Years after conservative Tea Party groups first complained that they were being targeted for unfair extra scrutiny by the Obama administration’s IRS, they are finally getting their just rewards. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced this week that the Department of Justice has settled several lawsuits against the administration, putting behind us Obama’s use of the federal government as an instrument for political warfare.
Though the mainstream media gave the Obama administration plenty of cover when the scandal broke wide open in 2013, they couldn’t entirely hide the truth from public view. The allegations were too egregious, too brazen, and too true to be ignored. Under the direction of IRS official Lois Lerner, the IRS specifically set conservative nonprofits aside for additional scrutiny and kept them waiting for years before granting them the tax exemptions they deserved under existing tax law. Groups with names like “Tea Party” or “Patriots” were subject to an intense screening process that was not applied to political groups on the left.
“The IRS’s use of these criteria as a basis for heightened scrutiny was wrong and should never have occurred,” Sessions said. “It is improper for the IRS to single out groups for different treatment based on their names or ideological positions.”
In addition to an undisclosed monetary settlement with the groups – which number more than 400 at this point – the IRS offered a courtroom apology to the plaintiffs.
“The IRS admits that its treatment of Plaintiffs during the tax-exempt determination process, including screening their applications based on their names or policy positions, subjecting those applications to heightened scrutiny and inordinate delays, and demanding some Plaintiffs’ information that TIGTA determined was unnecessary to the agency’s determination of their tax-exempt status, was wrong,” the IRS said. “For such treatment, the IRS expresses its sincere apology.”
While it’s encouraging to see these groups get the apology and money due them, we can’t help but continue to be frustrated that this was never a bigger deal – media-wise – than it was. In the Age of Trump, of course, we’re not surprised by anything the liberal press does or doesn’t do, but their dedicated refusal to cover this story properly is one of the great media shames of the 21st century. You have Obama apologists going around claiming that his presidency was “scandal free,” which is something too many people actually believe. Not because it’s true but because the first black president was granted an umbrella of press protection never before seen in political history.
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