A prominent Catholic professors says the IRS targeted her.
On Wednesday, Dr. Anne Hendershott, a devout Catholic and a noted sociologist, professor and author, exclusively told TheBlaze that she believes she may have been one of the IRS’s targets.
According to Hendershott, the IRS audited her in 2010 and demanded to know who was paying her and “what their politics were.”
It all started with a phone call she received at her home in May of that year — a call during which Hendershott was told she would be audited. A letter that followed on May 19, 2010 solidified the IRS’s request to meet her in person two months later in July. While IRS investigations are certainly not uncommon occurrences, the professor believes that the situation surrounding hers was more-than-curious.
“The IRS calls my house and says … ‘I just wanted to let you know that we’re going to be auditing your business’ and I said ‘My businesses?’ and he said, ‘You know the expenses you take off for writing,” the academic recalls.
She doesn’t operate a business.
Our own J. Christian Adams, one of the Obama/Holder Department of Justice’s most effective critics, says we can add him to the list of targets.
After Obama was elected, I faced my first IRS audit shakedown after decades of filing income tax returns. Overdue coincidence? Perhaps.
Given the headlines of the past 48 hours, perhaps not.
My audit experience was a headache, as anyone who has experienced one can attest. When it happened, a former IRS lawyer with whom I associated in private practice told me – “it’s no accident you were audited.”
I brushed it off. But I wonder how many left-wing election lawyers and leftist bloggers were audited. Any Media Matters drones face an audit in the last four years? Step right up and announce yourself if you did.
After wasting his time and money, the IRS ended up owing Adams $100.
Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, says that the IRS targeted his ministry and its charity, Samaritan’s Purse.
The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association urging of voters to back “candidates who base their decisions on biblical principles and support the nation of Israel” during last year’s presidential race was the reason why IRS agents visited the North Carolina offices of both Graham groups, the letter accuses.
“While these audits not only wasted taxpayer money, they wasted money contributed by donors for ministry purposes as we had to spend precious resources servicing the IRS agents in our offices,” Graham wrote in the letter, which was shared with POLITICO. “I believe that someone in the administration was targeting and attempting to intimidate us. This is morally wrong and unethical – indeed some would call it ‘un-American.”
Graham said that “in light” of the IRS admission that it targeted tea party groups for added scrutiny, “I do not believe that the IRS audit of our two organizations last year is a coincidence – or justifiable.”
Samaritan’s Purse does terrible things like sending Christmas gifts to impoverished kids. It was only a matter of time before Turbo Tax Tim and his crack squad of untouchables crashed down on them.
Am I alone in suspecting that this scandal is MUCH bigger than the IG report indicates, and that the FBI may not be up to the job of properly investigating it?
Update: Whoa.
According to a report by Courthousenews.com, an unnamed HIPAA-covered entity in California is suing the IRS, alleging that some 60 million medical records from 10 million patients were stolen by 15 IRS agents. The personal health information seized on March 11, 2011, included psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual/drug treatment and other medical treatment data.
“This is an action involving the corruption and abuse of power by several Internal Revenue Service agents,” the complaint reads. “No search warrant authorized the seizure of these records; no subpoena authorized the seizure of these records; none of the 10,000,000 Americans were under any kind of known criminal or civil investigation and their medical records had no relevance whatsoever to the IRS search. IT personnel at the scene, a HIPPA facility warning on the building and the IT portion of the searched premises, and the company executives each warned the IRS agents of these privileged records,” it continued.
That story is dated March 15.
Update: Did the IRS play any role in the Obama campaign’s attacks on Mitt Romney’s finances?
Also read: Obama’s IRS Targeted High School Kids
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