If you expose corruption in the government, be prepared to face retribution. That’s what happened when we at the American Accountability Foundation uncovered several of President Joe Biden’s disastrous nominees; radical leftist plants whose policies and backgrounds raised serious concerns.
Since 2020, our scrappy team of investigators has worked tirelessly to publish the truth about high-ranking government officials trying to dismantle our country from the inside. Our goal has always been simple: tell the people the truth and let them decide for themselves.
The Biden administration didn’t like that — so much so, it unleashed the IRS on us to conduct a targeted audit of our 2021 tax filings. Our crime? Simply calling attention to facts.
These facts led to the successful blocking of Biden nominees such as hypocritical climate warrior Ann Carlson and, more recently, the firing of Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, a radical leftist who used America’s top library to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and LGBT literature for young children.
Civil servants are supposed to work for the people, not push their own agenda. In fact, they take an oath to defend the public interest, not their own private, political motives. But the message from the last administration is unmistakable: question government officials, no matter the paper trail they’ve left displaying their biased agendas, and you will be punished.
It’s no coincidence that our IRS audit came after top Democrats, including Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), explicitly called for investigations into conservative organizations such as AAF by name. What followed was exactly that.
The IRS drew up demand letters and launched an investigation into our small organization, one that cost us over $13,000 in direct legal fees and over 50 hours of time spent providing files, emails, and information relating to “current public elected officials,” a blatant indictment of the IRS’s political motive to target our research. At the end of the day, the IRS found “no change” and was forced to close the examination.
We’re just one group among countless others that have faced retribution for daring to question the previous administration. It’s another clear-cut case of one political party weaponizing federal power against those who hold it accountable, something the IRS is an expert on all the way back to the Obama-Lerner days.
Biden’s choice to wield the IRS against us is proof that when the Left utters platitudes about “American democracy,” it wants democracy in its image only: anti-American and anti-democratic. This simple formula has worked for tyrants across centuries: threaten your enemies in an attempt to keep them quiet.
TOP IRS DIVISION APPEARS PACKED WITH ANTI-TRUMP OFFICIALS
For now, thanks to President Donald Trump’s decisive victory, watchdog groups such as ours have a reprieve from political persecution as the new administration works to rectify the utter assault Biden’s lackeys launched on not only conservative organizations but also innocent citizens.
Let’s not let the next three and a half years of winning cause us to forget. The IRS and other agencies like it have a long memory and the institutional framework to curb our freedoms. Thousands of faceless bureaucrats lie in wait for their next grab at power and the chance to reshape America in their image—not if we have something to say about it.
Tom Jones is the president of the American Accountability Foundation, a watchdog organization that holds policymakers accountable for their actions.