By Cliff Montgomery – May 15th, 2013
The top official of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has quit after reports revealed that numerous members of his staff had targeted conservative organizations for extra scrutiny, the Obama Administration has announced.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Wednesday asked Steve Miller – Acting Commissioner of the IRS – to resign, declared President Obama during a news conference.
The ever-widening scandal has crept closer to top Administration officials in recent days.
“Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington [D.C.] and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status,” according to documents acquired by The Washington Post.
Such revelations make it “clear that the effort reached well beyond the [IRS] branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed” for the targeting of right-wing groups, according to the Post.
“IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations,” stated the newspaper, “while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea-party-affiliated groups.”
The TIGTA study revealed that IRS managers had permitted “inappropriate criteria” to be employed against certain conservative groups, and that this criteria remained in place for well over 18 months.
These additional probes created a number of “substantial delays” in the processing of conservative groups’ requests for tax-exempt status, according to the TIGTA report. The study also found that IRS officials requested from various right-wing organizations such “unnecessary information” as donor lists.
Earlier this week, it was revealed that the IRS had been searching tax-exempt status applications for such key words as “patriot” and “tea party.”
But top IRS officials have insisted to the Treasury Inspector General that the extra scrutiny of conservative groups was not the result of pressure from anyone outside the agency.
Obama declared in a rather short statement that he planned to work with the U.S. House and Senate and they investigate the matter.
Republicans already are beginning to call for an investigation to be headed by a special prosecutor.
