The ex-IRS official accused of targeting conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status once floated an audit of a teen pregnancy nonprofit that contracted former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R) daughter as a spokesperson, according to a Senate report released Wednesday.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) cited an email Lois Lerner sent to advisers in 2011 about Bristol Palin’s compensation from the Candie’s Foundation as evidence of what he said was Lerner’s “interest in conservative organizations.”
“Thoughts on the Bristol Palin issue? I’m curious that a [private foundation] can pay any amount to someone who is not a [disqualified person]?” Lerner wrote (brackets are the report’s). “It is a [private foundation] right? Even if it were a [public charity] – would that be private benefit – what are the consequences? I’m asking because I don’t know whether to send to Exam as a referral.”
The report said that Lerner was spurred to inquire about the audit by news reports that the Candie’s Foundation, which focuses on teen pregnancy prevention, paid Palin $332,500 for her advocacy. Palin famously announced her pregnancy in 2008, at the age of 17, while her mother was running as the Republican Party’s vice presidential nominee.
The report did not state that a referral was ever made for an audit of the Candie’s Foundation. Still, Hatch said that his staff found no evidence Lerner acted on news reports to make a referral for an audit of a progressive organization.
“In its review of nearly 1,500,000 pages of documents provided by the IRS, Majority staff did not find any instances where Lerner referred a progressive organization for audit based on a news article,” the report read.
The bipartisan report found that poor management led the IRS to improperly single out conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status for scrutiny, but Republican and Democratic leadership on the committee differed as to whether any political agenda motivated the targeting.
