRS controversy over the agency's targeting of selected political groups applying for tax-exempt status. The resolution held Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify at a congressional hearing.
William H. Kennedy III is an American lawyer from Arkansas, who served as Associate White House Counsel during the Clinton administration.
Johnnie McKeiver Walters was an American lawyer and civil servant who served as a United States Assistant Attorney General from 1969 to 1971 and the Commissioner of Internal Revenue from August 6, 1971, to April 30, 1973.
The tax status of the Church of Scientology in the United States has been the subject of decades of controversy and litigation. Although the Church of Scientology was initially partially exempted by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from paying federal income tax, its two principal entities in the United States lost this exemption in 1957 and 1968. This action was taken because of concerns that church funds were being used for the private gain of its founder L. Ron Hubbard or due to an international psychiatric conspiracy against Scientology.
Donald Trump, President-elect of the United States, controversially refused to release his tax returns after being elected president the first time in 2016, although he promised to do so during his campaign. In 2021, the Manhattan district attorney (DA) obtained several years of Trump's tax information, and in late 2022, the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee obtained and released six years of his returns.
My father," Elliot Roosevelt observed of his famous parent, "may have been the originator of the concept of employing the IRS as a weapon of political retribution.