GOP report: Top IRS official considered admitting targeting before 2012 election -- but didn’t

A top IRS official considered going public with the agency’s targeting of conservative groups at a hearing just months before the 2012 presidential election but ultimately decided against revealing the bombshell news, according to a new report from a GOP-led House committee.

Then-Deputy Commissioner Steven Miller wrote in an email in June 2012, about a month before a House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing, that he was weighing whether to testify to “put a stake” in the “c4” issue -- apparently a reference to allegations about politics playing a role in the agency’s denial of tax-exempt, 501(c)(4) status to conservative-leaning groups.

“I am beginning to wonder whether I should do [the hearing] and affirmatively use it to put a stake in politics and c4,” Miller told his chief of staff, Nikole Flax, in a June 2012 email obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Miller ultimately testified at the July 25 hearing but never revealed his knowledge of the misconduct.

“Because he did not, he did a great disservice to the American taxpayers,” the House oversight committee report states.

The detail is one of many findings and allegations in the 226-page Republican-authored report, obtained by Fox News in advance of its release on Tuesday. The report highlights numerous examples of what House Republicans say is agency officials misleading congressional investigators and trying to slow their investigations.

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