The Internal Revenue Service is still in possession of improperly obtained conservative donor lists, according to congressional investigators.
“The Committee on Ways and Means (Committee) has discovered that inappropriately obtained donor lists still remain in taxpayer case files, despite assurances from then-Acting Commissioner Miller at our May 17, 2013 hearing,” according to a memo Wednesday from House Ways and Means chairman Rep. Dave Camp to acting IRS commissioner and Obama appointee Danny Werfel.
“In testimony before the Oversight Subcommittee on September 18, 2013, you said you ‘learned last night about the potential presence of these donor lists, which were intended to be destroyed,'” Camp wrote to Werfel.
“You provided a possible reason for the presence of these lists, saying, ‘it may be, for example, that we gave you a case file before August 2012 and that you found it in there before we put our destruction order in.’ Upon further investigation, however, the Committee has discovered donor list information contained in recent electronic productions from the IRS, including in a series of documents produced to the Committee on the very day of the hearing. Donor information was only found in the files of right-leaning organizations,” Camp wrote.
“As you know, the names of donors to 501()(4) organizations are confidential,” Camp wrote, noting that the IRS’ possession of their names is “putting these donors at the risk of potential harassment. This risk is not hypothetical.”
As The Daily Caller reported, the IRS sent confidential information on conservative groups to the liberal New York-based nonprofit group ProPublica, which specializes in investigative journalism on conservative groups.
Camp demanded that Werfel destroy the “donor lists discovered by the Committee, and any other donor lists inappropriately requested and retained in the files of targeted organizations… Please provide to me written confirmation of their destruction.”