The Biden Administration’s IRS has launched an investigative audit against the American Accountability Foundation (AAF), a conservative nonprofit which has actively opposed several nominees for key administration positions.
As the Daily Caller reports, the IRS is investigating AAF’s tax-exempt status, and has requested that the group submit all internal financial data, communications, and other internal documents. AAF, which was approved for nonprofit tax-exempt status in August of 2021, has claimed that the audit is in retaliation for the group’s reporting on several Biden nominees who eventually withdrew due to scrutiny.
“This sudden request by the IRS is not random,” said Tom Jones, the President of AAF, in a statement. “The IRS is demanding ‘[c]orrespondence files, emails and information posted on a website that relates to current public elected officials’ – clearly a sign that they are targeting our research and education activities. It’s a deliberate attempt to punish and suppress AAF’s activities. It is surely no coincidence that AAF—the very organization that exposed the weaponization of the IRS—is now the target of it.”
AAF had previously targeted such nominees as Gigi Sohn, Biden’s pick for chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), over multiple donations that Sohn had made to the campaigns of Democratic Senators, including Senators Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), John Fetterman (D-Penn.), and Michael Bennett (D-Colo.). The group had sent letters to all four senators demanding that they recuse themselves from voting on Sohn’s confirmation.
AAF continued to spend hundreds of thousands on billboards and other forms of advertising against Sohn’s nomination, which ultimately led to Sohn’s withdrawal.
In 2022, the group publicly criticized Ann Carlson, Biden’s nominee for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, over her “radical” statements on global warming and energy, including a remark she made deriding Americans for loving “their cars and their cheap gas.” The White House withdrew Carlson’s nomination following the backlash.
Another nomination that AAF has taken credit for tanking is Phillip Washington, the nominee for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The IRS’ letter insists that the purpose behind the audit is to confirm that AAF “operates in accordance with section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.”
“We demand that this abuse is put to an end at once,” Jones continued. “The Biden administration is acting as the gangster arm of the Left. Our Constitution and Declaration of Independence guarantee our God-given right to speak the truth about the powerful without being punished and harassed. We will do everything in our power to keep America free.”