No sooner did President Obama claim last week the IRS scandal was just a mirage than new evidence emerged to show it was anything but.
The conservative group Judicial Watch says documents it obtained “confirm” the agency targeted the donors of certain tax-exempt organizations. And the Government Accountability Office faulted IRS procedures, saying they failed to prevent bias in the selection of nonprofits for audits. That’s key, since the agency has been accused of targeting conservative groups.
Yet here was Obama on the Jon Stewart show denying the IRS did anything wrong.
“The truth of the matter is that there was not some big conspiracy there,” said Obama. “They were trying to sort out these conflicting demands.” Indeed, he added, “the real scandal” is that the agency doesn’t have the money to do more audits. Right.
So did the agency do anything wrong?
You be the judge:
- First, there’s the IRS’ internal auditor charging the agency targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
- Then there’s Lois Lerner, the former IRS official at the heart of the scandal, pleading the Fifth and claiming her hard drive crashed, destroying all the evidence.
- Later it turns out the IRS deliberately erased her backups, after the messages were subject to a congressional subpoena.
- And we learn the Justice Department apparently colluded with the IRS, discussing “several possible theories to bring criminal charges under FEC law” against groups “posing” as tax-exempt nonprofits.
Of course, the biggest scandal of all is that Team Obama has managed to stonewall and leave the public hanging. And that no one has been held accountable.