IRS Harassment Scandal Probed By FBI, White House Alleged To Be Involved

As a FBI probe into the IRS begins, the White House is being alleged to be involved in the IRS scandal.

As previously reported by The Inquisitr, the IRS apologized for targeting the Tea Party, but the Federal government knew about the indiscretion since 2011. Conservatives groups rejected the IRS apology and demanded the IRS FBI investigation now being launched.

Now Christian conservatives like Billy Graham are claiming IRS harassment along with other Christian ministries audited by the IRS. A Catholic professor claims IRS harassment after speaking out against Obama. It also came out that Jewish groups were targeted by IRS, with one group alleging they were investigated to make sure their organization’s activities did not “contradict the [Obama] Administration’s public policies.” Of course, even three Democrat-leaning groups received IRS inquiries.

Cleta Mitchell, who represents six Tea Party groups, including the King Street Patriots and True the Vote, claims the IRS harassment may have come from the White House:

“I’ve thought for some time that this is politically motivated and that’s the reason it was happening. And, as I said, I’ve been doing this for more than 20 years and I’ve never seen anything like this until 2009, 2010. And the only thing that changed was we had a different administration. We know the White House used the Department of Health and Human Services to try to silence critics about Obamacare. So if we know they used HHS, why wouldn’t they also use the IRS or other federal agencies to try to silence political critics?”

The IRS harassment allegedly included audit-like demands, surprise visits from multiple agencies including the FBI, and “voluminous requests for information” among other forms of harassment:

“There were nearly 100 groups across the country that got the very egregious set of letters from the IRS that were almost identical and they came from offices all over the country so I know of at least 85 to 90, maybe more, organizations. If they had the name ‘tea party’ or they had the word ‘patriots’ or if their mission was smaller government or study the Constitution, believe it or not, that would cause the IRS to say, ‘Oh, we better investigate these groups.'”

The Washington Post is reporting IRS Washington headquarters documents that show “Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed.”

What do you think about the IRS harassment scandal being linked to the White House?