Lawmakers: IRS Sent Confidential Tax Data to FBI

In the latest development in the IRS Tea Party targeting scandal, GOP lawmakers are accusing the agency of giving 1.1 million pages of confidential documents of tax-exempt organizations to the FBI without a court order.

In a letter to the IRS commissioner, Reps. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, indicated the massive data dump included public returns from non-profit groups and taxpayer information the law requires the IRS to keep confidential.

The confidential data, which was released in October 2010 just before midterm elections, came from IRS administrators Lois Lerner and Sarah Hall.

Both women were implicated for working with the FBI to charge the non-profit groups with conspiracy to violate U.S. laws.

"This revelation that the IRS sent 1.1 million pages of nonprofit tax-return data - including confidential taxpayer information - to the FBI confirms suspicions that the IRS worked with the Justice Department to facilitate the potential investigation of nonprofit groups engaged in lawful political speech," Issa said in the letter.