Tag: irs

“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.

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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.

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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.

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Churches Can Endorse Political Candidates to Their Members: IRS

The IRS on July 7 outlined an exception to a decades-old rule, the Johnson Amendment, which had banned tax-exempt religious organizations from campaigning for political candidates.

In a court filing regarding a lawsuit against the government by two Texas churches and the National Religious Broadcasters Association, the federal agency said the ban would not apply to faith organizations when they are campaigning to their own members.

The Christian groups sought reforms to nonprofit law that bans tax-exempt groups from political campaigning, arguing that the rule “unconstitutionally prohibits § 501(c)(3) [non-profit, tax-exempt] organizations from engaging in political speech.”

When campaigning for his first presidential term, President Donald Trump told the “evangelical and religious community” he wanted to repeal the law that “threatens religious institutions with a loss of their tax-exempt status if they openly advocate their political views.”

“Their voice has been taken away,” he said at the time.

“I am going to work very hard to repeal that language and to protect free speech for all Americans.

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Lawsuit Aims To Prevent IRS From Targeting Conservative Groups Ever Again

The mechanism that allowed the IRS to deny right-leaning groups legal nonprofit status during Barack Obama’s administration is still on the books, but this week a conservative group is challenging the provision in court to prevent it from being weaponized again.

Back in 2013, when Obama was president and Lois Lerner led the IRS Tax-Exempt Organizations division, Americans learned that conservative groups seeking nonprofit tax-exempt status were being blackballed by the IRS.

A 2014 House Oversight Committee report shows how huge the scandal was when it was discovered: “A May 2013 review of the IRS tax-exempt applications found that not a single group identifying itself as ‘Tea Party’ was approved by the IRS after February 2010, when the new targeting criteria were instated, while dozens of ‘progressive’ groups were approved.”

But 11 years later, the same criteria on the application for a nonprofit 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status remain, leaving the door open to more corruption.

Lex Politica Attorney Chris Gober has been working since then to change the rule on behalf of Freedom Path, a now nearly inactive conservative issue advocacy organization that filed for tax-exempt status in 2011. After the IRS requested a list of Freedom Path’s donors in 2012, and the 2014 Lois Lerner scandal blew over, finally in 2020 — nine years after its application — the IRS denied Freedom Path nonprofit status on the basis of the same “Facts and Circumstances Test” weaponized against conservative groups in the scandal.  

The Trump administration’s Department of Justice is defending the Facts and Circumstances Test as the case returns to court this week for a status report with Washington, D.C., District Judge Jia M. Cobb. Freedom Path is asking the court to declare the Facts and Circumstances Test “unconstitutionally vague.”

The IRS uses the 11-factor Facts and Circumstances Test (seen below) to evaluate whether a group’s advocacy communications, such as advertising campaigns, should be considered “issue advocacy” — which would allow the group to become a tax-exempt nonprofit — or if its communications should be considered a “political campaign intervention,” preventing the group from gaining tax-exempt status.

The test is subjective; results depend on the values of the person evaluating the applicant’s material.

“It has a necessary chilling effect, because conservative groups nationwide will have to self-censor rather than risk IRS retaliation,” Gober told The Federalist.

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Reports: Secretary Bessent and Musk came to blows behind closed doors

Former Trump strategist and War Room host Steve Bannon claimed this week that tech billionaire Elon Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent literally came to blows inside the White House over a heated disagreement regarding the future leadership of the IRS.

According to Bannon, the clash erupted just moments after both men exited the Oval Office in April following a tense meeting with President Trump about who should lead the IRS.

The dispute centered on Acting IRS Commissioner Gary Shapley—a key whistleblower in the Hunter Biden tax fraud cover-up—who had reportedly been installed at Musk’s request, bypassing Bessent’s approval entirely.

Gary Shapley, the whistleblower who came forward and exposed the political interference in the Hunter Biden tax fraud investigation, was named interim IRS Commissioner after Melanie Krause resigned.

Krause stepped down amid controversy over a data-sharing agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The New York Times reported that Bessent approached Trump and told him Shapley was put in his position at the IRS without his knowledge.

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IRS Whistleblowers Responded Perfectly to Hunter Biden’s Latest Legal Move

Either he wants to move on with his life, or it confirms what we all knew about Hunter Biden and his saga with the Internal Revenue Service. The crack cocaine-addicted son of Joe Biden has thrown in the towel regarding his lawsuit against whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joe Ziegler, who delivered damning testimony against the Biden Justice Department, alleging their investigations into the then-president’s son were interfered with on the regular. Hunter has moved to drop the lawsuit. 

“His voluntary dismissal of the case tells you everything you need to know about who was right and who was wrong,” said Shapley and Zeigler (via Fox News):

Hunter Biden on Wednesday dropped the lawsuit he filed against two Internal Revenue Service whistle-blowers in September 2023.  

Biden’s attorneys brought a motion in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to dismiss the lawsuit with prejudice, meaning the case cannot be brought again in any court.  

The lawsuit, initially filed by the former first son two years ago, alleged that IRS Special Agent Gary Shapley and IRS Criminal Investigator Joseph Ziegler had “targeted and sought to embarrass” Biden through statements to the media disclosing the details of the tax matters of a “private citizen.” 

Shapley and Zielger had testified before the House Oversight Committee earlier that year, saying they faced various limitations when tasked with investigating former President Joe Biden’s son.  

“It’s always been clear that the lawsuit was an attempt to intimidate us,” Shapley and Zielger said in a statement after Hunter Biden dropped the case, according to the New York Post. “Intimidation and retaliation were never going to work. We truly wanted our day in court to provide the complete story, but it appears Mr. Biden was afraid to actually fight this case in a court of law after all.” 

“His voluntary dismissal of the case tells you everything you need to know about who was right and who was wrong,” they added.  

Lawyers for the two whistle-blowers first emphasized how Hunter Biden “dismissed his case with prejudice – meaning he can never bring it again,” and did so “in exchange for nothing at all.” 

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Hunter Biden drops lawsuit against IRS whistleblowers, who say suit was ‘attempt to intimidate’

Hunter Biden has agreed to drop his federal lawsuit against IRS whistle-blowers who publicly argued federal investigations against then-President Joe Biden’s son were being mishandled by their agency and by the Justice Department.

“Intimidation and retaliation were never going to work,” IRS supervisory special agent Gary Shapley and IRS special agent Joseph Ziegler, who publicly raised concerns about what they considered the federal government’s slow-walking of the investigation, they said following the announcement Wednesday evening that the suit had been dismissed.

The lawyers for Hunter Biden filed a joint notice with the IRS telling the federal judge that they “hereby give notice of the dismissal with prejudice of all claims asserted in the Amended Complaint” that had been filed by their client. 

The dismissal being made “with prejudice” essentially means that the lawsuit cannot be brought again.

“It’s always been clear that the lawsuit was an attempt to intimidate us,” Shapley and Ziegler said. “However, we were always motivated by doing the right thing, defending our work, and honoring our duty to the American people.” 

Biden attorneys filed a lawsuit against the IRS in September 2023, alleging “agents have targeted and sought to embarrass Mr. Biden via public statements to the media in which they and their representatives disclosed confidential information about a private citizen’s tax matters.”

“While Mr. Biden has been the victim of various leaks regarding the IRS investigation previously, most recently, two IRS agents – Mr. Gary Shapley and Mr. Joseph Ziegler – and their attorneys raised the stakes to unprecedented levels with their numerous public appearances,” they said.

The lawyers doubled down on these claims in a February 2024 amended complaint to the federal court.

The legal team for the IRS whistle-blowers, at Empower Oversight, on Wednesday said: “Hunter Biden brought this lawsuit against two honorable federal agents in retaliation for blowing the whistle on the preferential treatment he was given by President Biden’s Department of Justice,” they said. “Shapley and Ziegler did nothing wrong.”

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The IRS Isn’t Going Away, and This Is How We Know

As the 2024 campaign neared its send, candidate Donald Trump began promising that, if elected, he would support the elimination of income taxes. Shortly after he was sworn in, Trump then began saying he planned to abolish the Internal Revenue Service. The Trump team claimed in each case that it could raise enough tax revenue from tariffs to replace tax revenue from income taxes.

By March, however, Trump began backtracking, and his administration announced that the new goal was to eliminate income taxes for people making under $150,000 per year.

That last development on its own tells us that the IRS isn’t going away. If people making more than $150,000 are still going to pay income tax, then there will still be an IRS to which we’ll need to send tax returns to prove we’re not making more than $150,000.Raico, Ralph

But even if we ignore that problem, there are at least two other reasons why we can be sure the IRS isn’t going anywhere. The first way we know this is from the fact that the Trump administration is only talking about “abolishing” the progressive individual income tax. Administration mouthpieces have said nothing at all about getting rid of the income taxes known as “payroll taxes” that every wage earner pays.

The second way we know that the IRS isn’t going away is that taxes on imports—i.e., tariffs—simply aren’t going to bring in enough revenue to keep funding all the popular spending programs that Trump clearly has no interest in cutting.

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