AP
By: David Martosko (UK Daily Mail)
Letters from U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, show his involvement in pressing the IRS to target mostly conservative organizations with cumbersome questionnaires seemingly calculated to slow down their applications for tax-exempt status in the middle of an election year.
...
'These new documents show that officials in the IRS headquarters were responsible for the illegal delays of Tea Party applications,' Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said Wednesday in a statement.
'The IRS scandal has now ensnared Congress,' he said.
That claim is a reference to a series of letters from Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who wrote to the IRS in June 2012 to complain about 12 nonprofit groups he wanted investigated for 'political activity.'
Eleven of those organizations are conservative; just one is liberal. The right-leaning groups included the Club for Growth, Americans for Tax Reform, the retiree-focused 60 Plus Association, and the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List.
Levin intensified his written complaints as the presidential election approached, sometimes objecting to how the IRS handled 'social welfare' groups and claiming that IRS routinely 'misinterprets the law' by allowing them to engage in any political-related activity while receiving a tax exemption.
Then-IRS Deputy Commissioner Steven Miller replied at one point that the agency has broad discretion – which it appears to have used – in choosing which organizations to approve and which to reject.
'There is no standard questionnaire used to obtain information about political activities,' Miller insisted.
Levin's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.