Over the week end of May 18-19 2013 the Obama Administration official Dan Pfeiffer went out and spun the IRS scandal saying “The law is irrelevant”. On the contrary, the law is very much relevant to the IRS scandal, including prohibitions against specific acts by IRS personnel and more general laws of which the ones to watch concern private civil actions for damages under the federal Racketeering, Influence and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act (18 USC 1961, et seq.) and Civil Rights Act (42 USC 1983, et seq.). There is every possibility that the victims of the IRS’s suppression of Obama political opponent free speech rights will sue the IRS and individual IRS employees under the civil rights and civil RICO laws for a $150-to-$650 million legal payday.
Remember, _THE IRS CONFESSED_. There is no argument that it admitted some of its actions concerning Tea Party organization tax-exempt applications were unlawful, i.e.., illegal. It is obvious that the IRS and its staff engaged in an organized multi-work unit, multi-state, plus Washington DC Headquarters, wide conspiracy to suppress the Tea Party. The IRS unlawfully applied special rules to Tea Party applicants that it did not to others and that conspiracy prevented them from exercising their free speech rights for the 2010 and 2012 election cycles.
It also is very clear that the IRS — via the questions it was asking the Tea Party and other religious non-profits — was busy creating a quite extensive Nixonian/Ailinskyite ENEMIES LIST for future use in intimidation and the depriving Obama Administration political opponents of their Constitutional Rights.
Those are classic CONSPIRACY AGAINST RIGHTS (18 USC 241) and DEPRIVATION RIGHTS UNDER COLOR OF LAW (18 USC 242) violations.
See these criminal federal civil rights statutes, whose violation gives rise to civil liability for damages too:
“Conspiracy Against Rights (18 USC 241)
If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or
If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured—
They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.”
and
“Deprivation Rights Under Color of Law (18 USC 242)
Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both;
and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.”
That is the criminal side of things.
The problem AG Holder is going to suffer obstructing discovery in civil rights and civil RICO lawsuits against the IRS is that criminal prosecutions and civil suits for damages proceed in tandem. The civil suits aren’t stayed by criminal prosecutions on the same subject, let alone by criminal “investigations” short of prosecutions.
The IRS “Special Group’s” delay of tax exempt status prevented Tea Party NGO’s from fund raising and participating in two political cycles (2010 and 2012) by educating “low information voters” as to the political issues of the day, like the National Rifle Association does. The NGO’s whose applications for tax-exempt status were slow-rolled can claim “trade and business” damages under Civil RICO provisions of Federal law. And the Supreme Court of the USA decided decades ago that criminal acts by the Federal government “under the color of law” do not qualify for sovereign immunity under the Federal supremacy clause of the constitution.
To quote a lawyer I know –
They can now also recover damages for civil rights (42 USC 1983) and RICO (18 USC 1961) violations. The latter would be trebled. Plus statutory attorney fees. But it would be better if this ends up as a class action, brought by the @ 500 groups whose tax-exempt filing applications were slow-rolled, and the (wild-assed guess) 1000 – 5000 individuals subject to politically motivated tax audits, against both the IRS, its agents, and all the lefties who incited the IRS.
This is a classic civil conspiracy, to use unlawful means to achieve lawful ends, in addition to achieve unlawful ends, and every person who agreed to act in concert to do either is liable for the acts of all. See Halberstam v. Welch, 705 F.2d 472 (D.C. Cir. 1983). And they need not have committed any overt acts themselves – that’s the difference between civil conspiracy and criminal conspiracy.
So sue them all, every individual person (IRS agents, elected & appointed officials, petty politicos such as the staff of Democratic and leftist organizations, including journalists, who happily published unlawful leaks of confidential tax information, etc.) plus every entity suspected of having made such an agreement, and then do civil discovery on every single one of them. There’d probably be 5000+ defendants, counting all the indviduals. All their emails since 2009/01/01, all their phone calls, all their correspondence. I’d start with all the emails on Journolist.
Only those defendants subject to possible criminal liability, i.e., those who committed overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy, can plead self-incrimination to avoid answering the civil discovery. And only individuals can assert 5th Amendment rights. Public and private entities cannot, and it is the latter who have custody of the email servers.
We are looking at 500 – 5000 plaintiffs with an easy $100,000 damage each (at least $50,000 average each in attorney fees, plus lost contributions for the NGO’s, emotional distress for the private individuals, etc.). That’s $50 – $500 million dollars, plus attorney fees of $100+ million. And $50 million of the damages might be trebled under RICO (18 USC 1961) as business damages for the NGO’s.
I.e., I think we can find some insurance companies willing to make policy limits offers, which can be leveraged with offers by their defendant insureds to squeal on the rest.
It is legal for law firms to offer shares in a contingent fee recovery to “investors”. I.e., various flavors of foreigners could finance expenses and basic attorney fees in such a class action, which reduces the risks to the big American law firms bringing it. The Swiss banks which recently paid billions of dollars in IRS penalties to settle DOJ criminal actions for tax evasion conspiracies might want to recover some of their losses this way, and get some payback too.
Consider that Pro Publica volunteered last week that the confidential tax records they published last year had been given to them by the IRS. This is classic “disassociation from the conspiracy” to cut off their criminal and civil liability as of the date of the disclosure. It was damage control by their attorneys, who realized the hammer is about to come down. IMO it won’t save Pro Publica unless they have information to trade for releases of liability, and just might have been a tacit signal that they are willing to deal.
The IRS Scandal will be civil RICO law suit city all the way because of the legal profit motive, as well as political payback motives, involved. And since most of the 471(+) Tea Party/Patriot non-profits still have not gotten their tax exempt application approved, the damages from the IRS conspiracy are rising daily. RICO discovery of IRS E-mails and other documents by a Federal Court-Appointed Special Master will air out exactly who did what to whom inside and outside the IRS (See Pro Publica).
Do expect AG Holder to act as hard as possible to block and delay this class action suit, “Due to on-going criminal investigations.” The Federal Courts won’t look kindly upon these efforts.
Court TV will love it; they will get a whole new audience to sell soap to for years.
Come The Resolution.
My Dear Sir even if this Dream comes to pass in it’s entirety it changes nothing fundamental about our politics in terms of who is elected and how the government operates. The operation was a success, it will be imitated.
The Best it might do is lay bare for those who care a damn exactly what our government is…a criminal conspiracy conducting a control fraud. The security organs of which exist to defend the governments interest in said control fraud. Which they did effectively, 2010 was not repeated at the polls.
For that reason it’s a useful exercise, but it doesn’t get us home.
What the Tea Party does [not says] now is important. If they respond by repeating 2009-2010 – I care not for the results of elections – in terms of protest than there is progress from the Tea Party. For our government Sir are NOT Brave people. They succeeded in 2012 with intimidation because the crime was suppressed publicly, and the public buzz was about anything and everything else. As it will be here. But the individual agents of government are not brave people. They won’t be comfortable with defiance, at all. They may also at some level know they’re wrong.
So Progress but with Caveats. IOW the method you describe will progress the issue but in no way resolve it.
Good Luck
Another point – the IRS was not confessing in 2012.
It was signalling.
It is proceeding as I have foreseen —
See this link:
http://suetheirs.com/
A college president in Georgia has been found PERSONALLY liable because he threw a student out of college, based on that student’s expressions of opinion, without following the college’s own procedures.
May be a relevant precedent.
This ought to be a good one. I need to get a couple years supply of popcorn.
Retirement won’t protect the IRS staff involved in this. Their retirements are very much at risk here. While they could try to trade immunity for squealing, they need to do that fast enough that their testimony against their superiors has value. Pro Publica’s example is instructive here.
Terry Nichols evaded execution for the Oklahoma City Bombing because he withdrew from his conspiracy with Timothy McVeigh. But Nichols did not publically withdraw, and so was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Confession is good for the pocketbook as well as the soul.
The 5000 person “high end” plaintiff number for the suit may in fact be very low. The IRS asked one Tea Party group — Albuquerque Tea Party — to provide information on the “Marianne Chiffelle’s Breakfasts.”
Marianne Chiffelle is 83-year-old great-grandmother and a naturalized citizen. She was once held in a World War II Imperial Japanese internment camp in the Dutch East Indies. She is a retiree who helps organize informal 9 a.m. meetings for members of the Bernalillo County Republican Party at a local Golden Corral restraunt.
How the hell did the IRS know that the “Marianne Chiffelle’s Breakfasts” existed?
This is a smoking gun that Arizona Democratic party affiliated campaign officials are involved in the IRS criminal conspiracy.
See:
Predictable History, Unpredictable Past:
http://predicthistunpredictpast.blogspot.com/2013/05/oh-myjust-when-you-thought-that-it.html
“Internal Revenue Service officials not only wanted a wide variety of information from the Albuquerque Tea Party’s application for non-profit status, it also wanted to know what contacts it had with people from other political organizations too.
That included an 83-year-old great-grandmother who was once held in a World War II internment camp, New Mexico Watchdog has discovered.
“I’ve always paid my taxes and everything,” Marianne Chiffelle told New Mexico Watchdog. “What I do think is, it doesn’t surprise me…because of this government we have at the moment.”
According to a review of documents conducted by the online news organization Politico, (in a story headlined “The IRS wants YOU — to share everything”), the IRS asked the Albuquerque Tea Party about connections to other groups, including “Marianne Chiffelle’s Breakfasts.”
That prompted us to do some digging.
It took New Mexico Watchdog less than an hour to learn that “Marianne Chiffelle’s Breakfasts” is not some restaurant chain, but a reference to the volunteer work of Chiffelle, a retiree who helps organize informal 9 a.m. meetings for members of the Bernalillo County Republican Party.
The group meets on Fridays at a Golden Corral restaurant. “We’ve had these meetings for a long time,” Chiffelle said. “It’s not a business.”
Chiffelle is a naturalized American citizen who was born in what was then called the Dutch East Indies, now known as Indonesia. Her father was an executive for Shell Oil and when World War II broke out Chiffelle was sent to a Japanese internment camp where she spent four years, from age 12 to 16.
After the war, she moved to the Netherlands and in 1960 she and her late husband immigrated to the United States.
Since living in Albuquerque, Chiffelle has been active in GOP politics and conservative causes. She helped establish the Children’s Freedom Scholarship Fund, which hands out patriotic coloring books to youngsters in the Albuquerque area.”
I certainly hope the parties involved do proceed with this. I have believed for a while that there is much still hidden and we need pressure to continue so the weak sisters begin to rat out the real villains. We need judge Sirica but maybe there is one out there.
This lady certainly has damages and should be a good plaintiff.
THat web page is now giving an error. I think a lot of people are looking at it or for it right now. Good !!
Let’s not forget that the National Treasury Employees Union kicked this whole conspiracy off with a meeting in the White House with Obama. Would Obama be included in the suits?
That makes the union a criminal enterprise, if I’m reading the posting correctly. One would think it would be busted but then the Teamsters are still with us.
A major question is how would judges appointed by Democrat presidents slow or block the criminal and civil cases?
The major dark cloud over this whole project is Joe Biden.
I have just contacted the Laguna Niguel Tea Party about the IRS demonstration at noon. They have 108,000 RSVPs. I’ll be there with a camera to see who shows up.
Interesting.
Every President is given an iron clad constitutional immunity from law suits as long as they serve as President.
Noting that it takes literally years to decades to resolve anything in Federal court, time that we do not have:
The question remains, what are the odds that a) the courts will actually take the suit [remember, from recent history, in vote fraud cases basically no one has standing to sue so the fraud stands], and b) that the government and defendants would accept jurisdiction of the courts, and c) that either side would accept the decision of the courts no matter which way it goes? If the government and defendants lose, the damages will be of such nature as to make open seizure of power the only alternative. If the plaintiffs lose, or the damages are watered down to slap on the wrist level; tyranny would become the new normal and armed resistance would be morally justified. An attempted coup d’etat of this scope is largely irresolvable by mere legal processes.
The validity of the vote count in elections is already, to put it mildly, questionable. So elections are far from a sure cure. The regime has foreclosed political and legal means of resistance, and made tyranny or other means the only choices.
Subotai Bahadur
Subotai Bahadur,
Chilling effects are a two-way street.
A RICO law suit litigation that touches lots of players in the conspiracy will result in multiple “Fitz-mass” or “Climate-Gate” e-mail dumps naming names from corporate non-profit, personal and Federal government servers.
Well, I went to the protest at the IRS office. Early on, there were more cop cars than protesters.
Then the cops forced all the protesters from the main entrance of the federal building to a distant corner of the parking lot.
Here is an aerial view of the building and parking lot.
This parking lot is enormous and is less than 1/4 filled. It’s where I took my kids to teach them to drive.
The building was built in the early 70s by North American Rockwell but never used. The parking lot was built for a big work force and not even the feds have filled it in 40 years.
The area “reserved” for the protest and the parking for protesters is about mile from the building and invisible to anyone driving by.
Sheriff’s deputy Wallace, badge number 1404, told me that I would be arrested if I tried to park in any other area. The federal building parking lot is “off limits” to taxpayers, especially if they want to protest the IRS.
I suspect that this protest was successfully squelched by the cops. On whose orders is not yet clear. Officer Wallace insisted “I don’t work for the IRS.” I’d like to believe him.
The Tea Party is visible now as it wasn’t early on. Every hand of government is against us now. Even in Orange County.
The Los Angeles Times has reported the following —
A top IRS official in the division that reviews nonprofit groups will invoke the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer questions before a House committee investigating the agency’s improper screening of conservative nonprofit groups.
Lois Lerner, the head of the exempt organizations division of the IRS, won’t answer questions about what she knew about the improper screening – or why she didn’t reveal it to Congress, according to a letter from her defense lawyer, William W. Taylor 3rd.
Lerner was scheduled to appear before the House Oversight committee Wednesday
We are less than 14 days into this scandal and we have senior Obama administration IRS managers taking the 5th before Congress.
Darrell Isaa, who I have the greatest regard for, is like a terrier with a rat. He will not let go and will not be intimidated.
He took over from Ron Packard, who was a great Congressman who followed the money and fought spending, but Issa is a born investigator. He made his fortune with a security alarm company. I don’t think he is afraid of anything.
Let’s hope so.
Oh my…Lois Lerner did similar things during her tenure at the FEC during the Clinton administration. Didn’t take much of a dog whistle from the top to get her going.
Trent,
Here is the proof of your statement that:
“… Over the week end of May 18-19 2013 the Obama Administration official Dan Pfeiffer went out and spun the IRS scandal saying “The law is irrelevant”. On the contrary, the law is very much relevant to the IRS scandal, including prohibitions against specific acts by IRS personnel …
Remember, _THE IRS CONFESSED_. There is no argument that it admitted some of its actions concerning Tea Party organization tax-exempt applications were unlawful, i.e.., illegal …”
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/21/Inspector-General-IRS-Agents-Leaking-To-ProPublica-Could-Be-Criminal
“During Tuesday’s Senate Finance Committee hearing on the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) targeting of conservative groups, Sen. John Thune (R-SD) honed in on a critical question with possible criminal implications.
In questioning Treasury Inspector General J. Russell George, Thune focused on the claims by progressive journalism group ProPublica that IRS agents gave them conservative organizations’ confidential tax documents.
“You mentioned earlier that disclosure of confidential information would be a violation of the law,” said Thune.
“Yes, it could be a violation of the law,” George said.
“The reporting about the giving of this information to ProPublica–release of confidential information–could very well be a violation of the law?” asked Thune.
“It could have been,” said George.
As Breitbart News reported, ProPublica claims IRS agents gave them “nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups” that “were not supposed to be made public.” The site also noted that “no unapproved applications from liberal groups were sent to ProPublica.”
According to the IRS’s own manual, anyone found to have engaged in the “unauthorized disclosure of a return or return information” may be subject to felony charges punishable by a fine of up to $5,000 and five years in prison:
11.3.1.6.1 (03-07-2008) Criminal Penalties Under IRC § 7213
1.IRC § 7213 makes the willful unauthorized disclosure of a return or return information a felony punishable by a fine of up to $5,000, or imprisonment of not more than 5 years, or both, together with the costs of prosecution. Upon conviction, officers or employees of the United States will also be dismissed from office or discharged from employment.
Note: IRC § 7213 also covers willful disclosures of software source code data protected by IRC § 7612.
So far, no criminal charges have been filed. But that could change.”
Can gov’t pensions be attached in a civil case? I want these parasites to fry.
Read what the local Fox New station in Cincinnati has reported upon regards the IRS chain of command and non-profit tax exempt reporting system inside the IRS and particularly the records those managers had to generate in the furtherance of this Denial of Civil Rights Conspiracy.
When an application for tax exempt status comes into the IRS, agents have 270 days to work through that application. If the application is not processed within those 270 days it automatically triggers flags in the system. When that happens, individual agents are required to input a status update on that individual case once a month, every month until the case is resolved.
Keep in mind, at least 300 groups were targeted out of Cincinnati alone. Those applications spent anywhere from 18 months to nearly 3 years in the system and some still don’t have their non-profit status. 300 groups multiplied by at least 18 months for each group, means thousands of red flags would have been generated in the system.
So who in the chain of command would have received all these flags? The answer, according to the IRS directory, one woman in Cincinnati, Cindy Thomas, the Program Manager of the Tax Exempt Division. Because all six of our IRS workers have different individual and territory managers, Cindy Thomas is one manager they all have common.
Cindy Thomas is the IRS employee that ProPublica has outed as giving them Tea Party/Conservative group private tax information.
As other have mentioned, ProPublica’s legal council did that in order to limit ProPublica liability to future Denial of Civil Rights RICO statute law suits.
Civil RICO discovery of IRS records and E-mails — which do not have 5th Amendment protections — is going to hang ’em all high…and attach their federal retirements!!!
Article Link below —
http://www.fox19.com/story/22380127/reality-check-exclusive-cincinnati-agent-giving-orders-in-irs-scandal
These are the ProPublica source links that Cincinnati Fox19 cites in it’s article —
– http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/537045-crossroads-gps-application-to-irs.
– http://www.propublica.org/article/controversial-dark-money-group-among-five-that-told-irs-they-would-stay-out.
– http://www.propublica.org/article/irs-office-that-targeted-tea-party-also-disclosed-confidential-docs
– http://www.propublica.org/podcast/item/propublica-and-the-irs-scandal/ .
*enable deep southern drawl*
Well, butter my buns and call me a biscuit – someone in Cincy has been committing acts of journalism!
*disable deep southern drawl*
What is the seriously scary part is not so much that the IRS agents were deliberatly stalling on non-profit status applications and fishing for all sorts of irrelevant additional information possibly to use as opposition research – THEY WERE ALSO SPILLING CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION ON PRIVATE CITIZENS! To political opponents, like the disgusting Harry Reid, accusing Mitt Romney of not paying his taxes.
I just don’t think Obama’s enablers in the press are going to be able to make this one go away. Too many citizens have good reason to think the worst of the IRS already.
One feature of RICO that makes this approach especially effective is that it allows for assessment of attorney fees.
That’s also known as SHARK CHUM.
The class action lawsuit Trent linked to, concerning slow-rolling of multiple applications, and the True The Vote lawsuit, both seek 42 USC 1988 civil rights violation attorney fees. Those, however, do not contain any civil conspiracy alllegations. Yet.
Double the damages. Conservative and business groups doing business with the EPA can now join in with claims for their attorney fees:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/349009/epa%E2%80%99s-conservative-problem-jillian-kay-melchior
“May 22, 2013 4:00 AM
The EPA’s Conservative Problem
Surprise: The EPA, too, treats conservatives unfairly.
By Jillian Kay Melchior
The EPA has an IRS problem.
The agency has rubber-stamped fee-waiver requests from environmentalist groups seeking information, but it denied similar requests from conservative groups, an extensive examination of EPA correspondence suggests. It’s the latest instance in which federal agencies have used their executive authority against perceived political opponents …”
The petty tryants don’t realize what their conduct means for them personally. The federal criminal law limitations period is extended for as long as acts in furtherance of the conspiracy continue, and that period is generally five years.
Each time the EPA waives or reduces fees charged on environmentalist information applications, while way overcharging business applications, can be used as an act in furtherance of the IRS conspiracy. The lawyers only need to expand the wording of the civil conspiracy allegations in their complaints for damages, to plead one big lefty conspiracy to use government power to oppress their political enemies.