The growing IRS scandal now includes charges that the agency sought to “intimidate” one of the most famous Christian preachers in America. The Internal Revenue Service targeted two groups connected to Billy Graham during last year’s election campaign, the legendary evangelist’s son Franklin Graham said in a letter to President Obama.

Two months before Election Day last fall, Graham said, the IRS targeted both the Billy Graham Evangelical Association and Samaritan’s Purse for reviews of its 2010 tax returns. Graham’s letter to Obama suggested that this was retaliation for a full-page newspaper advertisement that the Evangelical Association ran in April, supporting a ballot referendum to amend the North Carolina state constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman. Graham had also issued a statement in May criticizing Obama’s reversal of his prior position on the issue.

Both taxpayer resources and the resources of the Graham organizations were “wasted” by the IRS review of the North Carolina-based minsitries’ tax filings, Franklin Graham wrote Tuesday in his letter to the president.

“I believe that someone in the administration was targeting and attempting to intimidate us,” Graham wrote in the letter. This is morally wrong and unethical — indeed some would call it ‘un-American.’ … I do not believe that the IRS audit of our two organizations last year is a coincidence — or justifiable.”

The Graham organizations are not the only opponents of same-sex marriage to say they were targeted by the IRS. The National Organization for Marriage says the tax agency leaked their confidential donor information to their “political enemies,” and this information was used by Obama’s campaign co-chairman to attack Republican Mitt Romney during last year’s election campaign.

READ MORE:

• Daniel Burke, CNN: Franklin Graham: IRS targeted ministries
• Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit: Franklin Graham: Obama IRS Targeted Us Too… After We Spoke Out Against Obama
• Tim Funk, Charlotte Observer: Graham to Obama: IRS targeted BGEA and Samaritan’s Purse, too
• Sister Toldjah: Rev. Franklin Graham: Billy Graham Evangelistic Association also targeted by the IRS
• Reid J. Epstein, Politico: Franklin Graham: IRS targeted us, too
• Todd Starnes, Red State: Billy Graham Evangelistic Assn. Targeted by IRS