It has been in the national news that other Tea Parties have been targeted, but this brings it down to the local level and makes it very, very personal. People like you and I are being singled out for exercising our right to free speech that does not agree with the powers in charge.
Just try to imagine the howling and outrage if a Republican Administration had done this. Where is the howling and outrage? How loud can you be?
Government Assault on SATP?
Posted: Sunday, March 11th, 2012 at 1:13 pm
By: Tea Party
We’ve previously reported on this website rude, crude, and socially unacceptable comments of our detractors. As we do so, we usually dismiss them with a laugh or a sigh. After all, those writers or groups have every much a Constitutional right to hold and express those opinions—untrue or unfair as they may be—as we do ours. Recently we’ve become aware of a possibly larger, more insidious, and downright frightening attempt to undermine our movement. This time the assault doesn’t originate from a New York newsroom, a left-wing political opponent, or a Hollywood documentary studio. It could be coming from your own government-sponsored and taxpayer-supported Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Two years ago, the San Antonio Tea Party applied for its official government-issued 501(c)(4) tax exemption status. After months of no communication, on February 2nd of this year, the IRS sent us an 8-page letter informing us they need additional information to process our application. And, “under penalties of perjury” began the friendly greeting, we were asked to answer over 80 questions concerning our events, speakers, expenses, what was said at every event and by every speaker, our associations as a group, and (sit down for this one) names of every donor. All of this information was to be returned to the IRS within three weeks of their request. There are many words to describe this request, but we’ll suffice to say we found it unacceptable.
Indeed, the IRS is busy these days. Not only are they busy collecting taxes from law-abiding citizens and uncovering tax fraud, but we now learn the IRS has taken on investigating Tea Parties and other conservative groups that are simply trying to abide within the law. According to David French in his March 2nd National Review Online article “A Broad-Based IRS Assault on the Tea Party?”, the SATP is not alone: literally dozens of tea-party organizations have received intrusive information demands from the IRS, demands that seriously implicate their First Amendment rights.
Fortunately, we and these other conservative organizations have a powerful and friendly ally on our side: Jay Sekulow and the American Center for Law and Justice. During a recent telephone conference call in which we and other grassroots groups participated, the ACLJ has agreed to legally represent these groups against the IRS for free. At its most recent meeting, the SATP Executive Committee recommended unanimously to the SATP Board that we take advantage of the ACLJ’s gracious offer and ally with a growing number of organizations similar to us in the face of the IRS’s excessive and inappropriate requests.
Jay is a well-known conservative personality, often appearing on FOX News, and a Constitutional lawyer who has argued successfully before the U.S. Supreme Court. He recently wrote, “We are fighting back, representing many of the largest Tea Party groups in America. I am personally heading up a legal team to aggressively respond to the IRS’s political bullying tactics.”
Tea Parties, he went on to note, “have followed the law and requested tax-exempt status for their activities just as Americans have done for a hundred years. President Obama’s IRS appears to be using this as an opportunity to intimidate – to silence – these law-abiding citizens from exercising their fundamental First Amendment rights.”
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