A nonprofit group hopes to award a $1 million bounty to anyone who can provide "smoking gun" evidence to implicate IRS leadership or members of the Obama administration who purposefully targeted conservative and tea party-affiliated groups, TheBlaze has learned.
Gregg Phillips, the managing director for The Voters Trust, a political nonprofit 501 (c)(4) which was established to identify and mobilize Americans, told TheBlaze on Wednesday "that this is the people's bounty to seek the truth."
Catherine Engelbrecht, president of the nonprofit group True the Vote, will be officially announcing the bounty Wednesday night on Megyn Kelly's Fox News show, "The Kelly File" at 9 p.m. ET.
To qualify for the bounty, the person needs to provide "relevant evidence including emails, eye-witness accounts, or testimony of political targeting of Americans by the IRS or the Obama administration that has not previously been reported," according to an official press release from the group obtained by TheBlaze.
Phillips said the evidence must lead directly to the arrest and conviction those responsible and the information provided will remain anonymous and confidential.
"We are going to crowdsource the financing for the bounty," said Phillips, whose group has been planning the public bounty for months. "This is about the American people. The days of the big party - Republican, Democrat, Tea Party - are over and everybody has to unite right now... We're going to unite people around the truth. We're going to return people to liberty instead of expecting Congress or the Justice Department to investigate these wrong doings."
The Voters Trust is offering a reward up to $1 million to an IRS insider or other government whistleblower who comes forward with a new, relevant evidence implicating IRS leadership or the Obama Administration in the IRS witch hunt targeting conservatives.
The Voters Trust is a political non-profit (501 (c)(4)) established to identify and mobilize Americans. The Voters Trust provides a community to those who have been silenced and encourages citizens to speak out and take back their government. The organization’s managing director is Gregg Phillips, founder of super PAC Winning our Future, one of the biggest PACs in the 2012 election cycle.
Bounty Graphic courtesy of Voter's Trust.
Phillips, who is the founder of super PAC Winning our Future, one of the biggest PACs in the 2012 election cycle, said the bounty will allow people to "speak out and take back their government."
A website has been established to help those with information and American's who want to donate and be a part of the bounty, he added.
"I think that what the IRS, the Obama administration has done has a chilling effect on the entire country," she told TheBlaze.
Last year an inspector general’s report disclosed that the IRS had been improperly targeting tax exempt applications of conservative groups. The report noted that groups with the words “tea party” in their name were put on BOLO (be on the lookout) alerts for further investigation.
Some of these organizations, like True the Vote, were asked by IRS investigators to disclose books they read, the content of their prayers and many other private details. In fact, Engelbrecht said she and her husband had to endure not only the IRS, but the FBI's domestic terrorism unit and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. She was also questioned by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote and King Street Patriots, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Feb. 6, 2014 (AP)
Lois Lerner, former head of the IRS exempt organizations unit, was found in contempt of Congress in May for refusing to cooperate with congressional investigators. Many of the groups targeted by the IRS believe that the Obama administration is purposefully censuring information that would reveal the true intentions of administration officials.
Emails obtained by the government watchdog Judicial Watch, through a Freedom of Information Act request, reveal that the targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups came from the IRS in Washington DC. The emails and documents also show Sen. Carl Levin's (D-Mich.) potential involvement in putting pressure on the IRS to investigate conservative tax-exempt organizations.
"This is their intent and if we allow it to continue it will fundamentally reshape the citizen's relationship with the government," Engelbrecht said. "This bounty is about the people, it's about the grassroots and the citizenry of our nation and it belongs to all the people. This is our rallying cry for justice."
According to a press release from Voter's Trust, the "IRS Bounty is a crowd funding effort to raise $1 million dollars to finally peel back the layers of secrecy surrounding the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS and the Obama administration."
"The goal of The Voters Trust bounty project is to discover what other information is out there and how high up the ranks the scandal actual goes," states the press release, first obtained by TheBlaze.
Engelbrecht hopes the bounty will open the eyes of American's " if a conviction occurs I hope this stops and we never have to deal with this again. This is the type of tyranny that kills a Republic and it became a weapon the administration used against its own people."
More information about this project can be found at IRSBounty.com.
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