IRS audit of GOP senator pushed

Emails: Official in Tea Party flap suggested look at Grassley

WASHINGTON -- Congressional investigators said they uncovered emails Wednesday showing that a former Internal Revenue Service official at the heart of the Tea Party exemption investigation sought an audit involving a Republican senator in 2012.

The emails show former IRS official Lois Lerner mistakenly received an invitation to an event that was meant to go to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.

The event organizer apparently offered to pay for Grassley's wife to attend the event. In an email to another IRS official, Lerner suggests referring the matter for an audit, saying it might be inappropriate for the group to pay for his wife.

The other IRS official, Matthew Giuliano, waved her off, saying an audit would be premature because Grassley hadn't even accepted the invitation.

The name of the event organizer was blacked out on copies of the emails released by the House Ways and Means Committee because they were considered confidential taxpayer information. Grassley and his wife signed waivers allowing their names to be released.

In a statement, Grassley's office said the senator did not attend the event.

"This kind of thing fuels the deep concerns many people have about political targeting by the IRS and by officials at the highest levels," Grassley said. "It's very troubling that a simple clerical mix-up could get a taxpayer immediately referred for an IRS exam without any due diligence from agency officials."

The IRS said in a statement that it could not comment on the specifics of the case "due to taxpayer confidentiality provisions."

"As a general matter, the IRS has checks and balances in place to ensure the fairness and integrity of the audit process," the IRS statement said. "Audits cannot be initiated solely by personal requests or suggestions by any one individual inside the IRS."

Lerner headed the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt status. The IRS has acknowledged that agents improperly scrutinized applications from Tea Party-linked groups and others before the 2010 and 2012 elections.

The IRS says it has lost an untold numbers of Lerner's emails because her computer crashed in 2011, sparking anger from Republican lawmakers who have accused the tax agency of a cover-up. The emails released Wednesday were among the thousands that have been turned over to congressional investigators.

"We have seen a lot of unbelievable things in this investigation, but the fact that Lois Lerner attempted to initiate an apparently baseless IRS examination against a sitting Republican United States senator is shocking," said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. "At every turn, Lerner was using the IRS as a tool for political purposes in defiance of taxpayer rights."

Ways and Means is one of three congressional committees investigating the way the IRS processed applications for tax-exempt status. The Justice Department also is investigating.

Grassley had been an outspoken critic of the way the IRS policed tax-exempt groups even before the Tea Party scrutiny came to light last year.

A Section on 06/26/2014

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