IRS Targeted “Icky” Conservative Groups

It’s not over yet.

Not by a long shot.

Before the head of the House Oversight Committee Darrell Issa steps down from his position after the New Year, he released a 226-page summary report of the Committee’s investigation of the IRS targeting of conservative groups so far.

The interim report is a scathing revelation of extreme political bias against conservative groups, a bias which was also “being openly and loudly espoused by the President of the United States.”

The report confirms what you already suspect. IRS officials looked for ways to deny applications for groups they disliked. But listen to their language. One email about a conservative group said, “This sounds like a bad org,” and “This org gives me an icky feeling.” The e-mail concluded, “I think there may be a number of ways to deny them.”

In all, the millions of documents and dozens of interviews with Obama administration officials conducted in the investigation “show I.R.S. officials failed to limit their professional judgments to enforcing the tax code and instead inserted their own beliefs and judgments into federal matters to influence outcomes and decisions,” the report said.

“The IRS and its employees, whose conduct is largely shielded from public scrutiny to protect taxpayers, were not only affected by politics but by a more basic human failure: a discriminatory outlook on the world,” the staff report argues. “The IRS’s inability to keep politics out of objective decisions about interpretation of the tax code damaged its primary function: an apolitical tax collector that Americans can trust to treat them fairly.

The report also says that Deputy Commissioner Steven Miller knew that targeting was going on in July 2012 – in the heat of the Presidential campaigns and mentioned telling the House Ways and Means subcommittee about it. Nikole Flax (Lois Lerner’s sidekick) immediately responded, “No no no, don’t do that.”

The scandal wasn’t revealed until 10 months later, well after the election had been decided.

You can read Issa’s actual report here, but here are the disturbing elements of the report as listed by the ACLJ’s Jay Sekulow:

• “The Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative-oriented applicants for tax-exempt status;
• “Unlike applications from conservative groups, the small batch of applications from liberal-oriented groups received additional scrutiny for non-political reasons. Of the applications that received additional scrutiny, only seven contained the word “progress” or “progressive,” all of which were subsequently approved by the IRS, while Tea Party groups were subjected to an unprecedented degree of review and years-long delays.
• “Senior Internal Revenue Service officials covered up the misconduct and misled Congress about the existence and nature of the targeting;
• “The Internal Revenue Service sought to rein in conservative-oriented non-profits as early as 2010;
• “The Administration is using the targeting as pretext to support its proposed regulation to limit political speech of conservative non-profits;
• “Mismanagement among the senior leadership of the Internal Revenue Service contributed to the targeting;
• “The Internal Revenue Service and the Obama Administration knowingly and wrongly blamed line-level employees for the misconduct;
• “Employees of the Internal Revenue Service inappropriately used non-official e-mail to conduct official government business;
• “The Internal Revenue Service has compromised its traditional position as an independent tax administrator;
• “The Obama Administration exhibited a lack of accountability for the IRS misconduct;
• “Lois Lerner’s refusal to testify hindered the Committee’s investigation;
• “The Internal Revenue Service obstructed the Committee’s investigation; and
• “The White House and congressional Democrats obstructed the Committee’s investigation.”

This may seem like old news. You knew the IRS was up to no good. You knew they targeted conservative, pro-Israel, and tea Party organizations. But don’t forget how egregious this scandal actually is. The highest members of a government agency practically sat around dreaming up ways to illegally limit conservative speech, unfairly targeted them, then misled Congress when they were called out.

This scandal was – and is — a serious threat to American liberty.

While major news outlets are trumpeting that the investigation hasn’t found a clear link to the White House (yet), investigations into the extensive wrongdoing at the IRS are far from over.

It’s not over.

Not by a long shot.