Search FAIRtax.org

Grover Norquist: IRS Commissioner Should Be Fired Next

One of Washington’s top conservative leaders is asking why the president fired the head of the FBI but hasn’t yet fired John Koskinen, the IRS head who obstructed the congressional investigation into IRS targeting and harassment of Tea Party groups, actions thought to have altered the outcome of the 2012 election.

“Hey Why did James Comey get fired and the head of the IRS is still getting a paycheck. ‘You’re Fired’ should be said more often in DC,” Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform tweeted early Tuesday morning.

“If what they did is not illegal, they should change the law, because it should be illegal.”

The IRS targeting of groups that had “Tea Party” or “patriot” in their names, which often involved requests for thousands of documents as a condition of approval for tax-exempt status as nonprofit organizations, was deadly. Many of the groups dissolved or changed their names, and were never heard from again.

“It was a nightmare. We basically just gave up on it,” Everett Wilkinson, chairman of a South Florida Tea Party group told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in 2013. “Whatever they could do to send you around in circles, they would. A lot of other [Tea Party] groups just closed their doors or changed their status to for-profit — or just didn’t file anything.”

One conservative group was just approved for tax-exempt status in April, after seven years.