IRS IG's Response- The IRS Did NOT Target/Delay Progressive Applications (Only Conservative)

Sorry Progressives

Earlier this week the IRS released  disclosure yesterday of 15 redacted versions of its Be On the Lookout document, or BOLO, in an attempt to prove that their contention that the delays experienced by Tea Party groups applying for nonprofit status were a symptom of mismanagement and not politically motivated action.

The Progressive world had a field day, "see" they said, "the IRS Scandal was not political just stupid"

Rep. Sander Levin maintained at yesterday's the "failure" of the IG report to originally disclose this was a "fundamental flaw" in their investigation. He said it "contributed to the distortion of the entire investigation."

Democrats argued that by leaving out the detail on progressive groups, it gave Republicans license to cast the scandal as politically motivated.

"Half of the story has been told for I think for a very political reason and that is to make conservative groups feel as though they are the only ones receiving this heightened scrutiny and treatment and that somehow it must be orchestrated by the White House," Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., said. "And we believe that that's completely false."

Rep. Levin  demanded that the IRS inspector general, J. Russell George, should explain why his May 14 report didn’t include this information and demanded to know why the progressive organizations targeted by the IRS weren't included in his report.

Yesterday Inspector General George wrote Levin a letter which provided the answers which were sure to ruin most progressives weekends.

"Our audit did not find evidence that the IRS used the "Progressives" identifier as selection criteria for potential political cases between May 2010 and May 2012. The focus of our audit was on whether the IRS: 1) targeted specific groups applying for tax-exempt status, 2) delayed processing of targeted groups' applications, and 3) requested unnecessary information from targeted groups. We determined the IRS developed and used inappropriate criteria to identify applications from organizations with the words Tea Party in their names."

In other words, the Internal Revenue Service confined their witch-hunt to conservative and pro-Israeli organizations. Apparently the term "progressives" appeared in a section of the BOLO spreadsheet labeled "Historical," and, unlike other BOLO entries, did not include instructions on how to handle cases that met the "progressive" criteria.

According to the AG, the numbers don't lie:

"Based on the information you flagged regarding the existence of a 'Progressives' entry on BOLO lists, TIGTA performed additional research which determined that six tax-exempt applications filed between May 2010 and May 2012 having the words "progress" or "progressive" in their names were included in the 298 cases the IRS identified as potential political cases. We also determined that 14 tax-exempt applications filed between May 2010 and May 2012 using the words "progress" or "progressive" in their names were not referred for added scrutiny as potential political cases. In total, 30 percent of the organizations we identified with the words "progress" or "progressive" in their names were processed as potential political cases.

"In comparison, our audit found that 100 percent of the tax-exempt applications with Tea Party, Patriots, or 9/12 in their names were processed as potential political cases during the timeframe of our audit."

Sorry Liberals, you can chill now because the evidence shows us that conservative groups were not only flagged, but targeted and abused by the IRS.  Progressive groups were flagged, but the flagging was not followed up by anyone in the IRS.