Rep. Issa: Conservative, Tea Party Groups Still Targeted for Scrutiny

Targeting of tea party-supportive groups is becoming "an old story," Rep. Darrell Issa said Friday, but the "targeting is still happening."

"It is clearly still a procedure," the California Republican told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" host Bill Hemmer, pointing out that IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has promised to get the bottom of the scandal, but is now saying it's not his call to make when it comes to admitting conservative groups had been targeted for extra scrutiny.

"The fact is, he is a spokesperson for the president and is part of the delay and cover-up," said Issa. "This is becoming an old story, and the president ... is actually trying to take back his words from 2013 when he admitted this was unreasonable targeting. [Barack Obama] He wants to talk about how there is not enough money and blame a law passed before he was born that served us well and from then until now when it was suddenly broken."

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Issa said a list of targeted conservative groups that had been seeking tax-exempt status is not yet available for the general public to view, but he suspects that "as we talk one or more tea party groups will come forward, saying they are being delayed in their approval and acting without the kind of legitimacy that they should have."

But while Obama doesn't agree with the law, it has "served us well," said Issa. Further, Lois Lerner, the former IRS official at the center of the investigation, "was at the seat of government, here in Washington. She was high-ranking and was a partisan who was allowed to transfer from the FCC to the IRS, where she acted close and in concert with the commissioner."

Issa said that while Obama "would like to rewrite history," the president has also said in the past that the targeting of conservative groups was wrong.

Further, Issa told Hemmer that Obama instructed Treasury Secretary Jack Lew "to get to the bottom of it," and now "he wants to blame it on a law passed before he was born."

Issa told Hemmer that Hillary Clinton is guilty of the same kind of reaction, as shown in her current issues over her missing emails.

"When Hillary Clinton got a referral request from two inspector generals, this can't be explained away even by getting The New York Times to tone down before they published a report they published," he said. "That should cause the American people to realize the government needs more oversight not less, and protection of American people's rights."

Late last month,  U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered the IRS to deliver a status update on Lerner's emails, as well as those by other IRS officials, after the activist group Judicial Watch filed legal demands.

And on Thursday, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, asserted there is evidence that the IRS intentionally targeted conservative groups under Lerner, the former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit at the agency, and said "there will be news … as early as next week."

Chaffetz is leading the congressional investigation into the IRS scandal, and Thursday told a group at the Ripon Society in Washington, D.C., that the IRS destroyed documents requested by the committee in March 2014.

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