Was the White House involved in the IRS\u2019s targeting of conservatives? No investigation needed to answer that one. Of course it was.<\/p>\n
President Obama and Co. are in full deniability mode, noting that the IRS is an \u201cindependent\u201d agency and that they knew nothing about its abuse. The media and Congress are sleuthing for some hint that Mr. Obama picked up the phone and sicced the tax dogs on his enemies.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s not how things work in post-Watergate Washington. Mr. Obama didn\u2019t need to pick up the phone. All he needed to do was exactly what he did do, in full view, for three years: Publicly suggest that conservative political groups were engaged in nefarious deeds; publicly call out by name political opponents whom he\u2019d like to see harassed; and publicly have his party pressure the IRS to take action.<\/p>\n
Mr. Obama now professes shock and outrage that bureaucrats at the IRS did exactly what the president of the United States said was the right and honorable thing to do. \u201cHe put a target on our backs, and he\u2019s now going to blame the people who are shooting at us?\u201d asks Idaho businessman and longtime Republican donor Frank VanderSloot.<\/p>\n
Mr. VanderSloot is the Obama target who in 2011 made a sizable donation to a group supporting Mitt Romney. In April 2012, an Obama campaign website named and slurred eight Romney donors. It tarred Mr. VanderSloot as a \u201cwealthy individual\u201d with a \u201cless-than-reputable record.\u201d Other donors were described as having been \u201con the wrong side of the law.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was the Obama version of the phone call\u2014put out to every government investigator (and liberal activist) in the land.<\/p>\n
Twelve days later, a man working for a political opposition-research firm called an Idaho courthouse for Mr. VanderSloot\u2019s divorce records. In June, the IRS informed Mr. VanderSloot and his wife of an audit of two years of their taxes. In July, the Department of Labor informed him of an audit of the guest workers on his Idaho cattle ranch. In September, the IRS informed him of a second audit, of one of his businesses. Mr. VanderSloot, who had never been audited before, was subject to three in the four months after Mr. Obama teed him up for such scrutiny.<\/p>\n
The last of these audits was only concluded in recent weeks. Not one resulted in a fine or penalty. But Mr. VanderSloot has been waiting more than 20 months for a sizable refund and estimates his legal bills are $80,000. That figure doesn\u2019t account for what the president\u2019s vilification has done to his business and reputation.<\/p>\n
The Obama call for scrutiny wasn\u2019t a mistake; it was the president\u2019s strategy\u2014one pursued throughout 2012. The way to limit Romney money was to intimidate donors from giving. Donate, and the president would at best tie you to Big Oil or Wall Street, at worst put your name in bold, and flag you as \u201cless than reputable\u201d to everyone who worked for him: the IRS, the SEC, the Justice Department. The president didn\u2019t need a telephone; he had a megaphone.<\/p>\n
The same threat was made to conservative groups that might dare play in the election. As early as January 2010, Mr. Obama would, in his state of the union address, cast aspersions on the Supreme Court\u2019s Citizens United ruling, claiming that it \u201creversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests\u201d (read conservative groups).<\/p>\n
The president derided \u201ctea baggers.\u201d Vice President Joe Biden compared them to \u201cterrorists.\u201d In more than a dozen speeches Mr. Obama raised the specter that these groups represented nefarious interests that were perverting elections. \u201cNobody knows who\u2019s paying for these ads,\u201d he warned. \u201cWe don\u2019t know where this money is coming from,\u201d he intoned.<\/p>\n
In case the IRS missed his point, he raised the threat of illegality: \u201cAll around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates . . . And they don\u2019t have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don\u2019t know if it\u2019s a foreign-controlled corporation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Short of directly asking federal agencies to investigate these groups, this is as close as it gets. Especially as top congressional Democrats were putting in their own versions of phone calls, sending letters to the IRS that accused it of having \u201cfailed to address\u201d the \u201cproblem\u201d of groups that were \u201cimproperly engaged\u201d in campaigns.<\/p>\n