WASHINGTON — Over two years after the U.S. Treasury inspector general uncovered evidence the Internal Revenue Service was targeting conservatives, the Obama administration’s Department of Justice has officially closed the case without bringing any charges.
“Our investigation uncovered substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia, leading to the belief by many tax-exempt applicants that the IRS targeted them based on their political viewpoints,” Assistant Attorney General Peter J. Kadzik wrote in a letter to congressional leaders. “But poor management is not a crime. We found no evidence that any IRS official acted on political, discriminatory, corrupt, or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution.”
In 2013, the IRS admitted to inappropriately flagging conservative groups for additional scrutiny during the 2012 election cycle. Former IRS official Lois Lerner, who at the time was leading the division that oversaw tax-exempt groups, said organizations were selectively targeted because they included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications. Among those groups was Alabama’s Wetumpka Tea Party.
“That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate,” Lerner said at the time. “That’s not how we go about selecting cases for further review. The IRS would like to apologize for that.”
Lerner was held in contempt of Congress in 2014 for refusing to answer any further questions about the targeting scandal.
The Wetumpka Tea Party went on to join dozens of conservative groups from around the country in suing the IRS. Lerner was named in the suit, along with then-Attorney General Eric Holder, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, former acting commissioner of the IRS Steven Miller, IRS Director of Rulings and Agreements Holly Paz, and numerous other officials inside the IRS.
The suit garnered national attention, but was later thrown out by a judge who said the group lost its standing in court when it finally received its tax-exempt status, even though it had taken almost two years.
“(The judge) basically said that since we finally received our tax status — after almost 2 years of waiting — that we now have no case,” said Wetumpka Tea Party founder Becky Gerritson. “That’s like a judge telling a burglary victim, that even though she was robbed 2 years ago; since she does not currently have the thieves in her house, she has no case.”
Gerritson, who is now running for congress in Alabama’s 2nd District, reacted to the latest news of the DOJ not pursuing charges with similar frustration.
“The American people are being completely disregarded and our government is just running over us,” she told WSFA. “This is not an accident. This is not a coincidence. There was true targeting going on. When the government is acting citizens what they are praying about, what books they are reading, who they are associating with, it’s like we’re not longer living in America. One of my stands is to abolish the IRS. It is being used as a weapon against the American people.”
California congressman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) was chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee during the height of the scandal. In a statement released shortly after the DOJ announced it would not pursue charges, Issa called it “a low point of accountability in an Administration that is better known for punishing whistleblowers than the abuse and misconduct they expose.”
“After stating that their investigation confirms that Tea Party and conservative groups were improperly targeted, they dismiss it merely as a byproduct of gross mismanagement and incompetence — ignoring volumes of evidence in the public record and efforts to obstruct legitimate inquires,” Issa said in the statement.
Democrats, however, led ranking House Judiciary Committee member John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), called on Republicans to “end this partisan witch hunt and focus on matters that impact the lives of the American people.”
