IRS Officials Knew of Scrutiny of Tea Party Groups, Documents Suggest

Internal Revenue Service staffers in Washington were involved in heightened scrutiny of conservative groups seeking nonprofit status, and the tax agency’s two top officials knew of the matter a year ago, The Washington Post reports.

The newspaper reports that it obtained documents showing that the examination of organizations with “Tea Party,” “patriot,” or other keywords in their names went beyond the Cincinnati IRS office that was initially blamed for the approach, which President Obama denounced Monday as “outrageous.”

Then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman and his deputy, Steven Miller—now the agency’s acting head—learned of the heightened scrutiny in May 2012, according to Republican congressional aides who had been briefed by the IRS and federal investigators.

Campaign-finance watchdog groups that have pressed the IRS to more closely regulate political activity by 501(c)(4) social-welfare organizations lamented that the agency went after small Tea Party groups while ignoring entities such as Republican strategist Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS and the pro-Obama Priorities USA that have spent tens of millions of dollars in recent campaign cycles, The New York Times writes.

Read a Chronicle of Philanthropy article on the potential fallout for charities from the IRS Tea Party scandal.

This post has been corrected from an earlier version that mislabeled the conservative nonprofit group Americans for Prosperity.