As hearings on the IRS scandal moved from the House to the Senate top IRS officials continued to claim they were unaware that the agency was targeting conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. Former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, who led the agency between 2008 and 2012, told the Senate Finance Committee that he had not lied during Congressional testimony in March 2012, according to Reuters.
Shulman maintains that he was not fully aware of the scope of the targeting happening within the IRS when he testified in late March 2012 addressing complaints by conservatives that conservative groups had been receiving extra IRS scrutiny; Schulman says he only became fully aware within the last couple of weeks.
"The full set of facts around these circumstances came out last week...until that point I did not have a full set of facts," Shulman said. "What I knew sometime in the spring of 2012 was that there was a list that was being used. I knew that the word 'Tea Party' was on the list. I didn't know what other words were on the list."
It is unclear as to whether Shulman was aware of the list being used when he testified before a House subcommittee that the IRS was not focusing only on conservative groups on March 21, 2012, according to the Los Angeles Times.
"There is absolutely no targeting," Shulman said at the 2012 hearing. "This is the kind of back and forth that happens when people apply for 501(c)(4) status."
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, repeatedly asked Shulman and Steven Miller, the former IRS Chief who took over for Shulman and was forced to resign last week, why Congress was not informed once the IRS learned of the actions taking place in the Cincinnati office. Hatch went as far as to accuse Miller of telling a "lie by omission," according to the Los Angeles Times.
"I did not lie," Miller said. "We were not politically motivated in targeting conservative groups."
Senators appeared to be exasperated by the lack of concrete answers being given by Shulman and Miller, according to Reuters. In his opening statement to the hearing Hatch implied that there was still a great deal of investigation left in order to get to the bottom of the scandal.
"One way or another, we're going to learn the facts about what went on here," Hatch said. "I hope we can do so with the full and complete cooperation of the Obama administration."
