Posted on 05/20/2013 8:19:36 PM PDT by neverdem
Two senior White House aides knew weeks ago that a probe of the Internal Revenue Service had found that the U.S. tax agency had inappropriately targeted conservative groups, but did not tell President Barack Obama, a White House spokesman said on Monday.
A Treasury Department official informed White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler on April 24 about the preliminary findings of a report that would fuel the latest in a series of scandals to confront Obama at the start of his second term.
The report was issued by a Treasury inspector general on May 14, four days after an IRS official had acknowledged, and apologized for, the agency's targeting of conservative groups with names such as "Tea Party" and "Patriots" that had applied for tax-exempt status.
Soon after learning of the report's preliminary findings, Ruemmler briefed White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and some other senior staff members, White House spokesman Jay Carney told a regular news briefing. Ruemmler chose not to inform Obama about the findings to avoid any appearance that he had any role in shaping the report - a role the president would not have taken anyway, Carney said.
As a result, said Carney, Obama did not learn of the findings until they were announced last week - as the president has himself stated.
Monday's disclosures revealed more about the inner workings of the White House than they did about the IRS scandal, which revolves around questions such as who imposed the inappropriate targeting by IRS employees in the agency's office in Cincinnati, Ohio, and whether IRS officials misled Congress last year about whether they knew that targeting was going on.
Answers to such questions could begin to emerge during congressional hearings scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, in the Senate Finance Committee and House of Representatives Oversight...
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
“Does anyone think Obama did not know? He is a liar he knew and it has his grimy fingerprints all over it and many other sorted things I am sure.”
Obama has never said he didn’t know the IRS was targeting conservative groups. His exact response when question about whether he or anyone at the White house knew about the IRS activities targeting conservative groups was, “I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything about the IG report before the IG report had been leaked through the press”
Note that Obama had the opportunity to flat out deny any involvement or the orchestration of this activity by the White House. His failure to directly answer the question put to him suggests there is much more to the story.
Obama (peace be upon him) is responsible to know what par is on any given hole.
He even looks a bit like Tutankhamen, only uglier.
King Tut has an excuse...he's about 3000 years old.
I’ll give you that. [smiles]
Right. IMO he was in full charge of the IRS probe, unlike Benghazi in which he was probably somewhere hiding under the covers.
Thanks for the ping!
He must have just missed them on the way to his next vacation.
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