IRS Reimburses NOM $50,000 In Legal Fees And Expenses, NOM Claims ‘IRS Admits Wrongdoing’

The IRS is reimbursing the National Organization For Marriage $50,000 for legal fees and expenses related to a mistake made by an IRS employee sending an un-redacted form in response to a Freedom of Information request. NOM is claiming something entirely different.

After losing every single marriage case and every single money laundering and campaign finance case they’ve fought, after holding a March for Marriage attended by 2000 people or less, the leadership at the National Organization For Marriage are grasping onto anything they can tweak into a “win” just to prove to their supporters they’re not facing doom. Sadly, when the only “win” you can find is getting an expense check in the mail from the federal government, well, you’re facing doom.

Today the National Organization For Marriage is touting an agreement the IRS has made to them, following a federal judge’s ruling that not only slammed NOM but did so rather vociferously.

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As The New Civil Rights Movement reported, U.S. District Court Judge James C. Cacheris in his June 3 ruling against NOM used terms like, “NOM has failed to produce a shred of proof,” NOM’s argument “misses the mark,” is “unconvincing,” “is unpersuasive,” and “[t]o find that NOM could prevail from this scintilla of evidence … is not appropriate.”

 

In 2012, in response to a Freedom of Information request, an IRS employee made a mistake and provided what NOM is calling an LGBT activist an un-redacted list of NOM’s donors. The employee should have first redacted the names, addresses, and dollar amounts the donors (one of whom being a Mitt Romney Super PAC) made to NOM.

For two years NOM has tried to claim they are in the same (non-existent) boat as Tea Party groups that were challenged by the IRS after trying to claim they were entitled to a tax-exempt status (they are not — read the law.) NOM conflated their victim status in a brazen attempt to gain favor with the radical and religious right, and given their occasional invites to paperer on Fox News, it worked.

But in truth, as a federal court judge ruled, the IRS was not attempting war on NOM, one employee merely made a mistake. NOM lost two of the three counts of its case last month, and the third count — reimbursement of expenses, NOM, in its court filing, had requested about $58,000. Today the IRS agreed to $50,000 — less than NOM wanted — but NOM is wrongly claiming a win.

If a tree falls on your house and you repair your house and your insurance company sends you a check for the expenses associated with that event — say, fixing the roof, perhaps a few nights in a hotel, and maybe replacement of some damaged clothing or furniture — you don’t say Mother Nature admitted “wrongdoing.” You breathe a sigh of relief that an event (act of God, anyone?) didn’t cost you more than time, energy, and emotional upset.

“IRS Admits Wrongdoing in Release of the National Organization for Marriage’s Confidential Tax Return and Donor List; Agrees to Pay $50,000 in Settlement of Lawsuit,” is the headline NOM today is claiming is accurate.

Obviously, it is not.

“Thanks to a lot of hard work, we’ve forced the IRS to admit that they in fact were the ones to break the law and wrongfully released this confidential information.” — John Eastman, NOM chairman

Of course, the IRS did not admit they broke the law, they admitted to a mistake — without intent to harm.

Perhaps the IRS should sue NOM?

 

Image by Fibonacci Blue via Flickr under a CC License

Hat tip: Luke Brinker at Media Matters