Government watchdog group Judicial Watch has released another set of FBI documents that shows the Obama administration actively and purposefully buried the tax-exempt status applications submitted by conservative groups.
Its report states that from the beginning of 2010 and “lasting through the Obama reelection campaign in 2012, the IRS orchestrated a deliberate policy of burying conservative groups’ tax exemption applications in bureaucratic delays.”
That meant anytime Cincinnati IRS employees received applications from Tea Party organizations, they were “automatically denied approval and assigned to a special ‘Group 7822’ for an extended ‘inventory’ process while waiting for decisions from IRS headquarters in Washington, DC.”
A Cincinnati manager described “Group 7822" during FBI interviews:
Group 7822 was composed of 12 to 15 people and was simply a place for the Tea Party cases to be held in inventory while the agent waited to receive guidance from the Washington office. There had been no precedence previously on these issues. If the case said it supports politics and political activity, it would be put into Group 7822. [Redacted] and then [Redacted] held the cases in inventory.
Another said:
In the 14-month period when [Redacted] had the cases, he would ask for updates on guidance and was told they were still waiting on DC. He recalls receiving emails with contradictory guidance on whether the 501-c-3 or 501-c-4 cases should be denied. It was his understanding that a team would come and work the Tea Party cases when the guidance was provided … Nobody told him directly where the delay was in resolving the Tea Party issue. DC is like a black hole.
FBI interviews revealed that IRS employees were directed to delay conservative and tea party applications until after the 2012 presidential election. “The strategy relied upon the IRS’ multi-tier “bucketing” system that determined from the time an application was received whether it would be quickly approved or indefinitely delayed,” the report states.
IRS managers were asked point-blank by FBI agents why leftist groups weren’t treated similarly and no satisfactory answers were ever given. In the end, the Justice Department and the FBI brought no criminal charges against the IRS:
You can see how the FBI described the unlawful and purposeful bureaucratic delays orchestrated by top IRS officials in Washington, DC. That the FBI learned this concerns at least one IRS official about how the Obama IRS targeting of conservatives was ignored. It is incredibly corrupt that no criminal prosecutions were pursued.
Judicial Watch hopes the next president of the United States will finally take this information seriously and open a new criminal investigation.
