NOM threatens HRC with federal investigation as they try to play victim by comparing the publication of a tax form with the Watergate scandal that rocked the nation.
“I would like to know what the HRC knew and when did they know it,” NOM president Brian Brown said today, echoing a phrase made famous during President Nixon’s Watergate era. NOMÂ is threatening the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) with a federal investigation after The Huffington Post reportedly published a 2008 tax return form from NOM, in what NOM president Brian Brown is calling the possible commitment of “a federal crime by illegally obtaining and then releasing a confidential tax return of the National Organization for Marriage.”
“Either the HRC got NOM’s tax return from someone with the Internal Revenue Service, or they got it from a hacker who stole it. Either way, it appears that a federal crime may have been committed,” Brown said via a statement published on NOM’s blog today:
“It appears that someone with either the IRS or the HRC may have committed a federal crime by illegally obtaining and then releasing a confidential tax return of the National Organization for Marriage,” said Brian Brown, NOM’s president. “It’s clear that the tax return was stolen, either from NOM or from the government. The Huffington Post article says that HRC claimed they received the document from a ‘whistleblower.’ But the term ‘whistleblower’ is completely inapt. We’re talking about a criminal who has stolen confidential tax return information. We demand to know who this criminal is, whether they work for the HRC or the IRS, and how they obtained confidential tax information filed only with the US government.”
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“It certainly appears that either the HRC was involved in illegally obtaining this tax return themselves, or they worked with a criminal who stole it from NOM or the IRS. Either way, it appears that a federal crime may have been committed.”
Brown said he would present a written demand for an investigation to both the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, and to the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service.
NOM has notoriously worked to hide the names of its donors, and, as HRC notes, “multiple federal judges and state boards have thrown out NOM-backed cases, concluding the reasons NOM cites for needing such secrecy — LGBT people are bullies and will harass NOM supporters — is bogus and without sufficient evidence. NOM has unsuccessfully challenged disclosure laws in Washington, Maine, Minnesota, New York, California, Rhode Island, and Iowa. In fact, in every jurisdiction that NOM and its allies have tried to undermine public disclosure they have lost.”
Good As You founder Jeremy Hooper, who also writes for HRC’s NOM Exposed, and who worked with GLAAD to create their Commentator Accountability Project, calls the accusations “baseless,” and asks if this is “NOM’s latest attempt to save face?“