Issa: Former IRS chief will testify before Oversight committee

House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said Wednesday that he expects the former IRS commissioner, Doug Shulman, to testify next week about the agency’s targeting of conservative groups.

Lois Lerner, the IRS official who first publicly disclosed the extra scrutiny directed at Tea party groups, and Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, Russell George, have also been invited to testify at the hearing next Wednesday, Issa said.

The California Republican said his hearing would have a different focus than House Ways and Means, the tax-writing committee that is holding a hearing on Friday.

{mosads}A new audit, from George’s office, said that the IRS asked for unnecessary information from Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status, including questions about donors and voter-outreach efforts. Issa said he would press forward on whether those documents were eventually destroyed, as the inspector general’s report says.

“We want individuals that were supposed to have destroyed them say that to us under oath,” Issa said. “We find it incredible that they would ask for such extraordinary documents, and then destroy them.”

Issa also said that he expected some of the groups that the IRS targeted to testify.

“There are a number of areas where Ways and Means has unique jurisdiction. I think for the American people, they want the maximum of transparency,” Issa told reporters in the Capitol. “Our hearing is intended to be all about the public having full access.”

George and Steven Miller, the acting IRS commissioner, are scheduled to testify before Ways and Means on Friday. Miller and Shulman both found out about the agency’s targeting roughly a year ago, but declined to tell lawmakers about it.

Neal Wolin, the deputy Treasury secretary, is also on the witness list for the Oversight hearing.

On the other side of the Capitol, the Senate Finance Committee is planning to hold a hearing on the IRS scrutiny on Tuesday – the first hearing scheduled so far in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

This story was updated at 11:39 a.m.