Longtime readers of CHQ may recall that back in September of 2015 we ran a series of articles detailing our battle with then-Attorney General of California Kamala Harris over her
unconstitutional and illegal demands any organization soliciting funds in California submit an unredacted copy of their IRS form 990 to her – thus publicly disclosing their donors’ names and addresses.
Federal regulations forbid states from requiring nonprofits to reveal their donors, however, if nonprofits didn’t comply with Harris’s demands, they could lose their license to solicit in California. There is already a federal process in place for the state to obtain the donor list of nonprofits they are investigating for wrongdoing, by-the-way.
As our colleague attorney Mark Fitzgibbons explained in a 2016 column for the Washington Examiner:
The federal tax information privacy statute was written after abuses by Richard Nixon’s staffers, who targeted political enemies by obtaining their tax return information and having the IRS institute audits. The post-Watergate law is designed to prohibit snooping by government officials by defining unlawful “disclosure” of confidential tax information broadly as “making [it] known to any person in any manner whatever,” unless expressly authorized in the statute. Unlawful disclosure includes state officials obtaining confidential tax information outside the express authorizations of the federal statute.
Besides violating the federal privacy statute, Harris’s demands violate an essential notion of nongovernmental democracy that is at the core of American values: The right of private association.
The fear was that if these donors are revealed, the government could target them as was done in the Lois Lerner IRS scandal, where conservative groups were systematically discriminated against by the agency.
But that didn’t stop Harris from threatening the organizations with blacklisting and crippling fines if they didn’t comply with her demands.
We were among the leaders who organized dozens of organizations, including charities and major conservative nonprofits, nationally recognized attorneys specializing in nonprofit law and more than 1,400 citizens to file comments with Ms. Harris in response to a proposed rulemaking about how those donor names will be kept “confidential” from public disclosure.
In a 2015 column titled “You Wonder Why Americans Are Pissed Off” (unfortunately taken offline when we switched web hosts) we explained that the constitutional threat to the First Amendment and the rights of free speech and association were just part of the problem with Kamala Harris’s demands.
The other part, which didn’t get as much attention, perhaps because it is hard to put in legal terms, is the institutionalization of law breaking by the ruling elite that was behind Kamala Harris’s actions as California Attorney General.
In a society where the law was still respected and applied without political bias or intent Kamala Harris wouldn’t even thought of undertaking that blatant attempt to intimidate conservatives. And if she did, based on the plain meaning of the applicable federal law, a court would stop her.
But in the years preceding 2015 when Obama was President, and certainly over the years Kamala Harris has been Vice President, we Americans learned we no longer live in a society where the law is applied equally and without political bias or intent – we now live in a strange oligarchy in which a self-appointed elite, starting with the President and going right down to a state Attorney General and even local zoning officials, decides which laws apply to them and which laws they will follow.
“You’ve got an attorney general breaking federal law, and you’ve got judges upholding her breaking the law and you wonder why Americans are pissed off,” Fitzgibbons told Casey Harper of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
If Harris so cavalierly abused her power as Attorney General of California imagine what she would do as President.
Establishment media looking to explain a host of today’s political and cultural phenomena – like the rise of Donald Trump as the leading contender for President – need look no further than Mark Fitzgibbons’ comment, “You wonder why Americans are pissed off,” about Kamala Harris’s attempt to institutionalize government intimidation of her political opponents for their answer.
Conservatives, we are in a battle for the survival of a free America established and created under God’s laws. None should stay on the sidelines in this election. Working together we can save America for our children, grandchildren, and future generations. Please forward this and other CHQ articles to your contact list to inform and educate family, friends, neighbors, and others on what’s at stake in this election.
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