“Institutionally Incapable”: Jay Sekulow in Biden’s IRS in Testimony to Congress

ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow testified today at a congressional roundtable before Members of the House Ways and Means Committee over the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) targeting of Christians. We’ve told you the recent example of the IRS targeting a Christian organization in Texas based on reasons such as biblical views. That’s exactly what we fought against during the Obama-Biden Administration – and WON – and why we have to keep fighting.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is trying to pass some very disconcerting legislation that falls under the purview of the House Ways and Means Committee, so today’s hearing was very timely. The provisions of the legislation include that the IRS would receive an increase of $80 billion in funding, the repeal Lois Lerner rule that prevents this exact targeting, and lowering the threshold that would allow the IRS to investigate individual citizens’ financial transactions to a mere $600.

As ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow testified before Congress today:

"I have said in 2015, and I’m going to unfortunately repeat it again today. Despite the fact that we have a consent decree entered into federal court dealing with the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups, tea party groups, and pro-life groups, I believe the IRS is institutionally incapable of self-correcting. I believe they are institutionally incapable of correcting themselves even when . . . we have a multi-page consent order issued and signed by a federal judge."

He added:

"A portion of this says this – the IRS acknowledges that the First Amendment generally prohibits the government from discriminating against citizens on the basis of the viewpoints of their protected speech and/or other protected associational interests. . . . The IRS admits its treatment of Plaintiffs during the tax exempt determination process, including screening applications based on their names, policy positions, subjecting those applications to heightened scrutiny . . . was unnecessary to the agency's determination of the tax-exempt status, and wrong. Then, a consent decree was issued saying they would correct and not do it again. And fast forward five years they have done it again. . . . It didn’t take this Administration five months to begin again its harassment and targeting based specifically off their viewpoint."

ACLJ Director of Policy Harry Hutchison summed it up this way:

"The IRS has failed to correct itself. Indeed, it is incapable of correcting itself. So instead, the IRS has doubled down on its commitment to bigotry by classifying the Bible as a form of politics. So, having failed in the court and the court of public opinion, the Democrats now seek a statute – For the People Act – . . . they seek to overturn the Lois Lerner rule. But they are seeking to overturn constitutional provisions which protect freedom of speech and freedom of belief. They believe . . . that they can pass a law that invalidates provisions in the U.S. Constitution. So that would leave us with no choice but to go back to court and to protect these conservative and Christian organizations through litigation, and hopefully we could find a federal judge who still believes in the U.S. Constitution. . . . I think at the end of day what we are witnessing both at the IRS and within the halls of Congress is an attempted power grab by the IRS. And they’re attempting to increase their funding by a total of 80 billion dollars so they can engage in surveillance of individual transactions . . . so long as it includes a threshold of 600 dollars. . . . At the end of the day, the Democrats are demonstrating they do not believe in the U.S. Constitution."

Hopefully this legislation will not make it passed the Senate. We have filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The Biden Administration ignored this request as usual, so we’ve filed a lawsuit. Even if Congress doesn’t do their job and act, we do have a consent decree that we can argue in the courts. We won’t let the IRS get away with this again.

Today’s full Sekulow broadcast is complete with even more analysis of the ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow testifying at the House Ways and Means committee roundtable over the IRS targeting of Christians.