“The Tea Party people have known about this and were working on this,” Will continued. “But they said – it was just some odd underlings out in Cincinnati who did this and there was no political motive whatever involved. Now the question is, how stupid do they think we are? Just imagine, Donna Brazile, if the George W. Bush administration had an IRS underling, he’s out in Cincinnati, of course, saying we’re going to target groups with the word ‘progressive’ in their title. We’d have all hell breaking loose.”
Will noted that one of the items in the 1973 impeachment articles of then-President Richard Nixon, which ultimately led to his resignation, described the Nixon administration’s use of the power of income tax audits in a “discriminatory matter.”
“This is the 40th anniversary of the Watergate summer here in Washington,” Will said. “’He has, through his subordinated and agents, endeavored…to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigation to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner,’ – Section 1, Article 2, the impeachment articles of Richard Nixon.
We don’t have all the facts about the IRS politically targeting Tea Party groups. However, if it does turn out that Barack Obama ordered that or even knew about it and allowed it to go on, he would certainly deserve to be impeached for it. So while it’s too early to say, Congress should certainly be aggressively investigating this matter and demanding to know how far up the chain of command this disgraceful abuse of the IRS to attack Obama’s political enemies went.