The Senate Finance Committee expects to release on Wednesday a long-awaited report on the IRS’s improper scrutiny of Tea Party groups, the panel’s chairman said Tuesday.
Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said he believes the committee would sign off on releasing the bipartisan report, now almost 27 months in the making, during a closed-door meeting on Wednesday.
{mosads}IRS officials have long said they wanted the Finance panel to release the report, which would be the first bipartisan congressional inquiry to come to a close.
John Koskinen, the IRS commissioner, has said repeatedly that its up to the Finance panel to decide whether the agency intentionally targeted conservative organizations seeking tax-exempt status, and that the IRS would follow any recommendations from the report.
The IRS first acknowledged singling out Tea Party groups in May 2013, through an apology from a now former senior official, Lois Lerner.
Senators and aides on the Finance panel had hoped to release the results of their investigation sooner. But the inquiry was held up once the IRS acknowledged that it couldn’t find potentially thousands of emails to and from Lerner, the central figure in the Tea Party controversy.
A Treasury inspector general recently wrapped up its examination into those missing emails, finding that thousands of Lerner’s emails could have been lost. The House Oversight Committee has since called on President Obama to fire Koskinen, and has said it will consider impeaching the commissioner.