Anti-tax hiker Grover Norquist wonders if the Internal Revenue Service audit of Breitbart News represents a new front in the federal agency’s targeting of conservative groups.
“An audit here looks awfully convenient given the facts and circumstances,” Norquist said in a letter Friday to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.
“According to your own IRS records, less than 1 percent of all tax returns (including business returns) faced examination last year,” said Norquist who heads the Americans for Tax Reform group best known for its “No New Taxes” pledge.
“It defies reason to think that an agency as politicized as the IRS began this inquiry with anything other than the worst of intentions,” Norquist said.
Breitbart News President and CEO Larry Solov told Fox News earlier this week that “we stand ready to cooperate with the Internal Revenue Service on its audit of our company, but this will not deter us in the least from continuing our aggressive coverage of this president or his administration.”
A tax agency spokesman said it does not comment on on-going audits. The spokesman said IRS audits are done by career federal employees, not political appointees.
The IRS has been enmeshed for more than a year in a controversy ignited by its illegal targeting and harassment of Tea Party and conservative non-profit applicants during the 2010 and 2012 campaigns.
Two committees of the House of Representatives are investigating the IRS scandal. Lois Lerner, the former head of the agency’s exempt organizations division, was found in contempt of Congress earlier this year.
Breitbart News’ web site features multiple “verticals,” including Big Government, Big Journalism and Big Hollywood. It is named after Andrew Breitbart, the fiery conservative activist and author who died in 2012.
Spokesmen for other conservative media outlets contacted by the Washington Examiner — including National Review, Washington Free Beacon and the Daily Caller — said their organizations are not being audited by the IRS.
Norquist said in his letter to Koskinen that he was “disturbed” upon learning of the Breitbart audit because of his work during the Clinton administration on the National Commission on Restructuring the Internal Revenue Service.
“We saw at the time an agency that was out of control. Our report helped lead to the first ‘Taxpayer Bill of Rights’ in the late 1990s,” Norquist said.
“Unfortunately, history has shown that the problems we saw then have only gotten worse over time. This political targeting of Breitbart is further evidence of this.”
Mark Tapscott is executive editor of the Washington Examiner.
