Opinion Page: IRS granted tax-exempt status to extremists, including an Oath Keepers foundation – here’s why that’s not as surprising as it sounds

See, Stochastic Terrorism, Speech Incantations, and Federal Tax Exemption

From Elizabeth Schmidt, writing for The Conversation, May 18, 2023

You might presume that the government would automatically refuse to grant tax-exempt status to white nationalist and anti-government groups. Yet as a scholar who has researched nonprofit accountability, I’ve seen the authorities struggle to draw the line between which organizations deserve to operate as nonprofits and those that don’t.  The IRS usually grants this status to any applicant with at least one of eight purposes, including being charitable or educational.

Figuring out if food banks deserve exemption is generally straightforward, as they engage in an obviously charitable activity. Determining whether organizations are truly religious or educational is harder.

Oath Keepers Educational Foundation

Some groups with ties to the Oath Keepers – an extremist group with leaders who were found guilty of seditious conspiracy connected to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol – were granted this status.  Until recently, the Oath Keepers had chapters scattered across the country, and the main group never became a 501(c)(3) organization. But the Oath Keepers Educational Foundation and several smaller affiliated groups did obtain that status.

The foundation told the IRS when it sought charitable status that its primary purpose was “to give veterans an opportunity for continued involvement in community service.”  The Oath Keepers network has largely collapsed amid the prosecution of its members who engaged in the Jan. 6 attack. Most notably, founder Stewart Rhodes was found guilty in 2022 of seditious conspiracy for helping plot the insurrection. He is expected to be sentenced around May 25, 2023, and could spend more than two decades in prison. Rhodes was also listed as the foundation’s president when it was established.

When the Oath Keepers’ former spokesman Jason Van Tatenhove testified before Congress in 2022, he revealed that the group was radicalizing its followers and spreading violent messaging.  The Three Percenters, another extremist group with ties to people who were convicted for their role in the Jan. 6 attacks, was a charity at that time. Its leadership subsequently dissolved the organization.

Unite the Right ties

Other white nationalist groups, such as Identity Evropa and the National Policy Institute, have received 501(c)(3) status over the years.  Both of those groups were among the organizers of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, where participants attacked progressive counterprotesters, killing one of them and injuring many others . . .  But it should be clear that charities that encourage violence and cheer on extremism are not contributing to society with any of the purposes the IRS allows.

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darryll jones