IRS Targeted Tea Party Groups in 2012 Election, Now Apologizes (+video)
Photo Credit: APBy BYRON TAU, LAUREN FRENCH and TARINI PARTI. The Internal Revenue Service apologized Friday to conservative political groups for giving their tax documents extra scrutiny — validating the worst fears of Republican activists who have long accused the Obama administration of politicizing the process.
Roughly 75 groups were singled out using words like “tea party” or “patriot” in tax documents, Lois Lerner, who is responsible for overseeing tax-exempt groups, said on a hastily arranged conference call Friday afternoon.
The White House said Friday that the IRS inspector general is investigating the matter.
“What we know about this is of concern,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said, emphasizing that the IRS is an independent agency with only two political appointees. The agency is technically a division of the Treasury Department.
“It certainly does seem to be based on what we’ve seen to be inappropriate action that we would want to see thoroughly investigated,” Carney said. Read more from this story HERE.
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Obama’s spokesperson actually had the gall to blame the illegal targeting on a Bush IRS appointee:
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GOP blitzes Obama administration after IRS admits targeting tea party groups during election
By Alexis Levinson. Republican lawmakers are calling for a full investigation into the Internal Revenue Service after a top official revealed Friday that the agency specifically flagged tea party and conservative groups for review to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status.
Several Republicans voiced suspicion last year that the IRS was unduly focused on conservative groups, after several groups reported that they had been asked to fill out extensive amounts of paper work and go to great lengths to prove they were not violating their tax-exempt status.
Earlier today, ahead of a report by the inspector general for tax administration, the IRS admitted that it had targeted conservative groups for additional reviews, with an eye toward catching violations of tax-exempt status. Groups were singled out based on keywords such as “patriot” and “tea party” in their tax-exempt status applications, according to Lois G. Lerner, the IRS’s director of tax-exempt organizations.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa and Rep. Jim Jordan sent a letter to the inspector general in June 2012 asking that the committee be provided with “periodic updates” on the investigation into whether the IRS was applying an inappropriate level of scrutiny to such groups.
“The Committee will aggressively follow up on the IG report and hold responsible officials accountable for this political retaliation,” reads a new statement on the oversight committee’s web site. A representative from the committee confirmed to The Daily Caller that this would include hearings, but did not give a time or schedule. Read more from this story HERE.
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‘I’m not good at math’: The IRS’ public relations disaster
By Aaron Blake. About a half-hour into a conference call with reporters Friday afternoon, senior Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner said something she will regret.
“I’m not good at math,” she confessed as she tried to summon a statistic.
Lerner clarified that she is a lawyer and not an accountant (a fair defense) but the remark instantly blew up on Twitter — an IRS official being bad at math!? — and wound up punctuating what was a torturous response to the IRS’ admission that it inappropriately targeted tea party groups.
A skeptical press corps peppered Lerner with questions, many of which she and her staff were unable or unwilling to answer. Read more from this story HERE.