Tag: irs

‘Loyal Public Servants’: Whistleblowers Punished for Exposing Hunter Biden Protection Scheme Reach Settlement

Compensation being paid, and DOJ using ‘this example’ to train federal prosecutors.

Two former FBI officials who were punished under the Biden administration for their efforts to expose a protection scheme for first son Hunter Biden now have reached settlements in their lawsuits.

Hunter Biden, of course, faced both gun and tax charge convictions, cases that could have left him behind bars for years.

Then his daddy gave him a get-out-of-jail free card through a presidential pardon that Joe Biden actually signed, unlike many of his pardons that were issued through autopen signatures.

The settlements were reached for former Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley and Special Agent Joe Ziegler who had charged illegal retaliation against them.

The settlements with the IRS and Justice Department (DOJ) “included significant compensation for damages and a requirement for new training for federal prosecutors to deter future whistleblower retaliation.”

Keep reading

Bessent Taps New “CEO of IRS” Amid Rising Fears of Data-Surveillance State

The Treasury Department startled observers this week by creating a new executive position inside the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Frank Bisignano, the current Commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA), will now also serve as the IRS’s first Chief Executive Officer.

Treasury Secretary and Acting IRS Commissioner Scott Bessent announced the appointment Monday, describing Bisignano as “a businessman with an exceptional track record of driving growth and efficiency in the private and now public sector.” Bessent added that at the SSA, Bisignano “has already made important and substantial progress.” His expertise, Bessent said, would help sharpen the IRS’s “focus on collections, privacy, and customer service.”

The announcement also sought to justify the unusual dual appointment, claiming,

The IRS and SSA — two of the most public-facing and broadly impactful federal agencies — also share many of the same technological and customer service goals. This makes Mr. Bisignano a natural choice for this role.

Bisignano’s résumé is extensive. As chairman and CEO of Fiserv and First Data, he oversaw massive financial networks handling trillions in daily transactions and led one of the largest technology mergers in corporate history. Earlier, he held top executive roles at J.P. Morgan Chase and Citigroup, where he managed global transaction systems and large-scale digital integrations. The official record portrays a career defined by efficiency and digital optimization — principles now being imported into government.

But the consolidation of authority across Treasury, the IRS, and the SSA signals more than a bureaucratic reshuffle. It represents a structural shift that quietly places vast amounts of taxpayerdata under a single executive hierarchy. In the name of efficiency, the administration has effectively merged two of the nation’s most data-heavy agencies — one inside Treasury (IRS) and one historically independent (SSA) — under Treasury’s command, giving one unelected appointee extraordinary reach over both.

Keep reading

Unconstitutionally vague: IRS scheme used to attack conservative organizations struck down!

Under Barack Obama’s regime, the Internal Revenue Service was weaponized to delay and deny required governmental permissions for conservative charitable organizations that wanted to sound off on his re-election campaign, which he won, to operate.

They were grilled over their donors, their beliefs, their prayers and much more. Applications were lost and required a second submission. Free speech was under fire.

That treatment was unlike other groups that promoted a liberal agenda

Eventually, the IRS was forced to confess, and it even settled a number of lawsuits over its actions.

But now a federal court has ruled that one of the components that appeared in that agenda is unconstitutional.

A report at the Washington Examiner points to a ruling from Washington, D.C., judge Jia Cobb.

The court found that a test used by the IRS, involving “facts and circumstances,” was unconstitutionally vague.

The ruling said an organization called Freedom Path could not be rejected by the IRS for its requested tax standing because of the failing in the federal process.

But it continued the case, as neither side, Freedom Path nor the IRS, had suggested a standard that could be imposed.

The judge said the IRS violated constitutional protections by denying the tax-exempt status the organization requested.

“The ruling held that the agency’s ‘facts and circumstances’ framework, an 11-part analysis derived from a 2004 IRS revenue ruling, fails to survive the heightened scrutiny required when government rules implicate First Amendment speech rights,” the report said.

Freedom Path, founded in Texas in during 2011, when Obama remained in control of the IRS, sought tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(4). Years later, the IRS denied the request.

Keep reading

Farmers, Ranchers In 49 States To Get IRS Tax Relief Due To Drought

American farmers and ranchers who have sold or exchanged livestock due to drought conditions are eligible for tax relief, the IRS said in a Sept. 22 statement.

Generally, livestock sold due to drought must be replaced within four years. Under the latest extension, farmers and ranchers who had sold livestock due to drought, with replacement periods scheduled to expire by the end of 2025, will now have until the end of the 2026 tax year to make replacements.

Tax gains made from such sales or exchanges can be deferred, the agency said.

The relief applies to “capital gains realized by eligible farmers and ranchers from sales or exchanges of livestock held for draft, dairy, or breeding purposes. Sales of other livestock—such as those raised for slaughter or held for sporting purposes—and sales of poultry do not qualify,” the agency said.

The tax relief applies to “49 states, the District of Columbia, and other regions that reported exceptional, extreme, or severe drought during the 12-month period ending on Aug. 31, 2025,” it said.

To get the tax relief, applicants must prove that the sale or exchange of livestock was prompted by drought, with their areas covered under the federal drought designation, according to the IRS.

The tax relief comes at a time when the Western United States is experiencing “widespread drought conditions,” according to a Sept. 3 post by the National Integrated Drought Information System.

This year, 65.5 percent of the Western United States has been in drought, and 14 percent has reeled under “Extreme or Exceptional” drought, it said.

“Current drought coverage and intensity pales in comparison to peak drought conditions in the early 2020s—59.5 percent of the West was in Extreme or Exceptional Drought (D3-D4) in July 2021,” the post said.

“This record-setting Western U.S. drought in the early 2020s, plus the southwestern megadrought dating back to 2000, has left Western U.S. water supplies in a perilous position.”

For instance, 100 percent of the Colorado River Basin is in drought, reservoir levels in Utah are showing a “drastic decline,” and the state of Washington issued a drought declaration for the third straight year in June, it said.

“As most water in the West originates from runoff due to melting winter snow, the upcoming water year will be crucial for water supplies—and normal won’t suffice,” said the post.

“Many key headwaters need above-average precipitation, in some cases over multiple years, to bring water supplies back to sustainable levels.”

Keep reading

Company Owned by Ilhan Omar’s Multimillionaire Husband Owes IRS Over $200,000 in Unpaid Taxes

A company owned by Tim Mynett, the multimillionaire husband of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), failed to pay its fair share of taxes in 2021, according to a tax lien obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Mynett’s company, EStreetCo, accumulated nearly $206,000 in unpaid income, Social Security, and Medicare taxes in 2021, the IRS charged in a tax lien filed against the company in Sonoma County, Calif., in January 2023. Omar, who introduced legislation in February to “make corporations pay their fair share,” was married to Mynett when the IRS says the company failed to pay its taxes.

In her 2021 financial disclosure, the Minnesota Democrat described EStreetCo as a “creative agency” and said Mynett’s share of the company was worth no more than $1,000.

EStreetCo provided advertising, design, and public relations services, and boasted a staff of at least 17 people, according to an archived version of its website. Mynett’s business partner, former DNC adviser Will Hailer, formed EStreetCo in October 2020, and business records show the pair owned the firm until its dissolution in June 2022, about seven months before the IRS filed the lien.

Keep reading

Shocking NEW Documents Expose Multi-Front Effort To Protect Clintons While Framing Trump

Newly unearthed documents show deep state government actors once again circling the wagons to protect Bill and Hillary Clinton — and suppressing evidence that implicated them. Last week it was the FBI, this week it is the IRS.

In 2019, the IRS Criminal Investigations Division quietly launched a probe into the Clinton Foundation’s tax practices, working closely with whistleblowers John Moynihan and Larry Doyle, financial experts who had compiled thousands of pages of evidence.

According to internal agency memos reported by Just the News, IRS agents reviewed the evidence and at least one agent concluded it meant that the “entire [Clinton Foundation] enterprise is a fraud.” Agents then moved to treat the whistleblowers as cooperating witnesses and even set up secure computer servers to hold the material they had collected.

Then, without warning, the lights went out. “Can’t talk about the CF,” agents told the whistleblowers. By the summer of 2019, their inquiry was dead. Moynihan and Doyle are now battling the agency in Tax Court over the apparent shutdown of the investigation.

The IRS’s abrupt reversal follows an earlier, more infamous pattern. In 2016, FBI field offices in New York, Washington, and Little Rock all opened probes into the Bill and Hillary Clinton Foundation, partly on the strength of Peter Schweizer’s 2015 bestselling book, Clinton Cash, which exposed numerous examples of the Clintons using the foundation while she served as Secretary of State under President Barack Obama as a pay-to-play scheme for business and foreign government interests seeking political influence.

Keep reading

“Can’t Talk About the CF” – IRS Began Investigation Into Clinton Foundation in 2019, But Abruptly Stopped, Cut Off Whistleblowers

The IRS began investigating the Clinton Foundation in 2019 but abruptly stopped and cut off whistleblowers, according to memos obtained by Just The News.

“Can’t talk about the CF [Clinton Foundation],” one of the memo stated as it cut off the two Clinton Foundation whistleblowers.

Just The News reported:

Years after the FBI was forced to shut down multiple corruption probes of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s charity, the IRS under President Donald Trump began a criminal tax investigation into the Clinton Foundation and its dealings with other players on the global charitable stage, but then abruptly stopped working with whistleblowers in spring 2019, according to IRS memos and internal emails reviewed by Just the News.

“Can’t talk about the CF,” a memo states in recounting how IRS agents suddenly cut off contact with two whistleblowers they had been working with for weeks. One of the whistleblowers was a decorated former federal money laundering analyst who had testified before Congress about issues like terrorism financing.

The documents, released under the Freedom of Information Act, add a new body of evidence about the federal government’s concerns about the former first family’s famous global charity as well as a persistent narrative of federal agents being thwarted in their pursuit of investigations tied to major Democratic Party figures.

John Moynihan, a retired Drug Enforcement Agency financial crimes analyst, and Larry Doyle, a corporate tax compliance expert, had spent years researching the Clinton Foundation, testifying to Congress about it and providing the IRS with evidence of alleged financial wrongdoing by the Clinton Foundation.

In 2018, the whistleblowers, Lawrence Doyle of DM Income Advisors and John Moynihan of JFM Associates, argued that according to their research, the Clinton Foundation was operating outside of its bounds as a 501c3 non-profit organization and instead operated exactly like the global fund in Geneva, Switzerland by brokering money and pharmaceuticals.

Mr. Moynihan also stated that 60% of the donations going to the Clinton Foundation were used for “administration fees” which is a stark difference from the industry norm of 10-15% for admin fees.

“The investigation clearly demonstrates that the [Clinton] Foundation was not a charitable organization per se, but in pointed fact was a closely held family partnership,” Mr. Doyle said.

Doyle continued, “As such, it was governed in a fashion in which is sought in large measure to advance the personal interests of its principles as detailed within the financial analysis…and further confirmed within the supporting documentation and evidence.”

Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) asked the whistleblowers to elaborate on their claims the Clinton Foundation was operating as an agent of a foreign government.

Keep reading

Trump IRS seeks to block whistleblower trial that alleges Clinton Foundation tax irregularities

AU.S. Tax Court judge has tentatively scheduled a Dec. 1 trial allowing two whistleblowers to show they were wrongly denied an award for identifying alleged tax irregularities inside Bill and Hillary Clinton’s foundation, but the case is meeting resistance from an unexpected source: the Trump administration. 

The Internal Revenue Service under Trump filed a motion last week in the case brought by retired federal agent John Moynihan and private fraud expert Larry Doyle seeking to dismiss the case. Judge Alina I. Marshall set a deadline of September 15 for the petitioners to respond to that motion. The IRS also filed leave for an extension of time to file the Administrative Record with the court.

IRS says plaintiffs lack standing to sue

The agency argued that, as a matter of administrative and procedural law, the judge should not let the case proceed to trial because after an initial review, the IRS declined to look into the whistleblower complaint and, therefore, the plaintiffs don’t have standing to sue.

“In this case, the Whistleblower Office denied petitioners’ claims because the petitioners’ claims were never considered in an IRS action. Here, the Whistleblower Office forwarded petitioners’ claims to a classifier,” the IRS motion to dismiss argued last week “Following the classifiers’ preliminary review, the Classifier declined to forward petitioners’ claims to exam and recommended that it be forwarded to the CI [criminal investigation] division.

“The IRS did not proceed with any potential action when it investigated petitioners’ claims,” the IRS added. 

Obama’s Deputy Attorney General: “Shut it down”

The effort by the IRS to thwart the whistleblower case from going to trial was filed the same week Just the News reported that a bombshell memo recently uncovered by FBI Director Kash Patel shows the Obama Justice Department and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe roadblocked three separate probes into possible pay-to-play corruption allegations against the Clinton Foundation.

“Shut it down,” Obama Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates was quoted as saying in March 2016 in the memos.

You can read that memo here:

FBI Memos – Classified Leak Investigations – Declassified

Spokespersons for the IRS, the Treasury Department and the White House did not immediately return requests for comment on Sunday.

The Clinton Foundation has long denied it did anything wrong and said any suggestion of wrongdoing was politically motivated.

Doyle told Just the News the latest twist is just another example of the resistance the government has displayed to investigating the Clinton Foundation over many years.

Keep reading

Bipartisan bill would require IRS to notify taxpayer if seeking private financial info

Taxpayers will have more control over how the Internal Revenue Service acquires their personal information if a newly-introduced bill becomes law.

The bipartisan Taxpayer Notification and Privacy Act, brought forward Thursday by Sens. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., and Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., would require the IRS to inform taxpayers of the exact tax information it plans to seek from third parties, such as employers or banks, at least 45 days before doing so.

During that time period, taxpayers would have the option to provide the IRS directly with their personal financial information (used to calculate whether a person owes taxes) rather than have third parties – such as their bank or employer – do so.

According to Warnock and Barrasso, the bill is meant to protect taxpayer privacy and reputation and increase IRS transparency.

“[T]axpayers shouldn’t have to worry about the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) soliciting personal financial information behind their backs. They deserve to have the option to provide this sensitive information to the IRS directly,” Barrasso said.

“By providing that opportunity, our bipartisan bill will safeguard the reputation of taxpayers and small business owners across the country. It will also force the IRS to be as transparent as possible when it comes to the privacy of hardworking Americans,” he added.

Currently, if the IRS contacts third parties for tax information, it needs to notify the taxpayer that it is doing so, but it does not need to reveal which information it is seeking or from which entities. If passed, the bill would change that within 12 months of its being enacted.

The bill does include an exception, however. If the IRS determined that the information sought from a third party “is necessary notwithstanding whether the taxpayer could independently provide such information,” the IRS would not be subject to the extra reporting requirements stipulated by the bill.

Keep reading