By Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
Multiple media sources including the cable news site FoxNews and the website al.com are reporting that Alabama residents are among the persons who were wrongfully targeted by U.S. Internal Revenue Service.
The IRS subsequently has apologized for a pattern of abuse that apparently started in 2010 and ran until after President Barack H. Obama’s re-election in 2012. Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange (R) is asking any Alabama 501(c)(4) citizens who think that they were targeted by to come forward and present their case to his office.
Attorney General Strange wrote in a written statement released late Tuesday, “In light of the recent news reports and the IRS’ own admissions, I am calling on any 501(c)(4) organization in the state of Alabama that believes it has been unjustly targeted by the Internal Revenue Service to contact my office at 334-242-7300.”
AG Strange continued, “Americans don’t expect to be singled out and punished for their political beliefs, and for any government agency to do so threatens the most basic foundations of our republic. Despite the waffling from the White House, it appears the IRS sought to systematically harass American organizations seeking to exercise their free speech and association rights.”
“This situation demands full accountability from the IRS and procedures to ensure that safeguards are put in place so that this type of egregious abuse of the public trust does not occur again. It only makes sense for the President to appoint a special prosecutor to fairly and impartially investigate these troubling allegations to determine who directed these activities and if anyone in or associated with the White House knew of these activities and failed to stop them,” AG Strange said.
The White House had denied any involvement in or knowledge of the IRS scandal until April 22. The White House is claiming that this whole broad series of operations against President Obama’s grassroots political opponents was carried out by rogue elements within the IRS. Some pundits are skeptical of those claims.
ABC Contributor Trey Hardin said Tuesday,“I will tell you this on the IRS front. I’ve worked in this town for over 20 years in the White House and on Capitol Hill and I can say with a very strong sense of certainty that there are people very close to this president that not only knew what the IRS were doing but authorized it. It simply just does not happen at an agency level like that without political advisers likely in the West Wing certainly connected to the president’s ongoing campaign organization.”
NBC’s Brian Williams said, “As a lot of American adults not so fondly remember, the last time the government was found looking into the phone calls of reporters and using the IRS for political purposes, it was the Nixon era, and while times have changed and circumstances are different, that subject came up at the Obama White House today as the administration now scrambles on several fronts. We begin with the potentially illegal use of the IRS to scrutinize some American groups and citizens because of their politics, and in this case because of conservative politics. Again, this is just one front we’re covering tonight.”
In addition to the assault on the First Amendment rights of conservative activists throughout the country carried out by the IRS, it has similarly been revealed that the Press’s First Amendment rights were completely ignored by the U.S. Department of Justice. It has been discovered that the DOJ for reasons that still are hard to comprehend has been broadly wiretapping the phones of Associated Press Editors and Reporters.
