I would so love for that to be the case. But I haven't forgotten the massive controversy surrounding IRS red-flagging tax-exempt applications based on their conservative ideology.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy
The original claim: lots of right-wing groups organized as a type of tax-exempt group that didn't measure up under scrutiny. This has been well-documented.
Your new claim: left-wing groups do it too!! I'm sure it won't be hard for you to produce the documentation of that.
I don't think this is a left vs right issue. It's a greed issue.
I'm fairly sympathetic to the "Tea Party" movement in general, but I have to completely agree with this. It's actually worse: the IRS have had their chain jerked, so they will be very hesitant to go after any political group in future. Gosh, I wonder who will benefit most from unregulated tax exemptions for political entities? Perhaps Congress?
But whatever, keep grinding that axe.
One of the IRS agents involved pled the fifth, which you can only do if an honest answer would incriminate you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_...
To "plead the Fifth" is to refuse to answer any question because "the implications of the question, in the setting in which it is asked" lead a claimant to possess a "reasonable cause to apprehend danger from a direct answer", believing that "a responsive answer to the question or an explanation of why it cannot be answered might be dangerous because injurious disclosure could result."
i.e. "This is a political witch hunt and my answer will get twisted no matter what I say" is a perfectly valid reason to plead the Fifth. It is not evidence of guilt - if it were, it'd be a useless right.
Describes exactly any federal investigation into another federal agency.
Her negligence is worthy of disciplinary action, sure. If this had been discovered while she was still Secretary of State, she may have been fired. But she wouldn't have been sent to prison over it.
Lots of relevant discussion here: https://www.quora.com/Are-Republicans-right-to-be-outraged-t...
"Hey FBI, please investigate your likely future boss and friend of your current boss and be honest please!"
"Hey DOJ, I'm the president, your boss, and I appointed you, but will you investigate this other person I also appointed, even though we're all friends and in the same party? Oh, and please don't be biased."
The opportunity for corruption is just too great when an administration investigates itself.
So not to spell out the obvious... but, either she's the next President, and very clearly not a felon, or she is not the next President, and exactly one Administration will have a chance at proving she is a felon, until the statue of limitations runs out.
Personally, I think it's a crazy bet Hillary is taking. Her life is on the line with this election. The best thing Obama could have done for Hillary is charge Hillary himself, and not let her take this risk, and then pardon her if necessary. When she ultimately sees her day in court, you probably want that to happen under a friendly Administration. Some sort of plea agreement perhaps. Double jeopardy is required for Hillary to be safe from a long statue of limitations.
I don't think the President can pardon someone who hasn't been charged yet. So even if she wins this election, she could still be charged by the next administration.
Even conduct which is "a routine bureaucratic procedure meant to bundle potentially problematic applicants together for further review" can be crooked. Their shoddy practices actually had a disproportionate and damaging impact on many applications.
I'm actually OK with the investigation concluding with no criminal charges being filed. Not everything that is wrong is necessarily criminal. Companies screw things up all the time, and the IRS is a very large bureaucracy with ~90,000 employees. All they can do is perform a thorough and impartial investigation, publish the results, apologize to the American public, tells us what they will do differently going forward, and start trying to regain our lost trust. Or destroy evidence, cover it up, and plead the 5th.... but yeah, something like that.
"progressive", "occupy", "open source software", "medical marijuana", and "occupied territory advocacy"
were all targeted keywords. So do you think it was political or not?
Unfortunately, their evaluations were political when they should not have been. They tried to fix a problem with "social benefit" applications in general, but keywords were the wrong way to do it. This is not currently a job for automation, they must evaluate all applications fairly. Or to put it differently, the optimal solution for the problem of fraudulent applications does not include a PR disaster and FBI investigation. Hopefully they do better next time.
I think the perspective people miss on this, is that mistakes were made, but it wasn't personal. The system broke, but not in a criminal intent kind of way. Maybe the best way to say it, is the IRS stuck their foot in politics, and then tried to shake it off and hopefully clean their shoes.
I don't mind continuing the discussion, but I'm sorry for the flame-bait. I volunteer the thread for detach-and-mark-off-topic.
There is quite a difference between political actions and poor processes, which the Wikipedia article seems to confirm in its entirety.
Turns out, they couldn't.