Senate investigators find no IRS bias against conservatives

FILE – In this April 9, 2013 file photo Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., left, talks with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. on Capitol Hill in Washington. After investigating the IRS for more than a year, two key senators, a Democrat, Levin, ... more >

By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Sunday, September 7, 2014

The Senate’s chief investigative panel has concluded that there was no political bias in the agency’s targeting of nonprofit groups for special scrutiny, saying that while the questions were intrusive, the IRS inspector general blew the matter out of proportion.
Investigators from the permanent subcommittee on investigations, controlled by Democrats, blamed Internal Revenue Service leaders for mismanagement but cleared them of charges that they tried to unfairly target tea party or other conservative groups. They said the agency also asked probing questions of some liberal groups.
“The subcommittee found no evidence that political bias influences the decisions made by IRS personnel,” the report issued Friday concluded. “A review of nearly 800,000 pages of documents and nearly two dozen interviews produced no evidence of political bias influencing IRS decision-making about how to process [nonprofit] applications filed by conservative organizations, and no evidence that the IRS singled out conservative groups for harsher treatment than other groups.”
The investigators said part of the proof was that “key IRS personnel” were registered Republicans or viewed themselves ideologically as aligned with the tea party.

But True the Vote, one of the groups caught up in the targeting, said the investigation was tainted because Sen. Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat and chairman of the investigative panel, was one of those who pushed the IRS to go after nonprofit groups’ political activity in the first place.
“This report’s primary author has zero credibility,” True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht said. She said investigators never talked to her group, nor did they mention interviewing any of the other “victims” of IRS scrutiny.
Friday’s report marks the end of the first of four congressional investigations into the targeting. The Justice Department also is looking into whether the IRS engaged in criminal behavior.
Mr. Levin’s report focused heavily on the scope of the targeting and concluded that some liberal groups also were caught in the IRS dragnet. The report questioned the inspector general’s own investigation, which exposed the scope of targeting in a May 2013 report.
Senate investigators said that by highlighting the targeting of conservative groups, J. Russell George, Treasury inspector general for tax administration, left Americans with an erroneous picture of the scandal.
Mr. George said in a statement that he is still looking into the targeting and “facts are still coming to light.”
But he said he firmly stands behind the 2013 audit that found the IRS gave “inappropriate treatment” to nonprofit groups, and he pointed out that the IRS apologized for its behavior.
In a stinging dissent from the Senate report, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the ranking Republican, said almost all of the special scrutiny of nonprofit applications reviewed by the IRS was aimed at conservative groups, and the fact that “a scant few” liberal groups also were swept up does not mean there was no bias.
More than 80 percent of the 298 groups found to be targeted for intrusive screening and delays were right of center. Only 10 percent were left-leaning, and the remaining groups’ political leanings were undetermined.
Conservative groups also were asked more th