WASHINGTON, December 24 (Sputnik) – Republicans in the US House of Representatives are trying to advance their political agenda by leaking portions of a report that accuses the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of targeting conservative groups, a Democratic Congressman has announced.
"It is revealing that the Republicans – yet again – are leaking cherry-picked selections of documents to support their preconceived political narrative without allowing [House Oversight and Government Reform] Committee Members to even see their conclusions or vote on them first," Elijah Cummings, who is a ranking member of the committee, said in a statement Tuesday.
The Republican report concluded that IRS employees have conspired to deny tax exempt status to conservative organizations in the United States because of their political beliefs, regardless of the organizations' meeting the requirements of the federal tax code or not.
According to Cummings, Republicans leaked some parts of the report on condition that the information is withheld from Democrats so as to "intentionally bypass the normal congressional vetting process designed to distinguish fact from fiction".
This is not the final report on the IRS Targeting scandal, but it is the most comprehensive to date, according to the House oversight committee, some members of which received the report Monday night, before it was released to the public.
The IRS is the revenue service of the US federal government responsible for collecting taxes and the administration of the Internal Revenue Code.
