Top House committee chairmen said Wednesday that they have learned that the IRS sent some tea party groups’ applications for tax-exempt status through special scrutiny at the direction of agency officials in Washington, in a revelation that appears to confirm political targeting.
The committee chairmen released partial excerpts of interviews with IRS employees that show they were prepared to rule on some of the tea party groups’ applications, but Lois Lerner, an official at the root of the investigation, overruled them and instead created the complex and intrusive inquiries that have become the center of a Washington scandal.
Carter Hull, a tax law specialist with 48 years of experience at the IRS, said he was told to send some of the applications to the IRS‘ chief counsel’s office. The chief counsel is one of two political appointees in the IRS.
Mr. Hull told congressional investigators the IRS was trying to grapple with how to respond to the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case, which left the door open for interest groups to play a bigger role in political activities.
Part of the IRS‘ answer was to single out some tea-party-affiliated groups’ applications as test cases.
Some of those test cases still haven’t been decided, three years after they were filed, Mr. Hull said.
“That’s a very long time period,” he told investigators.
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