Project Veritas released the fourth in a series of undercover stories highlighting so-called “Deep State” corruption, this time featuring two Internal Revenue Service officials admitting unfair treatment of conservative nonprofit groups by the IRS.
“Unfortunately, I am not allowed by the bylaws of my union to go against the constitution.”
The officials are Thomas Sheehy, an IRS tax examiner and a member of the Austin Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in Texas, and Jerry Semasek, an IRS attorney in Washington D.C.
The video shows Sheehy boasting about former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen deleting email evidence of complaints logged by Tea Party groups. Koskinen “lost” tens of thousands of emails regarding the Lois Lerner controversy in 2013.
Per Project Veritas:
SHEEHY: “John Koskinen. He got a lot of flak for giving increased scrutiny to these Tea Party groups. Conservatives got really mad at him, he was so cool though because he deleted all the emails, so they could not hold any evidence against him.”
SHEEHY: “Yeah, I don’t give a s**t if that is a crime for doing that because… you should give increased scrutiny to those groups because a lot of them are just f***ing fronts for the Koch brothers or whatever.”
Sheehy also admitted he abused his work benefits to help further the agenda of the DSA, while also revealing there are more members of the political activist group working for the IRS. Sheehy also gleefully admits he would go against the constitution if he could get away with it.
SHEEHY: “I will say, I just really like the benefits. I get a lot of paid time off and sick days. So, like, for DSA stuff, I can just honestly… I will just stay late for a period. So, I will just call in for the next day.”
SHEEHY: “I mean, as long as like the manager doesn’t find out and you don’t explicitly say “hey I’m calling in sick to do Democratic Socialist of America work” then I mean like yeah. You know, you just gotta, you just gotta like sort of manage, you know, when and where you’re like doing, like, the work you do.”
SHEEHY: “My friend Chris, like he does a lot of like tech stuff. He even runs the f**kin’, I was looking over his shoulder once at the electoral forum and I noticed that he actually is on the national social media working group. So, he helps run the national twitter account. He also runs our local twitter account. He also is one that does all the bylaws and stuff…. he also works for the IRS.”
SHEEHY: “Unfortunately, I am not allowed by the bylaws of my union to go against the constitution.”
JOURNALIST: “Would you?”
SHEEHY: “Yeah.”
In the second video, Semasek admits several times to Project Veritas that “mistakes were made” during the 2013 scandal when conservative nonprofits were targeted after applying for tax-exempt status.
SEMASEK: “… you know what, for what it’s worth, on the record, I know people in Tax Exempt Government Entities. All that stuff we saw in the news, yeah mistakes were made”
SEMASEK: “… The law requires that an organization can’t be political, it can’t be partisan to be tax exempt… Those employees in Cincinnati, Ohio, started to separate them and put them in a pile. And it turns out that they were like the Tea Party group of people. And I think they did, like Lois Lerner and maybe some of her employees were more liberal leaning or Democrats so I don’t know if they disallowed them, but they required them to produce more documentation to try to prove that they weren’t partisan.”
SEMASEK: “… and that was bad. I think, from what people tell me, that really know about, there were mistakes made, but the problem with what happened… And again, there were mistakes made, and I think probably some people that were advised against conservative groups did make some mistakes.”
According to its site, this is the fourth release in a series Project Veritas started publishing in September of 2018, unmasking corrupt actors in the federal government.
Project Veritas says it will continue publishing undercover videos of federal employees to shed a light on “Deep State resistance.”
“As our deep state investigation continues to unfold, four government agencies have responded resulting in the removal of two federal employees from their job duties. Stay tuned to see which Government Agency we unmask next.” — Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe.
Watch the video clips in full here:
Editor’s note: Do you feel there are “Deep State” efforts to undermine Republicans and Republican Groups? Please discuss in the comments below.