Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., asked the IRS Monday to investigate whether the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has illegally received or solicited funds from foreign governments.
The letter, sent to IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, was written in response to news that CAIR has lost its IRS tax exempt status for failing to properly file annual tax reports, known as form 990s, for three years in a row.
The fact that CAIR’s donations are no longer tax deductible was exposed last week by the Investigative Project on Terrorism. CAIR’s national entities, CAIR-National and the CAIR Foundation, were both included on a list of hundreds of thousands of organizations that had lost their status for failing to file the paperwork.
But Rep. Wolf indicated that CAIR differs from those thousands of other organizations because it was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator (UCC) in the case of a U.S. Muslim charity found guilty of funneling millions of dollars to Hamas. When CAIR tried to have its named removed from the UCC list, a U.S. district court judge declined to strike CAIR’s name.
“Given CAIR’s status…this failure to comply with federal disclosure laws is all the more troubling,” Rep. Wolf wrote.
Mr. Shulman, I hope you bring your rubber gloves with you, because CAIR is going to need a very deep, probing audit into this matter.