Obamagate timeline

This is a timeline. For a detailed presentation, see Barack Hussein Obama and Barack Obama Controversies.

The Obamagate controversy came to light when Mark Levin accused the Obama administration, at the direction of Barack Obama, of being responsible for using government agencies to spy on and harass its political opposition — namely the Tea Party, Donald Trump, his aides, and then U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions, who is presently the Attorney General of the United States.

2010

• 21 January. Citizens United overturned.
• 27 January. Obama insults the Supreme Court in his State of the Union address over the Citizens United ruling.
• March. IRS employees in Cincinatti instructed from Washington to scrutinize tax-exempt applications using the words "Tea Party" or "Patriots" in the name.
• August. The IRS distributes its first BOLO (Be on the Lookout) list to examiners nationwide. The criteria on the BOLO list were Tea Party organizations applying for section 501(c)(3) or section 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status.
• 26 October. In a campaign speech, Obama promises to "punish our enemies and reward our friends."
• 2 November. Republicans sweep Midterms. GOP gained 63 seats in the House and took control, the largest for any midterm election since 1938 in the Great Depression. All 63 seats came from Democrats who had voted on a straight partyline for Obamacare. The GOP also gained six seats in the U.S. Senate. In state legislstures the GOP gained 680 seats. to break the previous majority record set by Democrats in the immediate post-Watergate Scandal Midterms of 1974. Republicans controlled 26 state legislatures, compared to 15 still by Democrats, and 29 of 50 Governorships. Obama referred to this outcome as his "shellacking".

2011

• June. Terminology on the BOLO list is increased to include additional names (Patriots and 9/12 Project) as well as specific policy positions such as government spending, government debt, or taxes; or involved advocating or lobbying to "make America a better place to live"; or criticized how the country is being run; or advocated education about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; or focused on challenging the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare.

2012

• February. IRS abuses hit the media for the first time but attract little attention.
• 22 March. IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman testifies before the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight that there was "absolutely no targeting" by the IRS of conservative and/or Tea Party organizations.
• July. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) inquiry begins.
• 6 November Obama elected to second term.
• 11 November Shulman steps down as IRS Commissioner.

2013

• 21 January. Obama re-inaugurated for second term.
• 14 May. Inspector General issues initial report; FBI begins investigation.
• 12 June. Use of the BOLO list is suspended.
• 20 June. News is made public that two former Commissioners who oversaw abuses were paid bonuses of $42,000 and $100,000, respectively.

2014

• 13 June. IRS notified House Republican investigators that it had lost emails from January 2009 to April 2011. The emails were under subpoena. NSA megadata collection also made the loss of data impossible.
• 19 June. IRS said that a damaged hard drive containing the missing emails had been disposed of more than two years prior. Legal commentators raised questions how the IRS handled these federal records. A National Archives and Records Administration spokesperson said: "The Office of the Chief Records Officer for the U.S. Government has contacted the IRS to explore specifics of the situation.
• 9 July. Republicans released an April 13, 2013 email from the Commissioner in which she cautioned colleagues to "be cautious about what we say in emails," citing congressional inquiries. Congressional investigators said this email suggested that the Commissioner tried to hide evidence.
• 5 September. The IRS said it lost additional emails of five workers under congressional investigation. These five workers include two people based in Cincinnati who worked on Tea Party cases.
• 4 November. Midterm elections. Republicans take control of the Senate, 54-46. Overall, the elections resulted in the largest Republican majority in the entire country in nearly a century, 247 House members, 31 governorships, and 68 state legislative chambers. GOP gains in the House were the largest majority since 1928, as well as the largest number of state legislatures since 1928.
• 22 November. A spokesman for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's Republican majority stated that TIGTA investigators told Congress that they had recovered up to 30,000 emails to and from a past Commissioner.
• 23 December. Chairman Issa's staff released a new report that found that "[t]he IRS's inability to keep politics out of objective decisions about interpretation of the tax code damaged its primary function: an apolitical tax collector that Americans can trust to treat them fairly."

2015

• January. The new Republican Senate requested that the White House produce all communications it has had with the IRS since 2010.

2016

• June. Obama administration seeks FISA warrant to eavesdrop on Donald Trump and associates. FISA court denies request.
• October. Obama administration rewrites request for covert electronic surveillance on Trump. FISA court approves request.
• 7 November. HeatStreet reports two separate sources with links to the counter-intelligence community confirmed that the FBI was granted a FISA court warrant in October, giving counter-intelligence permission to examine the activities of ‘U.S. persons’ in Donald Trump’s campaign.
• 8 November. Donald Trump elected president.
• 19 December. Electoral College meets in 50 state capitols to elect new president.

2017

• 6 January. Congress certifies Donald Trump's victory with 306 Electoral votes.
• 11 January. The UK Guardian reported that "the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court over the summer in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials. The Fisa court turned down the application asking FBI counter-intelligence investigators to narrow its focus." The Guardian further stated unconfirmed reports claim a warrant was obtained in October.
• 11 January. Trump complains leaked information by the Obama administration targeting him is "something that Nazi Germany would have done.”
• 12 January. The New York Times reported, "In its final days, the Obama administration has expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections."
• 12 January. NSA official John Schindler tweeted,"When |@IgnatiusPost speaks, Langley's 7th floor lips are moving. They are taking traitor Trump out now." Langley's 7th floor is a reference to CIA headquarters.
• 18 January. McClatchy News Service headlined a story that the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and representatives of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) collaborated for months in an investigation of Donald Trump, according to two anonymous sources.
• 19 January. The New York Times carried a frontpage headline, Wiretapped Data Used in Inquiry of Trump Aides. The article stated "investigators have accelerated their efforts in recent weeks but have found no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, the officials said. One official said intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House. The headline has been changed for its online version.
• 20 January. Donald Trump inaugurated president.
• 1 March. New York Times reports "In the Obama administration’s last days, some White House officials scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election — and about possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald Trump and Russians — across the government.
• 4 March. Trump tweets, "How low has President Obama gone to tap my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!"