In other news, it appears the group behind the deceptive Planned Parenthood fetus body parts video is a fraud.
The American Bridge opposition research group and Slate did some digging and discovered the Center for Medical Progress lied to the IRS.
But as Slate reports, the Center for Medical Progress appears to be nothing more than a front organization for the anti-abortion group Live Action. That is not how the IRS understood it when considering the group's application for tax-exempt status, and not how the group originally presented itself to the public in soliciting donations.
According to new research by the Bridge Project, the policy arm of the progressive group American Bridge, the IRS granted the Center for Medical Progress tax-exempt status as a 501(c)3 nonprofit in 2013 under the classification code G92, which applies to biomedicine charities. In the National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities, which is used by the IRS, that classification covers "Diseases, Disorders, Medical Disciplines: Biomedicine, Bioengineering." So-called "right to life" groups, defined as groups that "support the passage of legislation which assigns legal rights to the unborn and seeks to criminalize the termination of unwanted pregnancies," have their own classification code with the IRS.
I've said this dozens of times in the past and I doubt this will be the last time I have to say it -- government oversight itself, especially oversight conducted by the IRS, has been thoroughly diminished by the series of successive fake scandals ginned up by House Republicans who transformed the Oversight Committee into a nakedly political, opposition research committee.
Darrell Issa's legacy is not one of fraud busting; it's one of fraud promotion.
Despite all their efforts, House Republicans have not found a smoking gun, but they have placed guns in the hands of many.