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05.21.2013 0

Who coordinated multi-agency attack on tea party group?

By Robert Romano

As Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Spock were always fond of noting, when attempting to unravel a whodunit, a useful postulate is: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Point in case is the targeting by multiple government departments and agencies at the federal and state level, by elected officials, and by Democrat Party organizations of Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote, a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring honest elections and ballot integrity by targeting voter fraud.

Was it all just a coincidence?

Engelbrecht was hit up not just by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in delaying True the Vote’s still-unapproved application for tax-exempt status with mountains of invasive and improper follow-up questions — but also by the Occupational Safety Hazards Administration (Department of Labor) of Engelbrecht Manufacturing; several rounds of questioning by the FBI (Department of Justice) concerning her local meet up group, King Street Patriots; two audits by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (Department of Justice) of her manufacturing plant; a separate IRS audit of her family business and personal income tax returns; and another audit by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

As reported by the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity’s Jillian Kay Melchior at National Review, this targeting resulted in a $17,500 fine from OSHA, plus a demand by the Texas agency for Engelbrecht to spend $42,000 for additional storage sheds, notes Breitbart.com’s Brandon Darby. The Texas targeting was supposedly the result of “a complaint being called in.”

The OSHA fine came after “the OSHA inspector complimented them on their tightly run shop and said she didn’t know why she had been sent to examine it,” Melchior reports the Engelbrechts saying.

Engelbrecht’s difficulties apparently originate with a 2010 skirmish with the Texas Democrat Party, which filed a lawsuit against her, as did an ACORN affiliate, charging the group had acted as a political action committee by providing poll watchers.

On top of all that, True the Vote became subject to congressional scrutiny, Melchior notes, by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) in a letter to Department of Justice’s Thomas Perez — coincidentally Obama’s pick to head up the Labor Department — urging the group be investigated for “voter suppression.”

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) wrote a letter directly to Englebrecht accusing her group of “illegal voter suppression” that if “intentional, politically-motivated, and widespread across multiple states they could amount to a criminal conspiracy to deny legitimate voters their constitutional rights.”

Unsurprisingly, Engelbrecht believes the targeting by multiple agencies and political party organizations was coordinated, telling Melchior, “the way all of these personal instances interweave with what was going on on the nonprofit side… it amounts to something.”

Engelbrecht added, “You can’t help but think that statistically, this has to be coordinated on some level.” One can almost hear Holmes exclaiming, “Elementary!”

So, was this all a coincidence — targeting by multiple government agencies, law enforcement, the Texas state Democratic Party, a U.S. Senator and more?

The most charitable explanation is that this was a spontaneous state and federal party opposition to Engelbrecht’s group, along with several unrelated inquiries by state and federal government offices, including law enforcement, all going after the same group. That, simply put, they all had the same idea at exactly the same time and nobody talked to one another.

But, the chances of each subsequent visit and inquiry by a government agency without cause being a mere coincidence are infinitesimal, if not impossible. It strains believability.

The appearance of a number of federal government agencies directing investigatory resources at one person in a narrow timeframe  at least raises the question if Engelbrecht was politically targeted and if that targeting was directed by the only governmental entity that oversees all federal agencies: The White House.

The only way to be certain, since Engelbrecht has already been scrutinized by two separate bureaus at the Department of Justice, would be for an independent, special prosecutor — apart from the Department’s hierarchy — to be named by Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate this particular case.

Such an inquiry will have to ascertain the basis for each separate investigation and inquiry that was launched against Engelbrecht. To subpoena all correspondence by government officials in emails that name Engelbrecht and her group. To identify who knew what about her case or cases, and when they knew about it. To investigate if there was any coordination between Sen. Boxer’s office and Perez’s office on the Engelbrecht question. It would have to find out whether Engelbrecht was ordered to be investigated from within Justice’s chain of command.

Eric Holder is in no position to get to the bottom of this. He is a political appointee. A special counsel will be the only way to investigate the investigators and follow the bread crumbs — wherever they might lead.

Even if it leads to a horrible truth that the Democrat Party machine, or worse, the White House can and will use regulatory audits and law enforcement in a widely coordinated effort when necessary to target and intimidate political enemies.

If this was all politically motivated, it is beyond Nixonian. It is fascist.

One thing is for certain, it defies credibility that the governmental attack on Engelbrecht was not coordinated. The only question that remains for a special counsel is who did the coordination.

UPDATE: True the Vote files suit against the Internal Revenue Service.

Robert Romano is the Senior Editor of Americans for Limited Government.

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