Tea Party Group Sent IRS Copy of Constitution When Asked for Reading Materials

Tea Party Group Sent IRS Copy of Constitution When Asked for Reading Materials

When the IRS targeted an Ohio woman’s Tea Party organization and asked her to send the agency the books the group read in 2010, she sent the IRS a copy of the Constitution. 

Marion Bower said that the IRS targeted her organization in 2010, and it took “nearly two years for the Internal Revenue Service to approve her request for tax-exempt status.”

“I was trying to be very cordial, but they wanted copies of unbelievable things,” she told ABC News. “They wanted to know what materials we had discussed at any of our book studies.”

She said she sent the IRS a paperback copy of the Constitution when asked the agency asked for books and other reading materials. 

The 68-year-old Ohio woman founded American Patriots against Government Excess (PAGE) in 2010, and her group “consisted of volunteers who routinely passed out copies of the constitution at parades, and had informational meetings on anything from the health care law to disaster preparedness.”

“They wanted copies of our blog. They said they had already taken copies of our website. They wanted a list of all of our officers, what we do at our meeting, how our board is made up,” Bower said.

On Friday, the IRS apologized for targeting groups–like Bower’s–that had “Tea Party” or “Patriots” in their names during the 2012 elections. Subsequent reports have indicated the IRS targeted Tea Party and conservative groups since 2010. 

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