The IRS Conservative Targeting Scandal included:
- Hundreds of conservative groups were targeted
- At least 5 pro-Israel groups
- Constitutional groups
- Groups that criticized Obama administration
- At least two pro-life groups
- An 83 year-old Nazi concentration camp survivor
- A 180 year-old Baptist paper
- A Texas voting-rights group
- A Hollywood conservative group was targeted and harassed
- Conservative activists and businesses
- At least one conservative Hispanic group
- IRS continued to target groups even after the scandal was exposed
- 10% of Tea Party donors were audited by the IRS
- And… 100% of the 501(c)(4) Groups Audited by IRS Were Conservative
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen refused to apologize after he admitted the agency had lost all of Lois Lerner’s emails and had trashed her hard drive.
But they weren’t lost…
The IRS’s inspector general launched a criminal investigation in February after 32,744 lost emails were recovered by congressional investigators.
On Tuesday IRS Commissioner told reporters the GOP cannot abolish the IRS and most of the anger directed at the IRS was due to a complicated tax code.
The Hill reported:
Koskinen said Tuesday that, even under the simplest of tax codes, the federal government would need an agency to collect revenue and administer the tax code, something Cruz’s own aides have also admitted.
“Somebody has to collect the money, and then somebody also has to make sure when you fill in the small card, you’re putting in the right numbers,” Koskinen said.
But Koskinen also said he understands why politicians seek to tap into public anger at the IRS. Conservatives have become increasingly angry at the IRS because of the Tea Party controversy, but Koskinen insisted that an overly complicated tax code spurred much of the anger at his agency.
“I think that’s a lot of what’s behind, you know, ‘get rid of the IRS.’ It’s really ‘get rid of this complicated tax code.’ And to that extent, I think that’s a reasonable goal,” Koskinen said.
Koskinen made his comments after a speech in which he said that the agency was doing its best to put the controversies of the last few years behind it. In addition to the Tea Party investigations, Congress has also rapped the IRS for excessive spending on conferences.
Congressional investigators have accused the central figure in the Tea Party controversy — Lois Lerner, who formerly led the IRS division overseeing tax-exempt groups — of using her personal email account to conduct agency business.
Scrutiny of that practice has only grown in recent weeks, after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged not having an official government account while heading the department. Clinton is expected to announce her own presidential bid in the coming weeks.