GOP: IRS Flagging of Tea Party A 'Chilling' Form of Intimidation

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Washington Republicans on Sunday characterized the IRS targeting Tea Party groups and other conservative political organizations as “chilling” and intimidating acts that heighten Americans' mistrust in government.

Their comments follow the IRS acknowledgment Friday that the agency targeted such groups during the 2012 election cycle to see whether they were violating their tax-exempt status -- a revelation followed by a report that such activity dated back to the previous year.

“The conclusion that the IRS came to is that they did have agents who were engaged in intimidation of political groups,” Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers told “Fox News Sunday.” “I don't care if you're a conservative, a liberal, a Democrat or a Republican, this should send a chill up your spine. It needs to have a full investigation.”

Evidence that the IRS was flagging such groups in 2011 was included in a draft inspector general's report obtained Saturday by Fox News and other news organizations and is expected to be released in full later this week.

That information seemingly contradicts public statements by IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, who told congressional investigators in March 2011 that specific groups were not being targeted.

On Sunday, Fox News obtained a timeline from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration that shows the practice started in 2010 and that IRS agents also were looking for groups associated with such phrases as "We the People," and "Take Back the Country."

Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins on Sunday also called the IRS activities chilling and said she was disappointed that President Obama had not condemned the actions.

“This is truly outrageous and it contributes to the profound distrust that the American people have in government,” Collins told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It is absolutely chilling that the IRS was singling out conservative groups for extra review. And I think that it’s very disappointing that the president hasn’t personally condemned this.”

At about the same time, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney released a statement saying: “If the inspector general finds that there were any rules broken or that conduct of government officials did not meet the standards required of them, the president expects that swift and appropriate steps will be taken to address any misconduct."

Michigan Republican Rep. Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said Friday his committee will hold a hearing on the issue.

The IRS said Friday that it was sorry for what it called the "inappropriate" targeting of the conservative groups during the 2012 elections.

But the draft report seemingly contradicts public statements by Shulman and shows senior IRS officials knew agents were targeting Tea Party groups as early as 2011.

Lois G. Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, said Friday that the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias.

But on June 29, 2011, Lerner found out that such groups were being targeted, according to the inspector general's report.

She was told at a meeting that groups with "Tea Party," "Patriot" or "9/12 Project" in their names were being flagged for additional and often burdensome scrutiny, the report states.

The 9/12 Project is a group started by conservative TV personality Glenn Beck.

Collins also said she does not believe the activity was limited to “a couple of rogue IRS employees."

"After all,” she added, “groups with `progressive' in their names were not targeted similarly."

California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Affairs, was also dubious about the explanation that the flagging was a limited, low-level activity.

"This mea culpa is not an honest one," he told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Lerner said that about 300 groups were singled out for additional review, with about one-quarter scrutinized because they had "tea party" or "patriot" somewhere in their applications.

She also said 150 of the cases have been closed and no group had its tax-exempt status revoked, though some withdrew their applications.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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CHILLING TEXT: Bomb Suspect Sent 'LOL' When Friends Saw News

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    The case against the 3 new Boston suspects

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    Suspect Robel Phillipos says he is 'average guy'

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    Boston Terror Case: The Kazakhstan connection

Three new suspects have been charged in connection with the Boston Marathon bombing, two for conspiring to get rid of their friend's incriminating backpack filled with gutted fireworks after learning he was a suspect in the April 15 terror attack, and another for lying to investigators, according to an FBI affidavit released Wednesday.

Documents based on interviews with the young men reveal Dzhokhar Tsarnaev allegedly dropped sinister hints before the attack, telling his friends a month before that he had learned how to make a bomb. However, it wasn’t until the FBI released a surveillance photo of the suspects that the friends realized Tsarnaev may have been involved. 

The FBI claims this prompted Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakova both 19-year-old natives of Kazakhstan and friends of Tsarnaev at UMass-Dartmouth, to go to Tsarnaev's dorm and take a laptop, the backpack and some Vaseline that may have been used in making the deadly pressure cooker bombs that killed three and injured more than 200 at the race. Police believe the bombs were packed with shrapnel and gunpowder removed from fireworks. 

Robel Phillipos, of Cambridge, Mass., also 19, was charged with willfully making materially false statements to federal law enforcement officials during a terrorism investigation.

The affidavit filed in support of a complaint said Kadyrbayev was the one who carried out the disposal of the backpack after the three saw the fireworks that had been hollowed out and emptied of gunpowder.

"Kadyrbayev knew when he saw the empty fireworks that Tsarnaev was involved in the Marathon bombing."

- FBI affidavit

"Kadyrbayev knew when he saw the empty fireworks that Tsarnaev was involved in the marathon bombing," the affidavit reads. "Kadyrbayev decided to remove the backpack from the room in order to help his friend Tsarnaev avoid trouble."

The three acted on April 18, three days after the bombing and hours after investigators aired surveillance footage identifying Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan as the suspects in the bombing, though not by name, according to authorities. Phillipos first saw footage depicting Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the news Thursday, and told Kadyrbayev over the phone that he suspected their friend was the bomber. When Kadyrbayev later texted Tsarnaev and said he bore a resemblance to the subject of an intense manhunt, Tsarnaev allegedly sent back a chilling response: "Lol, You better not text me." He also texted Kadyrbayev to say, "Come to my room and take whatever you want," according to the affidavit.

The exchange came just before 9 p.m. on April 18, a few hours before the Tsarnaev brothers would carjack a Chinese immigrant, murder an MIT police officer and engage in a wild shootout with police through the streets of Cambridge and Watertown, police say. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died April 19, after a shootout hours after authorities showed the brothers on surveillance video and named them as suspects.

Although the three new suspects initially appear to have stonewalled authorities, Phillipos came clean in a fourth interview, conducted April 26. He confessed that the three took the backpack out of their friend's dorm room, according to the affidavit. Phillipos allegedly told investigators that the two others "started to freak out" after seeing Tsarnaev identified on television.

Robert Stahl, an attorney representing Kadyrbayev, said his client denies the allegations and added that Kadyrbayev assisted authorities in their investigation.

"He is just as shocked and horrified by the violence that took place in Boston as the rest of the community is," Stahl said. "He did not have anything to do with it."

Prior to the latest development, authorities had named only the brothers as suspects in the bombing at the finish line of the world-famous race.

Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov face maximum sentences of five years in prison and fines of $250,000. Phillipos, a U.S. citizen, faces a maximum sentence of eight years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Kadyrbayev's attorney, Robert Stahl, says his client will be transported to the federal courthouse later Wednesday to appear on new criminal charges. On Friday, Yerlan Kubashev with the Consulate General for Kazakhstan in New York confirmed in a statement to Fox News that the consulate is helping the young men with legal representation. Both Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov will plea not guilty, according to their attorneys. 

Kubashev said the two men are "shocked at the bombings," and "they express sorrow to the bombing victims and their families."

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, is in a prison hospital after being wounded in the shootout with police as he and his brother made their getaway attempt. He is charged with using a weapon of mass destruction to kill, a crime that carries a potential death sentence.

Authorities have searched the Rhode Island home of the parents of Katherine Russell, Tamerlan Tsarnaev's widow.

Click for more from MyFoxBoston.com

Fox News' Pamela Browne and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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CHILLING EFFECT: Prosecutor Quits Case After Texas Lawmen Murders

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  Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland, who was murdered at his home on March 30, 2012.MyFoxDFW.com

The murders of two prosecutors in Kaufman County, Texas, apparently has prompted a federal prosecutor to withdraw from a major racketeering case in Houston, the latest sign that attacks on lawmen are having a chilling effect on the judicial system.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Hileman sent defense attorneys an email Tuesday saying he was withdrawing from the case against the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas due to safety concerns.

“I understand why someone would want to step back, and it makes sense to me, especially people who have families,” defense attorney Richard Ely, who is representing one of the defendants in the case, said. “Jay is a friend of mine, and this was a personal decision.”

The Aryan Brotherhood case, which netted 34 indictments last November, was followed by a statewide warning that the white supremacist prison gang may be planning retaliation. Ely doesn’t know the origins of the threat, but he thinks it was probably someone just “spouting off.”

The Kaufman County District Attorney's Office was named in the threat because it joined several other agencies on a task force aimed at cracking down on white supremacist groups. Since then, District Attorney Mike McLelland and Deputy DA Mark Hasse have been murdered in brazen attacks.

The murders in Kaufman County have prompted tighter security for a number of other prosecutors in the state of Texas, including Harris County District Attorney Mike Anderson.

A high-profile attorney told MyFoxHouston.com that he started seeing a group of U.S. Marshals escorting Hileman around the city two months ago, which coincided with the Jan. 31 murder of Hasse.

The recent murders, including the killing of Colorado prisons chief Tom Clements, which investigators believe may be linked, have raised questions of security for prosecutors across the country.

“There are 40,000 prosecutors in the country, and anyone who has spent some time trying a case will probably tell you that they receive threats all the time,” Scott Burns, executive director for the National District Attorneys Association, told FoxNews.com. “What happened in Kaufman County is not only an assault on these attorneys but it is also an assault on the rule of law and the judicial system.”

He added: “This is unfortunately something we deal with all the time. The only good news is that to be murdered because of your position as a prosecutor is still very (unlikely).”

Others say that there has been a recent rise of attacks against attorneys at their homes, which has gone largely unnoticed until recently.

“There is some research that suggests these acts are increasing,” Steven Jansen, VP and CEO of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, told FoxNews.com. “It may be due to addresses of district attorneys now being available online.”

Incidents like these adversely affect the judicial system’s functioning when people are targeted simply to slow or stop a case from going forward.

Heath Harris, an assistant district attorney in Dallas, told the Los Angeles Times that the recent murders could have lasting effects.

"I've always reassured them (new attorneys) you really don't have to fear retaliation,” he said. "I definitely think people will think twice about becoming a prosecutor."

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