Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Mike Huckabee has picked up the baton of fact challenged cover-up claims; the target this time – the Justice Department. I’m sure you remember the flap over the IRS allegedly targeting Conservative Groups’ tax exempt applications. Well, the Justice Department has decided not to file any charges. Enter Mad Mike Huckabee; Right Wing Watch reports on his response to the decision:
… the fact that investigators didn’t find any wrongdoing at the tax agency proves that the DOJ is covering up the supposed scandal and — like the IRS — has become politicized under the Obama administration.
“That’s exactly what I expected them to do.”
The Republican presidential candidate added that the DOJ’s decision not to press charges in the matter “is just the kind of thing that makes people increasingly frustrated, angry and ready to start the revolution against Washington.”
In a 2013 post titled: “How the media outrageously blew the IRS scandal: A full accounting” Salon reported (my emphasis):
… we know that in fact the IRS targeted lots of different kinds of groups, not just conservative ones; that the only organizations whose tax-exempt statuses were actually denied were progressive ones; that many of the targeted conservative groups legitimately crossed the line; that the IG’s report was limited to only Tea Party groups at congressional Republicans’request; and that the White House was in no wayinvolved in the targeting and didn’t even know about it until shortly before the public did.
As we know, facts have no place in Right Wing faux outrage; but here are a few Mother Jones reported in 2013:
True The Vote/King Street Patriots:In 2010, an ethics complaint and lawsuit against King Street Patriots alleged illegal political activity, and last year a Texas judge agreed, ruling that the organization was not a nonprofit but in fact was operating like a political action committee and illegally helping the GOP. In August 2012, True the Vote donated $5,000 to the Republican State Leadership Committee, a 527 group that raised nearly $30 million dollars to elect GOP candidates in state legislatures.
TheTeaParty.net/Stop This Insanity: … might have triggered a closer look from the IRS. Its founders initially set up the group as both a 501(c)(4) and a political action committee that it registered with the FEC—as a single entity. That was a clear violation of the non-profit rules on political activity, as Backer himself acknowledged… (The group eventually shut down the PAC.)
In 2012, when the group sought to create a “leadership fund” in hopes of collecting unlimited campaign contributions, it ran afoul of federal campaign finance rules; it ended up suing the FEC, arguing that the agency should be prevented from enforcing those laws against it (and it lost).
Tea Party Patriots: … the organization raised $12 million in fiscal 2010. But only about $3 million of that went to its “social welfare” mission, according to an IRS 990 form filed in May 2012. Millions more went to professional telemarketing firms, which in some cases cost more than they raised; extensive travel costs; and legal fees incurred as the group sued competitors over its claim to own the “tea party” franchise.
Mike Huckabee, at the very least, should act a little Presidential candidate-ish and read the Justice Department’s decision before going off half-cocked and talking about “revolution against Washington”. The decision states:
“Our investigation uncovered substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia leading to the belief by many tax-exempt applicants that the IRS targeted them based on their political viewpoints,” Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik said Friday in a notification letter to Congress.
“But poor management is not a crime. We found no evidence that that any IRS official acted based on political discriminatory, corrupt or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution.”
Truth be told, if poor management were a crime, the Republican Congress would be decked out in orange jumpsuits looking through steel bars.