Report: New Hampshire Senator Seeking Re-Election on Tuesday “Point Person” in Political IRS Targeting

CLAIM:  IRS THREATENED SUPER-PAC REQUESTING SHAHEEN’S ROLE IN IRS TARGETING SCANDAL

by Sharon Rondeau

(Nov. 4, 2014) — A November 3 article by The Daily Caller identifies Senator Jeanne Shaheen, who is running for re-election against Republican Scott Brown, as having been “the point person” in a group of six Democrat senators who asked the IRS to investigate non-profit groups for what the senators believed could be excessive political activity.

Writer Patrick Howley called Shaheen’s actions part of “a plot with Lois Lerner and President Barack Obama’s political appointee at the IRS to lead a program of harassment against conservative nonprofit groups during the 2012 election.”

Lerner has pleaded the Fifth Amendment to Congress and at the same time insisted she “did nothing wrong” for her involvement in flagging “conservative” groups requesting non-profit status for extra scrutiny, sometimes delaying their approval or denial for years and effectively silencing their voices in the 2012 presidential election.

Pro-life, religious, and Tea Party groups were “targeted” by the IRS, which at first claimed that the actions were limited to its Cincinnati, OH office but were later shown to have emanated on orders from lawyers in Washington, DC.

Potential 2016 presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson was surprisingly audited by the IRS after he made comments critical of Obama’s health care plan at the National Prayer Breakfast in February.  Some donors to 2012 presidential challenger Mitt Romney were also audited.

On Monday, AOL News via the AP reported that Brown and Shaheen are statistically tied in polls leading into Tuesday’s election.

Shortly before this article went to print, Fox News replicated the first part of Howley’s article.

The race had not been considered competitive until late summer, when Brown began gaining in the polls by linking Shaheen’s decisions in the Senate to Barack Obama, who has become a liability to those seeking re-election today.

Brown served the remainder of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s (D-MA) term by means of a special election as the first Republican to hold the seat in decades.  He moved to New Hampshire in late 2013.

Shaheen was governor of New Hampshire from 1997 to 2003 and campaign manager for John Kerry when he challenged President George W. Bush in 2004.

Howley reported that “The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) did not want to publicly release 2012 correspondences exchanged between the IRS and Jeanne Shaheen at her personal Washington office: the agency delayed releasing the information to a major conservative super PAC multiple times, even threatening to see the super PAC in court, according to emails.”