by Kim Barker and Justin Elliott, ProPublica, May 17, 2013

The IRS division responsible for flagging Tea Party groups has long been an agency afterthought, beset by mismanagement, financial constraints and an unwillingness to spell out just what it expects from social welfare nonprofits, former officials and experts say.

The controversy that erupted in the past week, leading to the ousting of the acting Internal Revenue Service commissioner, an investigation by the FBI, and congressional hearings that kicked off Friday, comes against a backdrop of dysfunction brewing for years.

Moves launched in the 1990s were designed to streamline the tax agency and make it more efficient. But they had unintended consequences for the IRS's Exempt Organizations division. 

Checks and balances once in place were taken away. Guidance frequently published by the IRS and closely read by tax lawyers and nonprofits disappeared. Even as political activity by social welfare nonprofits exploded in recent election cycles, repeated requests for the IRS to clarify exactly what was permitted for the secretly funded groups were met, at least publicly, with silence.

All this combined to create an isolated office in Cincinnati, plagued by what an inspector general this week described as "insufficient oversight," of fewer than 200 low-level employees responsible for reviewing more than 60,000 nonprofit applications a year.

In the end, this contributed to what everyone from Republican lawmakers to the president says was a major mistake: The decision by the Ohio unit to flag for further review applications from groups with "Tea Party" and similar labels. This started around March 2010, with little pushback from Washington until the end of June 2011.

"It's really no surprise that a number of these cases blew up on the IRS," said Marcus Owens, who ran the Exempt Organizations division from 1990 to 2000. "They had eliminated the trip wires of 25 years."

Of course, any number of structural fixes wouldn't stop rogue employees with a partisan ax to grind. No one, including the IRS and the inspector general, has presented evidence that political bias was a factor, although congressional and FBI investigators are taking another look.

But what is already clear is that the IRS once had a system in place to review how applications were being handled and to flag potentially problematic ones. The IRS also used to show its hand publicly, by publishing educational articles for agents, issuing many more rulings, and openly flagging which kind of nonprofit applications would get a more thorough review.

All of those checks and balances disappeared in recent years, largely the unforeseen result of an IRS restructuring in 1998, former officials and tax lawyers say.

"Until 2008, we had a dialogue, through various rulings and cases and the participation of various IRS officials at various ABA meetings, as to what is and what is not permissible campaign intervention," said Gregory Colvin, the co-chair of the American Bar Association subcommittee that dealt with nonprofits, lobbying, and political intervention from 1991 to 2009.

"And there has been absolutely no willingness in the last five years by the IRS to engage in that discussion, at the same time the caseload has exploded at the IRS."

The IRS did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

Social welfare nonprofits, which operate under the 501(c)(4) section of the tax code, have always been a strange hybrid, a catchall category for nonprofits that don't fall anywhere else. They can lobby. For decades, they have been allowed to advocate for the election or defeat of candidates, as long as that is not their primary purpose. They  also do not have to disclose their donors.

Social welfare nonprofits were only a small part of the exempt division's work, considered minor when compared with charities. When the groups sought IRS recognition, the agency usually rubber-stamped them. Out of 24,196 applications for social welfare status between 1998 and 2009, the exempt organizations division rejected only 77, according to numbers compiled from annual IRS data books.

Into this loophole came the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in January 2010, which changed the campaign-finance game by allowing corporate and union spending on elections.

Sensing an opportunity, some political consultants started creating social welfare nonprofits geared to political purposes. By 2012, more than $320 million in anonymous money poured into federal elections.

A couple of years earlier, beginning in 2010, the Cincinnati workers had flagged applications of tiny Tea Party groups, according to the inspector general, though the groups spent almost no money in federal elections.

The main question raised by the audit is how the Cincinnati office and superiors in Washington could have gotten it so wrong. The audit shows no evidence that these workers even looked at records from the Federal Election Commission to vet much larger groups that spent hundreds of thousands and even millions in anonymous money to run election ads.

The IRS Exempt Organizations division, the watchdog for about 1.5 million nonprofits, has always had to deal with controversial groups. For decades, the division periodically listed red flags that would merit an application being sent to the IRS's Washington, D.C., headquarters for review, said Owens, the former division head.

In the 1970s, that meant flagging all applications for primary and secondary schools in the south facing desegregation. In the 1980s, during the wave of consolidation in the health-care industry, all applications from health-care nonprofits needed to be sent to headquarters. The division's different field offices had to send these applications up the chain.

"Back then, many more applications came to Washington to be worked -- the idea was to have the most sensitive ones come to Washington," said Paul Streckfus, a former IRS lawyer who screened applications at headquarters in the 1970s and founded the industry publication EO Tax Journal in 1996.

Because this list was public, lawyers and nonprofits knew which cases would automatically be reviewed.

"We had a core of experts in tax law," recalled Milton Cerny, who worked for the IRS, mainly in Exempt Organizations, from 1960 to 1987. "We had developed a broad group of tax experts to deal with these issues."

In the 1980s, the division issued many more "revenue rulings" than issued in recent years, said Cerny, then head of the rulings process. These revenue rulings set precedents for the division. Revenue rulings along with regulations are basically the binding IRS rules for nonprofits.

"We would do a revenue ruling, so the public and agents would know," Cerny said. "Over the years, it apparently was felt that a revenue ruling should only be published at an extraordinary time. So today you're lucky if you get one a year. Sometimes it's less than that. It's amazing to me."

Other checks and balances had existed too. Not only were certain kinds of applications publicly flagged, there was another mechanism called "post-review," Owens said. Headquarters in Washington would pull a random sample every month from the different field offices, to see how applications were being reviewed. There was also a surprise "saturation review," once a year, for each of the offices, where everything from a certain time period needed to be sent to Washington for another look.

So internally, the division had ways, if imperfect, to flag potential problems. It also had ways of letting the public know what exactly agents were looking at and how the division was approaching controversial topics.

For instance, there was the division's "Continuing Professional Education," or CPE, technical instruction program. These articles were supposed to be used for training of line agents, collecting and putting out the agency's best information on a particular topic -- on, say, political activity by social welfare nonprofits in 1995.

"People in a group would write up their thoughts: 'Here's the law,'" said Beth Kingsley, a Washington lawyer with Harmon, Curran, Spielberg & Eisenberg who's worked with nonprofits for almost 20 years. "It wasn't pushing the envelope. It was, 'This is how we see this issue.' It told us what the IRS was thinking."

The system began to change in the mid-1990s. The IRS was having trouble hiring people for low-level positions in field offices like New York or Atlanta -- the kinds of workers that typically reviewed applications by nonprofits, Owens said.

The answer to this was simple: Cincinnati.

The city had a history of being able to hire people at low federal grades, which in 1995 paid between $19,704 and $38,814 a year -- almost the same as those federal grades paid in New York City or Chicago. (Adjusted for inflation, that's between $30,064 and $59,222 now.)

"That was well below what the prevailing rate was in the New York City area for accountants with training," Owens said. "We had one accountant who just had gotten out of jail -- that's the sort of people who would show up for jobs. That was really the low point."

So in 1995, the Exempt Organizations division started to centralize. Instead of field offices evaluating applications for nonprofits in each region, those applications would all be sent to one mailing address, a post-office box in Covington, Ky. Then a central office in Cincinnati would review all the applications.

Almost inadvertently, because people there were willing to work for less than elsewhere, Cincinnati became ground zero for nonprofit applications.

For the time being, the checks remained in place. The criteria for flagged nonprofits were still made public. The Continuing Professional Education text was still made public. Saturation reviews and post reviews were still in place.

But by 1998, after hearings in which Republican Senator Trent Lott accused the IRS of "Gestapo-like" tactics, a new law mandated the agency's restructuring. In the years that followed, the agency aimed to streamline. For most of the '90s, the IRS had more than 100,000 employees. That number would drop every year, to slightly less than 90,000 by 2012.

Change also came to the Exempt Organizations division.

The IRS tried to remove discretion from lower-level employees around the country by creating rules they had to follow. While the reorganization was designed to centralize power in the agency's Washington headquarters, it didn't work out that way.

"The distance between Cincinnati and Washington was such that soon Cincinnati became a power center," said Streckfus, the former IRS lawyer.

Following reorganization, many highly trained lawyers in Washington who previously handled the most sensitive nonprofit applications were reassigned to focus on special projects, he said.

Owens, who left the IRS in 2000 but stayed in touch with his old division, said the focus on efficiency meant "eliminating those steps deemed unimportant and anachronistic."

In 2003, the saturation reviews and post reviews ended, and the public list of criteria that would get an application referred to headquarters disappeared, Owens said. Instead, agents in Cincinnati could ask to have cases reviewed, if they wanted. But they didn't very often.

"No one really knows what kinds of cases are being sent to Washington, if any," Owens said. "It's all opaque now. It's gone dark."

By the end of 2004, the Continuing Professional Education articles stopped.

Recommendations from an ABA task force for IRS guidelines on social welfare nonprofits and politics that same year were met with silence. 

Even the IRS's Political Activities Compliance Initiative, which investigated complaints of charities engaged in politics -- primarily churches -- closed up shop in early 2009 after less than five years, without any explanation. 

Both before and after the changes, the Exempt Organizations division has been a small part of the IRS, which is focused on collecting money and chasing delinquent taxpayers.  

Of the 90,000 employees at the agency last year, only 876 worked in the Exempt Organizations' division, or less than 1 in 1,000 employees.

Of those, 335 worked in the office that actually handles applications of nonprofits.  

Most of those -- about 300 -- worked in Cincinnati, Streckfus estimates. The rest were at headquarters, in Washington D.C.

In Cincinnati, the employees' primary job was sifting through the applications of nonprofits, making determinations as to whether a nonprofit should be recognized as tax-exempt. In a press release Wednesday, the IRS said fewer than 200 employees were responsible for that work.

In 2012, these employees received 60,780 applications. The bulk of those -- 51,748 -- were from groups that wanted to be recognized as charities.

But the number of social welfare nonprofit applications spiked from 1,777 in 2011 to 2,774 in 2012. It's impossible to say how many of those groups indicated whether they would engage in politics, or why the number of applications increased. The IRS said Wednesday that it "has seen an increase in the number of tax-exempt organization applications in which the organization is potentially engaged in political activity," including both charities and social welfare nonprofits, but didn't specify any numbers.

On average, one employee in Cincinnati would be responsible for going through roughly one application per day.

Some would be easy -- say, a local soup kitchen. But to evaluate whether a social welfare nonprofit has social welfare as its primary purpose, the agent is supposed to use a "facts and circumstances" test. There is no checklist. Reviewing just one social welfare nonprofit could take days or weeks, to look through a group's website, track down TV ads and so forth.  

"You've got 60,000 applications coming through, and it's hard to do that with the number of agents looking at them," said Philip Hackney, who was in the IRS's chief counsel office in Washington between 2006 and 2011 but said he wasn't involved in the Tea Party controversy. "The reality is that they cannot do that, and that's why you're seeing them pick stuff out for review. They tried to do that here, and it burned them." 

As we have previously reported, last year the same Cincinnati office sent ProPublica confidential applications from conservative groups. An IRS spokeswoman said the disclosures were inadvertent. 

Mark Everson, IRS commissioner for four years during the George W. Bush administration, said he believed the fact that the division is understaffed is relevant, but not an excuse for what happened. "The whole service is under-funded," he pointed out.

And Dan Backer, a lawyer in Washington who represented six of the groups held up because of the Tea Party criteria, said he doesn't buy the notion that low-level employees in Cincinnati were alone responsible.

"It doesn't just strain credulity," Backer said. "It broke credulity and left it laying on the road about a mile back. Clearly these guys were all on the same marching orders."

The inspector general's audit was prompted last year after members of Congress, responding to complaints by Tea Party groups, asked for it.

Like former officials interviewed by ProPublica, the audit suggests that officials at IRS headquarters in Washington were unable to manage their subordinates in Cincinnati. When Lois Lerner, the Exempt Organizations division director in Washington, learned in June 2011 about the improper criteria for screening applications, she instructed that they be "immediately revised."

But just six months later, Cincinnati employees changed the revised criteria to focus on "organizations involved in limiting/expanding government" or "educating on the Constitution." They did so "without executive approval."

"The story people are overlooking is: Congress is complaining about underpaid, overworked employees who are not adequately trained," said Bryan Camp, a former attorney in the IRS chief counsel's office.

In the end, after all the millions of anonymous money spent by some groups to elect candidates in 2012, after all the groups that said in their applications that they would not spend money to elect candidates before doing exactly that, after the Cincinnati office flagged conservative groups, the IRS approved almost all the new applications. Only eight applications were denied. 

The twists in the Robert Menendez saga just keep coming.

The Washington Post reported on Friday that federal investigators are looking at whether someone set out to smear the Democratic senator last year, while he was running for reelection in New Jersey.

That question recently prompted FBI agents to visit the Florida offices of the brothers Alfonso "Alfy" and Jose "Pepe" Fanjul, to interview two of the world's "wealthiest sugar barons," whose holdings include Domino Sugar, according to the Post. Major political donors in the U.S., the Fanjul brothers are also the largest landowners and employers in the Dominican Republic. Last year, Alfy Fanjul reportedly called Menendez to express displeasure about the Senator's vote to end the Agriculture Department's long-running subsidy program for domestic sugar.

A lawyer for the Fanjul brothers' company denied to the Post that anyone at the company was involved with the Menendez affair. According to the newspaper, Alfy Fanjul has personally called Menendez to assure the senator that he was not involved.

And it doesn't even end there. The Post also reported that the FBI last month sought to interview a man named Marty Martin, a former CIA operative who has worked for a company competing against a Dominican port security company owned by Dr. Salomon Melgen, a Florida ophthalmologist, businessman, and major Menendez donor.

Melgen has been at the heart of the story all along. As recently as last month, a grand jury was reportedly looking at whether Menendez improperly helped Melgen's business interests. Last year, a shadowy tipster contacted a nonprofit government watchdog and, subsequently, ABC News and the FBI, with allegations that Menendez had patronized prostitutes while visiting Melgen's home in the Dominican Republic.

The tipster went by the name "Peter Williams," but his true identity has remained a mystery. The FBI appears to now have an interest in solving that mystery.

One of the oddest aspects of the IRS scandal was the way the story first came to light last Friday, when Lois Lerner, head of the IRS' tax-exempt organizations division, apologized for inappropriate targeting of conservative groups. The apology, a major admission, was delivered in a decidedly low-profile place: in response to a question from an attendee at a panel during the American Bar Association tax section's annual meeting in Washington D.C.

It was such an unusual place for Lerner to drop such a bombshell, many people in the room thought the question had been prearranged. Turns out, it was.

"It was a prepared Q & A," outgoing acting IRS chief Steven Miller told Congress on Friday, in response to a question from Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA).

Nunes asked Miller if the question itself, which was asked by Celia Roady, a veteran tax lawyer, was planted in advance.

"I believe we talked about that, yes," Miller responded.

Roady, a partner in the D.C. office of Morgan Lewis, is also a member of the the IRS' Advisory Committee on Tax-Exempt and Government Entities.

Later on in the hearing, Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) asked Miller to elaborate on the conversation that took place before Lerner's admission. Miller said he did not speak to Roady, but did speak to Lerner, over the phone, about how the inspector general's report had been completed, "did it make sense for us to start talking of this in public."

Roskam asked why the revelation was made at the ABA meeting instead of a disclosure to Congress.

"We were going to do it at the same time I believe," Miller said. "Our attempt was to talk to you all at the same time."

"But that didn't happen, did it?" Roskam asked.

"It did not happen, I don't believe," Miller said.

Earlier this week, TPM spoke with a number of people who were in the room where Lerner revealed and apologies for the IRS' actions. It's not unheard of for questions to be prearranged at panels like the one at the ABA tax section meeting. But two of the people in the room asked Roady directly if the question had been planted, and they said Roady had denied it.

Roady did not respond to a request for comment from TPM earlier this week. A message left at her office Friday was not immediately returned.

Watch:

Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday announced that he had ordered a criminal investigation into the IRS scandal, in which the agency was found to have inappropriately screened and handled applications for tax-exempt status from conservative groups.

"The FBI is coordinating with the Justice Department to see if any laws were broken in connection with those matters related to the IRS," Holder said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon. "We are examining the facts to see if there were criminal violations."

The question then became what laws, specifically, investigators would look at. At a Congressional hearing on Wednesday, Holder gave a few more hints, telling lawmakers that the Justice Department was looking at possible "criminal violations of civil rights statutes" as well as any false statements that may have been made, presumably by IRS officials. Holder also mentioned the Hatch Act, which limits the political activity of government employees. While not criminal, Hatch Act violations can result in firings or suspensions.

To try to get a better sense of what investigators will focus on, TPM spoke on Wednesday with two former officials and a tax law professor. Here's one thing they suggested: if you're looking for criminal violations, you're probably going to have to look beyond the report released by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration on Tuesday.

Nathan Hochman, a former assistant attorney general for the tax division of the Justice Department, and currently a partner at the law firm Bingham McCutchen, said it was telling that the report did not refer any of its findings to the Justice Department.

"Generally, the [Inspector General] is not shy if they find clear-cut violations of criminal law to recommend that the Department of Justice investigate them and refer them for criminal investigation," Hochman told TPM. "The fact that you don't see that here suggests that, at least in the IG's mind ... the level of conduct didn't rise to that level of violation."

That said, the report is not the last word on the story, and federal investigators have many more tools at their disposal than the IG investigators did.

"For instance, the Department of Justice can convene a grand jury to look at this issue, issue grand jury subpoenas, bring people in front of the grand jury to give testimony under penalty of perjury," Hochman said. "They have the ability, if necessary, to offer immunity, for testimony that the IG couldn't."

According to Hochman, a civil rights case in this context would be unusual, even though Holder mentioned the possibility on Wednesday.

"I've never seen, at least recently, this statute be used where the civil rights being violated are your First Amendment rights ... probably right of association being the number one here," Hochman said. "Even if they were singled out for this additional scrutiny, the question will be, well, does that constitute, at a criminal level, a violation of your First Amendment rights?"

It's not just the government's lawyers that will be interested in possible civil rights violations. Ellen Aprill, a professor at Loyola Law School, said that while political motive is absent from the IG report, if it could be proved, the wronged organizations could bring their own action.

"I actually don't think the report shows that there was political animus and they were out to just get the right-wing groups, because it was only a small fraction of the groups that got these long letters," Aprill told TPM. "But if they could show it, then I guess [the groups] could try to bring a Bivens action for violation of their civil rights." (A Bivens action is a way for victims of constitutional violations to sue the government.)

With what is known right now, there appear to be at least two more areas of interest, both of which fall outside the scope of the IG report. The first is the IRS' release late last year of pending confidential applications to the news outlet ProPublica. Applications for tax-exempt status normally become public after groups are approved. But until then, they are supposed to remain secret. For reasons still unknown, that's not what happened for nine groups whose materials were sent to ProPublica.

"It's not in the report at all, but that's the only place that I can imagine Eric Holder would have a hook for bringing criminal prosecution against anybody in the IRS in this whole affair," Philip Hackney, an assistant professor of law at Louisiana State University and a former senior technician reviewer in the the IRS' Office of Chief Counsel, told TPM.

Disclosing taxpayer information is a very serious offense for an IRS agent.

"That's like the one-way ticket to the crowbar Hilton in the IRS," Hackney said.

The other area that might be looked at, as Holder mentioned on Wednesday, is false statements made by IRS officials.

"They're going to look at the statements that were made by the IRS, particularly to Congress, and determine whether or not any false statements were made," Hochman said. "Which at the criminal level it's a pretty detailed look at both the actual statement that was made, and the question to which it was responding to, or the context in which it was given."

Tucked inside the the government report that found the IRS used inappropriate criteria to identify tax-exempt applications to review is a list of seven questions.

The questions appeared in letters sent in January and February of 2012 to groups seeking non-profit status, from specialists on an IRS team in Cincinnati known as the Determinations Unit. And the seven questions were later identified as unnecessary by higher-up IRS officials.

The questions are the kind of thing Tea Party groups have been complaining about for a while now. Among other things, the questions asked for donor names, lists of all issues important to applicant organizations, and the political affiliations of group officers, directors, speakers, and candidates supported.

The report released Tuesday by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration blamed the questions on "a lack of managerial review, at all levels." The report also determined that the specialists in Cincinnati, part of the very IRS unit tasked with evaluating applications from non-profits, "lacked knowledge" about what activities 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 groups are allowed to engage in.

"This created burden on the organizations that were required to gather and forward information that was not needed by the Determinations Unit and led to delays in processing the applications," the report stated.

Overall, the report found that 170 organziations received additional information request letters. Ninety-eight of those additional requests were unnecessary, in whole or in part, according to the report.

Here's the full list of questions:

A timeline included in the government report suggested that it was in the wake of these letters going out, in February and March of 2012, that media outlets began to report on the IRS' unfair treatment of Tea Party groups, and that members of Congress "began to show interest in the IRS' treatment of Tea Party organizations."

The fateful question came from a tax lawyer, in a room filled with dozens of them. It came at the end of a Friday morning panel, on the second day of the American Bar Association tax section's big annual meeting at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Washington D.C. The moderator had announced that it would be the panel's last question.

"Lois, a few months ago there were some concerns about the IRS's review of 501(c)(4) organizations, of applications from tea party organizations," Celia Roady, a veteran tax lawyer, asked Lois Lerner, head of the IRS' tax-exempt organizations division, a few minutes after Lerner finished giving prepared remarks. "I was just wondering if you could provide an update."

The name of the panel was "News From The IRS And Treasury." But few, if any, of those present could have anticipated the kind of news Lerner would make with her response to Roady's question.

Lerner began by describing the increase in 501(c)(4) applications the IRS received between 2010 and 2012. IRS employees in Cincinnati, Lerner said, had reacted by centralizing the applications for efficiency and consistency, something the IRS did "whenever we see an uptick in a new kind of application or something we haven't seen before." But in this case, Lerner said, the centralization had not been carried out properly.

"Instead of referring to the cases as advocacy cases, they actually used case names on this list," Lerner said, according to a transcript of the meeting. "They used names like Tea Party or Patriots and they selected cases simply because the applications had those names in the title. That was wrong, that was absolutely incorrect, insensitive, and inappropriate -- that's not how we go about selecting cases for further review."

Lerner went on to also acknowledge that the IRS had sent some of these organizations questions that were "far too broad," in some cases even asking for contributor names. Within minutes, her words had made headlines. Within hours, White House Press Secretary Jary Carney was taking questions about the IRS' actions. Within days, President Obama was expressing concern, and Attorney General Eric Holder had announced an investigation into the matter.

But back at the Grand Hyatt on Friday, Lerner's words were met with surprise and bafflement. The fact that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration had a report on the issue just days from release was not yet widely known. Audience members couldn't understand why Lerner had chosen that panel as the venue in which to make her admission. While Lerner's remarks have since been referred to as a "slip" by lawmakers and media reports, several people in the audience on Friday said they saw Lerner refer to notes when answering the question, as if she'd prepared the response in advance. The whole thing was so strange, some even speculated that the question itself had been a plant.

"We all just sort of looked at each other and couldn't quite understand," Ellen Aprill, a professor at Loyola Law School who was in the audience, told TPM on Monday. "It seemed so odd that it was such a detailed response to the question rather than part of her prepared remarks."

Paul Streckfus, the editor of EO Tax Journal, an online publication for exempt organization tax practitioners, told TPM he had been "dozing off" when Roady had asked the question, but had "jumped almost out of my seat" when he realized what Lerner was saying. (Streckfus recorded the panel and provided the transcript of Roady's question to TPM.) Once Lerner had finished, Streckfus rushed up along with another reporter to question Lerner further, but she begged off.

"I'm sorry, I can't answer any questions, I've got to go," Streckfus said Lerner told him.

Philip Hackney, an assistant professor of law at Louisiana State University and a former senior technician reviewer in the the IRS' Office of Chief Counsel, said he had been "blown away" by Lerner's response.

"She's a seasoned government employee," Hackney told TPM. "I've spoken at those things before, and generally this isn't the way you do it. It's really strange."

According to Hackney, an American Bar Association tax section meeting isn't where you would expect a government official to stumble. Attendees appreciate their access to government officials, and don't make a habit of hardball questions.

"It's not unlike a reporter's relationship with government officials, which is, they respect that government officials don't want to be put in embarrassing positions, and so they're highly unlikely to ask any kind of embarrassing questions," Hackney said. "So it's a total dance that these guys place with the government, the government plays with them. And everybody knows the rules of the game, generally."

It's not unheard of for questions to be planted at events like Friday's, but no one TPM talked to believed that Roady's question had set up in advance. Both Aprill and Streckfus said they had asked Roady directly about the issue. Roady denied any arrangement.

"I know that some people in the audience thought it was set up, but I talked to Celia [Roady]," Aprill said. "It was not a set up. And I believe Celia. I've known Celia for years."

Roady, a partner in the D.C. office of Morgan Lewis and a member of the the IRS' Advisory Committee on Tax-Exempt and Government Entities, did not respond to a request for comment from TPM.

As for Lerner, perhaps she had been trying to get out in front of the Inspector General's report, people said. But there were still questions about how an official as respected as Lerner could have made such a miscalculation.

"At that point [after Roady asked Lerner the question], she should have said, 'I understand the report's coming out in a few days, as soon as it's out I'll be glad to respond to that question, but now is not the time,'" Streckfus said. "So I think she did make a terrible mistake. I think she would even agree that it was just a terrible mistake on her part. It's like being a quarterback and throwing an interception. You think, 'Man, I wish I could have that one back.' And, unfortunately in her case, once it got out there, all hell broke loose."

by Kim Barker and Justin Elliott, ProPublica

The same IRS office that deliberately targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 election released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year.

The IRS did not respond to requests Monday following up about that release, and whether it had determined how the applications were sent to ProPublica.

In response to a request for the applications for 67 different nonprofits last November, the Cincinnati office of the IRS sent ProPublica applications or documentation for 31 groups. Nine of those applications had not yet been approved--meaning they were not supposed to be made public. (We made six of those public, after redacting their financial information, deeming that they were newsworthy.)

On Friday, Lois Lerner, the head of the division on tax-exempt organizations, apologized to Tea Party and other conservative groups because the IRS' Cincinnati office had unfairly targeted them. Tea Party groups had complained in early 2012 that they were being sent overly intrusive questionnaires in response to their applications.

That scrutiny appears to have gone beyond Tea Party groups to applicants saying they wanted to educate the public to "make America a better place to live" or that criticized how the country was being run, according to a draft audit cited by many outlets. The full audit, by the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration, will reportedly be released this week. (ProPublica was not contacted by the inspector general's office.)  

Before the 2012 election, ProPublica devoted months to showing how dozens of social-welfare nonprofits had misled the IRS about their political activity on their applications and tax returns. Social-welfare nonprofits are allowed to spend money to influence elections, as long as their primary purpose is improving social welfare. Unlike super PACs and regular political action committees, they do not have to identify their donors.

In 2012, nonprofits that didn't have to report their donors poured an unprecedented $322 million into the election. Much of that money -- 84 percent -- came from conservative groups. 

As part of its reporting, ProPublica regularly requested applications from the IRS's Cincinnati office, which is responsible for reviewing applications from nonprofits.

Social welfare nonprofits are not required to apply to the IRS to operate. Many politically active new conservative groups apply anyway. Getting IRS approval can help with donations and help insulate groups from further scrutiny. Many politically active new liberal nonprofits have not applied.  

Applications become public only after the IRS approves a group's tax-exempt status.

On Nov. 15, 2012, ProPublica requested the applications of 67 nonprofits, all of which had spent money on the 2012 elections. (Because no social welfare groups with Tea Party in their names spent money on the election, ProPublica did not at that point request their applications. We had requested the Tea Party applications earlier, after the groups first complained about being singled out by the IRS. In response, the IRS said it could find no record of the tax-exempt status of those groups -- typically how it responds to requests for unapproved applications.)

Just 13 days after ProPublica sent in its request, the IRS responded with the documents on 31 social welfare groups.

One of the applications the IRS released to ProPublica was from Crossroads GPS, the largest social-welfare nonprofit involved in the 2012 election. The group, started in part by GOP consultant Karl Rove, promised the IRS that any effort to influence elections would be "limited." The group spent more than $70 million from anonymous donors in 2012.

Applications were sent to ProPublica from five other social welfare groups that had told the IRS that they wouldn't spend money to sway elections.  The other groups ended up spending more than $5 million related to the election, mainly to support Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Much of that money was spent by the Arizona group Americans for Responsible Leadership. The remaining four groups that told the IRS they wouldn't engage in political spending were Freedom Path, Rightchange.com II, America Is Not Stupid and A Better America Now. 

The IRS also sent ProPublica the applications of three small conservative groups that told the agency that they would spend some money on politics: Citizen Awareness Project, the YG Network and SecureAmericaNow.org. (No unapproved applications from liberal groups were sent to ProPublica.)

The IRS cover letter sent with the documents was from the Cincinnati office, and signed by Cindy Thomas, listed as the manager for Exempt Organizations Determinations, whom a biography for a Cincinnati Bar Association meeting in January says has worked for the IRS for 35 years. (Thomas often signed the cover letters of responses to ProPublica requests.) The cover letter listed an IRS employee named Sophia Brown as the person to contact for more information about the records. We tried to contact both Thomas and Brown today but were unable to reach them.

After receiving the unapproved applications, ProPublica tried to determine why they had been sent. In emails, IRS spokespeople said ProPublica shouldn't have received them.

"It has come to our attention that you are in receipt of application materials of organizations that have not been recognized by the IRS as tax-exempt," wrote one spokeswoman, Michelle Eldridge. She cited a law saying that publishing unauthorized returns or return information was a felony punishable by a fine of up to $5,000 and imprisonment of up to five years, or both.

In response, ProPublica's then-general manager and now president, Richard Tofel, said, "ProPublica believes that the information we are publishing is not barred by the statute cited by the IRS, and it is clear to us that there is a strong First Amendment interest in its publication."

ProPublica also redacted parts of the application to omit financial information.

Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for Crossroads GPS, declined to comment today on whether he thought the IRS's release of the group's application could have been linked to recent news that the Cincinnati office was targeting conservative groups.

Last December, Collegio wrote in an email: "As far as we know, the Crossroads application is still pending, in which case it seems that either you obtained whatever document you have illegally, or that it has been approved."

This year, the IRS appears to have changed the office that responds to requests for nonprofits' applications. Previously, the IRS asked journalists to fax requests to a number with a 513 area code -- which includes Cincinnati. ProPublica sent a request by fax on Feb. 5 to the Ohio area code. On March 13, that request was answered by David Fish, a director of Exempt Organizations Guidance, in Washington, D.C. 

In early April, a ProPublica reporter's request to the Ohio fax number bounced back. An IRS spokesman said at the time the number had changed "recently." The new fax number begins with 202, the area code for Washington, D.C. 

Several times in the past week, Bryce Reed posted on Facebook about how hard recent days have been.

"Integrity is so hard, especially when it is attacked," Reed wrote in a post time-stamped 2:55 a.m. on Monday. "I am so sick of being strong. I am so sick of crying. You try to do the right thing, and get kicked for it. I'm so done. I seek no accolades or commendations, I simply wanted to honor the fallen."

Six and a half hours later, he wrote another post.

"Last night was very hard, but I know I worried a lot of you and I am so very sorry," Reed wrote. "I am incredibly emotional right now, and it seems like every time I turn around somebody is critiquing me. I'm vertical/breathing so I really cant complain, but I would encourage all of you to follow this: LOVE, not fake love, but LOVE one another."

Reed, a volunteer paramedic in West, Texas, had been among the first people on the scene of the April 17 fertilizer plant fire and explosion in the town, which left 15 people dead and around 200 others injured. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Reed spoke with several media outlets about his experience at the scene. At a public memorial last month for the 12 people killed responding to the fire at the plant, Reed appeared in a videotaped eulogy for Cyrus Reed, a volunteer firefighter from Abbott, Texas, who Bryce Reed referred to as his "brother," though the two were not related.

Bryce Reed / McLennan County Sheriff

Speaking to The Dallas Morning News, Reed's stepfather, Gary Nelson, said there was "not a chance" that Reed was involved in the explosion.

"He's been tore up about it," Nelson said.

Nelson said Reed's family is "100 percent behind him."

But the sister of the Cyrus Reed, the firefighter Bryce Reed eulogized last month, told the newspaper that her family had been "fooled by Bryce Reed."

"He convinced us that he and Cyrus were very close, like brothers," Sarah Reed said. "But I want people to know they are not brothers, and he is not part of our family."

Sarah Reed told the Morning News that she and her family had gone through Cyrus Reed's computer and cell phone records and, as the paper put it, "found that the two first responders might not have been as close as the suspect led the public to believe." Furthermore, Sarah Reed said, she had asked police to guard Cyrus Reed's apartment, because she was concerned that Bryce Reed had been stealing from it.

While Friday's trouble was public, Bryce Reed's recent Facebook posts suggest he had also been dealing with personal criticism about his action's since the explosion. In one post on Tuesday, he also mentioned that, on top of everything that had happened in recent weeks, his wife had left him:

I have not been paid by the media, by press, I made nothing for delivering my brothers eulogy, and made NOTHING off of this tragedy. I was a shoulder to cry on, I found a GREAT new family, and was blessed to get to tell them about their son. THIS IS NOT ABOUT ME!!! IT IS ABOUT 12 HEROS THAT DIED TO SAVE LIVES!!!!! I am blessed to be alive. Period. I lost a lot in this and there have been INCREDIBLY kind people who are taking donations so I can get a HOME AND LIFE back, however, never would I PROFIT from anyones death. I loved and still love Cyrus A. Reed, and he loved me. I did and will do what I thought was right. Was I emotionally devistated? Hell yes I was. Have your brother die, your town explode, your crew be emotionally wrecked, and in the midst of it have your wife leave you because you are lost in your own emotions: ALL IN THE SAME WEEK, and see how you fare. People I am doing my BEST to hold myself together, but please for the love of God quit picking me apart. I have to bury yet ANOTHER friend tomorrow. God Bless

Then, on Wednesday, Reed wrote that he was going to take a break from Facebook to "reflect."

"I assure you that I'm ok," he wrote. "God bless you all, and please if you heed nothing else I have said, love one another. God bless. Bryce."

Reed's attorney, Jonathan Sibley, did not immediately return a request for comment from TPM. The Morning News, meanwhile, reached Bryce Reed's wife, Brittany Reed, early on Friday. She declined to comment.

"I can't," Brittany Reed told the newspaper. "No comment, no comment, no comment right now."

One of former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.'s ex-colleagues came to his defense in a letter to a judge made public Tuesday, calling the corrupt ex-congressman "the highlight of our karaoke nights" and asking that his "many contributions to America" be taken into account in his sentencing.

Jackson pleaded guilty in February to to federal charges stemming from his misuse of hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds. A number of letters written both in support and against the Illinois Democrat in advance of the ex-lawmaker's upcoming sentencing were entered into the record this week in Washington D.C. federal court.

Among the letters in support of Jackson is one from Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH), chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.

"Although some members of Congress and I saw Jesse exhibit what we now know were various signs of illness during the last 4 to 5 years, we also saw him continue to work as a tireless advocate for the poor and underserved," Fudge wrote. "Let me tell you about Jesse Jackson the person. Not only is he highly intelligent, he is charming and entertaining... Jesse was the highlight of our karaoke nights and always made everyone feel like an integral part of, and not apart from, various activities. He made us realize that we could still have fun, while addressing important national issues."

"Jesse is worth saving and I know he can continue to have a positive impact on the lives of others as he has with my colleagues and me," Fudge also wrote.

Fudge was not the only person who wrote to the court in support of Jackson.

"Jesse Jr. made a mistake, we all realize this. But please, Your Honor, in your infinite wisdom be merciful to my friend and I promise you he'll be a better man for it!" Eddie Smith Jr., member of the Teamsters Local 727 in Illinois, wrote.

Other letters were not as sympathetic.

"The congressman comes from a prominent family and has been afforded the best education that a lot in our society has not," Tina Hawkins, of Markham, Ill., wrote in her letter. "I am asking that you do the right by his constituents and treat him as you would any other person."

"I was further shocked to learn that the most jail time he could receive is about four years," Frank Bailey, of Oak Bluffs, Mass., wrote in his. "He stole $750,000 and use (sic) it to enhance his high life style, and I am not impressed by his few tears with the words that he is sorry for his actions."

Read the letters:

Jesse Jackson Letters

Ken Bennett, the Secretary of State of Arizona, receives a $70,000 annual salary. But he also, it turns out, receives $2,000 a month for his work as a board member of the Cancer Treatment Centers of America, a for-profit company founded by a one of the key people behind the tea party group FreedomWorks.

According to a report by KTVK reporter Dennis Welch, Bennett has received tens of thousands of dollars from the Cancer Treatment Centers of America since taking office in 2009. The company was founded by the conservative millionaire Richard Stephenson. There are no state laws or rules that would keep Bennett from serving on the company's board, and Bennett has disclosed the money in financial disclosure statements. So Bennett sees nothing wrong with the arrangement.

"I don't think there's anything inappropriate, in fact it's an honor for me to serve on a board that's helping treat people for cancer," Bennett told KTVK. "I'm on other boards, my whole life isn't about being secretary of state."

Bennett's work for the Cancer Treatment Centers of America's board can sometimes take "many" hours a month, he said.

"I can't do everything I'd like to do for them but I can squeeze out a few hours a month to be on the board," Bennett said. He later added: "Sometimes I spend several hours a week and many hours a month."

And despite the fact that Stephenson and other associates at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America have donated more than 30 percent of the money raised so far for Bennett's exploratory committee for governor, Bennett told KTVK, "I don't see Mr. Stephenson as a political activist."

Stephenson, who has been described as a "reclusive Illinois millionaire," founded the Cancer Treatment Centers of America in 1988 and currently serves as chairman of the board. He's also been a major political donor, and has a longtime association with FreedomWorks.

Stephenson was reportedly an early supporter of Citizens for a Sound Economy, the conservative lobbying group founded in 1984 by the Koch brothers. In 2004, Citizens for a Sound Economy split into Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks. Stephenson became a FreedomWorks board member. In recent months, Stephenson has been linked to a mysterious $12 million donation made to FreedomWorks last year. And in the aftermath of former House Majority Leader Dick Armey's attempted coup FreedomWorks, Stephenson agreed to pay Armey $400,000 per year over 20 years in exchange for Armey leaving the group.

A call to the Cancer Treatment Centers of America was not immediately returned.

Zombie target mannequins that look like President Barack Obama have appeared on two Discovery Channel reality shows in recent years.

An Obama-esque mannequin, made by a California company called Zombie Industries, was taken off display at a sales booth during the National Rifle Association's convention in Houston over the weekend, reportedly at the request of the NRA.

The mannequins' likeness to Obama went unmentioned during the segments of the Discovery Channel programs "Sons of Guns" and "American Guns" in which they were used.

"Sons of Guns," a reality-show starring a custom gun-making company in Louisiana called Red Jacket Firearms, featured Zombie Industries mannequins in its season three finale, which originally aired on April 18, 2012. During the episode, Max Brooks, the author of "The Zombie Survival Guide," asked Red Jacket Firearms to build the "ultimate" zombie gun. At the end of the episode, the guns were tested on scores of Zombie Industries mannequins, including numerous "Rocky" and "Bill" models. The Rocky model, which is green and "bleeds" when shot, was the kind taken down at the NRA convention. The Bill model, which is purple and "wounds" bright orange when shot, appears to use the same physical design as the Rocky, with different coloring.

A promotional image for Zombie Industries' "Sons of Guns Apocalypse Package!!!"/Image via zombieindustries.com

Zombie Industries currently offers a special deluxe "Sons of Guns Apocalypse Package!!!" on its website. Priced at $15,999.95, the package includes 250 zombie targets, including 100 Bills and 25 Rockys, along with 250 "ZomBOOM! Exploding Rifle Targets." (Residents of California, Maryland, New York, and Hawaii take note: Zombie Industries no longer sells, advertises, or markets ZomBOOM! to customers in these state, due to "possible legality issues.")

"Want to be a famous Zombie Slayer and annihilate a Zombie horde just like Red Jacket Firearms did on their hit TV show 'Sons of Guns'?" Zombie Industries asks on the "Sons of Guns Apocalypse Package!!!" product page. "Want no more, ere's (sic) your chance to be a superstar! With our new SOG 'Apocalypse' package, as featured on the the season finale of Season 3, you'll have everything you need to recreate your very own massive Zombie Outbreak... just like on the TV show."

A second Discovery Channel show, "American Guns," about a family of gun makers, featured what appeared to be the mannequins during a segment called "Zombie Takedown." It is unclear when the segment aired, but video of it is available on the Discovery Channel's website (embed below). Numerous Rocky mannequins are shot at, blown up, and even stabbed.

"American Guns" ran for two seasons, but was cancelled in December, just days after the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn. "Sons of Guns," meanwhile, was just picked up for a fourth season in March. New episodes air on Friday nights, and a recent press release put out by the Discovery Channel touted the show as the top ranked cable program among "persons and men" ages 25 to 54.

The Discovery Channel did not immediately respond to questions sent by TPM. A woman who answered the phone Monday morning at Zombie Industries said no one was available to answer questions and to try back later.

On its product page for the Rocky mannequins, Zombie Industries declares that "any resemblance to actual persons" is "entirely" coincidental. But when a Buzzfeed reporter asked a Zombie Industries booth worker at the NRA convention about the likeness, the worker replied, "Let's just say I gave my Republican father one for Christmas."

The "American Guns" segment:

Remember all those gun nullification bills that cropped up back in January? Last month, Kansas went ahead and passed one. Senate Bill 102, also known as the Second Amendment Protection Act, became effective in Kansas on April 25. And it has led to a high-level back and forth between Attorney General Eric Holder and Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R).

Kansas' Second Amendment Protection Act declares, among other things, that firearms manufactured and owned in Kansas that do not cross state lines are not subject to any federal laws. It also makes it unlawful for government agents to try to enforce federal laws on firearms made and kept within state lines.

The day after the measure went into effect, Holder sent a letter to Brownback.

"In purporting to override federal law and to criminalize the official acts of federal officers, [Senate Bill] 102 directly conflicts with federal law and is therefore unconstitutional," Holder wrote in his letter. "Federal officers who are responsible for enforcing federal laws and regulations in order to maintain public safety cannot be forced to choose between the risk of a criminal prosecution by a state and the continued performance of their federal duties."

Citing the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, Holder said that Kansas could not prevent federal employees and officials from carrying out their official responsibilities. The attorney general told Brownback that federal agencies, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, would continue to enforce federal laws and regulations. Holder also warned that the government would take "all appropriate action, including litigation if necessary, to prevent the State of Kansas from interfering with the activities of federal officials enforcing federal law."

On Thursday, Brownback responded.

"The state's Second Amendment Protection Act, which expressly restates our commitment to these rights, was approved by wide, bi-partisan margins in the Kansas Legislature," Brownback wrote to Holder, citing the bill's passage margin in the state Senate (35-4) and state House of Representatives (96-24). "The people of Kansas have clearly expressed their sovereign will. It is my hope that upon further review, you will see their right to do so."

The same day, Kansas' Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), who was one of Senate Bill 102's co-authors, issued a much more aggressive statement responding to Holder's letter.

"Holder's understanding of the United State Constitution is incorrect," Kobach said in the statement, obtained by Propublica. "As one of the co-authors of [Senate Bill] 102 and as a former professor of constitutional law, I ensured that it was drafted to withstand any legal challenge."

Kobach accused Holder of making a "simplistic and incorrect claim" in his letter to Brownback.

"[Holder] rests his claim on the Supremacy Clause of Article VI," Kobach said. "However, what he fails to mention is the basic constitutional rule that a federal law that exceeds Congress's power has absolutely no ability to preempt a contrary state law."

In his defense of the Second Amendment Protection Act, Kobach went far beyond it. He argued that over the "past 80 years," Congress has used the interstate commerce power to regulate numerous subjects "that have nothing to do with interstate commerce--including firearms." He also brought up the "Fast and Furious" ATF gun walking scandal, "the executive amnesty for illegal aliens the DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano launched in June 2012," and accused the Obama administration of "repeatedly" violating the constitution over the past four-and-a-half years.

"With respect to any litigation," Kobach said, "we will happily meet Mr. Holder in court."

(h/t Propublica)

  Eric Holder Letter To Sam Brownback

If you're looking for people fighting dark money in federal elections, look down.

Last month, state lawyers and elections officials from about 10 states held a conference call to talk about "how to deal with the flood of secret money that played an unprecedented role in the 2012 election," according to The Los Angeles Times. So-called "dark money" groups, notably 501(c)4 "social welfare" non-profits, spent hundreds of millions of dollars during the last election cycle.

Officials from California, New York, Alaska, and Maine participated in the call, which was organized by Ann Ravel, the chairwoman of California's Fair Political Practices Commission. So far, the officials are just sharing information. But according to the Times, the officials may eventually work together on investigations and to press federal agencies for more action.

"There is no question that one of the reasons to have states working together is because the federal government, in numerous arenas, has failed to take action," Ravel told the newspaper.

Ravel's agency has been investigating an $11 million donation made last year by the conservative group Americans for Job Security to impact ballot initiative fights in California. The money was funneled through an Arizona dark money non-profit called Americans for Responsible Leadership. Last year, the Fair Political Practices Commission called the donation "the largest contribution ever disclosed as campaign money laundering in California history."

Back in December, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) announced new rules that would make dark money political organizations that operate in New York report more details about their activities.

In Maryland, meanwhile, Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) on Thurdsday signed legislation which, according to the Times, will force independent groups that spend $6,000 or more on election-related donations or expenditures per four-year cycle to disclose more information about their top donors.

About a month before April 15, Azamat Tazhayakov was having a meal with his roommate Dias Kadyrbayev and their friend Dzhokhar Tsarnaev when, according to court documents, Tsarnaev told them that he knew how to make a bomb.

Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev met Tsarnaev in 2011, when they all began attending the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev, both from Kazakhstan, shared an apartment in New Bedford, Mass., and Tsarnaev had spent a lot of time there in recent months. He was there with Tazhayakov, court records show, until about midnight on April 17, two days after the bombing.

The next day, Tazhayakov had an afternoon class, and he caught a ride home with Tsarnaev, who dropped him off at around 4 p.m. A little over an hour later, the FBI released photographs and videos of the two Boston Marathon bombing suspects, then still unnamed. Later that night, Tazhayakov was out shopping when he got a text from Kadyrbayev: "Have you seen the news?"

The events that ensued led to federal charges filed Wednesday against Tazhayakov, Kadyrbayev, and a third friend, Robel Phillipos, who also attended UMass-Darthmouth. They have not been accused of participating in the bombing. Instead, Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev, who have been in custody since being arrested April 20 on immigration violations, were charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice for knowingly destroying, concealing, and covering up objects belonging to Tsarnaev, namely a backpack containing fireworks and a laptop computer. Phillipos, meanwhile, was charged with making false statements in a terrorism investigation.

An affidavit written in support of the complaints against the three men by FBI special agent Scott Cieplik provided summaries of what the three men told investigators in numerous interviews last month. It also offered a glimpse of Tsarnaev's actions in the days between the bombing and his April 19 apprehension. The accounts given by the three men differ at various points, especially on questions of timing, but, according to the affidavit, all three admitted to investigators that on the night of April 18 they removed Tsarnaev's backpack from Tsarnaev's dorm room, and Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov further admitted that they agreed to get rid of the backpack "after concluding from news reports that Tsarnaev was one of the Boston Marathon bombers."

Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov both told investigators they had grown close with Tsarnaev in 2012. Kadyrbayev said he had visited Tsarnev's home repeatedly, and met members of his family. Tazhayakov recalled a day several months ago when he, Tsarnaev, and others had set off fireworks on the banks of the Charles River in Boston.

According to the affidavit, Kadyrbayev, like Tazhayakov, told investigators that he had seen Tsarnaev as recently as April 17. Kadyrbayev had driven to Tsarnaev's dorm, Pine Dale Hall, and texted his friend to come down and meet him. Tsarnaev came. They chatted while Kadyrbayev smoked a cigarette. Kadyrbayev noticed that Tsarnaev appeared to have given himself a short haircut. Then Tsarnaev went back to him room.

The next day, Kadyrbayev was driving when he got a call from Phillipos. Phillipos told him to put on the news when he got home, because the FBI had released images of the bombing suspects, and one of them looked familiar. When he got home, Kadyrbayev turned on the TV. Phillipos was right. Kadyrbayev texted Tsarnaev, and told him he looked like the suspect on television. (Kadyrbayev's lawyer has already publicly disputed the government's allegation that his client recognized Tsarnaev immediately after seeing a photograph.) According to the affidavit, Tsarnaev texted back between 8:43 p.m. and 8:48 p.m.

"Tsarnaev's return texts contained 'lol' and other things Kadyrbayev interpreted as jokes such as 'you better not text me' and 'come to my room and take whatever you want,'" the affidavit states.

By Kadyrbayev's account, he, Tazhayakov, and Phillipos had already been to Tsarnaev's room by then. In Kadyrbayev's version of events, the trio had met between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. and went to Tsarnaev's room. They were let in by Tsarnaev's roommate, and then spent some time inside "watching a movie," according to the affidavit.

"They noticed a backpack containing fireworks," the affidavit states. "The fireworks had been opened and emptied of powder. Kadyrbayev decided to remove the backpack from the room in order to help his friend Tsarnaev avoid trouble. He decided to take Tsarnaev's laptop as well because he did not want Tsarnaev's roommate to think he was stealing or behaving suspiciously by just taking the backpack."

The trio then returned to Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov's apartment. They watched the news. According to Kadyrbayev, they then collectively decided to throw the backpack and fireworks into the trash because they did not want him to get in trouble. Around 10 p.m., Kadyrbayev placed the backpack and the fireworks into a large black trash bag, with other trash, and put the bag in a dumpster.

In Tazhayakov's version of events, he received a text from Kadyrbayev -- "Have you seen the news?" -- at 9 p.m. on April 18. They traded more texts and then Tazhayakov went home and looked at images on CNN with Kadyrbayev. They met Phillipos outside Tsarnaev's dorm room, and before they went in, Kadyrbayev showed Tazhayakov a text message from Tsarnaev that stated "I'm about to leave if you need something in my room take it." The affidavit stated that when Tazhayakov saw that text, he believed he would never see Tsarnaev alive again. Tazhayakov's account did not apparently mention any movie watching, only that once inside the room Kadyrbayev located a backpack that contained a cardboard tube "that Tazhayakov described as fireworks." Powder had been emptied out of the tube. Kadyrbayev also found a jar of Vaseline in the room and told Tazhayakov he thought Tsarnaev had used the Vaseline "to make bombs." At that point, according to the affidavit, Tazhayakov believed his friend was involved in the bombing.

In Tazhayakov's version, he, Kadyrbayev, and Phillipos were up at 6 a.m. on April 19, and saw news reports identifying the Tsarnaev brothers as the suspects in the bombings. Kadyrbayev decided to throw out the backpack and fireworks inside, and Tazhayakov agreed.

According to the affidavit, Phillipos admitted in a fourth interview with investigators that he had lied in previous interviews. He said that at around 9 p.m. on April 18, he got a text message from Kadyrbayev saying "to go to Jahar's room." (Tsarnaev's friends called him Jahar.) According to Phillipos, Kadyrbayev "went through Jahar's belongings" and found "a dark backpack," inside of which "at which point I observed seven red tubular fireworks, approximately 6 to 8 inches in length." After the group returned to Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov's apartment they "started to freak out, because it became clear from a CNN report that we were watching that Jahar was one of the Boston Marathon bombers," Phillipos told investigators.

On Friday, law enforcement agents found the backpack in a New Bedford landfill. Inside the backpack were the fireworks, a jar of Vaseline, a UMass-Dartmouth homework assignment sheet.

"I have determined that the homework assignment sheet is from a class in which Tsarnaev is currently enrolled," FBI special agent Scott Cieplik wrote near the end of the affidavit.

Two young men who were charged Wednesday in connection with the Boston Marathon bombing case left what appears to be a long trail on social media sites, detailing their love of pop music and a trip they took to New York City last year.

Dias Kadyrbayev, 19, and Azamat Tazhayakov, 20, were students at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth along with bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was arrested last month and charged in the attack.

Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov were charged Wednesday in Massachusetts federal court with conspiracy to obstruct justice for knowingly "destroying, concealing, and covering up objects" belonging to Tsarnaev, namely a backpack containing fireworks and a laptop computer. A third man, Robel Phillipos, was also arrested Wednesday and charged with making false statements in a terrorism investigation. Court documents described all three men as friends of Tsarnaev's. There were no obvious social media signs of Phillipos on Wednesday afternoon.

Two of the young men, Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov, lived at an off-campus apartment in New Bedford, Mass., that investigators raided on April 19, four days after the bombing. Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov were taken into custody by investigators, questioned, and then released along with another person who has not been named. It is unclear whether or not Phillipos was the third person questioned after the raid. According to the Standard-Times newspaper in New Bedford, investigators believe Tsarnaev was in the apartment "often and possibly lived there for a time." Kadyrbayev did not respond to an email from TPM sent April 19.

On April 20, Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov were detained for allegedly violating their student visas by not attending classes. According to the Boston Globe, UMass Dartmouth officials confirmed Tazhayakov was a student at the school and that Kadyrbayev had been "expelled from the school because of low grades." UMass Dartmouth has not responded to multiple requests for comment from TPM.

On Friday, Robert Stahl, an attorney for Kadyrbayev, told the Associated Press the two men were classmates of Tsarnaev's and that they had cooperated fully during multiple interviews by FBI agents. Stahl also denied they had anything to do with the marathon bombing and that they thought Tsarnaev "seemed to be a typical young college student." Stahl told Yahoo News the men planned to plead not guilty on Wednesday afternoon. As of this writing, Stahl has not responded to multiple requests for comment.

Long before the bombing, Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov both appeared to have set up profiles on VKontakte, a Russian-language social networking site. Each profile listed the other as a friend. TPM has not been able to independently verify the authenticity of the profiles. However, one of the profiles, apparently belonging to Kadyrbayev, was reviewed four days after the bombing, only a short time after the men were originally detained by investigators. The other, which appears to be Tazhayakov's, was reviewed Wednesday.

Kadyrbayev's profile included his name and many photos. It identified him as a student of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (A spokeswoman for MIT told TPM there is no one with Kadyrbaev's name currently registered at the school and "there has never been a registered student with that name.") The profile also said his hometown was Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Many of the 108 posts on the site included photos and videos of BMW cars. According to the Standard-Times newspaper, Kadyrbayev's father was quoted by a news site in Kazakhstan saying his son owned a BMW that sported a souvenir plate reading "TERRORISTA #1." There were also multiple photos showing Kadyrbayev with a man who appears to be Tsarnaev, including one where the man is wearing a t-shirt from Tsarnaev's high school wrestling team.

Other pictures posted in April 2012 showed Kadyrbaev with friends in New York City. One showed him standing with Tsarnaev and Tazhayakov in Times Square. CNN reported on Wednesday that Stahl confirmed to the network his clients were the ones in that photo along with Tsarnaev.

Tazhayakov's apparent profile on VKontakte included his name and some photos. In one photo, dated April 2012, he is shown at the Statue of Liberty in New York City. The profile is headlined by a song lyric from Green Day, "Wake me up when September ends." It is filled with posts about soccer and football, as well as songs from American pop artists. The most recent post on the site on April 18 was Macklemore & Ryan Lewis' song "Can Not Hold Us."

Tsarnaev himself also appeared to maintain a profile on the social networking site, and was connected with Kadyrbayev as friends. A photo posted on Kadyrbayev's account (shown above) was tagged with his name and Tsarnaev's, and it was also shared on Tsarnaev's page.

Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov also both appeared to maintain Facebook profiles, which also have not been verified but shared many of the same characteristics with the VKontakte profiles, including that the listed each other as friends. A profile under Kadyrbayev's name included a photo dated March 2012 that appeared to show him at Manhattan's Le Souk nightclub. One of the photos posted on the Facebook profile in March 2012 was also posted on the VKontakte page. A profile under Tazhayakov's name identified him as a student at UMass Dartmouth and lists his hometown as Atyrau, Kazakhstan.

View photos from the VKontakte pages below.

Tazhayakov, Kadyrbaev, and Tsarnaev in Times Square, VK.com

Tsarnaev and Kadyrbaev, VK.com

Tazhayakov at the Statue of Liberty, VK.com

Authorities investigating last month's killing of Colorado Department of Corrections chief Tom Clements settled on a suspect weeks ago. But the case hasn't been closed.

Evan Ebel, a 28-year-old parolee with a long criminal record and ties to a white supremacist prison gang, the 211 Crew, died after a shoot-out with Texas sheriff's deputies just days after Clements' killing. Authorities later determined that Ebel had been carrying the gun that had been used to kill Clements.

According to an article published late Monday by The Denver Post, investigators still don't have an answer for why Ebel may have killed Clements, and are looking at whether he had help. And, in that context, the name Homaidan al-Turki has resurfaced.

Media reports in the days following Clements' killing speculated that the crime was connected to al-Turki, a Saudi national serving time for a 2006 conviction for what the Post described as keeping a woman as a sex slave for years. Earlier in March, Clements had written a letter informing al-Turki that he was denying al-Turki's request to serve out the remainder of his sentence in Saudi Arabia.

According to the Post, FBI agents are investigating "any possible financial transactions between al-Turki and 211 Crew members to determine whether he had hired the gang for protection, among other things." Investigators are also interviewing "al-Turki associates who run errands for him outside of prison," one source told the paper.

Al-Turki's attorney, Hal Haddon, confirmed to the Post that investigators had questioned his client's associates, but called the allegations that al-Turki was tied to Clements killing the product of "outrageous" speculation. On April 8, Haddon and the rest of al-Turki's legal team filed a lawsuit alleging that al-Turki had been mistreated and isolated in prison after Clements' death. Haddon told the paper that within an hour of the killing in March, he had received a call from Gov. John Hickenlooper's chief legal counsel, Jack Finlaw.

"Finlaw placed a 'pretext call' to Haddon purporting to convey this news and seeking to elicit information which could link Mr. Al-Turki and his lawyers to the murder," the lawsuit states, according to the Post.

Haddon said he asked Finlaw what the call was for, but Finlaw declined to answer. Finlaw, meanwhile, has denied Haddon's version of events, saying her merely left a message for Haddon informing him of Clements' death out of "courtesy." When TPM contacted Hickenlooper's office on Tuesday, we were provided with the same statement from Finlaw that was given to the Post.

"Hal Haddon was one of the many people I called that night to alert them to the news of Tom's death," Finlaw's statement read. "I knew that Hal had been working on a legal matter with Tom, and I thought Hal deserved the courtesy of hearing this tragic news before it hit the media. That was the only reason for my call. I left Hal a voice mail. Hal returned the call a few days later and left a message. We did not talk either time."

Haddon did not respond to a call from TPM.

The El Paso County Sheriff's Office told the Post that al-Turki remains of interest to the Clements' case.

"I don't think that is a chapter that has been closed," Lt. Jeff Kramer, spokesman for the Sheriff's Office, said.

Adrienne Jacobson, a spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Corrections, told TPM on Tuesday evening that al-Turki had been put in protective isolation that morning after receiving "unwanted media scrutiny." (He spent time in protective isolation following the earlier reports linking him to the case.) Following standard procedure, al-Turki was then interviewed by officials, to determine if he felt safe in the general population. Al-Turki indicated that he did.

"He is being moved back to general population at this time," Jacobson told TPM on Tuesday.

It's a sprawling, messy story. It involves the Virginia governor's mansion, a wedding, undisclosed vacations, a "naturally-occuring alkaloid" called anatabine, a struggling company, a corporate jet, and, just to top things off, a chef facing embezzlement charges. But most importantly it involves Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R), along with Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.

The Washington Post on Monday and the Associated Press on Tuesday revealed that FBI agents are conducting interviews about the relationships between McDonnell, his wife Maureen, and Jonnie Williams Sr., a major McDonnell campaign donor and the chief executive officer of a company called Star Scientific, which makes an anti-inflammatory dietary supplement called Anatabloc. (Last month, the company disclosed that it was the subject of a federal securities investigation.)

According to the Post, FBI agents looking into the matter are trying to determine whether there was any quid pro quo between McDonnell and Williams. It's a charge that is notoriously hard to prove. On Tuesday, McDonnell said his administration has never given any special treatment to Star Scientific. But news of the FBI's interest has raised the profile of a story that's been developing since late March, when the Post first reported on the "two-way" street between the governor and Williams.

Here are some of the story's key facts and figures:

$15,000: Amount of money Williams reportedly paid to foot the bill for the food at the June 2011 wedding of Bob and Maureen McDonnell's daughter Cailin. The wedding was held at Virginia's Executive Mansion, and the menu featured poached jumbo shrimp, bruschetta, and stuffed chicken breast. McDonnell did not disclose the gift. A McDonnell spokesman told the Post in March that as the money was a gift to the governor's daughter, and not to the governor, Virginia law did not require him to report it.

158: Miles between Smith Mountain Lake, southeast of Roanoke, Va., and Richmond, Va. In July 2011, the McDonnell family enjoyed a (disclosed) vacation at Williams' Smith Mountain Lake house. According to the Post, they drove back to Richmond in Williams' Ferrari.

$120,000: Publicly disclosed campaign donations given by Williams and Star Scientific to McDonnell and his political action committee.

3: Number of days before her daughter's wedding that Maureen McDonnell spoke at a Florida seminar for scientists and investors interested in anatabine, the key ingredient in Anatabloc. According to the company, Anatabloc "leverages the body's natural process for regulating its own inflammation using anatabine, a naturally-occuring compound found in some plants, combined with Vitamin A and D3 to help the body to avoid excessive creation of inflammation." The dietary supplement is not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. Anatabloc has received paid endorsements from golfer Fred Couples and tennis player John Isner.

$9,600: Reported value of food, lodging, transportation, and entertainment that McDonnell has disclosed receiving from Williams and his company in 2011 and 2012.

4: Embezzlement charges filed against Todd Schneider, a former executive chef at the Virginia governor's mansion.

$4,500: Value of two stays at Williams's Smith Mountain Lake vacation house that Cuccinelli disclosed on Friday. Cuccinelli had previously disclosed receiving nearly $13,000 in gifts from Williams and the company. One newly reported stay occurred over Thanksgiving in 2010. Williams also supplied a catered turkey dinner. According to the Post, Cuccinelli also failed to disclose that he owned stock in Star Scientific, which he attributed to an oversight. His 2012 disclosure form indicated that he held between $10,001 and $50,000 in Star Scientific stock, "the only company in which Cuccinelli has ever reported holding more than $10,000," the newspaper reported.

$22.9 million: Amount of money Star Scientific reported losing in 2012, the company's 10th consecutive money-losing year.

47th: Virginia's rank in The State Integrity Investigation, a collaborative project of the Center for Public Integrity, Global Integrity, and Public Radio International.

"Virginia has long prided itself on ethical government, but the state's lax oversight rules, weak consumer representation protections, dwindling capitol press corps and coziness between political and economic elites, have all combined to undermine the validity of that self-image," the project's Laura LaFay wrote, in a blog post explaining the reasons for the state's low score. "Meanwhile, the few ethics and disclosure requirements that do exist tend to be flawed, limited or fraught with exemptions and qualifications, according to state ethics experts."

by Justin Elliott, ProPublica

In January, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, ascended to the powerful chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee. Six weeks later, campaign finance filings and interviews show, Hensarling was joined by representatives of the banking industry for a ski vacation fundraiser at a posh Park City, Utah, resort.

The congressman's political action committee held the fundraiser at the St. Regis Deer Valley, the "Ritz-Carlton of ski resorts" known for its "white-glove service" and for its restaurant by superstar chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

There's no evidence the fundraiser broke any campaign finance rules. But a ski getaway with Hensarling, whose committee oversees both Wall Street and its regulators, is an invaluable opportunity for industry lobbyists.

Among those attending the weekend getaway was an official from the American Securitization Forum, a Wall Street industry group, a spokesman confirmed. It gave $2,500 in February to Hensarling's political action committee, the Jobs, Economy, and Budget (JEB) Fund.

Len Wolfson, a lobbyist for the Mortgage Bankers Association, which gave the JEB Fund $5,000 that month, posted a picture on Instagram from the weekend of the fundraiser of the funicular at the St. Regis. (It was labeled, "Putting the #fun in #funicular. #stregis #deervalley #utah.") Wolfson did not respond to requests for comment.

Visa, which gave the JEB Fund $5,000, also sent an official. A Visa spokesman told ProPublica that in attendance were not just finance companies, but also big retailers and others.

Hensarling, a protégé of former Texas senator and famed deregulator Phil Gramm, has a mixed record regarding Wall Street. While he has been critical of "too big to fail" banks and voted against the 2008 bailout, Hensarling recently said he opposed downsizing big banks, according to Bloomberg. That stance matters now more than ever as a bipartisan duo in the Senate, David Vitter, R-La., and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, introduced a bill last week seeking to constrain the too-big-to-fail institutions. While the bill is considered a longshot, it has provoked intense opposition from the industry.  

Meanwhile, Hensarling recently barred the head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from appearing before the House Financial Services Committee, citing a legal cloud over recess appointments made by President Obama.

Whatever his stance on the industry, Hensarling has been more than happy to court Wall Street's money.

Donors working in various financial industries are Hensarling's biggest supporters, giving him over $1 million dollars in the last election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The congressman's office did not respond to requests for comment.

Others donating to Hensarling's JEB Fund around the time of the Utah ski weekend: Capital One; Credit Suisse; PricewaterhouseCoopers; MasterCard; UBS; US Bank; the National Association of Federal Credit Unions; Koch Industries, which is involved in sundry financial trading; the National Pawnbrokers Association; and payday lenders Cash America International and CheckSmart Financial. All either declined to comment or did not respond to requests.  

A spokeswoman for one large bank that donated $5,000, Alabama-based Regions Financial, told ProPublica the company doesn't discuss events employees attend for "a number of reasons, including security."

Also donating $5,000 to Hensarling's political committee around the time of the ski weekend was Steve Clark, a lobbyist for JP Morgan and the industry group the Financial Services Roundtable. (In 2011, a memo written by Clark and his partners for the American Bankers Association proposed an $850,000 public-relations strategy to undermine Occupy Wall Street. It leaked to MSNBC; the plan had apparently never been executed.)

Clark didn't respond to requests for comment.

The ski weekend was a large, apparently family-friendly affair. A Utah entertainment booker told ProPublica she had hired two caricature artists for a Feb. 23 event at the St. Regis for a group of 100, including 20 children. Hensarling's JEB Fund, paid the bill. The fund also reported spending about $1,000 on "gifts and mementos" at Deer Valley as well as charges at the upscale restaurant Talisker on Main.

Campaigns and political action committees of a few other GOP congressmen also show charges totaling more than $50,000 at the St. Regis around that time: House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions of Texas; House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp of Michigan; and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Greg Walden of Oregon. None responded to requests for comment.

This is at least the second consecutive year that Hensarling has attended a fundraiser at Deer Valley. During the same February congressional recess last year, the National Republican Congressional Committee hosted a "Park City Ski Weekend" for Hensarling along with Sessions and Walden. Hensarling's JEB Fund also reported about $60,000 paid to the St. Regis Deer Valley in the last election cycle. (The NRCC said it did not sponsor this year's event.)

The Texan congressman has long had a taste for mixing skiing and politics. On the same February weekend in 2009, for example, Hensarling's political action committee invited donors "to the second annual 'JEB Fund Takes Jackson'" ski weekend for a minimum contribution of $2,500. The setting was the Snake River Lodge and Spa in Jackson, Wyoming, which boasted "wintertime activities fun for the entire family" including dog sledding tours and sleigh rides, according to the invitation. 

Reporting contributed by Al Shaw.

In the days since law enforcement agents apprehended the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing last Friday, officials and news reports have been clarifying and correcting the record on a number of points, large and small, related to the attack and the ensuing search for the suspects.

Some misinformation, such as individuals wrongly identified by media outlets as suspects or persons of interest in the case, was easy enough to sort out. (Even if the emotional impact on wrongly-fingered individuals can't be undone.) Other aspects of the case, like the alleged actions of the Tsarnaev brothers on Thursday night and early Friday morning last week, have proved harder to pin down.

And it turns out even the federal investigators most closely involved in the case were caught in the early swirl of bad or incomplete information: an affidavit written by a FBI agent in support of the initial charges filed against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev now appears to contain a factual error about the events of Thursday night.

"Near midnight on April 18, 2013, an individual carjacked a vehicle at gunpoint in Cambridge, Massachusetts," Daniel Genck, an FBI special agent in Boston, wrote in the affidavit filed on Monday in federal court in conjunction with the compliant against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

It's a minor point, but it now appears the carjacking occurred in Boston, not across the Charles River in Cambridge. The carjacking victim said so in an interview with the Boston Globe, which published a story on Thursday based on the victim's harrowing tale. And the Cambridge Police department confirmed as much to TPM.

"The Cambridge Police Department has always maintained that [the carjacking] occurred on Brighton Ave. in Boston," Dan Riviello, a spokesperson for the Cambridge Police Department, told TPM on Friday.

According to Riviello, a statement published on the department's website last Friday, which said the carjacking occurred in Cambridge, was actually drafted by the Middlesex County District Attorney's Office. The statement was later edited to remove a reference to the incident having occurred on Third Street in Cambridge, Riviello said. (Told by TPM that, as of Friday afternoon, the statement still referred to an "armed carjacking in Cambridge," Riviello said that should probably be edited as well.)

"From the start there was a little bit of confusion because there was a language barrier," Riviello said, in apparent reference to the victim of the carjacking, a 26-year-old Chinese national whom the Globe identified only by his American nickname, Danny. Riviello said the confusion might have been a mix-up based on the victim's home address. According to the Globe, Danny lives in Cambridge.

The Cambridge/Boston mistake speaks to just how pervasive bad information can be. But the discrepancy should not have any effect on the case against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. According to Ronald Sullivan, the director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School, the slip up will have "absolutely no impact on the affidavit or on the validity of a subsequent indictment."

"A fact of that nature, or a misstatement of that nature, is not consequential for the purposes of the affidavit," Sullivan told TPM on Friday. "Boston and Cambridge sit right next to each other. That's something that, even if an indictment listed Cambridge instead of Boston, that could be cured by what's called a superseding indictment."

The FBI's Boston office told TPM on Friday it could not comment on the location of the carjacking. A spokesperson for the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cambridge, MA -- One week after he and his brother allegedly set off explosive devices near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, and three days after his dramatic apprehension in Watertown, Mass., Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was charged on Monday in federal court in Massachusetts with using a weapon of mass destruction and malicious destruction of property resulting in death.

The charges, and an accompanying affidavit written by Daniel Genck, an FBI special agent in Boston, represent the starting point of the government's case against Tsarnaev. In many ways, Genck's filing matches much of what news outlets including TPM have reported about the events of the past week. But the official filing also clarifies a few matters, and complicates a few others. And many questions remain.

What Happened In The Carjacking?

Genck's affidavit provides a sketch of the events that occurred late Thursday and early Friday, in the violent and frantic hours after the FBI released images of the two suspects, whose identities were still then unknown to law enforcement.

Near midnight on Thursday, according the the filing, one person carjacked a vehicle at gunpoint in Cambridge. The victim later told law enforcement that he was sitting in his car, reported to be a black Mercedes SUV, when a man approached and tapped on the passenger-side window. The driver rolled down the window, and the man reached in, opened the door, and got in the car. He pointed his gun at the driver.

"Did you hear about the Boston explosion?" the man allegedly asked the driver. "I did that."

After showing the driver that the gun was loaded, the carjacker had the victim drive to another location, where they picked up a second man. (The affidavit alleges that the two men were the Tsarnaev brothers. But it does not say which brother allegedly initiated the carjacking.) The brothers then put something in the trunk of the car, and the man with the gun took the driver's keys, and got behind the wheel, with the victim in the passenger seat and the second carjacker in the back. According to the victim, the two men spoke to each other in a foreign language. They asked the victim for money. He had $45. They then forced him to give them his ATM card and PIN, and drove to an ATM.

Another point where things are still unclear: the moment at which the carjacking victim gets away from the suspects. Did he escape, or was he released? According to the affidavit, the trio drove to a gas station/convenience store on Memorial Drive, which winds along the Cambridge side of the Charles River. At the gas station, the two men got out of the car, according to the filing, "at which point the victim managed to escape." But a report filed by the driver to the Cambridge Police, and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, indicates that the two men "declared to [the victim] that they were the Boston Marathon bombers and would not kill him because he wasn't American."

News reports have also indicated that law enforcement used GPS to track a cell phone left in the car by the victim, and have raised the possibility of the suspects having more than one car. But the FBI affidavit states only that the vehicle was located by law enforcement "a short time later" in Watertown, Mass. On Dexter Street, at least two IEDs were thrown out of the car. On Laurel Street, a gun battle with law enforcement officers then took place. As we now know, the older brother, Tamerlan, was fatally injured in the melee, with some reports from law enforcement indicating that he was run over as his fleeing brother tried to ram officers on the street with the SUV. But the charging documents are more muted, noting simply that one of the suspects was "severely injured" and remained on the scene and that the second escaped in the carjacked vehicle, which was later found nearby, with an "intact low-grade explosive device" inside.

Absent from the affidavit is any mention of the killing of Sean Collier, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer who was found shot in his patrol car in Cambridge around 10:30 p.m. on Thursday. Collier was transported to Massachusetts General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

How Much Video Footage Of The Crime Is There?

Apart from the events of Thursday night and Friday morning, the affidavit also provides an overview of the surveillance evidence obtained by investigators of the bombing incident itself. One security camera, positioned on the corner of Boylston Street and Gloucester Streets, captured two young men, alleged to be the Tsarnaev brothers, turning left onto Boylston Street last Monday at approximately 2:38 p.m. -- 11 minutes or so before the explosions went off. Both men can be seen carrying large backpacks. Their outfits are now familiar to anyone who has seen the photos and video footage released by the FBI last week. Tamerlan wore a dark-colored baseball cap, sunglasses, a white shirt, a dark coat, and tan pants. Dzhokhar wore a backwards white baseball cap, a gray hooded sweatshirt, a lightweight black jacket, and dark pants. The pair walked east on Boylston Street, toward the marathon's finish line, with Tamerlan leading the way.

A second security camera, located above the doorway of the Forum restaurant at 755 Boylston Street, recorded some of what happened next. At approximately 2:41 p.m., the camera captured the two suspects standing together about a half block from the restaurant. A minute later, Tamerlan, still wearing a backpack, began walking east on Boylston, closer to the finish line, passing directly in front of Forum, toward the spot where the first explosion would occur. At 2:45 p.m., Dzhokhar, with the thumb of his right hand hooked under the strap of his backpack and his left hand apparently holding a cell phone, walked east on Boylston and stopped directly in front of Forum. He stood near the metal barrier that separated the runners from the spectators, facing the street. He then apparently slipped the backpack off and placed it on the ground.

The video from Forum's camera shows Dzhokhar remaining in place for the ensuing four minutes, occasionally looking at his cell phone, and, in one instance, apparently taking a photograph. About 30 seconds before the explosion went off, he lifted his phone to his ear, where he kept it for nearly 20 seconds. A few seconds after he puts down his phone, the footage shows the large crowd reacting to the first explosion. Almost every head in the footage turns to the east, the affidavit states. But Dzhokhar remains calm. He glances to the east and then "calmly but rapidly" begins walking west, without his backpack. Ten seconds or so later, the second explosion occurs in the spot where he left it.

What Condition In Dzhokhar Tsarnaev In?

As of Monday morning, Tsarnaev remained in serious condition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

Genck's affidavit suggests Tsarnaev may have been wounded more extensively than previously thought. According to the affidavit, he had gunshot wounds to the head, neck, legs, and one hand.

On Sunday, according to the affidavit, the FBI searched Tsarnaev's dorm room at UMass Darthmouth. Inside, they found a black jacket and white hat, "of the same general appearance as those worn by Bomber Two at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013"

Watertown, MA -- On Saturday morning, just hours after the largest manhunt in Massachusetts history ended in this Boston suburb, the sun was fighting through the clouds, and the police perimeter had been reduced to a couple hundred feet in either direction of the elbow of Franklin Street, a short, L-shaped road lined with well-kept woodframe houses.

On Friday night, in a boat parked in the backyard of one of those houses, law enforcement agents successfully apprehended Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, the remaining at-large suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing. The hunt for Tsarnaev, who, along with his elder brother, is suspected of carrying out the attack that killed three people and wounded more than 180, had paralyzed much of the Boston area on Friday, and Watertown in particular.

Saturday morning, what had been the center of the action had turned into something of an attraction. TV news vans were parked along the street, and residents of other Watertown neighborhoods and adjacent communities had come to satisfy curiosities.

TPM spoke with one Franklin St. resident, Leah Flynn, 36, who was returning from picking up breakfast at Starbucks. Flynn had spent most of Friday in her home with her fiancee, just a couple blocks away from where Tsarnaev was eventually found.

"Gosh, to know that he was there the whole day," Flynn said. "He was crouching there the whole day, like the coward that he is. ... I'm usually a bleeding heart. But not today."

Flynn said that she had seen law enforcement officers in her backyard during the day on Friday, which had allowed her to feel better about her personal safety. Still, she said, she "just had this unsettling feeling that he wasn't far."

Shortly after state officials lifted the lockdown order on Friday evening, Flynn and her fiancee had left their home for some food. They had not eaten all day. Twenty minutes later, Flynn said, her phone was "blowing up" with people calling to check in. Back on Franklin Street, Tsarnaev had been located, and the news was traveling fast.

Flynn was glad Tsarnaev had been caught, but it was difficult for her to feel "elated" on Saturday. She works as the director of the Office of Student Activities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. An MIT police officer, Sean Collier, was allegedly killed by the Tsarnaev brothers overnight on Friday. Flynn didn't know Collier personally, but said she had seen him at a meeting just last week.

"My heart was torn between this neighborhood and MIT," Flynn said. "I just want to tell loved ones to push their love to the victims."

Closer to the yellow police tape, a Cambridge man named Francis Bingham had taken a detour from his usual Saturday morning jogging route to come to Franklin Street to "gawk."

"I told my wife I wanted to come over and shake the hand of a law enforcement officer," Bingham, 32, told TPM.

Bingham said that on Tuesday, the day after the marathon bombing, he had registered for the Bay State Marathon, which is a Boston Marathon qualifying event.

"I felt like, man, I'm healthy, these people lost their legs, I can't take my health for granted anymore," Bingham said.

The Bay State Marathon is in October. To qualify for the big race, Bingham needs to finish in 3:05 or less.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Dozens of people began to crowd outside Mount Auburn Hospital on Friday night after reports that the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings was being taken there following his arrest.

Dzokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was taken away from a Watertown, Mass., neighborhood in an ambulance after a standoff with police. Authorities said he was alive but had been injured during the manhunt and was in serious condition.

Police moved the crowd away from the building and put up yellow tape. At one point, a person in the crowd yelled out to ask a police officer how the officer was doing. The officer's only reply was a thumbs up.

It turns out the crowd was all for nothing. A police officer came out more than an hour after people began to gather and said that, while Tsarnaev was originally set to come to Mount Auburn, plans had changed.

"A decision was made by medics on scene," the officer said. He would not say where Tsarnaev had been taken instead.

SOMERVILLE, MA -- Jerry Siegel, the manager of Webster Auto Body in Somerville, Mass., didn't realize at first that he knew the father of the two men suspected of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombing earlier this week.

But he quickly found out in the chaos of the past day that his former employee, Anzor Tsarnaev, was the pair's dad.

"I thought that he was an uncle of those kids and it ended up that he's the father," Siegel, 54, said Friday.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, have been identified as suspects in the bombing by the FBI. The older of the two sons died after a shootout with police early Friday morning, while the other remained at large.

According to Siegel, their father worked at Webster as a "body man" for a little while in 2004 or so. Siegel hasn't seen Anzor in years, and said he thought the father was working out of "some garage" now. However, the suspects' uncle said on Friday that their father had moved to Russia with his wife about a year ago, according to the New York Times.

Siegel said Anzor was known in the neighborhood for working on his car outside, even in winter.

Webster Auto Shop, located on Webster Avenue, is just around the corner from the Norfolk Street address that's associated with the Tsarnaev family and that was searched by law enforcement on Friday.

Siegel described Anzor as a "nice guy," and recalled a time when a man who worked at the shop was hit by a car and Anzor dragged him out of the street.

"Big guy, tough guy," Siegel said. "Would do anything you told him to."

In Siegel's recollection, Anzor's sister had come by and lobbied hard to get her brother a job at the shop. During TPM's conversation with Siegel, an on-camera interview given on Friday by Maret Tsarnaev, an aunt of the bombing suspects, came on a television in Siegel's office. Asked if that was Aznor's sister, the one who got him the job at Webster's, Siegel, while cautious, given the number of years that have gone by, said he thought so.

"I just remember her promoting the hell out of him," Siegel said. "I remember her saying 'he can take a car completely apart and put it back together.'"

During the aunt's interview, she alleged that the two suspects had been framed in Monday's bombing. The allegation was echoed by Anzor in an interview aired on Fox News.

Siegel said Anzor had difficulty with English when he worked at Webster, and was a quiet guy -- not that Siegel minded quiet employees.

"He didn't talk when he was here," Siegel said. "He just worked."

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- A Somerville, Mass., auto mechanic told reporters on Friday that the younger of the two brothers suspected of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombing came to his shop on Tuesday, the day after the bombing, and asked to pick up a car he had dropped off for repairs about two weeks before.

Gilberto Junior, 44, said that the man, who has been identified as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, appeared to be "very nervous."

"He was biting his fingernails, and was shaky," Junior said.

Tsarnaev had dropped off the car, which Junior described as a white Mercedes wagon, at the auto shop about two weeks earlier. It had rear bumper damage, and Tsarnaev had said it was his girlfriend's. On Tuesday, when Tsarnaev suddenly returned, Junior told him the car wasn't ready.

"I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, I need the car right now," Tsarnaev said, according to Junior.

The mechanic said Tsarnaev took the car without its rear bumper on.

Junior said he had known the two brothers for about two years. His shop, Junior's Auto Body, is not far from the Norfolk Street apartment in Cambridge that law enforcement searched on Friday. The brothers and their friends -- between six and eight of them, Junior said -- would bring their cars to the shop for work.

"I talked to them all the time, about cars, and about soccer," Junior said.

Junior said he had seen the pictures of the suspects on Thursday, but he wasn't sure it was the young men he knew until Friday morning. With the FBI searching the apartment so close to his shop, Junior went over and told the FBI what he knew. Asked what he had thought of the brothers, Junior said he thought they were "nice" kids. Then he added: "You know, not nice kids now."

WATERTOWN, MA -- A massive law enforcement effort to locate an at-large suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing was underway on Friday morning in and around the city of Boston.

About 9 a.m., a helicopter circled above an area that the Boston Police Department set up for media staging in Watertown. The parking lot, being used by the press in front of Target and Best Buy stores, was blocked off and being patrolled by police.

Nearby, on a small street called Willow Park, Fox News showed heavily armed cops surrounding a house as they hunted for 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of two brothers suspected in the bombing. His older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed early Friday morning in a shootout with police. At the latest scene, anchors on the network described what they believed to be the sounds of explosions and gunfire.

Back in the parking lot, a father and daughter were huddled away from the manhunt. They had returned from a trip at about 2:30 a.m., only to be turned away from their home by police. By the late morning, they were hungry and tired, and their 8-week-old puppy was crying.

"We got out of the airport around 12, 12:30 and were just in the middle of it from there to here," Michael Demirdjian told TPM. "I ended up at this point here around 2 a.m., 2:30 a.m."

Tom Kludt contributed reporting.