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In a letter dated July 11, 2012, the man who conducted the investigation - IRS inspector general J. Russell George - wrote to Rep. Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, telling him that he was investigating the issue and offering to keep him updated as the investigation progressed.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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In a letter dated July 11, 2012, the man who conducted the investigation - IRS inspector general J. Russell George - wrote to Rep. Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, telling him that he was investigating the issue and offering to keep him updated as the investigation progressed.

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http://news.yahoo.com/republicans-informed-irs-investigation-last-1256
15676--abc-news-politics.html

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"We would be happy to provide a status update to the Subcommittee staff and provide a copy of our interim and final reports on the matter when they are issued," George wrote in the letter to Issa. An identical letter was also sent the Rep. Jim Jordan, who, like Issa had raised the issue with the IRS.

The letter notes that it was Issa who had written him about "questionnaires that the IRS has issued which may exceed appropriate scrutiny and a potential lack of balance in the use of criteria for reviewing organizations that are applying for tax-exempt status." George offers no confusions but says, "our Office of Audit recently began work on this issue."

According the Issa aide, the committee received an email update from George in December saying, "We are leaving no stone unturned as part of our due diligence. As such, we won't be able to provide a detailed, substantive briefing until late April/early May."

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Originally posted by Geezer:

Hmm.

So the IRS auditor informed Rep. Issa they were doing an investigation, but provided no conclusions, and stated there were not going be any until April/May of 2013.

Want to bet the senior IRS officials got more info than "We'll get back to you later"?

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
Odd that the congressional Republicans sat on this for so long. It *almost* looks like they were trying to cover something up!

What's next? A release of GOP-edited "e-mails" that seem to implicate the administration?

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The Pinocchio Test


It has long been part of the Washington game for officials to discredit a news story by playing up errors in a relatively small part of it. Pfeiffer gives the impression that GOP operatives deliberately tried to “smear the president” with false, doctored e-mails.

But the reporters involved have indicated they were told by their sources that these were summaries, taken from notes of e-mails that could not be kept. The fact that slightly different versions of the e-mails were reported by different journalists suggests there were different note-takers as well.

Indeed, Republicans would have been foolish to seriously doctor e-mails that the White House at any moment could have released (and eventually did). Clearly, of course, Republicans would put their own spin on what the e-mails meant, as they did in the House report. Given that the e-mails were almost certain to leak once they were sent to Capitol Hill, it’s a wonder the White House did not proactively release them earlier.

The burden of proof lies with the accuser. Despite Pfeiffer’s claim of political skullduggery, we see little evidence that much was at play here besides imprecise wordsmithing or editing errors by journalists.



Three Pinocchios

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