EMAIL: IRS planned secret new rules to justify targeting tea party groups two years ago

Daily Mail ^ | February 5, 2014 | By David Martosko

[Brad from Tennessee]

Republicans clashed with the Internal Revenue Service's new commissioner Wednesday in a Capitol Hill hearing that featured the unveiling a document indicating that the agency planned as early as 2012 to change its rules in a way that justified singling out tea party groups for special scrutiny.

The document, an email from Treasury Department tax policy attorney Ruth Madrigal to a group of IRS officials including the disgraced Lois Lerner.

'Don’t know who in your organizations is keeping tabs on c4s,' Madrigal wrote, quoting an election law blog and referring to the 501(c)(4) tax-exempt groups that were the subject of the tea party targeting scandal, 'but since we mentioned potentially addressing them (off plan) in 2013, I’ve got my radar up and this seemed interesting.'

House Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Dave Camp insisted Wednesday that Madrigal's note indicated that new regulations were planned as a 'remedy to the target[ing]' back in 2011 and 2012. 'I’m pretty sure [off-plan] means "hidden from the public",' he said.

The revelation that the IRS planned two years ago to change the way it approached approving those groups for tax-exempt status is raising eyebrows because it indicates the agency was aware early on that its practice of singling out conservative groups was out of sync with existing regulations. . .

[RobbyS]

The Tea Party is a movement, like the civil rights movement, not a national party. Remember the blacks were divided, too.

[livius]

Yes, that’s what I meant. These are little groups, not connected among themselves or part of a larger organization, not even collecting for or contributing to the same projects, and apparently even this is a threat to Obama.