There are no records of political donations for the other four Cincinnati IRS workers called to give interviews with Oversight Committee staff this week.
The I-Team confirmed they are John Shafer, a screening manager who began in March 2012; Gary Muthert, a screener who also began in March 2012; Liz Hofacre, a case coordinator from April 2010 to October 2010; and Joseph Herr, a group manager from April 2010 to August 2010.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/06/18/irs-managers-interview-transcript-adds-little-to-debate/
The main new takeaways, for those following the IRS investigation:
- Mr. Shafer simply doesn’t recall some details of the early stages of the IRS scrutiny of tea party groups. By all accounts so far, the targeting of conservative groups started in his IRS unit in Cincinnati, which screened applications for tax-exempt status from around the country. In February 2010, one of Mr. Shafer’s screeners flagged a single tea-party group’s application for extra scrutiny, and Washington officials agreed that similar cases should be scrutinized to make sure they were not engaging in too much political campaign activity. But Mr. Shafer doesn’t recall several important details of what happened after the first tea-party case was identified.
- Mr. Shafer’s statements conflict in a few respects with those of other IRS employees interviewed in the congressional investigation. Mr. Shafer, for example, denies telling a screener to search for other “tea party” cases by name during early 2010. The screener has said otherwise.
- Mr. Shafer says that when higher-ups in Washington decided they were interested in reviewing the first tea-party case, he told workers that similar cases should be held, pending a decision about how to handle them. But he said he never said all tea-party cases should be held.
- The interview also provided evidence that IRS officials in Washington officials proposed taking a handful of the cases, and asked the Cincinnati office to hold the other similar cases. According to the transcript, an email to Mr. Shafer from March of 2010 says the Washington office “does not want all of the Tea Party cases. They only want two of them and want us to hold the remainder. We can discuss who should hold them if you would like.”
The I-Team confirmed they are John Shafer, a screening manager who began in March 2012; Gary Muthert, a screener who also began in March 2012;
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On the pdf file at the bottom of page 1, John Shafer responds to a question about an email from Feb 25, 2010.
Apparently there is a discrepancy about when John Shafer was working in the department?