More trouble for the IRS (and the public)

IRS Sent FBI Database on Nonprofit Groups in 2010, GOP Lawmakers Say

WASHINGTON—The Internal Revenue Service transmitted a 1.1 million-page database of information concerning tax-exempt organizations to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the run-up to the 2010 election, including confidential taxpayer information that shouldn't have been shared, according to House Republican lawmakers investigating the IRS.
The information was to be used in investigations of nonprofit groups' political activity, the lawmakers say, citing internal emails from the agencies.

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The Justice Department turned over the database to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee this month in response to a subpoena, officials said on Monday.
"We were extremely troubled by this new information, and by the fact that the IRS has withheld it from the committee for over a year," wrote Reps. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) and Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) in a letter to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. "We were astonished to learn days ago from the Justice Department that these 21 disks contained confidential taxpayer information protected by federal law."
The IRS late Monday said the disks primarily contained "publicly available material that is easily and routinely accessible." But the IRS said it recently identified 33 tax returns on the disks—out of a total of 12,000 returns—that inadvertently included "some nonpublic information." The agency said the 33 groups represented a wide spectrum of organizations and most don't appear to have any connection to political activity.
GOP lawmakers are probing whether the IRS did anything inappropriate in coordinating with the Justice Department to investigate improper political activity by some tax-exempt organizations.
At the time in 2010, Justice Department officials were exploring whether criminal charges could be brought against tax-exempt groups that did more election campaigning than the law allows.
A Justice Department official said that the agency made no use of the information.
"We informed the committee that the FBI did not review the disks except for the index and, to the best of our knowledge, neither the FBI nor the department used them for any investigative purpose," the official said. "After learning last week that the disks contained protected confidential information, we returned our copies of the disks to the IRS and recommended that the committee do the same."
Richard Pilger, a Justice Department prosecutor who discussed concerns about tax-exempt organizations' political activity with the IRS during 2010, told congressional investigators recently that he contacted the IRS in January 2011 for help in obtaining "certain tax information" to assist with a "specific investigation." But he said he couldn't discuss that matter because of taxpayer privacy.
The latest revelation is likely to fuel a continuing controversy over the government's treatment of tax-exempt organizations that were engaged in politics in recent years. Lawmakers continue to investigate how and why IRS officials centralized their review of applications for tax-exempt status by conservative tea-party groups beginning in early 2010.
That review resulted in yearslong delays for many applicants. An inspector general in 2013 concluded the IRS had targeted tea-party groups for special scrutiny, although the IRS review eventually grew to include some liberal groups, too.
Write to John D. McKinnon at john.mckinnon@wsj.com

 

I think that this clearly demonstrates that Obama's secret plan is to institute sharia law, make baby eating mandatory, convert all Christians to black Muslims, open up the gates of hell and bring forth the anti-Christ, and cancel Christmas. And he is still better than any candidate on the Right.

 

Biased a little?

 

Biased a lot.