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Conservatives Demand Congress Investigate Liberal Attorneys General Attacking Free Speech

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Dozens of conservative leaders want Congress to investigate whether Democratic attorneys general in California and New York violated federal tax laws and regulations by requiring public disclosure of confidential donor information.

As impeachment hearings loom for Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner John Koskinen, leaders of 105 organizations and individuals sent a letter Thursday urging House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman [crscore]Jason Chaffetz[/crscore] to hold hearings on demands by California Democratic Attorney General Kamala Harris and New York Democratic Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

Among the signers are evangelical radio host James Dobson, Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist and Tea Party Patriots president and co-founder Jenny Beth Martin.

Harris and Schneiderman ordered conservative nonprofits seeking to operate in their states to hand over their IRS Form 990 Schedule B donor information. The letter signers claim Harris, who is running for U.S. Senate in California, and Schneiderman, want to use illegal techniques to obtain private charitable donor information that can then be used to intimidate and silence groups that disagree with liberal views on issues like global warming.

IRS regulations require non-profits to report the donor information but it is supposed to be kept confidential by federal officials.

“The facts and law provide ample grounds for Congress to conduct hearings into whether California and New York state officials have violated the protections for Schedule B donor information, and whether violations were willful, whether the IRS was derelict (or complicit) in failing to act to prevent the violations, and whether the state officials are acting as surrogates in the Lois Lerner-style attempts to abuse federal tax information and their power based on viewpoint discrimination,” the letter states.

“We would object equally if Republican attorneys general had done the same to intimidate and violate the exercise of First Amendment rights by liberal nonprofit organizations and donors, but the fact is that the only state attorneys general engaged in these acts are Democrats,” the letter continues. (RELATED: California AG Threatens Non-Profit Donors’ First Amendment Rights)

The letter cites federal privacy laws, which make it illegal for government agents to inspect or disclose private taxpayer information, and the 1958 U.S. Supreme Court Decision in NAACP v. Alabama, which declared unconstitutional the state government’s attempt to access NAACP member information. The NAACP’s donors feared if their names became public they would be injured or killed by Ku Klux Klan members

The IRS can give Schedule B information to state attorneys general on a case-by-case basis, but the IRS hasn’t exercised the responsibility to safeguard private donor rights, the conservatives claim in their letter, citing the posting by Harris of more than 1,700 Schedule Bs on a public website.

The signatories ask if the two Democratic state attorneys general are acting as “surrogates” for the IRS and the Obama administration in a war on conservative nonprofits that have opposed the president’s policies. (RELATED: IRS Failing To Handle Data Properly Two Years After Lois Lerner)

The letter asks Chaffetz’s committee to also consider whether penalties for violating privacy rights under tax law should be strengthened.

“It was bad enough when Americans learned of partisan operations within the President Obama/Lois Lerner Internal Revenue Service,” the letter says. “Now come top state law enforcement officials — known partisans with track records of targeting the speech of those with whom they disagree — who are violating the post-Watergate tax information confidentiality rules through creative, unprecedented methods.”

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