Democrats offer new evidence that IRS targeted progressive groups

By Josh Hicks, WashPost, Updated: July 12, 2013

The House Oversight committee’s top Democrat on Friday will release new evidence that the Internal Revenue Service targeted both progressive and conservative groups for extra scrutiny during the 2010 and 2012 election cycles.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said in a draft letter to committee chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif) that congressional investigators have discovered training materials from an July 2010 “Screening Workshop” that prove IRS agents were told to be on the lookout for groups from both sides of the political spectrum.

A PowerPoint presentation from the workshop told IRS processors to screen for names that look like “tea party,” “patriots,” ” 9/12 Project,” and “progressive.” It noted that such groups ”may be more than 50% political,” which could disqualify them from tax-exempt status.

Minutes from the training session show that the IRS also instructed agents who had doubts about those groups to “err on the side of caution and transfer to 7822,” an IRS office in Cincinnati that reviewed applications for tax-exemption.

An audit by IRS inspector general J. Russell George found that the agency inappropriately targeted groups based on ideology rather than looking for politically neutral signs of campaign activity.

(More here.)