Dear Media: This man is not a victim, nor are his conservative allies.
Pro Publica:
On its 2012 tax return, GOP strategist Karl Rove’s dark money behemoth Crossroads GPS justified its status as a tax-exempt social welfare group in part by citing its grants of $35 million to other similarly aligned nonprofits. [...]
The return, signed under penalty of perjury, specified that the grants would be used for social welfare purposes, “and not for political expenditures, consistent with the organization’s tax-exempt mission.”
But that’s not what happened.
And what exactly did happen? Well, according to Pro Publica's research, Crossroads GPS gave $11.2 million to Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, money that Crossroads claimed was intended for permissible "social welfare" purposes but was actually used for impermissible electioneering.
According to Pro Publica, this sort of transaction—claiming to earmark money for "social welfare" even though that money ends up getting spent on campaigns—illustrates one way that groups like Crossroads GPS manage to qualify for tax-exempt status while still engaging in political activity.
Remember, the issue here isn't whether Crossroads should be allowed to spend money on campaigns—it's whether it donors to Crossroads should be allowed to deduct their donations from their income. In other words, it's whether or not the public should subsidize their political activity. The law makes it clear that they should not, but Rove's group clearly believes that laws were made to be bent to their will.
The pathetic thing is that even though these guys get away with shenanigans like this, they still claim to be victims of Obama's tyrannical IRS. Nothing could be further from the truth, yet as we've seen throughout the year, the media is far more interested in reporting on their bogus claims of oppression than on actual examples of malfeasance taking place right beneath their noses.