Victim of IRS Targeting Ready to Start 'Offense Fund' to Go After Tax Agency's Abuse

Former Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, who recently said she found out she was targeted by the Internal Revenue Service during her 2010 campaign, announced she's ready to fight back to get to the bottom of the IRS scandal.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) building is viewed in Washington, DC, February 19, 2014. AFP PHOTO / Jim WATSON JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

O'Donnnell was informed by federal investigators that the IRS looked into her personal tax information on the day she announced for Senate.

While she said she's happy that Congress and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration are continuing to investigate, she would like to see a more aggressive Justice Department.

“If we speak up, if the public outrage is loud enough, we can back Eric Holder into a corner to a point where he is forced to do something,” O’Donnell said Friday during a panel discussion at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md.

An Obama donor, Barbara Bosserman, a Justice Department attorney, is heading up the probe.

“We're starting an offense fund, and notice I say an offense fund because we plan to go on an offensive and hire our own private investigators who aren't bound by certain scopes of what they're supposed to do to ensure that this does not happen again, because this drives a stake right through the heart of the American dream and everything we're fighting for,” she later added. “This administration has an arrogance of thinking they’re untouchable.”

This week, former IRS official Lois Lerner again invoked her Fifth Amendment right by refusing to answer questions to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The IRS reportedly announced Friday that Lerner's emails will be full released.

The fact that revelations of the IRS political targeting emerged in May 2013 and that only now Lerner's emails are being released is an outrage, said Washington attorney Cleta Mitchell, representing several of the tea party groups that were targeted by the IRS in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles.

Mitchell said that Democrats were trying to shun the scandal by saying President Barack Obama was not directly involved.

Hans Von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said Obama did not need to be giving direct orders, considering the content of his speeches targeting independent groups.

“I've heard people say that the White House doesn't need to pick up the telephone because the president had a megaphone giving speeches talking about these organizations saying they were getting dark money and they needed to be investigated,” Von Spakovsky said.