Despite what liberals like Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) are trying to tell you, the investigation into the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups is far from finished. In fact, according to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the investigations into the IRS isn’t over by a long shot.
“The goal is to get to the truth. Sometimes that takes a while,” Jordan said during a panel sponsored by the non-profit organization Judicial Watch Thursday afternoon. “It’s going to take some time but we’re committed to getting there.”
Jordan, who serves on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, personally promised to keep up the pressure on the IRS.
“We gottta keep going,” Jordan said. “We’ll continue to get to the bottom of it. The commitment is strong.”
But besides commitment, fear is what is prevalent throughout the American people, according to Jordan. He said it was “chilling” that groups that meet in church basements just because they don’t like Obamacare have been targeted by the IRS and paid visits by the FBI.
Jordan was joined in this by several of the other panelists, including Cleta Mitchell, a partner at the law firm Foley & Lardner LLP, Jenny Beth Martin, a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, and Brian Brown, president and co-founder of the non-profit National Organization for Marriage.
Mitchell, who represents many of the conservative organizations that have been targeted and audited by the IRS, noted that the more power the government has to help people, the more power it has to destroy its people at any given notice as well.
“This [targeting] isn’t in the past tense,” she said. “This is ongoing and it is utter lawlessness, is what it is,” adding that because of the agency’s size and now-reputation for targeting conservatives, Americans have a legitimate reason to fear the agency.
While Mitchell believes that the organization needs to be “jerked out by the roots” and reorganized, that’s not enough for Martin, whose own organization felt the affects of the IRS’s blatant targeting all too well.
“Anyone who is involved in [the IRS], I don’t want them working for the government ever again in any government agency,” Martin said. “They’ve abused their authority. They turned their position of authority into a weapon and they weaponized it and set the sights of that weapon on citizens of this country.”
“I don’t want my taxpayer dollars paying for someone who’s willing to abuse their authority in this way,” she added.
