WASHINGTON — A House Republican investigation faults senior IRS officials in the mistreatment of conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status, but could find no link to the White House, according to a report released Tuesday.
The probe isn’t over, although investigators have reviewed 1.3 million pages of documents and interviewed 52 officials.
The report, however, marks the end of Rep. Darrell Issa’s tenure leading the investigation.
The Republican from California is stepping down as chairman of the House Oversight Committee because of term limits. Issa has repeatedly clashed with the White House and congressional Democrats over the way the IRS treated tea party and other conservative groups. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, will take over the committee in January.
The report does not absolve anyone from blame. Instead, it complains that the IRS and the White House have not fully cooperated with the investigation.
The report says conservative groups were given improper scrutiny from 2010 to 2012. It says senior IRS officials covered up the misconduct and misled Congress about it.
The report specifically faults eight senior IRS leaders who “were in a position to prevent or to stop the IRS’s targeting of conservative applicants,” including former Commissioner Douglas Shulman, former acting Commissioner Steven Miller, and Lois Lerner, who used to head the division that processes applications for tax-exempt status and refused to testify. The IRS told Congress in June that it had lost an unknown number of e-mails to and from Lerner when her computer hard drive crashed in 2011.
