We’ve been covering IRS abuses for a long time and while it’s gone after conservative, Christian and Jewish groups, it’s allowed leftist and Islamist groups to go on operating.
This may be the most extreme example yet.
The Justice Department today announced the unsealing of a five-count complaint charging Reda Mazen Rida Sabassi, 38, of San Diego, California, with terrorism, sanctions-evasion, wire fraud, money laundering, and false statement charges in connection with his efforts to divert funds raised through purported charitable campaigns to Hamas and for personal use.
Since at least in or about 2022, Sabassi has used his social media accounts, crowdfunding websites, and his putative charity called Ikram — The Arab Charity Foundation Inc. (Ikram) to solicit donations from around the world, including from individuals in the United States and New York. In his online fundraising campaigns, Sabassi claimed to be raising funds to provide humanitarian aid to people in Gaza; however, Sabassi was actually raising funds for Hamas. Sabassi and a co-conspirator joked privately that they should name the fundraiser after Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades, before agreeing to use Sabassi’s Ikram. Sabassi worked with the Hamas fundraising organization Gaza Now and other co-conspirators to operate these online fundraisers and to send funds to Hamas.*** Between in or about December 2023 and in or about February 2024, Sabassi raised a total of approximately $600,000 through online fundraising campaigns, from which Sabassi sent approximately $116,000 to a Hamas member and attempted to convert approximately $382,000 of the cash he raised into cryptocurrency to send to Hamas through Gaza Now.
That’s not the strange part of this.
The non-profit in question should never have even been allowed to operate. The paperwork is woefully inadequate and the 2024 filing stated that the “remaining funds were placed under federal seizure due to an ongoing FBI investigation unrelated to the organization’s charitable activities.”
This should have rung some bells at the IRS. But nope. Neither did the FBI action because the IRS database shows that it’s still eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions despite a federal seizure of funds reported on its 2024 990s and a DOJ crackdown.
The IRS spent six years targeting us for writing negatively about Hillary Clinton but having the DOJ go after you for supporting Islamic terrorists is fine with the IRS.
There’s nothing the IRS won’t allow except conservatives.
