GOP, Democrats trade blame over taxpayer info leak

Roughly 80 percent of those groups were conservative, and USA Today said that agency lawyers examined the political and lobbying activity of those organizations.

{mosads}The IRS and lawmakers in both parties have said that the report includes confidential taxpayer information – the leaking of which is against the law.

Rep. Sandy Levin (Mich.), the top Democrat at House Ways and Means, charged that Republicans were behind the leak, as they “try to spin a story that is simply not supported by the facts.”

Democrats have long asserted that there’s no evidence that there was political motivation or outside involvement in the targeting of Tea Party groups. A spokesman for Levin added that the leak was in character with how the Republicans have circulated cherrypicked information throughout the four-month investigation.

But Republicans – who have stressed that the evidence does show that the IRS treated conservative groups far worse than their liberal counterparts – put the onus on Democrats.

“Perhaps Democrats leaked this information to prove a small handful of liberal groups were inadvertently caught up in the net to catch conservative groups,” one GOP aide said.