IRS Scandal Fast Facts

Other Facts:The investigation into the email disappearance, which the IRS said was due to a crash of former IRS official Lois Lerner’s hard drive, is part of a wider criminal probe of whether any IRS employees broke the law in unfairly singling out specific political groups for extra scrutiny.

296 applications by groups were flagged for further review. About 75 groups had names with “tea party” or “patriot” in them.

Timeline:
Early 2010 –
According to the May 2013 Inspector General report, “Inappropriate Criteria Were Used to Identify Tax-Exempt Applications for Review,” the inappropriate targeting of mainly conservative groups begins. This targeting involves delaying the processing of their applications and requesting information deemed unnecessary.

May 2010 – According to the report, “EO function officials stated that, in May 2010, the Determinations Unit began developing a spreadsheet that would become known as the “Be On the Look Out” listing (hereafter referred to as the BOLO listing) “which included the emerging issue of Tea Party applications.”

May 7, 2014 – Lerner is held in contempt of Congress by the House.

June 13, 2014 – IRS informs congress that it is unable to recover Lerner’s e-mails from January 2009 to April 2011 because of a computer crash. The emails were subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee Chairman. They have subsequently been able to recover 24,000 of the e-mails.

June 23-24, 2014 – The House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform hold two hearings: “IRS Obstruction: Lois Lerner’s Missing E-mails: Part I and Part II.”

December 23, 2014 – The sixth report from the House Oversight Committe says that the IRS “systematically targeted” conservative groups, and places blame on Lerner and seven other IRS officials. According to the report, “The fact-finding is not yet complete.” Another 30,000 e-mails to and from Lerner have been recently recovered which will also be looked at.

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