Oversight panel: IRS investigation found targeting a year ago

The IRS briefed congressional staffers from both chambers on those findings earlier this month, the Oversight aide said. 

House Oversight disclosed those findings a day before their first hearing into the matter, and shortly before news broke that one of the four scheduled witnesses, Lois Lerner, had informed the committee that she would invoke her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

{mosads}Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and other top panel members have said that Lerner “provided false or misleading information” to them in 2012 – within months of the internal IRS investigation, and during the heat of a presidential election.

Lerner’s choice puts another roadblock in the way of lawmakers trying to learn more about the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status – something the inspector general says that Lerner knew about by June 2011.

White House and Treasury officials have stressed that they only learned of the inspector general’s findings within the last several weeks or months, and even Doug Shulman, the former IRS commissioner, said he only learned the full set of details after he left the agency last year.