bob jones – The Surly Subgroup

By Sam Brunson

Copyright: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic

On November 5—two days after the presidential election—James O’Keefe posted an interview with a postal worker claiming that he and his colleagues were instructed to backdate ballots that they received after election day. The next day he filed an affidavit swearing that he and his colleagues had been instructed to continue picking up ballots after the November 3 deadline.

After an interview with U.S. Postal Service investigators, Richard Hopkins, the postal worker, recanted his statements. He also told investigators that his affidavit had been written by Project Veritas, the organization O’Keefe founded and with which he is associated.

Project Veritas, it turns out, is a tax-exemption organization. And its association with Hopkins may have put its exemption at risk. By signing an untrue affidavit, Hopkins almost certainly broke the law. And several attorneys interview in the Salon story say that Project Veritas may also have broken the law as a result of its involvement in the false affidavit.

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On the Cooking the Books Podcast, Phil Hackney and I discussed Michael Kunzelman’s story (that we both spoke to him about) on white nationalist groups that are tax exempt. Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Eugene Volokh asserts that the IRS cannot constitutionally deny tax exemptions to “hate groups” based on their views, abhorrent that they may be.

Since he name-checks me and fellow Surly blogger Phil Hackney, I figured it was worth responding to his piece. (It’s worth noting that we’ve generated a fair amount of Twitter discussion already; you can catch that in a number of threads, including this one and this one.)

I don’t intend to be comprehensive here, but I want to make five main points: Continue reading “More on Hate Groups and Tax Exemptions [Updated]” →