In spite of intense national outrage over the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service, a current IRS employee revealed that the agency is still subjecting conservative groups to higher levels of scrutiny than others who apply for tax-exempt status.
The Daily Mail is reporting that the bombshell admission came during a close-door interview with House Ways and Means Committee staffers when the employee, whose job entails evaluating new tax-exempt applications, said the targeting of conservative groups is continuing.
According to a recently released transcript of the meeting, which took place on August 1, the IRS employee was asked:
” . . . (I)f a Tea Party case, a group — a case from a Tea Party group came in to your desk, you reviewed the file and there was no evidence of political activity, would you potentially approve that case? Is that something you would do?”
The agent replied: “At this point I would send it to secondary screening, political advocacy.”
“So you would treat a Tea Party group as a political advocacy case even if there was no evidence of political activity on the application. Is that right?” the Committee asked.
The agent responded: “Based on my current manager’s direction, uh-huh.”
An aide to a senior Republican member of the committee told the Daily Mail that the Committee’s staff was “flabbergasted” to hear that “all the promises from IRS managers about changing things turned out to be a bunch of hot air.”
“When the scandal was first revealed, the president promised the American people that the administration would ‘hold the responsible parties accountable’,” wrote Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) and House Oversight Committee chair Darryl Issa (R-CA) in an op-ed appearing in the Washington Post.
Thus far, they have gotten nothing but the run-around.
“So far, the IRS and this administration have provided no assurances that oversight and accountability is in place to prevent such abuses from happening again,” Issa and Camp continue. “The administration’s own partisan anti-tea party rhetoric, its evolving and inconsistent explanations and the IRS’s own unwillingness to fulfill the president’s promises of cooperation with our investigation have fueled skepticism about how dedicated they are to holding the responsible parties accountable.”
They conclude: “The American people deserve to know that they have a government that works for them — not against them. The White House and the IRS should fully cooperate. It is the only way Americans can regain lost trust in this administration.”
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