Thread: TEA PARTY LEADER FILING ETHICS COMPLAINT AGAINST DEM REP

TEA PARTY LEADER FILING ETHICS COMPLAINT AGAINST DEM REP

by MATTHEW BOYLE 6 Feb 2014, 6:27 AM PDT POST A COMMENT

One of the most high-profile victims of the IRS Tea Party targeting scandal is planning to unveil surprising new allegations about the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee at a hearing this morning.

Catherine Engelbrecht, the head of election integrity group True The Vote and Tea Party group King Street Patriots, alleges Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) demanded information from her group in a similar manner to the IRS, according to her testimony. “Hours after sending letters, he would appear on cable news and publicly defame me and my organization,” Engelbrecht said.

The Tea Party leader is filing a formal ethics complaint against Cummings with the Office of Congressional Ethics, a panel of outside advisers who review allegations and refer those they consider to have merit to the official Hosue Ethics Committee.

Engelbrecht is one of several witnesses testifying at an oversight subcommittee hearing on the IRS scandal on Thursday. The committee’s subcommittee on Economic Growth, Job Creation and Regulatory Affairs will be holding a hearing titled: “The IRS Targeting Investigation: What is the Administration Doing?”

In her opening statement, published on the committee’s website late Wednesday, Engelbrecht offers the painstaking details of how the IRS and administration as a whole targeted her, noting “my private businesses, my nonprofit organizations, and family have been subjected to more than 15 instances of audit or inquiry by federal agencies.”

Engelbrecht said she is disgusted with Cummings’ behavior, and that Cummings was engaged in activity that “misrepresent[s] this governing body in an effort to demonize and intimidate citizens.”

“Such tactics are unacceptable,” Engelbrecht wrote in her prepared testimony. “It is for these reasons that immediately after this hearing I am filing a formal complaint with the House Office of Congressional Ethics and asking for a full investigation.”

Earlier in her testimony, Engelbrecht lumped Cummings’ actions in with those of the administration, writing that after she filed IRS papers to create her groups, “an assortment of federal entities – including law enforcement agencies and a Congressman from Maryland, Elijah Cummings – came knocking at my door.”

It is highly unusual for a witness at a hearing to announce she is filing a formal ethics complaint against the ranking member of the committee holding it. Cummings' office did not respond to a request for comment sent late Wednesday.

Cummings has been a Democratic thorn in the side of oversight efforts of full committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and other committee Republicans on the IRS scandal since he ascended to the top Democratic slot on the committee in 2010.

Cummings released sensitive investigation documents this past summer, including a redacted transcript of an interview committee investigators conducted with IRS employee John Shafer. Cummings did so, according to an NPR story on the matter, because he said the transcript “debunks conspiracy theories about how the IRS first started reviewing these cases.”

But Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) said in response to that renegade Cummings action that it “will severely undermine the Oversight Committee’s ability to gain the full truth of what has transpired at the IRS.”

“Since he called for an end to this investigation, we have learned that IRS officials in Washington had been more involved in the targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups than we initially were lead to believe,” Turner said then. “This maneuver will do nothing more than obstruct the Committee’s investigation. It’s clear that Ranking Member Cummings is concerned only with ending a highly embarrassing and troubling investigation before we learn the full truth of who was responsible and why.”

On the Benghazi scandal, Cummings outed a trip Issa was taking to Libya--somethingIssa’s office feared could have put the chairman in danger as terror threats were being made against Issa’s life at the time by a Libyan national.

Testifying along with Engelbrecht at Thursday’s IRS hearing will be American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) chief counsel Jay Sekulow, Alabama’s Wetumpka Tea Party president Becky Gerritson and lawyer Cleta Mitchell of Foley & Lardner LLP. Barbara Bosserman of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division is invited to testify, according to the House Oversight Committee’s website but has not confirmed.

Englebrecht statement.
http://oversight.house.gov/wp-conten...ngelbrecht.pdf

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...gainst-Dem-Rep

True the Vote Founder to Congress: "I Will Not Retreat. I Will Not Surrender. I Refuse To Be Intimidated"



CATHERINE ENGELBRECHT, TRUE THE VOTE: Good morning Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee. My name is Catherine Engelbrecht. I am the Chairwoman of True the Vote, a nonprofit election integrity organization; the Founder of King Street Patriots, a citizen-led liberty group; and President of Engelbrecht Manufacturing.

Thank you for this opportunity to share my story with you today, though at the outset it must be said that it is a story with a central theme shared by countless thousands of other Americans who haven’t yet been heard from, though I pray they will be. It must be made publicly known that across this country citizens just like me are being targeted by an administration willing to take any action necessary to silence opposition.

I am an average American who, prior to 2009, had never been active in the processes of government; but, after volunteering to work at the polls in Texas in the 2009 elections I saw fundamental procedural problems that I felt could not go unaddressed. So, I started True the Vote, an organization that grew into a national movement to ensure that every American voter has an opportunity to participate in elections that are free and fair.

My life before I spoke out for good government stands in stark contrast to the life I now lead. As a wife, a mother, and small businesswoman working with my husband, raising our children and participating in my church and PTA, the government collected my taxes and left me and my family in peace. But when I helped found and led True the Vote and King Street Patriots, I found myself a target of this federal government.

Shortly after filing IRS forms to establish 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organizations, an assortment of federal entities – including law enforcement agencies and a Congressman from Maryland, Elijah Cummings – came knocking at my door. In

Nearly two decades of running our small business, my husband and I never dealt with any government agency, outside of filing our annual tax returns. We had never been audited, we had never been investigated, but all that changed upon submitting applications for the non-profit statuses of True the Vote and King Street Patriots. Since that filing in 2010, my private businesses, my nonprofit organizations, and family have been subjected to more than 15 instances of audit or inquiry by federal agencies.

In 2011, my personal and business tax returns were audited by the Internal Revenue Service, each audit going back for a number of years.

In 2012, my business was subjected to inspection by OSHA, on a select occasion when neither my husband nor I were present, and though the agency wrote that it found nothing serious or significant, it still issued fines in excess of $20,000.

In 2012 and again in 2013 the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms conducted comprehensive audits at my place business.

Beginning in 2010, the FBI contacted my nonprofit organization on six separate occasions – wanting to cull through membership manifests in conjunction with domestic terrorism cases. They eventually dropped all matters and have now redacted nearly all my files.
All of these incursions into my affairs began after filing applications for tax-exemption. There is no other remarkable event, no other reason, to explain away how for decades I went unnoticed, but now find myself on the receiving end of interagency coordination into and against all facets of my life, both public and private.

Bear in mind, distinguished ladies and gentlemen of this sub-committee, these events were occuring while the IRS was subjecting me to multiple rounds of abusive inquiries, with requests to provide every Facebook and Twitter entry I’d every posted, questions about my political aspirations, and demands to know the names of every group I’d ever made presentations to, the content of what I’d said, and where I intended to speak for the coming year. The answers to these sorts of questions are not of interest to the typical IRS analyst, but they are of great interest to a political machine that puts its own survival above the civil liberties of any private citizen.

This government attacked me because of my political beliefs, but I refuse to be cast as a victim; not to the IRS, not to the FBI, not to OSHA, not to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, or to any other government agency. I am not a victim, because to be a victim is to accept that I have no options. I do have options and I intend to use them all to the fullest extent of my capabilities.

As an American citizen, I am part of a country that still believes in freedom of speech, and so I will continue to speak out; here in Congress and all across this country, I will continue to press in every legal way possible, as I did by filing suit against the Internal Revenue Service. No American citizen should be willing to accept a government that uses its power against its own people.

I also refuse to let a precedent be set that allows Members of Congress, particularly the Ranking Member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, to misrepresent this governing body in an effort to demonize and intimidate citizens. Three times, Representative Elijah Cummings sent letters to True the Vote, demanding much of the same information that the IRS had requested. Hours after sending letters, he

would appear on cable news and publicly defame me and my organization. Such tactics are unacceptable. It is for these reasons that immediately after this hearing I am filing a formal complaint with the House Office of Congressional Ethics and asking for a full investigation.

After all the tyranny, all the things that have been done to my organizations, to my family and to me; many people would have quit. And, Mr. Chairman, many Americans have quit. I have heard, over and over, that people are afraid to tell their stories because of what has or might happen to them and their families at the hands of our own government.

But know this, my experiences at the hands of this government in these last five years have made me more determined than ever to stand before you and America and say I will not retreat. I will not surrender. I refuse to be intimidated. I will not ask for permission to exercise my Constitutional rights.

I come before you today Mr. Chairman, on behalf of Americans just like me, asking for a solution to end this ugly chapter of political intimidation. There was a time when people of goodwill were encouraged to participate in the processes of government; not targeted because of it. I applaud Congressman Issa and Jordan’s request of the Internal Revenue Service to withdraw a proposed regulation limiting political speech by nonprofit organizations. That action should be taken quickly and without fail, because if allowed to pass, these new regulations will effectively codify into law the very practices that bring me here today. If those regulations pass, non-profit organizations across the country will be destroyed. No American, regardless of their political affiliation, should support the silencing of political speech.

Beyond ending the proposed IRS regulations, I ask you – I implore you – as representatives to the people of this great nation, to pass a law that protects all citizens of this country from the increasing use of such abusive practices.

Pass a law that exposes government officials who trample on the rights of ordinary citizens. Do not allow them to continue to cower behind a veil of secrecy, abuse, unethical and unfair behavior. Send the President a bill that makes public, at the option of persons and entities regulated, all communication between government agencies and those they regulate. No restricted, redacted, selectively released files; give us a truly transparent process. Stop hiding behind privacy rules meant only to protect the government. Protect the people. Restore liberty to the people. We will not be silenced.

Thank you Mr. Chairman and Committee Members for allowing me this opportunity to share my testimony with you today.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vid...timidated.html