GOP turns up the heat on IRS emails

Congressional Republicans are turning up the heat on the IRS to hand over emails with the White House, as they continue their investigation into the agency’s improper scrutiny of Tea Party groups.

{mosads}Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said they were going back to the IRS after the White House brushed aside GOP requests for emails.

“In light of the White House Counsel’s refusal to comply with our request, we ask that you provide the documents — originally requested in April of last year — without delay,” Hatch and Ryan wrote to the IRS commissioner, John Koskinen.

The two Republicans are asking for all the emails between the White House and the IRS, dating back to the start of 2010.

Former House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) first sought the emails in April 2014. But the IRS told Camp that they didn’t have the resources to comply with the request, Hatch and Ryan said Wednesday.

In February, the White House counsel’s office told Hatch that lawmakers should continue to work with the IRS on that request, all while noting the agency had already handed over more than a million pages of documents to Congress.

Lawmakers have been investigating the IRS’s treatment of Tea Party groups for almost two years, since shortly after former agency official Lois Lerner apologized for the improper scrutiny in May 2013.

Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration said last month that it was examining whether there was any criminal activity involved when the IRS said it lost an untold number of her emails. The inspector general’s office is still working to recover those emails. 

The White House said last year that it had found no emails between Lerner and White House officials during the two-year span for which the IRS couldn’t find Lerner’s emails.