IRS Fires Top Obama-Era Aide in Tea Party Targeting

Paz had served as Lerner’s deputy during the Obama administration.

In 2013, it was revealed that the IRS, under Lerner, had wrongfully scrutinized tax-exempt applications related to the phrases "Tea Party," "9/12" and "Constitution." The Treasury’s inspector general later confirmed "inappropriate criteria" were used to target conservative groups and criticized ineffective oversight of systemic bias.

The IRS reportedly spent more than two years targeting conservative tax-exempt groups.

The Trump administration, after years of litigation, in 2017, settled lawsuits with Tea Party and other conservative groups who say they were unfairly targeted by the IRS under the Obama administration.

Lerner and Paz, at the time, asked the federal courts to keep their testimonies in the Tea Party targeting case private forever, over fear of death threats.

The targeting scandal drew heavy attention in 2013 after the IRS admitted it applied extra scrutiny to conservative groups applying for nonprofit status. Lerner became the public face of the scandal, though many other IRS officials, like Paz, were also involved.

In a 2017 settlement, the IRS offered an apology, saying the agency "admits that its treatment of Plaintiffs during the tax-exempt determination process, including screening their applications based on their names or policy positions, subjecting those applications to heightened scrutiny and inordinate delays, and demanding some Plaintiffs’ information that TIGTA determined was unnecessary to the agency’s determination of their tax-exempt status, was wrong."

"For such treatment, the IRS expresses its sincere apology," the IRS said at the time.

Fox News Digital has reported that Bessent has been working closely with Hunter Biden whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, and has met several times with IRS leadership.