l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 A top IRS official considered going public with the agency’s targeting of
conservative groups at a hearing just months before the 2012 presidential
election but ultimately decided against revealing the bombshell news,
according to a new report from a GOP-led House committee.
Then-Deputy Commissioner Steven Miller wrote in an email in June 2012, about
a month before a House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing, that he was
weighing whether to testify to “put a stake” in the “c4” issue --
apparently a reference to allegations about politics playing a role in the
agency’s denial of tax-exempt, 501(c)(4) status to conservative-leaning
groups.
“I am beginning to wonder whether I should do [the hearing] and
affirmatively use it to put a stake in politics and c4,” Miller told his
chief of staff, Nikole Flax, in a June 2012 email obtained by the House
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Miller ultimately testified at the July 25 hearing but never revealed his
knowledge of the misconduct.
“Because he did not, he did a great disservice to the American taxpayers,”
the House oversight committee report states.
The detail is one of many findings and allegations in the 226-page
Republican-authored report, obtained by Fox News in advance of its release
on Tuesday. The report highlights numerous examples of what House
Republicans say is agency officials misleading congressional investigators
and trying to slow their investigations.
Miller testified before Congress on at least six occasions as deputy
commissioner and later as acting commissioner, from May 2012 until May 2013,
when he was forced to resign.
During a final hearing, Miller apologized for the agency’s “poor service”
but maintained the targeting was not motivated by politics.
The report states: “Though Miller was never asked as directly as [
Commissioner Doug] Shulman about the targeting … Miller likewise never told
Congress about the IRS misconduct. Miller’s multiple missed opportunities
to tell Congress about the targeting continued the IRS’s pattern of failing
to inform Congress.”
Now-retired IRS official Lois Lerner, in charge of the agency’s tax-exempt
division during the 2010-2012 targeting, eventually revealed the scandal at
an American Bar Association event in May 2013 -- roughly six months after
President Obama won re-election and just days before an inspector general
report on the allegations was scheduled for release.
“They used names like Tea Party or Patriots and they selected cases simply
because the applications had those names in the title,” she said at the
time. “That was wrong, that was absolutely incorrect, insensitive and
inappropriate.”
Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House oversight
committee, on Monday accused the authors of the GOP-generated report of
taking information out of context and selectively releasing information.
“It is revealing that the Republicans -- yet again -- are leaking cherry-
picked excerpts of documents to support their preconceived political
narrative without allowing committee members to even see their conclusions
or vote on them first,” he said in a statement. “By leaking information to
reporters on condition that they not disclose it to Democrats, Republicans
are intentionally bypassing the normal congressional vetting process
designed to distinguish fact from fiction.”
The report follows a recent congressional budget agreement for fiscal 2015
that cuts IRS funding to roughly fiscal 2000 levels, which agency officials
argue will make oversight and other jobs even more difficult.
Other conclusions in the report, including several already made public, are
that the Obama administration appears so far to have done an incomplete
investigation and at times has been uncooperative.
“Only a month after Attorney General (Eric) Holder announced the
administration’s investigation, then-FBI Director Robert Mueller was unable
to answer basic questions about the status,” the report states. “Even as
recently as July 2014, after the IRS informed Congress that it had destroyed
two years of Lerner’s e-mails, the FBI continued its refusal to provide
any information about its investigation.”
In addition, the Justice Department at one point was willing to pursue
criminal prosecutions against the tax-exempt groups, based on information
obtained by the IRS, according to documents obtained by House GOP
investigators.
And the IRS failed to provide sufficient internal oversight, the report
concludes.
“Congress created administrative oversight entities within the Executive
Branch to ensure the IRS carries out its mission efficiently and responsibly
,” the report states. “These entities -- specifically, the IRS Oversight
Board and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration -- exist to
ensure that IRS misconduct does not occur and, if it does, to identify and
address it immediately. In the case of the IRS’s targeting of conservative
tax-exempt applicants, these administrative oversight entities failed in
their missions.” | P*********0
发帖数: 265 | | a*********a
发帖数: 3656 | 3 why don't u go tell the Acorn people. after all that is (or was) the biggest
political charity.
Bush did not send the IRS attack dog on Acorn though.
【在 P*********0 的大作中提到】
: 支持。
: 这些傻逼搞政治活动还希望免税。
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