The IRS and FBI: Breach of Faith - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
The IRS and FBI: Breach of Faith
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Two more unlikely people it would be hard to imagine.

One consorts with a man who heads a country the State Department describes as having “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.” This man is also the half brother of….the President of the United States.

The other? The other is a woman who with her husband built a small manufacturing business in Houston and decided to start a couple of local Tea Parties.

And whom does the IRS target? Whom does the FBI Domestic Terrorist Unit target?

That’s right, the woman in Houston. The woman who is not related to the President of the United States. The woman who has zero connections to terrorists.

And Catherine Engelbrecht was far from alone.

Earlier this week we wrote up Part One of what was termed a timeline of tyranny — “The VanderSlooting of America.” A timeline that focuses not just on the Treasury IG report of IRS abuses or the birth of the Tea Party and the struggle ignited by battles over massive government spending and health care but expands outward to illustrate the mindset of the Left at work. Using Big Left Money (i.e., George Soros) and/or the power of government to go after conservatives in religion (Bill Donohue’s Catholic League) or in the media (Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Lou Dobbs) or, as revealed the last few weeks, just plain ordinary American citizens across the land.

We will finish up that timeline in today’s Part Two. A hat tip here to attorney Cleta Mitchell, Mark Levin of the Landmark Legal Foundation, Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice, and Walid Shoebat and Ben Barrack.

January 5, 2011: Nearly 100 new members of Congress are sworn in with their colleagues. Many of the new members have support from the Tea Party.

January, 2011: The FBI’s Domestic Terrorist Unit has more questions for Catherine Engelbrecht, the co-founder with husband Bryan of Engelbrecht Manufacturing. The questions are about an attendee at one of Engelbrecht’s two Tea party groups, the King Street Patriots. The first contact from the FBI came in December of 2010. Engelbrecht had filed for tax exempt status for her Tea party groups — True the Vote and the King Street Patriots — in July of 2010. 

January, 2011: The IRS audits the 2008 and 2009 Engelbrecht Enterprises tax returns.

March, 2011: Catherine Engelbrecht receives and responds to IRS questions on her nonprofit application for True the Vote, the first round of such questions for this group.

May, 2011: The FBI Domestic Terrorism Unit calls Catherine Engelbrecht again for “a general inquiry about the King Street Patriots.”

May 30, 2011: The Barack H. Obama Foundation, run by the President’s Kenyan half-brother Malik Obama, applies to the IRS for tax-exempt status. (Here is a photo of Malik Obama with President Obama in the Oval Office.)

As noted here in an investigation by the former Muslim Brotherhood member-turned-peace activist Walid Shoebat and his colleague Ben Barrack:

It has been learned that the relationship between President Barack Obama’s half-brother Malik Obama and Sudan’s President Omar Al-Bashir is much closer than previously thought. Malik is the Executive Secretary of the Islamic Da’wa Organization (IDO) as reported by all major Saudi press, including Okaz.

How significant is this?

Very significant. The IDO has been created by the Sudanese Government, which is considered by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist state. This places Malik Obama in bed with terrorists and working as an official with a terrorist state.

We have the evidence to prove it — meetings, photos, et al.

Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on seven counts relating to crimes against humanity. As such, Bashir is the head of a country that the U.S. State Department has identified as a State Sponsor of terrorism, a designation issued in 1993.

Now, bearing in mind the issue here is the IRS, follow this trail.

Here is a photo of Bashir (the balding man dressed in black on the right) at the 2010, Islamic Da’wa Organization (IDO) conference in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan.

Write Shoebat and Barrack:

One of the objectives of the IDO is to spread Wahhabist Islam across the African continent.

Bashir wasn’t just present at the conference; he supervised it. In this photo, from the Barack H. Obama Foundation (BHOF) website, headed by Malik, Bashir can be seen dressed in black, to the right. Another man to take notice of is seated directly to the right of Bashir; his name is Suar Al Dahab…”

Catch that?

The photo of Bashir — the man who heads a country, the Sudan, that is labeled by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist state — is featured on the Barack H. Obama Foundation website. You will find that photo at that website as the fifth photograph labeled beneath the photo this way: “Photo:Munadhamat Dawa Al-Islamia (MDI) Board of Directors Conference 2010, Khartoum, Sudan.” So too is this photo featured of Malik Obama addressing the 2010 IDO conference, found here with his boss Suar Al Dahab watching from the same rostrum that, in another photo, the photo mentioned above, has Malik Obama’s boss and the boss of terrorist Sudan sitting side by side from the rostrum of the IDO conference. And here, from Shoebat’s site, are photos of Malik Obama’s boss posing with the Prime Minister of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh and the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi. And of course, here is Malik Obama with his boss. Hamas — and remember again the issue here is the IRS — is listed (here) by the U.S. State Department as a “terrorist organization.”

June 1, 2011: Two days after the Obama Foundation applies for tax-exempt status, the Leadership Institute (LI), which trains conservative organizers, is notified by the IRS that its tax return for 2008 is being audited. The Leadership Institute, founded in 1979 by longtime conservative activist and Reaganite Morton Blackwell and located in Arlington, Virginia “…teaches conservatives the nuts and bolts of how to succeed in the public policy process. ….To accomplish this, the Institute identifies, recruits, trains, and places conservatives in government, politics, and the media.” What happened to them? In their own words:

On June 1, 2011, LI received notice of an audit of its tax return and activities in 2008.

What followed was a more than year-long investigation of more than 23,430 pages of records and requests for items like:

 — a list of 2008 interns and their future employers;

 — sample emails between employers and LI regarding ConservativeJobs.com; and

 — how LI’s more than 300 trainings are advertised.

Ultimately, the IRS accepted the Institute’s tax return as filed.

“The IRS’ indefensible behavior is worse than we first thought, as it targeted both new and existing conservative groups in politically motivated attacks,” said Morton Blackwell, president of the Leadership Institute. “Fortunately my Leadership Institute had the resources to stand up to the government’s bullying and intimidation. Other groups, including grassroots and tea party groups we’ve helped train, did not. Defending ourselves from the harassing audit cost my organization more than $50,000 in legal fees alone.”

June, 2011: Catherine and Bryan Engelbrecht’s personal tax returns for 2008 and 2009 are audited by the IRS.

June, 2011: The FBI Domestic Terrorism Unit calls Catherine Engelbrecht yet again with a general inquiry about King Street Patriots.

June 26, 2011: Lois Lerner, the Director of Exempt Organizations for the IRS, signs the final approval for the Barack H. Obama Foundation run by the President’s half-brother Malik. Elapsed time between filing and approval: 28 days.

Stop. Stop right here.

Notice anything just a tad on the odd side? Within a mere 28 days of filing for an application, Malik Obama’s foundation — named after the President — is approved by the IRS — specifically by Lois Lerner herself. Malik Obama has been identified by Walid Shoebat as having a “much closer than previously thought” relationship with Sudan’s President Omar Al-Bashir. Al-Bashir’s Sudan being identified — by the U.S. State Department!- in 1993 (!) “as a State Sponsor of terrorism.” Malik Obama’s pal Bashir “is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on seven counts relating to crimes against humanity.” And Malik Obama’s boss is pictured above not only benignly seated at the head table of an Islamic conference with Bashir, the head of terrorist Sudan, but proudly posing with the Prime Minister of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh. That would be the Hamas identified by the U.S. State Department as a “terrorist organization.”

And yet whom does the FBI Domestic Terrorist Unit investigate? An investigation that kicks in only after she applies for an IRS tax-exempt status? That’s right — the FBI zeroes in on Catherine Engelbrecht of the King Street Patriots and True the Vote in Houston, Texas. And whom do Lois Lerner and the IRS put through the process wringer? That would be Catherine Engelbrecht in Texas — and among others Morton Blackwell in Virginia. But Malik Obama’s Foundation? Run by the President’s half-brother who spends his time literally associating with the head of a terrorist state while his boss proudly poses with same? 

No problem. Lois Lerner clears in 30 days.

June 29, 2011: Lois Lerner is first briefed on the Tea Party cases.

July, 2011: “Criteria changed to ‘Organizations involved with political, lobbying, or advocacy for exemption under 501 (c) (3) or 501 (c) (4)’ based on the concerns the Director, EO, raised in June 2011.”

Source: IG Report

October, 2011: Catherine Engelbrecht receives and responds to more questions from the IRS, a second round from the IRS on True the Vote.

November, 2011: Catherine Engelbrecht gets still another call from the FBI Domestic Terrorism Unit for a general inquiry about King Street Patriots.

December, 2011: Catherine Engelbrecht gets a sixth call from the FBI with another “general inquiry” about the King Street Patriots.

January 25, 2012: The IRS Exempt Organizations division revises its BOLO issue description criteria — BOLO is IRS-speak for “Be On the Look Out” — to “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform/movement.”

January 26, 2012: Bill Williams of the Tea Party group “Ohio Liberty Council Corp.” receives a letter from the IRS saying, “We need more information before we can complete our consideration of your application.” The group is given until February 16 to reply and presents 9 very detailed questions, several with multiple subsets of questions labeled alphabetically.

February, 2012: Catherine Engelbrecht receives and responds to a third round of IRS questions on her nonprofit application for True the Vote.

February, 2012: Catherine Engelbrecht receives and responds to a first round of questions from the IRS on the King Street Patriots.

February, 2012: Engelbrecht Manufacturing, a small company owned by Catherine and Bryan Engelbrecht, receive an unscheduled audit from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

February 14, 2012: A Tea Party group called “Linchpins of Liberty” in Franklin, Tennessee, founded by entertainment lawyer Kevin Kookogey, receives a letter from the IRS in response for tax-exempt organization status. Signed by IRS “Exempt Organizations Specialist” Mitch Steele of the Cincinnati IRS office, it says: “Unfortunately we need more information before we can complete our consideration of your application.” Steele’s letter gives the group a response date of March 6, the letter asks 31 very detailed questions, several with multiple subsets of questions labeled alphabetically (from “a” through “f” etc.)

February 29, 2012: The Rush Limbaugh-Sandra Fluke controversy begins. The episode launches a massive liberal attempt to remove Limbaugh from the air by threatening Limbaugh advertisers.

March 2, 2012: Congressman Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, writes IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman requesting that “the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to investigate whether any groups qualifying as social welfare organizations under section 501(c)(4) of the federal tax code are improperly engaged in political campaign activity.” In 2010, Congressman Welch, who sits on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that oversees the IRS, received a $1,000 contribution from the IRS union. He won with 64.6% of the vote. In 2012, Welch received another $1,000 contribution and won with 72%.

March 12, 2012: Senate Democrats Charles E. Schumer (NY), Michael Bennet (CO), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Jeff Merkley (OR), Tom Udall (NM), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), and Al Franken (MN) write IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman to demand an investigation into “the amount of political spending by tax-exempt, nonprofit groups” and demanding the IRS cap the amount of money the conservative groups were spending. Schumer is the immediate past chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Colorado’s Bennett will be elected to the same post in 2013. Six of the seven Democrats received campaign contributions from the IRS union, the NTEU: Schumer ($2,500 in 2010), Bennet ($8,500 in 2010), Whitehouse ($2,000 in 2012), Merkley ($5,000 in 2008 ), Udall ($10,000 in 2008, $1,000 in 2010), and Franken ($5,000 in 2008).

March 16, 2012: A Tea Party group named the “Ohio Liberty Council Corp.” receives IRS notification through their attorney Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice. The IRS tells Sekulow’s client that in spite of the group’s earlier response to a January letter, the IRS needed “additional information” which must be supplied by May 15. The letter is signed by “Lois Lerner, Director of Exempt Organizations.” 

March 22, 2012: IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman testifies to Congress, answering a question from Congressman Charles Boustany. The question: “Can you give us assurances that the IRS is not targeting particular groups based on political leanings?” To which the IRS Commissioner replies: “Yes. I can give you assurances. There’s absolutely no targeting.”

March 23, 2012: Mark Levin of the Landmark Legal Foundation “requests an immediate investigation into possible misconduct by the Internal Revenue Service’s Exempt Organization (EO) Division that calls into question the integrity of federal tax administration and IRS programs.” The filing is made with the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.

April 2, 2012: Two IRS agents interview Mark Levin regarding the Landmark complaint to the Treasury IG.

April 20, 2012: The official website for the Obama campaign’s “Truth Team” posts the name of Idaho businessman Frank VanderSloot in an article titled “Behind the curtain: A brief history of Romney’s donors.” The posting describes VanderSloot as part of “a group of wealthy individuals with less-than-reputable records,” saying specifically of VanderSloot: “Frank VanderSloot is the national finance co-chairman of the Romney campaign and, through his company Melaleuca, has donated $1 million to Restore Our Future.” He is also a “litigious, combative, and a bitter foe of the gay rights movement” who “spent big” on ads in an “ultimately unsuccessful effort to force Idaho Public Television to cancel a program that showed gays and lesbians in a favorable light to school children.”

July, 2012: Engelbrecht Manufacturing owners Catherine and Bryan Engelbrecht receive an unscheduled audit from the OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor.

July 25, 2012: Frank VanderSloot reveals in an interview with Fox News that he has become the subject of both two IRS audits as well as an audit from the U.S. Department of Labor. He received the news sixty one days following the Obama “Truth Team” posted his name and disparaged him as part of “a group of wealthy individuals with less-than-reputable records.” Reports Fox:

An Idaho businessman singled out by the Obama campaign for giving $1 million in support of Mitt Romney is now the focus of IRS and Labor Department audits.

Frank VanderSloot, in an interview with FoxNews.com on Tuesday, said he received the initial audit notice from the IRS last month. Two weeks later, he got one from the Labor Department stating the agency would be looking into records related to foreign employees working at his Idaho Falls cattle ranch.

It might all be a coincidence, he said — “but the timing was peculiar.”

The Associated Press reported the VanderSloot story this way, writing:

Sixty-one days after the Obama campaign posted the list of Romney donors, Vandersloot said he received a letter from the IRS, his first-ever audit from the agency.

“It’s all fine and well,” Vandersloot told The Associated Press Wednesday. “I am not claiming there is a connection, and don’t know if there is one.

“But the fact that it comes right on the heels of being named on the president’s enemies list is curious to say the least,” he said.

July 27, 2012: A month before Republican Mitt Romney is officially nominated to be President Obama’s opponent, Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, writes a 6-page letter on official Subcommittee stationery to IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman. Saying the response from an earlier letter to IRS official Lois Lerner was unsatisfactory, Levin, among other things, names 12 conservative groups by name and demanding to know if “they have a) applied for; and if so, b) received the described exemption for political activity from the IRS?” Levin received a $3,000 contribution from the IRS union in 2008.

August 28, 2012: Republicans nominate Mitt Romney for President. The Obama-Romney race for the White House formally begins.

September 19, 2012: With the Obama-Romney race now heating up and the polls predicting a close race, Senator Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat, goes to the floor of the U.S. Senate to demand in a statement that the IRS step up its investigations of political nonprofit groups applying for tax exemptions.

September, 2012: Frank VanderSloot receives notice of a third audit from the IRS, bringing the total with the Labor Department audit to four. He spends $80,000 in legal and accounting fees defending himself and will not be reimbursed.

November, 2012: Engelbrecht Manufacturing receives an unscheduled audit from the Texas Commission on Environment Quality.

November, 2012: Catherine Engelbrecht receives and responds to a fourth round of IRS questions on the nonprofit application for True the Vote.

November 6, 2012: President Obama is re-elected.

March 18, 2013: Senator Carl Levin tells the New York Times he intends to stay on the IRS and insist the agency go after conservative groups. Says Levin of the conservative groups he has already listed in his July, 2012 letter to the IRS Commissioner: “We’re going to go after them.”

March, 2013: Catherine Engelbrecht receives and responds to an IRS question on the tax filing status for True the Vote.

March 22, 2012: IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman testifies to the House Ways and Means Committee that “There’s absolutely no targeting. This is the kind of back and forth that happens to people.”

April, 2013: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms conducts a second audit of Engelbrecht Manufacturing.

May, 2013: Catherine Engelbrecht’s Tea Party groups, True the Vote and the King Street Patriots, have still not received their determination of nonprofit status from the IRS.

May 6, 2013: Another Tea Party group receives an inquiry from the IRS, states the group’s lawyer, Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice.

May 10, 2013: Lois Lerner, the director of the tax-exempt organizations division at the Internal Revenue Service, addresses the American Bar Association conference in Washington. An IRS- planted question is used to give Lerner the ability to announce, in the words of the Washington Post, “that employees in the IRS’s tax-exempt unit in Cincinnati had improperly scrutinized applications from dozens of organizations.”

In a phone briefing for the media Lerner says: “They added the names Tea Party and Patriot to the list of cases that should be centralized in this group.”

May 13, 2013: President Obama addresses the subject of the IRS at a press conference: “I first learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this, I think it was on Friday…”

May 14, 2013: The Treasury Department Inspector General Russell George releases the IG report on IRS abuses and confirms that the IRS did in fact use “inappropriate criteria… to identify tax-exempt applications for review.”

May 15, 2013: At another public appearance President Obama says “I’ve reviewed the Treasury Department watchdog’s report and the misconduct that it uncovered is inexcusable…” Obama orders Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew to ask for Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller’s resignation. 

May 20, 2013: White House Press Secretary Jay Carney says the IRS “misconduct had stopped in May of 2012…” This contradicts the fact of an IRS letter delivered to one of Sekulow’s clients on May 6, only 14 days earlier.

May 22, 2013: Lois Lerner, the Internal Revenue Service’s director of Exempt Organizations — takes the Fifth Amendment in front of a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

May 28, 2013: Catherine Engelbrecht attorney Cleta Mitchell announces Engelbrecht will sue the IRS. NBC News reports this story (bold print for emphasis):

Cleta Mitchell, another attorney representing conservative groups that allege they were targeted, said an IRS agent in Cincinnati told her a “task force” IRS office in Washington, D.C., was making the decisions about the processing of applications, and that she subsequently dealt with IRS representatives there.

(The IRS agent in Cincinnati) told me that in fact the case would be transferred to a special task force out of Washington, and that he was told — he was the originally assigned agent — that he wasn’t allowed to make decisions, the decisions were all going to be made in Washington,” Mitchell said. “I know that this process was going on in Washington because I’ve dealt with those people.”

One of Mitchell’s clients, Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote, a conservative elections monitoring organization, applied for tax-exempt status for the group in July 2010. She said that when she asked the IRS two years later why it was taking so long to get a decision, agents told her Washington was to blame. 

So.

What do we have here?

What we have is a Breach of Faith. Whatever else is to come, the real crime here is an all-out attack on the trust of the American people in their government.

Think of this.

We have a “foundation” run by the Kenyan half-brother of the President of the United States. A half-brother who has been clearly identified as having a “much closer than previously thought” relationship with the head of a State Department-identified “terrorist state” (Bashir of The Sudan). A half-brother who works for an organization headed by a man who associates with the head of Hamas — the latter identified yet again by the State Department as a “terrorist organization.”

And that half-brother’s application for tax exempt status whizzes through the IRS in a mere thirty days, getting signed by Lois Lerner herself.

Meanwhile, the IRS — not to mention the FBI Domestic Terrorist Unit, OSHA and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms — are in hot pursuit of American citizen Catherine Engelbrecht of Houston, Texas . And Engelbrecht has still not received the tax exempt status she applied for three years ago. A tax exempt status granted to Malik Obama in a mere thirty days and signed by Lois Lerner herself.

Then there was the IRS targeting of Morton Blackwell and the venerable conservative Leadership Institute — which is busily turning out conservative leaders in public policy, campaigns and the media. Young conservative leaders who would doubtless, in 2012, be taking to the field to oppose Barack Obama.

And that’s before one gets to the IRS treatment of Frank VanderSloot of Idaho, Bill Williams of the Ohio Liberty Council or Kevin Kookogey at the Linchpins of Liberty group in Tennessee.

Not to mention Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, the target of a Soros-funded group that tried to both bully Donohue off CNN when not having the IRS do their dirty work for them, as Donohue himself has documented.

Not to mention all the other almost 500 Tea Party groups who have been subjected to the same treatment.

Not to mention that massive but failed effort to get Rush Limbaugh pushed off the air in March of 2012.

Earlier this week, in the first part of this two-part series on “The VanderSlooting of America” we began to see the true pattern of the Left at work in America.

What we have assembled is what we called here a timeline of tyranny.

Perhaps the best way to close this long two-part list is with this quote from — yes — Ronald Reagan. In fact, let’s use the Reagan close to Mark Levin’s presciently titled — and Tea Party favorite — Liberty and Tyranny:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

Enough said.

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