Jenny Beth Martin, a founder of Tea Party Patriots, has issued a warning that the growing number of Internal Revenue Service agents under the administration of Joe Biden may signal the return of a politicized tax agency that targets conservatives.
During a phone interview with The Daily Signal, Martin, a resident of Florida, said the following: “I said back then, if they’re not held accountable, other bureaucrats will think that they can abuse the law in an even more egregious manner and get away with it.”
Martin’s comments were made in response to a question about whether or not those responsible would be punished.
Martin stated, “What concerns me is what we’re hearing right now with these 87,000 new IRS agents, they have such an enormous power, they can garnish wages, they can levy bank accounts, and they can put liens on your property.”
“What concerns me is what we’re hearing right now with these 87,000 new IRS agents, they have such an enormous power,” Martin said.
During the year 2013, members of the conservative movement accused the Internal Revenue Service of unfairly targeting their organizations as they sought permission from the IRS for tax-exempt status.
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The government agency confirmed that it had singled out certain organizations that had applied for tax-exempt status (either 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4)) for further and rigorous inspection based solely on the names of the organizations and their political affiliations.
The Internal Revenue Service primarily targeted conservative organizations, seeking phrases like “freedom,” “liberty,” and “patriots” in the titles of those organizations as a means of identification.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) made conservative organizations wait for information about their applications for years, forcing them to suffer an arduous ordeal.
Martin, who is now 52 years old, recounted that the couple had submitted their application in 2010, but they did not hear back from them until around the year 2012.
“So [it took] about two years, which is weird because generally, you receive an approval really quickly,” she said. “So that’s almost two years.”
And when conservative organizations did receive a response, she claimed, they were subjected to onerous questioning that went far beyond what was necessary to decide whether or not they qualified as tax-exempt organizations.
“They were interested in hearing about what was discussed at our events. “They wanted to have access to the back end of our website so that they could read anything that was on our website,” Martin said of the inquiries made by the IRS.
Therefore, they should not have been asking for such items, as it was outside of the scope of what they should have been asking for.
At some point, the charges that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was unfairly targeting conservatives reached a level of severity that prompted a congressional intervention.
In 2012, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee asked then-IRS Commissioner Douglas H. Shulman to testify on the allegations.
After testifying that the Internal Revenue Service was not going after conservative groups, Shulman stepped down later that same year.
Also in the crosshairs of Republican lawmakers was Lois Lerner, who served at the time as the director of the Internal Revenue Service’s Exempt Organizations Unit. This was the division of the IRS that decided whether or not applicants for tax-exempt status were granted the status.
On May 22, 2013, Lerner testified before a House committee and stated quickly that she “had not broken any laws” or “violated any IRS rules or procedures.”
She subsequently refused to give any more testimony, citing her right under the Fifth Amendment not to incriminate herself.
As the committee investigated the issue, the congressmen summoned Martin in to testify about how her organization had been targeted by the IRS. Martin’s testimony may be found here.
The Internal Revenue Service chose that point in time to grant the Tea Party Patriots tax-exempt status.
Martin stated that even after waiting for another year and a half, the status of their organization was not changed until after they had finally approved it.
“[However], the day before I was scheduled to speak before Congress over it, they called our attorneys and informed us that it had been authorized,” he said.
In the end, it took her organization a total of two years and a half to receive the final permission from the IRS.
Martin told The Daily Signal that the government employees responsible for dragging their feet in scrutinizing conservative groups never received any punishment even though Lerner eventually resigned from her position at the IRS and her organization eventually received the tax exemption for which it had been applying.
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She stated that those individuals who breached the law while working for the IRS were never held accountable for their actions.
Martin believes that her prediction that the government would take action to suppress conservatives could be coming true, and if it did, it would have chilling repercussions specifically for free speech.
Martin told The Daily Signal that “the fallout originally for us when they were targeting tea party groups is that it had a chilling effect on speech and a chilling effect on the First Amendment.”
“We were getting together to present our concerns to our government calmly and rationally.”
