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Fox News: IRS Law Against Churches Endorsing Politicians ‘An Assault On People Of Faith’

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Fox News co-host Tucker Carlson says that the IRS enforcing a half-century old law prohibiting churches from endorsing politicians is designed to “crush” them, and is “an assault on people of faith” by atheists.

Tucker Carlson is best-known as the former co-host of CNN’s original “Crossfire” political news show, and the target of a famous takedown by Jon Stewart when the “Daily Show” host appeared live and asked him to “stop hurting America.” Shortly thereafter CNN announced it was not renewing Carlson’s contract and was canceling the show.

Fast forward a decade. Carlson is even more of a “political hack,” as Stewart accused, than he was at CNN. He is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of the Daily Caller, a Breitbart-esque political news site that is wildly partisan and far-right-leaning.

But Carlson is also the weekend co-host of Fox News’ “Fox & Friends,” and on Saturday hosted a wildly fact-less segment attacking the IRS for enforcing the law — something Fox News regularly attacks the Obama administration for not doing. 

Clearly, the concept of separation of church and state seems foreign to Carlson.

The law Carlson claims atheists are using to “crush” churches is 1954’s Johnson Amendment, named for then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, which prohibits tax-exempt groups, including churches and other non-profits, from endorsing political candidates.

The IRS recently settled with the Freedom From Religion Foundation after the group sued when the IRS announced it would not enforce the law. The IRS agreed to investigate charges of law-breaking by non-profits — in other words, it would do its job — as part of its settlement.

The Raw Story reports on Carlson’s wild accusations:

On Saturday, Tucker Carlson told Pajamas Media Legal Editor J. Christian Adams that this was another examples of “liberal politicians, liberal groups asking the IRS to crush organizations that they don’t agree with.”

“They want to use IRS as a weapon against Christianity, against faith,” Adams agreed. “Using the power of government to go after faith, that’s what it’s about. Sure, there are going to be churches in the South that go after Democrats, but it’s a much bigger and far more dangerous campaign they’re on.”

“This is basically an assault on people of faith,” Carlson opined.

“They want to turn belief in constitutional principles, belief in God into a political thing,” Adams declared. “They want to use the IRS to go after people who express their faith from the pulpit and urge action. That’s the important part, they want people who believe to shut up.”

At no point did Carlson mention that the IRS is legally-obligated to enforce the law — nor did he even mention there is a 60-year old law in place prohibiting electioneering or endorsement of politicians.

Watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73nWvAry6ks

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BREAKING NEWS

Trump Files Sweeping Legal Motion to Try to Block Georgia Grand Jury Findings and District Attorney Fani Willis

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March 20, 2023

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Attorneys for Donald Trump Monday morning filed a sweeping 483-page legal motion asking a Georgia court to block any report from the Fulton County special grand jury and any evidence the grand jury may find, and to force District Attorney Fani Willis to recuse in the investigation into his unlawful attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in that state.

The Daily Beast’s Jose Pagliery first reported the filing. The Atlanta Journal Constitution also reports Trump’s attorneys have filed the motion.

Lawfare Blog’s Anna Bower, who has been covering the Fulton County case, calls the filing “mammoth.”

The news comes just hours after reports District Attorney Willis could be considering RICO, or conspiracy and racketeering charges against Trump.

READ MORE: ‘This Man Is a Criminal’: George Conway Busts GOP’s ‘Completely Ridiculous’ Trump Defense

This is a breaking news and developing story. 

Image via Shutterstock

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‘RICO’: Trump Could Be Facing Racketeering and Conspiracy Charges Used to Prosecute Organized Crime

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1 hour ago

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March 20, 2023

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Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis is reportedly considering RICO charges against Donald Trump in her probe of his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, CNN reports. RICO charges are generally used when prosecuting organized crime cases.

“The reason that I am a fan of RICO is, I think jurors are very, very intelligent,” Willis had said last year about a different case. “They want to know what happened. They want to make an accurate decision about someone’s life. And so RICO is a tool that allows a prosecutor’s office and law enforcement to tell the whole story.”

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, a law professor and an NBC News/MSNBC contributor, Monday morning on Twitter, pointing to CNN’s report, said Willis “is seriously considering a RICO charge.” She repeated that claim on MSNBC shortly after.

READ MORE: Experts Warn Trump Is Encouraging Violence One Day After He Announces Rally at Waco on 30th Anniversary of Siege

CNN reports, “Investigators have a large volume of substantial evidence related to a possible conspiracy from inside and outside the state, including recordings of phone calls, emails, text messages, documents, and testimony before a special grand jury. Their work, the source said, underscores the belief that the push to help Trump was not just a grassroots effort that originated inside the state.”

On-air Monday morning, CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig, a former federal and state prosecutor, explained conspiracy, racketeering, and RICO, saying, “conspiracy” is “a loaded word. But all it really means is an agreement, a meeting of the minds between two or more people to commit a crime.”

But he added, “if we go up to racketeering, now, this is a really powerful tool the prosecutors use. What you have to do is show two things. First of all, the existence of what we call a racketeering enterprise, that can be a Mafia family, that can be a drug trafficking organization, but it could also be a corporation or a political entity, and then you have to show that they engage in what we call a pattern of racketeering activity, meaning that they committed two or more crimes in an organized fashion, which brings us to this other new piece of information. There’s a third phone call we already know about, of course, the infamous phone call to Brad Raffensperger. ‘I just want to find 11,780 votes.’ There’s also a public recording of Donald Trump talking to this investigator, Francis Watson, when he tells her, ‘when the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised.'”

READ MORE: ‘Reacting to a Cult Leader’: Trump Supporters Organizing to ‘Stock Up on Weaponry’ Says GOP Adviser

“Now we know, Trump also called the former Georgia Speaker of the House asking him to convene a special session,” Honig continued. “As we know we’ve heard from some of the grand jurors special grand jurors who’ve come out, they’ve told us that they recommended indictments for more than a dozen people.”

Watch CNN’s report below or at this link.

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‘This Man Is a Criminal’: George Conway Busts GOP’s ‘Completely Ridiculous’ Trump Defense

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2 hours ago

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March 20, 2023

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George Conway ripped Republicans for defending lifelong “criminal” Donald Trump against a looming indictment in New York.

The ex-president apparently expects to be charged in the Stormy Daniels hush money payoff, and the conservative attorney told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that he richly deserves it.

“The Republicans are behaving like complete disgraces,” Conway said. “They’re basically saying that, by saying that Trump is being persecuted, they’re essentially saying, you can’t touch Trump and Trump is above the law. Whatever slack you might have wanted to cut a former president, that was gone after Jan. 6. This man is a recidivist criminal, he’s committed fraud all his life, he’s lied all of his life.”

“This Stormy Daniels thing was something he cooked up,” Conway added. “The notion that [Michael] Cohen is going to be discredited on it is ridiculous given the paper trail. We see the checks signed by Donald Trump. It’s hard to say he is being picked on for paying $130,000 in hush money to a porn star and concealing that and using a straw donor, which was Cohen, to do that, and saying he’s being persecuted somehow when no one has ever done that it is completely ridiculous.”

RELATED: Georgia weighs slapping Trump with racketeering charges: CNN

Watch the video below or at this link.


 

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