Some 2,500 documents that "potentially" show taxpayer information held by the Internal Revenue Service was reportedly shared with the Obama administration, according to a shocking revelation by the Treasury Inspector General.
The discovery, revealed to the group Cause of Action which has sued for access to any of the documents, speculates that both the IRS and White House were working together to harass taxpayers, The Washington Examiner reported.
A large number of documents suggest that President Obama's White House was directly involved in probes of taxpayers, likely including conservatives and Tea Party groups associated with the IRS scandal, an official revealed in an email from the Justice Department's tax office.
In requesting a delay in the delivery date of the documents, the DOJ told Cause of Action, "The agency [Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration] has located 2,500 potentially responsive documents and anticipates being able to finish processing 2,000 of these pages by the December 1 date. It needs the additional two weeks to deal with the last 500 pages to determine if they are responsive and make any necessary withholdings."
But Cause of Action, which calls itself "Advocates for Government Accountability," had been expecting these documents since it had earlier filed a lawsuit to win access to them but had been denied by a federal judge, according to Fox Nation.
"This disclosure, coming only after Cause of Action sued TIGTA over its refusal to acknowledge whether such investigations took place, and after the court ordered TIGTA to reveal whether or not documents existed, signals that the White House may have made significant efforts to obtain taxpayers' personal information," Cause of Action said in a statement to Secrets.
The latest finding renews its "concerns about the decaying professionalism of, and apparent slip into partisanship by, IRS's senior leadership," Cause of Action added.
The disclosure follows the agency's recovery of 30,000 missing emails five months after ex-IRS official Lois Lerner's lost emails revived the investigation into the matter of abuse by IRS officials in unfairly and illegally targeting conservative-leaning and Tea Party not-for-profit groups, The Washington Examiner reported.
Lerner, who headed the IRS division, has been accused of processing Tea Party and conservative groups for tax exempt status in an unfair manner before the 2010 and 2012 elections, including when the IRS allgedly improperly delayed dozens of applications for years, according to an internal audit by the agency's inspector general. Documents show that some liberal groups were singled out, too, Politico reported.
