UPDATE (5:48 p.m.): The IRS says current acting commissioner learned in May 2012 that tea party groups were targeted.
President Barack Obama said the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups is “outrageous” and vowed to hold anyone involved “fully accountable.”
Obama said that he first learned about the targeting from news reports, when questioned about it after a joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron on May 13. The Associated Press (AP) first reported on May 10 that the IRS was targeting conservative groups, particularly those with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names, during the 2012 campaign. The targeting meant that the service asked for reams of documents and tried to find violations to revoke the organizations’ tax-exempt status.
“I’ve got no patience with it, and I will not tolerate it,” said Obama.
Senior IRS officials have apologized in recent days for the targeting, but Republican elected officials want much more to be done.
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) called for the resignation of the current IRS commissioner Steven Miller over the targeting.
“[It] is clear the IRS cannot operate with even a shred of the American people’s confidence under the current leadership,” said Rubio in a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. “I strongly urge that you and President Obama demand the IRS Commissioner’s resignation, effectively immediately. No government agency that has behaved in such a manner can possibly instill any faith and respect from the American public.”
The IRS is an independent agency within the Treasury Department. The agency blamed low-level employees, saying no high-level officials were aware.
But a draft of an inspector general’s report obtained by The AP says senior IRS officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups as early as 2011. The Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration is expected to release the final report this week after a yearlong investigation.
The portion of the draft report reviewed by the AP does not say whether anyone in the Obama administration outside the IRS was informed of the targeting.
As the targeting came to light over the past few days, conservative groups have been coming forward to say they were targeted during the 2012 campaign.
David French, senior counsel at The American Center for Law and Justice, said that the center represented 27 Tea Parties from 18 states in resisting the “series of intrusive questions” that the IRS was asking the groups while holding up applications for tax-exempt status.
“While I appreciate the honesty, ’sorry' is just not enough,” said French. “Where is the compensation for hundreds of hours of attorney time? Where is the compensation for thousands of hours spent by Tea Party groups compiling tens of thousands of pages of documents?”
The Richmond Tea Party was one of the groups targeted, according to the executive director of the party.
“For a period of two years, IRS officials intentionally obstructed our organization’s attempts to qualify for a simple nonprofit status, at the cost of hundreds of man hours and thousands of dollars,” Laurence Nordvig said in a statement obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “In addition, intrusive and improper demands were made for personal information about our volunteers, which not only invaded privacy, but encroached upon their constitutional rights to free speech and free association.”
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) is one of many calling for an investigation into the matter.
“The conclusion that the IRS came to is that they did have agents who were engaged in intimidation of political groups,” Rogers told Fox News. “I don’t care if you’re a conservative, a liberal, a Democrat or a Republican, this should send a chill up your spine. It needs to have a full investigation.”
U.S Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), senate finance committee chairman, said that his committee would launch a full investigation into the matter.
Epoch Times staff member Tara MacIsaac and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
