Top House committee chairmen said Wednesday that they have learned that the IRS sent some tea party groups’ applications for tax-exempt status through special scrutiny at the direction of agency officials in Washington, in a revelation that appears to confirm political targeting. The committee chairmen released partial excerpts of interviews with IRS employees that show they were prepared to rule on some of the tea party groups’ applications, but Lois Lerner, an official at the root of the investigation, overruled them and instead created the complex and intrusive inquiries that have become the center of a Washington scandal. Carter Hull,...