IRS Press Releases

Requests documents and transcribed interview of DOJ official in wake of public revelation that DOJ corresponded with former IRS official Lois Lerner about prosecuting tax exempt status applicants WASHINGTON – House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and sixteen Oversight Committee members asked Department of Justice Attorney General Eric Holder to produce documents and a Justice Department official for a transcribed interview to ...

“The release of new documents underscores the political nature of IRS Tea Party targeting and the extent to which supposed apolitical officials took direction from elected Democrats,” said Chairman Issa. “These e-mails are part of an overwhelming body of evidence that political pressure from prominent Democrats led to the targeting of Americans for their political beliefs.”

“Today, the Oversight Committee upheld its obligation to pursue the truth about the IRS targeting of Americans because of their political beliefs,” said Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif. “Our investigation has found that former IRS Exempt Organizations division Director Lois Lerner played a central role in the targeting scandal and then failed to meet her legal obligations to answer questions after she waived her right not to testify. In demanding answers and holding a powerful government ...

Ranking Democrat previously denied his staff contacted the IRS about group True the Vote WASHINGTON – Newly delivered internal IRS e-mails sent and received by former IRS Exempt Organizations Director Lois Lerner and other IRS employees show that House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Minority staff, working for Ranking Member Elijah Cummings, began contacting the IRS in August 2012 ...

“Lois Lerner’s testimony is critical to the Committee’s investigation,” the report states. “Without her testimony, the full extent of the IRS’s targeting of Tea Party applications cannot be known, and the Committee will be unable to fully complete its work.” As Director of the Exempt Organizations business divisions of the IRS during the relevant period, Ms. Lerner “has unique, first-hand knowledge of how, and why, the IRS scrutinized applications for tax-exempt status from ...

“[T]he Administration and congressional Democrats have seized upon the notion that the IRS’s targeting was not just limited to conservative applicants,” the report states. “These Democratic claims are flat-out wrong and have no basis in any thorough examination of the facts. Yet, the Administration’s chief defenders continue to make these assertions in a concerted effort to deflect and distract from the truth about the IRS’s targeting of tax-exempt applicants.”

Washington, D.C. – House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) today announced that the Committee will convene for a business meeting on Thursday, April 10, 2014 at 9:00 AM in room 2154 of the Rayburn House Office Building to consider a resolution holding Lois G. Lerner, former IRS Director of Exempt Organizations, in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions before Congress on

WASHINGTON – Today, in advance of Wednesday’s hearing on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)’s inappropriate targeting of conservative groups, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., sent a letter to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen detailing specific and longstanding priority document requests the agency has still not fulfilled. “As you prepare for ...

WASHINGTON – On Wednesday, March 26th, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., will convene a hearing on the IRS targeting scandal entitled, “Examining the IRS Response to the Targeting Scandal.”   This hearing will address the IRS’s response to the targeting scandal, including its compliance with ...

“In the wake of Ms. Lerner’s refusal to testify and answer questions, this report offers detailed evidence about steps she took to crack down on organizations that exercised their Constitutional rights to free political speech,” said Chairman Issa. “She involved herself in efforts to apply unprecedented scrutiny to new applicants, existing organizations, and to write new rules after President Obama and other prominent Democrats expressed outrage at the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ...