Two years after the IRS first admitted improperly scrutinizing Tea Party groups, the Obama Justice Department continues to block congressional efforts to investigate the tax agency.
Reports The Hill:
Top lawmakers like Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) note that they’ve only just received thousands of emails to and from Lerner that the IRS said were unrecoverable close to a year ago.
Hatch recently said he hoped a bipartisan Finance report, which members once thought could be released more than a year ago, could come out by the end of June. But congressional investigators maintain that they’ll need to make sure they have a fuller accounting of Lerner’s email trail before any reports are circulated.
Asked about the repeated delays, Hatch said simply: “Every time we turn around we get more emails.”
Congressional committees have received about 5,000 of the roughly 6,400 newly recovered Lerner emails they expect from Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, a GOP aide said Friday. The aide said that there appears to be little new in the emails, and that the inspector general is expected to issue a broader report on the emails in the coming weeks.
Hatch is far from the only GOP lawmakers fuming about the status of the IRS investigation.
“That’s so egregious, for the tax collection agency of the United States to be in that kind of shape,” said Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.). “They have nobody to blame but themselves. I’d just like to see some accountability, you know?”
