IRS Targeting Conservatives Again? Sen. Ted Cruz Wants Answers For Latest Audit

Is the IRS targeting Conservatives again?

Texas Senator Ted Cruz wants answers for the latest audit issued against a right-leaning news website.

According to a report from another right-leaning news site, the Blaze, Breitbart News Network has attracted attention from Internal Revenue Service auditors.

Cruz believes that the Senate Judiciary Committee should issue subpoenas to the IRS to have them provide more information about the circumstances behind the audit.

What Cruz wants to know isn’t why Breitbart specifically has been targeted but how many other news organizations are audited and what their left-right leanings are, as well as how those decisions are made.

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen replied to Cruz by letter in late September on the issue.

“Given the volume of IRS audits, it is inevitable that organizations of every type, in every industry, whether politically active or not, and of every imaginable political leaning will over time be selected for examination… Our duty is to conduct all of these audits fairly and impartially, and this is a duty that we take seriously.”

Cruz, however, was not happy with the response, stating that a hearing would now be needed since Koskinen didn’t answer any of the questions he had posed.

In response to IRS targeting conservatives in a previous action that happened under Democrat Lois Lerner’s watch, Cruz accused the current Commissioner of “stonewalling.”

“Accordingly, when Congress reconvenes in January, it is my hope that the Senate Judiciary Committee will convene hearings — with subpoena power, if necessary — to compel the IRS to answer these questions,” he added.

In the September Politico report detailing the audit, Stephen K. Bannon, executive chairman of BNN, sounded up for the challenge.

“The Obama administration’s timing on this is exquisite, but try as they might through various methods to silence us, we will only get more emboldened,” he said. Furthermore, the president and CEO of the news organization said the company would not be intimidated.

“We stand ready to cooperate with the Internal Revenue Service on its audit of our company, but this will not deter us in the least from continuing our aggressive coverage of this president or his administration,” Larry Solov said in a statement.

At that point, Cruz said the decision to go through with the audit was “highly questionable.”

What do you think, readers? Is this another case of the IRS targeting conservatives or is it just a coincidence?

[Image via Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock.com]