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Acting Chief of I.R.S. Forced Out Over Tea Party Targeting Acting Chief of I.R.S. Forced Out Over Tea Party Targeting
(about 2 hours later)
WASHINGTON — President Obama announced Wednesday night that the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service had been fired, and he pledged that his administration would cooperate with Congressional investigations into the targeting of conservative groups. WASHINGTON — President Obama announced Wednesday night that the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service had been ousted after disclosures that the agency gave special scrutiny to conservative groups. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., meanwhile, warned top I.R.S. officials that a Justice Department inquiry would examine any false statements to see if they constituted a crime.
Speaking in the White House’s formal East Room, the president said Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew had asked for and accepted the resignation of Steven Miller, who was aware of the agency’s efforts to single out conservative groups for special scrutiny as a deputy I.R.S. commissioner. Speaking in the White House’s formal East Room, Mr. Obama said Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew had asked for and accepted the resignation of the acting commissioner, Steven Miller, who as deputy commissioner was aware of the agency’s efforts to demand more information from conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status in early 2012.
Mr. Miller is scheduled to testify on Friday before the House Ways and Means Committee in the first of a series of hearings on the I.R.S. targeting scandal. “Americans have a right to be angry about it, and I’m angry about it,” Mr. Obama said. “It should not matter what political stripe you’re from. The fact of the matter is the I.R.S. has to operate with absolute integrity.”
“Americans have a right to be angry about it, and I’m angry about it,” the president said. “It should not matter what political stripe you’re from. The fact of the matter is the I.R.S. has to operate with absolute integrity.” Mr. Miller, who told agency employees that he would leave the administration in early June, is scheduled to testify Friday before the House Ways and Means Committee in the first of a series of hearings on the I.R.S. activities.
He vowed that the Treasury Department would ensure new safeguards were in place to prevent a similar incident from happening in the future, and he promised to work “hand in hand with Congress as it performs its oversight role.” The president acted as his administration broadly stepped up pressure on the I.R.S. — and sought to insulate itself from the outcry over the agency’s conduct. Mr. Obama spoke to reporters after an Oval Office meeting with Mr. Lew and his deputy, Neil Wolin, who will be responsible for carrying out the president’s orders to install safeguards to prevent a similar effort.
“We’re going to hold the responsible parties accountable,” Mr. Obama said. In an internal message to employees, Mr. Miller, a 25-year veteran of the I.R.S., wrote: “This has been an incredibly difficult time for the I.R.S., given the events of the past few days, and there is a strong and immediate need to restore public trust in the nation’s tax agency. I believe the service will benefit from having a new acting commissioner.”
Earlier Wednesday, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. warned top officials at the Internal Revenue Service that criminal laws on false statements could come into play in a Justice Department investigation on the agency’s targeting of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. Mr. Holder’s warning came as lawmakers stated unequivocally that I.R.S. officials had lied to them in failing to disclose the added screening despite being pressed repeatedly.
Appearing at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, Mr. Holder said the investigation would examine whether groups of individuals had their civil rights criminally violated and whether statutes governing I.R.S. conduct were violated. At a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Mr. Holder said the Justice Department would investigate whether the civil rights of groups or individuals, and statutes governing I.R.S. conduct, had been violated. But Mr. Holder also said, “False-statement violations might have been made given, at least what I know at this point.”
After repeated accusations from senior lawmakers that top I.R.S. officials had lied to them, Mr. Holder also issued a warning: “False-statement violations might have been made, given at least what I know at this point.” Members of Congress from both parties, meanwhile, prepared a gantlet of hearings for I.R.S. leaders in the coming days. The House Ways and Means Committee will hold the first hearing on Friday, featuring Mr. Miller, who was aware of the problem in March 2012, yet told Republican senators a month later that no such singling out had occurred.
Three Congressional committees already have hearings planned to investigate the agency’s activities, and an early focus appears to be on whether I.R.S. officials lied to members of Congress. On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee will hold its first hearing on the matter, and the next day, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hear the testimony of Lois Lerner, who heads the I.R.S.’s division on tax-exempt organizations and was aware of the issue nearly from the beginning, in 2010, yet told reporters on Friday that she had learned of it from news reports in 2012.
Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California and the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which has a hearing scheduled for next Wednesday, and Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, sent a nine-page letter accusing Lois Lerner, the head of the I.R.S.'s division on tax-exempt organizations, of providing false or misleading information to the committee four times in 2012 as the scope of the targeting effort became clear ahead of the presidential election. “Lois Lerner lied to me,” said Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, who helped initiate the Congressional investigation of the I.R.S.
Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, which also has opened an investigation, said he was “purposely misled” by the acting I.R.S. commissioner, Steven Miller, when he and other Republican senators were told that no targeting of conservative groups had taken place. The House Oversight Committee requested five senior I.R.S. officials be made available for interviews by May 20, including the director of rulings and agreements, Holly Paz; a former screening group manager in the exempt-organizations determinations division, John Shafer; and a former advocacy group manager, Joseph Herr.
Ahead of a public hearing on Friday with Mr. Miller, the bipartisan leadership of the House Ways and Means Committee requested all I.R.S. documents on the targeting of conservative organizations. Mr. Miller met privately with Senator Max Baucus of Montana, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, as four Republican senators, including the top two leaders, demanded his resignation. “Potentially dozens of I.R.S. employees are involved with the original targeting, the failure to correct the problem and the failure to promptly report the truth to Congress and the American people,” said Meghan Snyder, a spokeswoman for Mr. Jordan.
Mr. Holder made it clear that the criminal investigation he said he ordered on Friday was only the beginning. But he said it would be based in Washington to give it the broadest possible scope and would not be concentrating solely on the service’s field office in Cincinnati, where the political targeting was largely based. Republicans made it clear that they would focus their inquiries on false statements, violations of the civil liberties of conservative groups and whether information on the I.R.S.’s conduct reached Obama administration officials outside the independent I.R.S. but was kept under wraps during an election year.
“The facts will take us wherever they take us,” he said, adding: “This will not be about parties. This will not be about ideological persuasions. Anyone who has broken the law will be held accountable.” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, on Wednesday noted that the president was beginning to take action, but said Republicans want to know whether “there was an effort to bring the power of the federal government to bear on those the administration disagreed with, in the middle of a heated national election. We are determined to get answers and to ensure that this type of intimidation never happens again at the I.R.S. or any other agency.”
The other area of particluar interest to House and Senate investigators is whether top officials in the I.R.S. shared information about the targeting efforts with the Obama administration. The I.R.S. pushed back on the idea that knowledge of its activity had reached higher levels of the Obama administration, saying for the first time that its chief counsel did not tell Treasury superiors of the I.R.S. targeting efforts, nor did he participate in a 2011 meeting when the issue was discussed with the I.R.S. chief counsel’s office.
Pushing back against an inspector general’s report, the I.R.S. said Wednesday morning that its chief counsel did not tell Treasury superiors of I.R.S. targeting efforts, nor did he participate in a 2011 meeting when the issue was discussed with the I.R.S. chief counsel’s office. House and Senate aides investigating the agency’s actions said they were focusing on an Aug. 4, 2011, meeting in which, according to a report by the Treasury inspector general, the I.R.S.’s chief counsel conferred with agency officials to discuss the activities of a team in the Cincinnati field office. The team had been subjecting applications for tax-exempt status from Tea Party and other conservative groups to a greater degree of review than those from other organizations.
The I.R.S. statement came as House and Senate aides investigating the agency’s actions said they were focusing on an Aug. 4, 2011, meeting in which, according to a report by the Treasury inspector general, the I.R.S.'s chief counsel conferred with agency officials to discuss the activities of a team in the Cincinnati field office. The team had been subjecting applications for tax-exempt status from Tea Party and other conservative groups to a greater degree of review than those from other organizations. Under I.R.S. rules, the agency’s chief counsel, William J. Wilkins, reports to the Treasury Department’s general counsel. But the I.R.S. statement Wednesday said the notation on which the report relied was referring to the chief counsel’s office, which employs 1,600 lawyers, not Mr. Wilkins himself.
Under I.R.S. rules, the agency’s chief counsel, William J. Wilkins, reports to the Treasury Department’s general counsel, and investigators want to determine if Mr. Wilkins took the issue out of the independent I.R.S. to other parts of the Obama administration. But the I.R.S. statement was less clear about when Mr. Wilkins learned of the added scrutiny, saying instead the counsel “did not learn about specific groups being singled out by name until earlier this year.”
But the I.R.S. statement Wednesday said the notation on which the report relied was referring to the chief counsel’s office, which employs 1,600 lawyers, not Mr. Wilkins himself. Mr. Holder made it clear that the criminal investigation he said he ordered on Friday was just beginning. He said it will be based in Washington to give it the broadest possible scope and would not be concentrating solely on the service’s field office in Cincinnati, where the handling of nonprofit applications was largely based.
“Wilkins is not involved in the 501(c)(4) application process,” the agency said. “He did not discuss 501(c)(4) applications with the Treasury general counsel. Mr. Wilkins did not learn about specific groups being singled out by name until earlier this year.” “The facts will take us wherever they take us,” he said, adding “this will not be about parties. This will not be about ideological persuasions. Anyone who has broken the law will be held accountable.”
The question of whether Mr. Wilkins conferred with Treasury staff members holds significant political implications for the White House, which has stressed the I.R.S.'s independence even as Mr. Obama has castigated the agency over the allegations of political bias. The I.R.S. released a list of 176 groups that have been granted tax-exempt status through the review process, which centralized operations in Cincinnati in order to deal with a crush of applications that began in 2010 with the Tea Party movement. That list included organizations with names like American Patriots Against Government Excess; Rebellious Truths; the Coalition for a Conservative Majority; and Friends of the Constitution; as well as dozens of Tea Party chapters.
“What we don’t know at this point is whether it jumped the fence from the I.R.S. to the White House,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader. “But we do know this: we can’t count on the administration to be forthcoming about the details of this scandal, because so far they’ve been anything but.”
The inspector general’s report, issued Tuesday, blamed ineffective Internal Revenue Service management in the failure to stop employees from singling out conservative groups for added scrutiny. Late Tuesday, Mr. Obama said in a statement that “the report’s findings are intolerable and inexcusable.”
The report said that senior I.R.S. officials told inspectors that no individual or organization outside the agency influenced the criteria used to single out Tea Party or other conservative groups.
But Congressional aides looking into the matter are not convinced. One notation in a 12-page timeline of events prepared by the inspector general stood out for exploration. On Aug. 4, 2011, officials at the I.R.S.'s rulings and agreement office met with the I.R.S.'s chief counsel “so that everyone would have the latest information on the issue,” according to the inspector general.
That was interpreted as an invitation to bring the matter up the chain of command, to the Treasury general counsel, George W. Madison, who left the department in June 2012. Treasury officials declined to comment Tuesday.