A conservative critic of President Barack Obama who twice found himself in tax court with a hostile Internal Revenue Service says newly released government documents from the cases against him prove his audits were acts of political retaliation.
"I've got proof that the IRS targeted me for my political views," Wayne Allyn Root, a former Libertarian Party vice presidential candidate, told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner on
Newsmax TV on Tuesday.
Story continues below video.
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Root, an author and radio talk show host who was a classmate of Obama at Columbia University in New York, said the files he sued for also show that a Democratic U.S. senator — not named in the documents — was involved.
Root said he has "handed over all of that proof" to Senate investigators who are looking into why the IRS leveled extra scrutiny against tea party and other politically conservative activists that were trying to set up tax-exempt nonprofit organizations.
"The next step, I hope, is that I will testify in front of the United States Senate," said Root. "These people have got to pay."
He used the
president's own word from 2013 on the scandal, saying, "It's outrageous, and if it happened, people have to be held responsible."
Root has at different points accused Obama of stealing the 2012 presidential election and attempting to destroy the capitalist foundations of the U.S. economy.
"I've been in the media nonstop for Obama's entire six years," he said. "Over 6,000 appearances not only attacking Obama and his policies and his goals, but also pointing out that I was his classmate at Columbia and talking about his background at Columbia University.
"You know I got under his skin, so I don't think it's farfetched to assume that everything that happened to me happened upon orders of the Obama White House."
Root also said he was just "the tip of the iceberg" — he says the Obama administration used the IRS to target "hundreds of people just like me."
He said the difference in his case is the assistance of Judicial Watch, the government watchdog organization that helped him sue for the records generated by two IRS audits and the related court cases — both of which Root won.
"I'm just lucky enough that Judicial Watch took my case and we were able to obtain my files," he said, describing the organization as "relentless" toward government lawyers who "fought us for 14 months" before finally giving up the documents.
Root said his master file, which was marked "sensitive case," is replete with "notes that I'm a tea party guy and that I'm a Republican conservative and I'm on Fox and other media that are conservative media. They name the host I'm on TV with and they name where I wrote my columns."
The documents also show that on the same day IRS official
Lois Lerner resigned — May 23, 2013 — amid questions about her role in the targeting of tea party groups, an IRS official called the staffer conducting the Root audit and instructed him to shut it down, said Root.
Discussing the apparent involvement of a Democratic senator, Root said the documents indicate it was a senator from Oregon — and his guess is Ron Wyden, the former Senate Finance Committee chairman with oversight of the IRS.
"I don't know it's him, but I'm just guessing," said Root. "That senator had oversight over the IRS, and maybe the White House made a call to him because they were afraid to put their fingerprints on it and said, 'Sen. Wyden, go ahead and get this guy.'"
Root said that, all told, the evidence points to deliberate harassment, political punishment, and an effort to silence him.
"Democratic U.S. senator involved, IRS employees talking about my politics and writing it down," he said.
"The IRS agent said he spent countless hours on the Internet studying my life and my political views. If this isn't proof, it certainly is a mountain of circumstantial evidence that shows there was a widespread criminal conspiracy using the IRS and the powers of the Democratic Party and the powers of the federal government."
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