Radio Recap – The IRS Scandal of the Century

President Obama’s IRS targeted conservatives and conservative groups.

On today’s Jay Sekulow Live, we discussed the IRS scandal of the century. We played excerpts of our new film, Targeting U.S., and discussed the Obama Administration’s IRS targeting of conservatives.

It started over a seven-year span of representing clients targeted by the IRS. The ACLJ represented more than 41 Tea Party and conservative groups from more than 22 states. Does that sound similar to what we’re doing to help parents and students right now? Does that sound similar to how we’ve been fighting the Deep State?

This was the first shot fired back at the Deep State, and it was fired by the American Center for Law and Justice.

As my dad, ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow, added, this was “against the biggest agency to deal with, and that is the Internal Revenue Service.”

That’s exactly right, the most feared arm of the federal government – the IRS. Well, it used to be the most feared until the ACLJ took action resulting in the IRS being gutted, and it still is to this very day.

So, from April 2010 to May of 2013, our clients received 117 targeting letters from IRS officials. These obtrusive questionnaires demanded that our clients set aside their constitutional rights at the request of government bureaucracy. Eighteen of those letters, of course, were signed by Lois Lerner, herself. Lois Lerner is the former Director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the Internal Revenue Service under President Obama. Forty-two letters were sent to 28 of our clients after May of 2012, when the IRS claims their discriminatory heightened scrutiny had ended. So they were still doing it.

The IRS asked about things like the contents of prayers. They also asked for donor lists and text of speeches. These were both 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) groups. Some groups, just because they had the word “liberty” in their title, got caught up in this targeting scheme by top officials at President Obama’s IRS as well.

Even worse, we had the FBI try to get involved with our clients.

My dad talked about the FBI’s involvement, saying:

What happened was, the FBI was notified because of Lois Lerner. Lois Lerner said let’s get the FBI and the FEC involved in this and we can just bring one criminal case, and we have all these letters and we got all this from our FOIA and our litigation, if we can get one criminal case against one of these Tea Party groups, we’ll stop their influence. That was the position that was being advocated at that point by the Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service. Now, what’s also interesting is that we did a frontal attack on this. We went to federal court seeking injunctive relief, monetary damages, and so forth.

The fact that the IRS, after years of litigation, conceded their error, corrected the policies, implemented new procedures, and consented to an injunction, tells you how serious this really was. It was wrongdoing at the highest level of the Internal Revenue Service and the ACLJ got to the bottom of it.

Not only did we at the ACLJ get to the bottom of it, we put a stop to it.

Our new film, Targeting U.S., which details the targeting of the conservatives and conservative groups by the IRS, can be viewed at ACLJFilms.com.

The full episode is complete with more excerpts of our film, Targeting U.S., as well as much more discussion of the absolute wrongdoing done by the Obama Administration’s IRS by its targeting of conservatives and conservative groups.

Watch the full broadcast below.