From the Washington Examiner:
Internal Revenue Service officials sent the Federal Bureau of Investigation a “massive” database listing of tax exempt organizations just a few weeks before the November 2012 elections, House investigators announced Monday.
Oversight and Government Reform chairmen Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, say they recently obtained an email from Lois G. Lerner, the former head of the IRS tax exempt division, to a Justice Department official asking how to format the list of tax exempt groups for delivery to the FBI.
Issa, who heads the oversight committee and Jordan, who chairs a subcommittee, said in a statement on Monday sent a new letter to the IRS, demanding more information about the data sent to the FBI.
“At the very least, this information suggests that the IRS considered the political speech activities of nonprofits to be worthy of investigation by federal law-enforcement officials,” the letter states.
According to Issa and Jordan, the IRS apparently realizes it should not have sent the information to the FBI.
“After the Justice Department turned over the database to the Oversight Committee this month in response to a subpoena, the Justice Department says it was informed by IRS officials that it contains legally protected taxpayer information that should not have ever been sent to the FBI and it now plans to return the full database to the IRS,” a statement from the Oversight Committee said.
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