FBI opens criminal probe of U.S. tax agency

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said on Tuesday he had ordered the FBI to open a criminal probe in a growing scandal over the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative political groups for extra tax scrutiny. Holder's announcement came about four hours before an inspector general's report on the IRS portrayed the tax agency as plagued by disarray and "insufficient oversight" during its struggles to review the cases of hundreds of advocacy groups that claimed they should be tax exempt. The audit, which drew some backlash from IRS officials, also underscored what the agency had acknowledged last Friday: that the IRS had used "inappropriate criteria" for evaluating tax-exempt groups, in part by singling out scores of conservative Tea Party and "Patriot" organizations for increased scrutiny. The report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration sharply criticized the way the IRS had screened the conservative groups, citing poor management and processing delays. The report suggested that such practices could damage public confidence in the agency.
 
The criteria used to target the conservative groups "gives the appearance that the IRS is not impartial in conducting its mission," the report said. However, the report stopped short of saying the IRS actions had been politically motivated.
 
For President Barack Obama - who late on Tuesday said the report showed that the IRS had failed to apply the law fairly in dealing with conservative groups - the revelations have added to a sense of a White House under siege.
 
Republicans continue to bash the Obama administration's handling of the attack last year on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. And on Monday, Obama's Justice Department came under bipartisan fire for seizing phone records of journalists from the Associated Press as part of a wide-ranging criminal probe into intelligence leaks.
 
In Washington on Tuesday, the IRS case appeared to have the most potency, as lawmakers and administration officials alike described the symbolic and legal importance of having a non-partisan tax agency that Americans can trust.
 
For the IRS and the U.S. government, the stakes are particularly high in the scandal because the tax agency is playing an increasingly significant role not only in vetting the tax status of non-profit groups that dabble in politics, but also in enforcing parts of Obama's ongoing overhaul of the nation's healthcare system.
 
Some of the IRS's conservative critics, including Republican Senator Ted Cruz, have said the current scandal is a sign that the agency shouldn't be trusted to enforce a vast array of tax regulations related to healthcare.
 
The IRS's embattled acting commissioner, Steven Miller, met privately with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, apparently seeking to calm the political uproar, even as some Republicans called for his resignation.
 
The IRS said on Monday that Miller, then the IRS deputy commissioner, was first informed in early May 2012 that some groups seeking tax-exempt status had been "improperly identified by name" and subjected to extra scrutiny.
 
Lawmakers say that neither Miller nor his predecessor, Douglas Shulman, ever made them aware of the targeting.
 
Senator Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the tax-writing Finance Committee, said that Miller - who spent more than two decades working his way up through the IRS bureaucracy and was named acting chief six months ago - should step down.
 
"He basically misled me," Hatch told reporters. "I really think it is time for him to leave."