Senior officials with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) knew the agency was targeting Tea Party groups as early as 2011, according to a report.
The Associated Press reported Saturday that an upcoming report from a federal watchdog will find that top officials were aware of the targeting two years ago.
The report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) is slated to be released next week — the AP obtained a draft copy of the report.
According to that draft, the head of the IRS division that overseas tax-exempt groups became aware that conservative groups were being targeted for scrutiny in June, 2011. The report does not say whether Douglas Shulman, IRS commissioner at the time, was aware of it.
In 2012, Shulman testified before Congress alongside other senior IRS officials, and vowed that the agency was above politics, and was not targeting any groups on a partisan basis. Shulman left the IRS at the end of 2012.