IRS and Obama State Department conferred about ways to deny tax-exempt status to pro-Israel groups

Obama ought to be impeached for this alone. He has turned the United States government into an instrument to punish his political enemies, and shows in this particular incident how deeply he hates Israel and how ardently he supports the “Palestinian” jihad. Obama and the Left seem bent on destroying what was one of the great achievements of the United States: the continued existence of a loyal political opposition that was not subject to violence or oppression, but allowed to operate freely and accorded respect, as it accorded the same respect to the majority. Those days are over. There is a single perspective that is allowed in the mainstream media, the educational system, and the entertainment industry, and now Obama has gone one step beyond that and endeavored to make a group’s legal privileges subject to its submission to his political line. Dark days, indeed.

“The IRS’s Foreign Policy,” Wall Street Journal, July 28, 2014:

The IRS has stuck by its story that tax-exempt applications by conservatives got slow-rolled because of bureaucratic bungling not because the groups opposed President Obama’s policies. Now the slow drip of email evidence to congressional investigators is casting further doubt on that tale.

In 2009 the Pennsylvania group Z Street applied for tax-exempt status for its mission of educating people about Israel-related issues. In 2010 an IRS agent told Z Street that its application was delayed because the tax agency’s Washington, D.C. office was giving special scrutiny to groups whose missions might conflict with Administration policies. The IRS’s “Be On the Lookout” list that November also included red flags for groups referring to “disputed territories.”

Z Street sued in August 2010 for viewpoint discrimination and its case is headed for discovery in federal court. Emails uncovered by the House Ways and Means Committee show that the IRS and State Department were conferring in 2009 about pro-Israel groups like Z Street and considering arguments to deny their tax-exempt applications.

In an April 16, 2009 email, Treasury attache to the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem Katherine Bauer sent IRS and Treasury colleagues a 1997 JTA News article sent to her by State Department foreign service officer Breeann McCusker. The subject was whether 501(c) groups buying land in Israel’s disputed territories were engaged in “possible violations of U.S. tax laws.” The article chronicles the controversy and whether “ideological activity” can “legally be financed with the help of U.S. [tax] dollars.”

“Thought you might find the below article of interest—looks like we’ve been down this road before,” Ms. Bauer wrote. “Although I believe you’ve said you can’t speak to on-going investigations, I thought it was worth flagging the 1997 investigation mentioned below for you if it can be of any use internally when looking for precedence [sic] for the current cases.” A Treasury spokesman declined comment on Ms. Bauer’s behalf.

The “current cases” would have been applications like Z Street’s in which Israel-related activity was apparently being scrutinized for its ideological and policy content. The government says Z Street got special scrutiny because it was focused in a region with a higher risk of terrorism, which is hard to believe and in any case doesn’t explain all of the IRS’s behavior.

It doesn’t cover, for instance, why one questionnaire we’ve seen from the IRS to another Jewish group applying for tax-exempt status asked, “Does your organization support the existence of the land of Israel?” and “Describe your organization’s religious belief system toward the land of Israel.” No matter the answers, they should not affect the processing of an application for 501(c) status. The State-IRS emails reveal a political motivation for IRS scrutiny that gives Z Street powerful evidence for its suit charging IRS bias….

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