COMPLAINT SAYS SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER BEHIND IRS EFFORT TO ATTACK TEA PARTY GROUPS

Image Credits: David Shankbone via Wikimedia Commons

Schumer speech laid out plan to destroy tea party groups

The Center for Competitive Politics has filed a complaint with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics claiming New York Senator Chuck Schumer and other Senate Democrats used the IRS to deny the free speech of political opponents.

Schumer had signed letters directing the IRS to look into allegations of improper campaigning by “social welfare organizations.” The IRS in turned investigated mostly conservative groups.

The complaint also mentions a Schumer speech titled “The Rise of the Tea Party and How Progressives Can Fight Back.” The Center for Competitive Politics says the speech demonstrated how the IRS could be used to attack tea party groups.

“The complaint documents how the senators improperly interfered with IRS adjudications to further their party’s electoral prospects,” Joe Trotterwrote for the Wall Street Journal. “They pressured the IRS to undertake income-tax investigations of specific organizations, to find that specific organizations were in violation of the law, to reach predetermined results pertaining to pending applications by individual organizations for nonprofit status, and to adopt specific regulatory interpretations and policies to further their campaign goals.”

If correct, the complaint reveals the attack on the tea party and other conservatives groups did not originate in the White House, as previously claimed, but in the Senate.

“As outrageous as this is, we shouldn’t be shocked,” notes Poor Richard’s News. “It was just a matter of time. History has taught us that if a government is large enough to be capable of doing something like this, it will eventually do it. That’s why the federal government should be so small that it literally couldn’t target or oppress people even if it wanted to. Yet I hear few politicians seriously talking about abolishing the IRS.”

It is now up to the establishment media to look into the allegations. However, considering it long ago jettisoned its role as a watchdog over government and disposed of any pretense of investigative journalism, this prospect is unlikely.

Instead, it will not be up to the alternative media to investigate Schumer’s role and that of his fellow Democrats who are running scared from the populist tea party and constitutionalist movements.