{"id":32591,"date":"2013-05-10T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-10T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/irs-admits-apologizes-for-targeting-right-wing-groups-in-election-run-up\/32591\/"},"modified":"2013-05-10T22:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T21:00:00","slug":"irs-admits-apologizes-for-targeting-right-wing-groups-in-election-run-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/irs-admits-apologizes-for-targeting-right-wing-groups-in-election-run-up\/","title":{"rendered":"IRS admits, apologizes for targeting right-wing groups in election run-up"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<\/a><\/div>\n

Officials from the US Internal Revenue Service apologized Friday after confessing that the agency had targeted conservative political groups, putting them under extra scrutiny during the months leading up to the 2012 presidential election.<\/p>\n

Organizations that used words including \u201ctea party<\/i>\u201d or
\n\u201cpatriot<\/i>\u201d in their applications for tax-exempt status were
\nflagged. Some were asked for their list of financial donors, a
\nflagrant violation of IRS policy, Lois Lerner, an IRS division
\nhead, told the Associated Press.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, it was
\ninsensitive and it was inappropriate<\/i>,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s not
\nhow we go about selecting cases for further review. The IRS would
\nlike to apologize for that<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Approximately 75 groups were targeted, although none had their
\ntax-exempt status revoked, Lerner added. She reiterated that the
\nscheme was started by low-level employees in Cincinnati, Ohio and
\nthat IRS higher-ups were not privy to what was happening at the
\ntime.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey didn\u2019t do it because of any political bias<\/i>,\u201d Lerner
\ncontinued. \u201cIt was an error in judgment and it wasn\u2019t
\nappropriate but that\u2019s what they did. We\u2019ve now corrected these
\nissues, and we don\u2019t expect that any of these will be repeated
\ngoing forward<\/i>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tea Party groups and similarly-minded activists who were
\noutspoken in their disdain for US President Barack Obama complained
\nof mistreatment from the IRS before the election, when political
\nfeelings are naturally heightened. Sal Russo, founder of the Tea
\nParty Express political action committee, told ABC News that though
\nhis group was never harassed by the IRS, he did hear of government
\nresistance to the tax exemption requests.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cOn our bus tours the local Tea Party groups were all
\nscreaming about it<\/i>,\u201d Russo said. \u201cIt was so pronounced
\naround the country that it was obvious the Tea Party groups were
\nbeing targeted. Not unlike any bureaucracy, the first reaction is
\nto deny everything even when they don\u2019t know the facts<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that he was \u201cglad they finally acknowledged what was
\nobvious to everyone else<\/i>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Other leaders in the Tea Party, a right-wing anti-government
\nfaction created in 2009 in reaction to government relief for
\nforeclosed-upon homeowners, were decidedly less
\nforgiving.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is suspicious that the activity of these \u2018low-level
\nworkers\u2019 was unknown to IRS leadership at the time it
\noccurred<\/i>,\u201d Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator for Tea
\nParty Patriots, which bills itself as the biggest Tea Party group
\nin the US, told ABC. \u201cPresident Obama must also apologize for
\nhis administration ignoring repeated complaints by these broad
\ngrassroots organizations of harassment by the IRS in 2012, and make
\nconcrete and transparent steps today to ensure this never happens
\nagain<\/i>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

One coincidence that\u2019s fueled conspiracy theories is the IRS\u2019
\nresponsibility to enforce Obama\u2019s <\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on : RT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Officials from the US Internal Revenue Service apologized Friday after confessing that the agency had targeted conservative political groups, putting them under extra scrutiny during the months leading up to the 2012 presidential election. Organizations that used words including \u201ctea party\u201d or \u201cpatriot\u201d in their applications for tax-exempt status were flagged. Some were asked for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-32591","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}