Tucker goes after politically-charged Media Matters’ non-profit status: ‘This isn’t just unethical, it is illegal’

(Video screenshot)

Media Matters, the far-left organization known for spreading rampant disinformation about conservative media journalists and commentators, appears to be in violation of federal law, Fox  News host Tucker Carlson noted Tuesday evening on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

How so? Though it’s a tax-exempt non-profit, it clearly functions as a political organization.

Listen to his explanation below:

“In its original tax application to the IRS, Media Matters claimed that the American news media were dominated by a pro-Christian bias that needed them to balance it,” he said.

Studies have shown that “pretty much all of journalism now leans left,” as Investor’s Business Daily put it last year. Within financial journalism alone, there’s a ratio of 13 liberals to every conservative.

“Despite the obvious absurdity of that claim the group received non-profit status. It has been violating the terms of that status flagrantly ever since,” Carlson continued.

“For example, during the Obama administration, Media Matters held weekly strategy discussions with the White House about how to hurt its political enemies.”

True. An investigation by The Daily Caller conducted in 2012 found that the far-left group “operate[d] in regular coordination with the highest levels of the Obama White House, as well as with members of Congress and progressive groups around the country.”

According to the White House visitor logs, in the summer of 2010 Media Matters founder David Brock met with then-White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. Around that same time the radically left-wing organization “began a weekly strategy call with the White House.”

Now fast-forward to when the 2016 presidential election began. Media Matters practically transformed overnight into an unofficial PAC for then-Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

“According to a piece in the New Republic, a liberal magazine, Media Matters changed its mission during the 2016 Democratic primaries to campaign for Hillary Clinton,” Carlson explained.

“We were ‘running defense for Clinton,’ one Media Matters staffer said, ‘defending Hillary from every blogger in their mother’s basement.’ In a leaked 2015 memo from inside Clinton’s campaign, staff discussed cooperating, coordinating, colluding with Media Matters to attack Republicans and accuse the press of biased coverage of Hillary.”

Is any of this legal? Carlson claims that it’s not.

“This isn’t just unethical, it is illegal. Under IRS regulations, nonprofits are totally prohibited from participating in the campaigns of political candidates. Media Matters broke the law. The group has never been punished for this, though it is widely known. Media Matters retains its tax-exempt status. That means that you and every other taxpayer is subsidizing attacks on our own First Amendment.”

By “attacks on our First Amendment,” Carlson meant Media Matters’ habit of trying to silence anyone with an opposing viewpoint, including him. He’s recently come under attack from the far-left group for controversial comments he made years ago to a shock jock radio host.

HERE’S WHAT YOU’RE MISSING …

But you’re mistaken if you believe only “whiny” conservative media personalities, as some leftists have put it, believe Media Matters needs to be held accountable. Attorney Boyden Gray, who served as the White House counsel during the late George H.W. Bush’s presidency, feels similarly.

“If anybody wants to spend his own nickel attacking anybody on television or what they’ve said, that’s fine. But I don’t think it ought to be subsidized by the federal government. That’s completely wrong and the government ought to stay out it,” he said to Carlson.

He’s been attempting to hold Media Matters accountable since 2011, when he submitted a letter to the Internal Revenue Service accusing the organization’s “War on Fox News” of being “unlawful conduct.”

“MMA’s activities should disallow its tax-exempt status in two fundamental ways,” he wrote in an op-ed at the time. “First, IRS rulings make clear that attacks on individuals, statement of positions that are unsupported by facts and use of inflammatory language and other distortions will cost an organization its tax-free status.”

“Second, in declaring ‘guerrilla warfare’ on Fox as the ‘leader’ and ‘mouthpiece’ of the Republican Party and in developing a sophisticated Democratic-leaning media training boot camp, MMA has transformed itself into an aggressive advocate for Democratic and progressive causes and thus produced a second deviation from exempt educational activities.

He echoed some of these points Tuesday.

“They have been in violation for over a decade,” he said. “So it’s really outrageous. And I don’t know how it can be stopped. But I think maybe it’s time for someone to speak up at the White House and say, look, the IRS is controlled, it’s under the control of right-thinking people, or better-thinking people, and let’s see if we can push the IRS to treat you fairly. And to treat all people fairly who don’t want to subsidize a speech they don’t agree with.”

Listen:

Carlson concluded the discussion by accusing the IRS of “protecting an openly partisan group in flagrant violation of the law.”

It remains unclear why the IRS has refused to taken action against the far-left group.

Social media users appear to believe it’s time for someone, anyone, to take substantive legal action against both Media Matters and its partner in crime, the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center. Some have even suggested Carlson should recruit Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann’s attorney and sue Media Matters in to bankruptcy:

HERE’S WHAT YOU’RE MISSING …

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