What the liberal media and bloggers are carefully not acknowledging is that while those progressive groups were highlighted, the instructions on how to handle the tax exempt applications were different from how they were ordered to handle the conservative groups' applications.
NRO explains:
A November 2010 version of the list obtained by National Review Online, however, suggests that while the list did contain the word “progressive,” screeners were in fact instructed to treat “progressive” groups differently from “tea party” groups. Whereas screeners were merely alerted that a designation of 501(c)(3) status “may not be appropriate” for applications containing the word ”progressive” – 501(c)(3) organizations are prohibited from conducting any political activities – they were told to send those of tea-party groups off IRS higher-ups for further scrutiny.
That means the applications of progressive groups could be approved on the spot by line agents, while those of tea-party groups could not. Furthermore, the November 2010 list noted that tea-party cases were “currently being coordinated with EOT,” which stands for Exempt Organizations Technical, a group of tax lawyers in Washington, D.C. Those of progressive groups were not.
This is why in the initial apology by Lois Lerner, the IRS official who oversaw tax-exempt groups, which kicked off the whole IRS targeting conservative scandal, only mentioned "inappropriately" targeting conservative groups and only mentioned Tea Party, Patriot and 9/12 groups.
The Internal Revenue Service is apologizing for inappropriately flagging conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status.
Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS unit that oversees tax-exempt groups, said organizations that included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax-exempt status were singled out for additional reviews.
In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.
“That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That’s not how we go about selecting cases for further review,” Lerner said at a conference sponsored by the American Bar Association.
“The IRS would like to apologize for that,” she added.
Acting IRS commissioner Danny Werfel, told House Financial Services and General Government subcommittee chairman Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-Fla.), that his "primary mission" is to restore public trust in the IRS.
Throwing the information about the BOLOs out without acknowledging how differently the IRS was instructed to treat one group over another, shows clearly that Werfel's "primary mission" prevents him from being an objective investigator into the wrongdoings of the IRS.
There should be a special prosecutor assigned to this investigation, one who is completely non-partisan and who has the "primary mission" of getting to to the truth, because Werfel was handed an objective which, in and of itself, is a conflict of interest.
Full Wake up America coverage on the IRS scandal can be found here.
