The IRS added 128 groups to the original contested list of 298 conservative and Tea Party groups.
The newly added, mostly socialist leaning groups, just appeared during the last few weeks preceding the court action. This appears to be a last minute effort to balance the previously biased IRS targeting.
The IRS Hit List
Washington, DC, June 7.─ Three years on, the Internal Revenue Service has finally handed over its list of the organizations the agency’s tax-exempt division targeted for their political views. All it took to shake the disclosure from the agency were dozens of lawsuits and a federal appeals-court order.
In a court filing last month, the IRS produced a list of 426 groups that were singled out for special scrutiny and in some cases had approval of their application for tax-exempt status delayed. The filing was in response to a lawsuit by NorCal Tea Party Patriots, which has struggled for three years to get the agency to acknowledge the names of those it mistreated, so that the targets have the option of joining the litigation. The targets run the gamut from big outfits such as the Tea Party Patriots to local groups that used the “tea party” moniker.
The list doesn’t include 40 groups that have already opted out of the suit, so the actual number targeted is 466. The lawsuit’s goal is to find out how the targeting occurred and to seek damages for “viewpoint discrimination,” among other legal violations.
The IRS hasn’t explained why its number is so much higher than the 298 groups that Treasury Inspector General Russell George identified in his 2013 audit that disclosed the targeting ...
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