Politics

The ‘strange’ IRS audit of a Romney fundraiser and her extended family

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The Internal Revenue Service’s political targeting might not have been limited to a few “rogue Cincinnati agents” or even organizations seeking nonprofit status. A major Mitt Romney fundraiser and campaign official — along with her husband and three other family members — all got a visit from the taxman in 2012.

In an interview with The Daily Caller, Kit Moncrief, a big-money fundraiser and state chair in Texas for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, recounted an unusual telephone call she received from an IRS agent on her personal cell phone in the spring of last year.

“The first place [the agent] called me was on my cell phone,” Moncrief said, explaining that she believed the only place the agent could have accessed the number was from a Romney list. “The number is listed under my husband’s name. She wouldn’t have been able to be able to have my cell phone number because on the IRS form it shows the office number.

“She would have had to have gotten it from the Romney list. That’s the only way I can figure out how she got the number,” Moncrief said.

The family business, Moncrief Oil, had faced an audit in the 1990s due to a whistle-blowing employee. But according to Moncrief, the agent explained that her call was due to an “administration directive.”

“She said, ‘Let me just tell you this was not a disgruntled employee, this was a directive from the administration to look into y’all,'” Moncrief said.

“I don’t know if the directive was for money or political, both of which seem very wrong to me,” Moncrief added later when asked for further clarification on the “directive.” She added, “They seem to want to punish people who do well or people who disagree with them.”

Moncrief said the process was “strange” on two levels.

“It was just very strange, number one that she called me for the family business. The tax returns would have said to call the office. And number two she probably said something that she shouldn’t have said, that this was a directive from the administration,” she added.

According to Kit Moncrief the agent was very interested in her, asking Moncrief’s employees specific questions about her activities.

Kit and her husband Charles Moncrief were not the only Moncriefs the IRS visited.

Charles Moncrief told TheDC his daughter Gloria Holmsten and brothers Bill and Richard Moncrief were also audited by the IRS in that same 2012 timeframe, all by different agents.

Bill Moncrief’s audit lasted from May to July 2012, Richard Moncrief’s audit lasted from June to December 2012, and Gloria and her husband Erich Holmsten’s audit lasted from April to June 2012.

Charles Moncrief, explained his audit further to TheDC, noting that he took the agent, whom he identified as Kendra Walloch, to look at their ranch in late May.

“She said that they had received orders to audit anyone that had a [adjusted gross income of over a million dollars],” he said.

Both Charles and Kit Moncrief stressed that Walloch was very kind.

When reached for comment Walloch directed TheDC to the IRS’ national press office. When pressed on where she obtained Kit Moncrief’s cell phone number, Walloch would not refer to Kit Moncrief’s case, but said that often the IRS gets information from Google.

“I can tell you that in general the way we find information out is we do Google searches,” she said.

A Google search for Kit Moncrief’s cell phone number yielded no apparent results.

An IRS spokesman in the national office told TheDC that the IRS could not comment on specific audits.

“Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code prevents the IRS from discussing or commenting,” the IRS emailed TheDC in an official statement.

The IRS audit of Kit and Charles Moncriefs lasted from April to June 2012, and according to the family, everything was found to be in order.

Kit Moncrief further noted that she was not the only Romney fundraiser in her Texas milieu to be audited by the IRS.

Indeed the Moncriefs are not the only Romney supporters who have spoken out about their experience with the IRS.

In an interview with TheDC in May, Mitt Romney super PAC donor Frank VanderSloot explained how he was audited twice by the IRS after being attacked by the Obama campaign as one of eight “wealthy individuals with less-than-reputable records.” In that interview the billionaire businessman and former national co-chair of the Romney campaign’s finance committee said that he was “not the only one” on that list who had received a visit from the IRS.

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