Glenn opened the radio program this morning with a stunning story out of Washington D.C. According to testimony released Thursday by the House Ways and Mean Committee, an unidentified IRS agent told Congress that the agency is still targeting conservatives – three months after the scandal first came to light.
The agent’s remarks come from closed-door testimony and were made public by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI). In response to questioning, the agent said Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status are still subjected to “secondary screening” in his IRS office.
“The IRS is still, still targeting Tea Party,” Glenn said on radio this morning. “This is incredible.”
The Washington Examiner provided this transcript of the IRS agent’s testimony:
Wednesday, August 1, 2013
COMMITTEE: Today, currently, how do you analyze advocacy cases. If, for example, Tea Party of Arkansas came in today, how would you handle it?
IRS AGENT: Well, the BOLO list doesn’t exist anymore.
COMMITTEE: Sure.
IRS AGENT: If a political advocacy case came in today, I would give it — or talk about it to my manager because right now we really don’t have any direction or we haven’t had any for the last month and a half.
--
COMMITTEE: If you saw — I am asking this currently, if today if a Tea Party case, a group — a case from a Tea Party group came in to your desk, you reviewed the file and there was no evidence of political activity, would you potentially approve that case? Is that something you would do?
IRS AGENT: At this point I would send it to secondary screening, political advocacy.
COMMITTEE: So you would treat a Tea Party group as a political advocacy case even if there was no evidence of political activity on the application. Is that right?
IRS AGENT: Based on my current manager’s direction, uh-huh.
“The IRS is still targeting the Tea Party. So now why,” Glenn asked. “It's very simple: Congress isn't even united against the IRS on the Tea Party… And so what happens? You don't have anybody on the GOP that really is powerful. You don't have those guys really coming out and standing together. You have the GOP wanting to torpedo the Tea Party as well, so the progressives are working together on this and just brushing this one under the rug, and nothing is going to happen. The Tea Party is going to continue to be targeted, and then it will get worse from there.”
Committee Chairman Camp has since called the allegations of continued political targeting by the IRS “outrageous.”
“Like I said at the beginning, the point you should remember in this is the Tea Parties are still being targeted,” Glenn concluded. “This isn't old news. New testimony: The Tea Parties are still being targeted. And that's not going to change.”