A Democratic leader in the House has come forward with newly released documents that show that the Internal Revenue Service did not give extra scrutiny to conservative groups seeking tax exempt status exclusively; they also applied the same extra effort toward progressive groups, according to Reuters.
The documents were released by Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., along with a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. Among the documents released us a PowerPoint presentation and a watch list indicating that the Cincinnati office of the IRS was actively searching out liberal groups in addition to conservative groups, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Also released with the documents is an e-mail from an investigator in the inspector general's office that backs the claims of Democrats that the scrutiny given to Tea Party groups was not done for reasons of political bias but instead because of confusion and poor direction, according to Bloomberg.
"The e-mail traffic indicated there were unclear processing directions and the group wanted to make sure they had guidance on processing the applications so they pulled them," the investigator said in the e-mail. "This is a very important nuance."
While the documents do reveal that groups were targeted for having the word "progressive" or "occupy" in their name Ali Ahmad, a spokesman for Rep. Issa, claims the documents to not prove that they went through the same scrutiny Tea Party groups did, according to Reuters.
"These documents, once again, refute misleading attempts to equate routine scrutiny of other groups involved in advocacy to the systematic scrutiny of Tea Party groups by IRS officials," Ahmad said. "As has been documented, while 100 percent of Tea Party applications were systematically stopped and scrutinized for a 27-month period, at the same time dozens of progressive applications were approved by the IRS."
In the letter Cummings says that the inspector general, Russell George, omitted the just released information from his report and needs to be called back in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in order to explain himself, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., believes that the new documents show that George's audit was "fundamentally flawed and created widespread misperceptions that Republicans seized on in an effort to attack the White House."
Cummings makes the same point in his letter to Issa as he accuses the California Republican of purposefully excluding Democrats from the investigation.
"This investigation, however, has been characterized by one-sided and partial information leading to unsubstantiated accusations with no basis in fact," Cummings wrote. "You did not consult with me before asking Mr. George to undertake this review, and Mr. George did not provide me with copies of his subsequent correspondence with you. In addition, Democratic staff were not invited to meetings your staff had with Mr. George's staff to discuss the scope of his work."
The committee is scheduled to meet to discuss the issue on July 18 to further discuss the IRS scandal. Cummings says that if George is not at that meeting to explain why the newly released documents were not included in his report that the entire premise of the meeting would be called into question.
