2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumCandy Crowley of CNN's State of the Union does not think it's relevant to the investigation
that the original IRS supervisor in Cincinnati who managed the screening group has testified that he doesn't believe that the White House had any involvement in scrutinizing Tea Party applications and that this Supervisor is a 21 year employee of the IRS and described himself as a Conservative Republican.
Cincinnati IRS Screening Group Manager
Q: "In your opinion, was the decision to screen and centralize the review of Tea Party cases the targeting of the President's political enemies?"
A: "I do not believe that the screening of these cases had anything to do other than consistency and identifying issues that needed to have further development."
Q: "Do you have any reason to believe that anyone in the White House was involved in the decision to screen Tea Party cases?"
A: "I have no reason to believe that."
"...The Maryland lawmaker's staff on Sunday released a letter sent to Issa in which Cummings contended that a key supervisor in the IRS' Cincinnati office had suggested the White House had no involvement in the controversial practices. "I do not believe that the screening of these cases had anything to do [with anything] other than consistency and identifying issues that needed to have further development," the letter quoted the supervisor as saying in his committee interview.
"He is a conservative Republican working for the IRS. I think this interview and these statements go a long way to showing that the White House was not involved in this," Cummings said on CNN. ..."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/09/elijah-cummings-irs_n_3411812.html
If this guy wanted to point a finger at the White House, he had every opportunity to do so and did not. He also was the one responsible for submitting the initial documentation to the Washington Technical Office (WTO) because he wanted them to make some type of ruling on the matter on how their group should review these applications going forward to ensure that the treatment was consistent.
But dear Candy tries to brush over this fact when presented with this information in her conversation with Rep. Cummings because:
1) we don't yet know who sent that BOLO (be on the lookout) memo about applications with the words Tea Party or Patriots in it; and
2) this Supervisor (who sent the original letter to the WTO) may not have known about any potential White House involvement because that's Darrel Issa's point.
Huh!!!!!!!
If the Conservative IRS Supervisor of 21 years says that he was the original source of escalating the issue to the WTO after his people brought it to his attention they were receiving a large number of these types of applications from groups which appeared to have political overtones to them, and needed guidance on how to evaluate these applications so as to be consistent going forward, and he decided to elevate this up the chain of command, why is Darryl Issa still looking for a White House smoking gun which doesn't exist? And more so, why does Candy Crowley not think this is more relevant than what the chronic partisan witch hunter believes?
dkf
(37,305 posts)We need to see the data. That's the only way to know.
I certainly don't put much credence on anything these people testifying say.
Not that I think that the Prez or his people did anything, but these IRS heads seem clueless.
John2
(2,730 posts)now. You don't think the supervisor of the Cincinnati group knows anything about the issue? Am I reading into his answer too much, or did he say, that he had something to do with the process because of the number of new applications? I don't think anybody in the white house went around IRS supervisors and ordered their employees to target anybody. If they didn't know what their employees were doing, then they shouldn't be in their jobs.
dkf
(37,305 posts)They need to find out more about Carter Hull, the DC lawyer who was initiating things.
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)so I find her opinions to be non sequitur.
Joe Bacon
(5,165 posts)She's an endless fountain of Republican propaganda.