The IRS is the most unaccountable and bloated agency in the federal government. More importantly, it has failed to address nonprofit groups facilitating political violence tied to Antifa as well as deep state actors that view the service as a playground for targeting. The Trump administration just announced that it will furlough 34,429 IRS employees. This should be the first step in a house cleaning that is long overdue for the government’s least popular agency.
First, the IRS continues to look the other way when nonprofits incite violence. Last weekend, organized rioters attacked ICE agents in Chicago, where officers “were rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars,” according to Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin. One rioter was armed with a semi-automatic weapon, which forced the officers to “fire defensive shots”. In Portland, rioters have attacked the city’s ICE office over 100 straight nights, according to the facility’s director. Earlier this summer, in Los Angeles, we saw organized rioters throwing objects off bridges at police officers and striking law enforcement vehicles with bricks. All of the activity has been organized.
Nonprofits routinely call to obstruct ICE investigations and other Trump administration actions they deem undemocratic. Organized rioters are often dressed in black tactical outfits with masks, Antifa markings and carry weapons. The violence is becoming so intense that President Donald Trump just held a White House roundtable for independent journalists to discuss Antifa violence they have experienced firsthand. Yet the IRS does nothing.
For example, the No Kings organization is holding another rally on Oct. 18. Their website offers “de-escalation training” so people can “be prepared to take nonviolent action safely, powerfully and together.” There’s no need to de-escalate nonviolent action though. The No Kings training is code for teaching rioters to conceal unlawful behavior while obstructing law enforcement operations. Ironically, one sponsor of the upcoming event is the American Federation of Government Employees. AFGE supports workplace rights of federal workers. Nothing in its mission statement aligns with the No Kings agenda of alleged “targeting of immigrant families,” election integrity, environmental causes, etc. AFGE’s sponsorship is particularly egregious because they’re endangering the federal officers they purport to represent during a government shutdown.
The IRS can be the tip of the spear in dismantling these networks. They should immediately strip the tax-exempt status of groups tied to political violence and domestic terrorism. Non-profits facilitating such events are operating outside the mission for which they were incorporated.
Second, IRS failures go beyond its reluctance to scrutinize nonprofit-driven political violence. The agency is full of political actors who target taxpayers. Confidential tax information of President Donald Trump and others was stolen and leaked to Pro Publica and the New York Times by now-imprisoned IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn to intimidate political opponents. The information continues to be used as a pretext to audit conservative donors, making them less likely to contribute to candidates for fear of greater retribution. This shadow taxing — deemed Choke Point 3.0 — isn’t new. In 2013, reports surfaced that Republican donors were being audited by the IRS because of political contributions.
The evidence of targeting doesn’t end there. The infamous Tea Party scandal of 2013 rattled the Obama Administration when the IRS was caught denying the applications of Tea Party groups. Lois Lerner, the head of the Tax Exempt Division at the time, referred to the groups as “crazies” and “a-holes” in email correspondence. She invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than answer questions before Congress.
Lerner’s legacy lives on at the IRS though. Her top deputy, Holly Paz, accused of misleading Congress during the scandal, oversaw the creation of a pass-through audit team that an IRS official said would target individuals “who want to make basis great again” and use an invasive information document request form dubbed the “Art of the IDR” — both references to Trump and his supporters. Moreover, the team relies on an internal IRS Revenue Ruling drafted by a former top IRS attorney who, according to the Daily Wire, “called for people to ‘resist’ the GOP and attacked the police.”
The bloated IRS workforce and layers of bureaucracy have made it impossible to cut through red tape and focus on non-profits facilitating Antifa driven political violence, as well as Deep State targeting. However, the government shutdown offers an opportunity to redirect its focus now that President Trump has furloughed 34,429 workers. We may never have a better opportunity to take on the government’s least favorite bureaucracy.
Chuck Flint is the President and CEO of the Alliance for IRS Accountability and a former U.S. Senate chief of staff.
