[h=3]By EVAN PEREZ[/h]WASHINGTON—Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday the Justice Department has opened a criminal probe of recently disclosed actions by the Internal Revenue Service.
He said he ordered the investigation Friday, after the IRS apologized for what it said was inappropriate scrutiny of tax-exemption requests by conservative groups with "tea party" or "patriot" in their names.
An internal audit, found the scrutiny was broader, and included groups worried about government spending, debt or taxes, according to disclosures to congressional investigators by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. The audit findings were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The internal investigation also revealed that a high-ranking IRS official knew as early as mid-2011 that conservative groups were being inappropriately targeted—nearly a year before then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told a congressional committee the agency wasn't targeting conservative groups.
Mr. Holder also said the Justice Department's seizure of Associated Press reporter records was approved by his deputy, because Mr. Holder recused himself from the investigation that is looking into a leak about a news report on a 2012 counterterrorism operation in Yemen.
Mr. Holder, speaking at an unrelated news conference on health-care fraud prosecutions, defended the AP phone-records actions, saying he is certain officials followed "all the appropriate Justice Department regulations."
Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole approved the subpoena of phone records, Mr. Holder said, acting on a request by the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. The records related to phone lines used by reporters or editors for the Associated Press.
The Justice Department notified AP on Friday that records had been subpoenaed from telephone companies several months ago. The subpoenas covered a four-week period over two months around the time AP wrote the story about an alleged conspiracy to detonate an underwear bomb aboard a U.S.-bound airliner. The plot was foiled early on because the alleged bomber was a mole for a foreign-intelligence service working against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, according to officials familiar with the case.
Mr. Holder said the leak was one of the most serious he had ever seen in his 30-year career prosecutor and judge.
"It put the American people at risk," Mr. Holder said, adding it was one of the two or three most damaging he had ever seen.
In making the government's subpoenas public Monday, AP had denounced the effort as a "massive and unprecedented intrusion by the Department of Justice into the news-gathering activities" of the company.
The government took records of calls received and made from 20 phone lines associated with AP or its staffers, the company said in its letter of protest to the government. These included the home or personal cellphone numbers of editors and reporters, and the office numbers of AP bureaus in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., as well as the company's phone in the press area of the House of Representatives, it said.
AP called it "particularly troubling" that the Justice Department took that step without giving the company notice, or "taking any steps to narrow the scope of its subpoenas to matters actually relevant to an ongoing investigation."
Write to Evan Perez at [email protected]
He said he ordered the investigation Friday, after the IRS apologized for what it said was inappropriate scrutiny of tax-exemption requests by conservative groups with "tea party" or "patriot" in their names.
An internal audit, found the scrutiny was broader, and included groups worried about government spending, debt or taxes, according to disclosures to congressional investigators by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. The audit findings were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The internal investigation also revealed that a high-ranking IRS official knew as early as mid-2011 that conservative groups were being inappropriately targeted—nearly a year before then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told a congressional committee the agency wasn't targeting conservative groups.
Mr. Holder also said the Justice Department's seizure of Associated Press reporter records was approved by his deputy, because Mr. Holder recused himself from the investigation that is looking into a leak about a news report on a 2012 counterterrorism operation in Yemen.
Mr. Holder, speaking at an unrelated news conference on health-care fraud prosecutions, defended the AP phone-records actions, saying he is certain officials followed "all the appropriate Justice Department regulations."
Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole approved the subpoena of phone records, Mr. Holder said, acting on a request by the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. The records related to phone lines used by reporters or editors for the Associated Press.
The Justice Department notified AP on Friday that records had been subpoenaed from telephone companies several months ago. The subpoenas covered a four-week period over two months around the time AP wrote the story about an alleged conspiracy to detonate an underwear bomb aboard a U.S.-bound airliner. The plot was foiled early on because the alleged bomber was a mole for a foreign-intelligence service working against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, according to officials familiar with the case.
Mr. Holder said the leak was one of the most serious he had ever seen in his 30-year career prosecutor and judge.
"It put the American people at risk," Mr. Holder said, adding it was one of the two or three most damaging he had ever seen.
In making the government's subpoenas public Monday, AP had denounced the effort as a "massive and unprecedented intrusion by the Department of Justice into the news-gathering activities" of the company.
The government took records of calls received and made from 20 phone lines associated with AP or its staffers, the company said in its letter of protest to the government. These included the home or personal cellphone numbers of editors and reporters, and the office numbers of AP bureaus in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., as well as the company's phone in the press area of the House of Representatives, it said.
AP called it "particularly troubling" that the Justice Department took that step without giving the company notice, or "taking any steps to narrow the scope of its subpoenas to matters actually relevant to an ongoing investigation."
Write to Evan Perez at [email protected]