Last week, October 5th to be exact, NPR's Peter Overby 'reported:'
In 2013, IRS official Lois Lerner revealed that conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status had been getting extra scrutiny, based on words such as "tea party" or "patriots" in their names.
For conservatives, she confirmed their darkest suspicions. In the Tea Party heyday years of 2009 and 2010, hundreds of groups affiliated with the party had sought tax-exempt status as 501(c)(4) "social welfare" organizations. IRS demands for documents left many of them in bureaucratic limbo for a year or more.
Now, in the third audit of how the tax-exempt application process went off the rails, the Treasury Department's inspector general overseeing the IRS has found the agency targeted not just conservatives but also scores of groups with words like "progressive" in their names.
Yawn.
Quoting from the September 23, 2013 snapshot:
Turning to the US where so many scandals plague the White House these days. There is the ongoing IRS scandal and the big news today on it is that the woman who pleaded the Fifth Amendment rather than testify about how she did her job duties has resigned. Dana Bash, Kevin Bohn and Deidre Walsh (CNN) quote an IRS statement declaring Lois Lerner has retired and the reporters note:
Lerner drew fierce criticism from Republicans shortly after she admitted at an American Bar Association conference and later in a phone conference with reporters that the IRS had focused on groups with the names "tea party" and "patriot" in their titles. Over the summer, however, more investigations revealed that the IRS had also looked closely at groups that used the word "progressive."
The reporters are incorrect that targeting of 'progressive' groups emerged over the summer. From the first hearing in the spring, it was publicly known that progressive groups invoking the Bill of Rights were among those targeted. By the second hearing, if you didn't know that progressives were also targeted, you really weren't paying attention. Also incorrect is press spin that Lerner disclosed the problems. No, Lerner staged a disclosure. She planted a friend in the audience and instructed the friend to ask the question. This was deceitful and a sign of Lois Lerner's true nature.
C.I. covered it in 2013, Ruth did, Ava did (at Trina's site), Wally did (at Rebecca's site), Kat did and, here, Dona covered it in Congressional roundtable pieces.
