IRS SCANDAL NEWS: IRS officials thought Obama wanted crackdown on tea party groups, worried about negative press. “IRS employees were ‘acutely’ aware in 2010 that President Obama wanted to crack down on conservative organizations and were egged into targeting tea party groups by press reports mocking the emerging movement, according to an interim report being circulated Tuesday by House investigators.. . . In the report, the investigators do not find evidence that IRS employees received orders from politicians to target the tea party, and agency officials deny overt bias or political motives. But the report says the IRS was at least taking cues from political leaders and designed special policies to review tea party applications, including dispatching some of them to Washington to be vetted by headquarters.”
Related: ACLJ: IRS corruption update — three key revelations from Lois Lerner’s emails.