Exclusive — Marsha Blackburn Circulating Letter Calling on IRS to Investigate Clinton Foundation Tax Status

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is working on building congressional support for pressure on the IRS to investigate the tax exempt status of the Clinton Foundation, Breitbart News has learned.

A draft copy of a letter from Blackburn—that she’s circulating around Capitol Hill for signatures from her colleagues—to IRS commissioner John Koskinen asks him to review the tax-exempt status of the foundation. Blackburn and her colleagues will write that “recent media reports have revealed that the Foundation failed to report millions of dollars in grants from foreign governments that it accepted while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State and that it facilitated private business transactions between foreign entities” and as such, “given the substantial public interest involved, we feel a prompt review of the Foundation’s tax-exempt status is appropriate to determine whether it is acting within the scope of its charitable mission.”

Technically, Blackburn’s letter notes, the Clinton Foundation is required to file an IRS 990 every year listing foreign contributions. But, she writes, Clinton’s Foundation “failed to report tens of millions of dollars in foreign government grants between 2010 and 2012.” Citing how Clinton’s Foundation officials and Bill Clinton himself admitted they didn’t handle the IRS filings correctly, Blackburn’s letter to the IRS commissioner argues that the Clinton Foundation’s “failure to report the donations is problematic and deserves enhanced scrutiny given Mrs. Clinton’s position as Secretary of State at the time.”

The Blackburn letter then cites the Washington Post article from May 3 in which the Post—following up on Peter Schweizer’s Clinton Cash book—explored the “nexus” between Canadian businessman Frank Giustra and the Clinton Foundation and questions about whether the Foundation’s “activities were used as a pre-text to allow Giustra to gain access to foreign individuals or entities with a stake in his private business interests.”

“Given these widely reported allegations, we believe a review of the appropriateness of the Foundation’s tax-exempt status is necessary,” Blackburn’s letter continues. “Proceeding under the cloak of philanthropy, the Foundation appears to have facilitated major private business transactions between foreign entities and also failed to report substantial foreign donations during Secretary Clinton’s tenure at the State Department. These actions have created an appearance of impropriety and go behind the Foundation’s pledge to act primarily in furtherance of charitable causes for which it was granted tax-exempt status.”