A federal judge has given the IRS a month to present written explanations on how the emails to and from former IRS official Lois Lerner disappeared.
When federal election lawyers decided the nonprofit Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies
likely violated political spending limits, campaign finance watchdogs
were certain the Internal Revenue Service would take action.
After all, lawyers for the Federal Election Commission argued that Crossroads GPS, co-founded by repugican agitators Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, spent more on politics than anything else leading up to the 2010 election.
Then the IRS tea party scandal exploded.
The repugicans in Congress began waylaying the IRS
over what they said was the systematic and inexcusable targeting of tea
party and wingnut cabals. And the Treasury Inspector General for
Tax Administration declared that the agency had employed “inappropriate criteria” in heavily scrutinizing some groups' tax-exemption applications.
The scandal has persisted with the recent revelation over missing agency emails, which the IRS has blamed on a computer hard drive crash in 2011.
The
IRS’ nonprofit division, grappling with a decimated staff and limited
resources, effectively lost whatever nerve it had left. Notably, it came
to a near standstill on deciding whether it should grant "social
welfare" nonprofit status to Crossroads GPS and other wingnut cabals. It
likewise balked at denying or revoking nonprofit status for a
growing constellation of politically driven, big-spending liberal
nonprofits such as Patriot Majority USA and Priorities USA.
The
IRS knew that many of these groups were highly political. But “nobody
wanted to say 'no, you’re not exempt,'” said an IRS exempt organizations
division staffer who asked not to be identified for fear of losing his
job.
“We stalled so we wouldn’t have to say no,” he added.
The
paralysis allowed organizations waiting for IRS approval to continue to
spend freely on elections while keeping the names of their donors
secret.
The tea party
scandal, combined with Congress systematically stripping the IRS of
resources and clout over decades, has led to an exempt organizations
division that has all but quit regulating politically active nonprofits
in any consistent, demonstrable way, a six-month Center for Public Integrity investigation revealed.
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