IRS Guilty of Leaking Marriage Group's Documents

The IRS is paying the National Organization for Marriage $50,000 to settle the lawsuit over leaking the group's private information to gay activists.

NOM sued the agency for disclosing some of its confidential tax records and donor list to their top political opponent, a pro-gay group called the Human Rights Campaign.

"In the beginning, the government claimed that the IRS had done nothing wrong and that NOM itself must have released our confidential information. Thanks to a lot of hard work, we've forced the IRS to admit that they in fact were the ones to break the law and wrongfully released the confidential information," NOM Chairman John Eastman said.

CBN News has an exclusive interview with John Eastman on Wednesday's Newswatch. Click on the player to watch the full interview, including Eastman's comments on the IRS targeting scandal and how he believes the IRS should investigated and held accountable.

NOM is grateful that the IRS has admitted wrongdoing, but they're concerned the tax agency may still be hiding information. They're also upset the Department of Justice is not investigating the case to hold the perpetrators accountable.

"The gay activist who received our information unlawfully claims to have had a conduit that would allow him to get our donor information so that they could deter future donors," Eastman told CBN News.

"But the Department of Justice has refused to prosecute him," he continued. "More importantly, the Department of Justice also refused to grant him immunity that we could use to force him to answer our questions."

"So there's still this uncertainty about who his conduit is. Is it somebody in the IRS? Is there more to this story than we've yet been able to prove? And why is the DOJ refusing to grant him immunity if they're not going to prosecute him anyway?" Eastman asked.

NOM's case is not directly tied to the IRS Tea Party targeting scandal, but it follows the same pattern of the IRS being used as a weapon to silence or undermine conservative groups.