The Hill News

Two campaign finance watchdogs on Tuesday requested that the Internal Revenue Service investigate Crossroads GPS, an outside conservative group, for allegedly violating laws restricting the political activity of non-profits.

Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center wrote a letter to the IRS asking it to probe if Crossroads GPS and its sister group American Crossroads, which former top Bush advisers Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie helped establish, is using its tax-exempt status to improperly keep its donor list private. 

{mosads}"In our view, Crossroads GPS is a classic example of a 501(c)(4) organization that is impermissibly using its tax status ! to spend tens of millions of dollars in the 2010 congressional races while hiding the donors funding these expenditures from the American people," Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer said. "The IRS cannot sit idly by and ignore what is going on without enormous damaging consequences to the interests of the American people and to the integrity and credibility of the tax laws."

The move could signal a series of challenges on outside political spending due to a Supreme Court decision in January that knocked down limits on corporate and union spending.

The Crossroads groups are one of several big-spending outside conservative groups at which Democrats have taken aim during the midterm campaign.

Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, said that both organizations follow the law and attacked the campaign finance groups for being hypocritical.

"Crossroads GPS carefully follows all laws governing 501c-4 organizations," he said. "This is a baseless complaint, filed by a partisan group that files baseless complaints for its living. Liberal groups spent more than $400 million in undisclosed campaign money in 2008 alone, with nary a peep from liberal lobbyist Fred Wertheimer or any of his groups."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) criticized outside conservative spending in an e-mail to Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee supporters Tuesday.

"Shadowy front groups funded by GOP special interests are pouring millions into these races," she wrote. "We wi! ll never stop fighting to ensure the People's House remains in the hands of the people."

Both conservative groups have already launched ads in seven key Senate races in Missouri, Colorado, Nevada, Ohio, Kentucky, California and Pennsylvania. The groups are also on target to raise $52 million by election day, the Associated Press reported last month.