Washington Times - IRS Office In D.C. Heavily Involved In Tea Party Assault

May 15, 2014

1 min read

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By Stephen Dinan and S.A. Miller, WashingtonTimes.com

A year after a scorching audit revealed that the Internal Revenue Service targeted tea party groups for intrusive scrutiny, and despite an effort to clean house at the agency, many of those groups are still awaiting approval for tax-exempt status.

Meanwhile, documents released Wednesday — a year to the day after the inspector general’s audit — signal intensive involvement of IRS employees in Washington, contradicting the early story by agency employees that the problems stemmed from overzealous employees in the Cincinnati office.

As the IRS scandal enters its second year, congressional oversight continues, but the agency faces increasing pressure from other avenues, including lawsuits meant to force the agency to approve some of those long-stalled applications.

“We still don’t have the complete picture of what took place. We have a much better idea than we did a year ago, but the scope, depth and breadth of it is going to [emerge] in context of the litigation,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice, which is representing several dozen groups that have tangled with the IRS over their nonprofit applications. . . .

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