It hasn’t been a very good week for the Obama administration. In fact, I’ve never seen the sharks circling as they are today… particularly about the IRS abuse scandal.

You see, Congress is serious about this one. They have five years of pent-up frustration over Obama’s Teflon-like ability to shirk responsibility; and now that he’s on the defensive, they’re going to make sure the law is enforced. The Speaker of the House, John Boehner, asked, “Who’s going to jail over this scandal?”

Yet somehow Obama and his team seem to not understand the gravity of the charges leveled against them. Or perhaps they’re simply in denial. They’ve clearly lost control of the news cycle, and even Obama’s own people are starting to look out for themselves.

Not even the most committed Obama followers want to do jail time for him.

The IRS Scandal in Review

So far, Mr. Boehner and the media have mostly focused on the delay/rejection of tax-exempt status for Tea Party and conservative advocacy groups.

We see this clearly in Boehner’s comments: “Someone made a conscious decision to harass and to hold up these requests for tax-exempt status… I think we need to know who they are and whether they violated the law. Clearly, someone violated the law.”

But my sources on Capitol Hill tell me the investigation has moved from this first violation onto even more significant breaches of IRS statute.

It seems that, under Obama, the IRS has leaked specific information from tax returns and IRS applications of conservative organizations to the media and liberal advocacy organizations.

We know this because of a report from the news organization, ProPublica, which received the illegal information. An article released on May 13 states: “The same IRS office that deliberately targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 election released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year.”

And if that wasn’t enough, House investigators have also heard about another major felony committed by someone at the IRS.

John Eastman, Chairman of the Board of the anti-same-sex-marriage group The National Organization for Marriage (NOM), reported, “A year ago, someone at the IRS illegally disclosed the confidential portions of its tax return to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the leading organization on the other side of NOM in the war over the definition of marriage. At the time, HRC was headed by someone who had just been named national co-Chair of the Obama for President campaign.”

The bottom line is this: Releasing confidential tax returns is a felony, and the review of confidential tax returns is also a felony.

The HRC reviewed the illicit tax returns and, after acknowledging the document was illegally received, placed it on their website. Soon afterward, the information appeared on the Huffington Post and in other news outlets.

Eastman tried repeatedly to get the attention of authorities. He said:

We asked the IRS and the Department of Justice for an investigation more than a year ago. An investigation was had, but they refuse to let us know who was responsible. We then filed several freedom of information act requests to get to the truth, beginning last August. But NOM’s requests have largely been stonewalled. That latest non-response response is priceless. The identity of the perpetrator, the person responsible for illegally disclosing NOM’s tax returns, is ‘confidential’ information protected from disclosure by the very same law that this individual violated.

Big Problems

Despite their nonchalance, Obama’s team actually has more to worry about than just Congress. The FBI is also looking into the IRS’s criminal activities under the Obama administration.

It’s been a busy – and shocking – week on Capitol Hill. We’ll stay on top of this scandal as the story progresses, and we’ll use our inside sources to bring you the big news before it breaks in the mainstream media.

 

This article originally appeared at CapitolHillDaily.com and is reprinted here with permission.