Taxable Talk

I did catch a portion of the Senate Finance Committee hearing this morning. More interesting will be tomorrow’s House hearing where Lois Lerner will be testifying but taking the Fifth Amendment (“I refuse to answer the question on the grounds that the answer would tend to incriminate me.”).

Now, that does not mean that Ms. Lerner is guilty of anything; she’s well within her rights to take the Fifth. However, it does indicate that in some manner she thinks her answers could cause her legal difficulties. It also indicates to the public that there is something here in this scandal.

We also have a report from the National Review that the direction for the “rogue low-level employees in Cincinnati” came from the Technical Unit of Rulings and Agreements Office in Washington. The idea that two (or four) low-level IRS employees in Cincinnati could have done this on their own has always been, for me, ridiculous. That said, the idea that a group of IRS lawyers decided to implement this policy doesn’t seem reasonable to me. Still, I think the answer is far more likely to be in Washington than Cincinnati.

Finally, we’re now on the sixth version of what the White House knew (or didn’t know) on this scandal:

Just a day after telling reporters that chief of staff Denis McDonough had learned of the situation about a month ago, press secretary Jay Carney revealed that White House officials had consulted with the IRS on how to initially present to the public the story that the agency had targeted conservative tax-exempt groups for extra scrutiny.

There was “discussion about the possibility of a speech” by Lois Lerner, who oversaw the IRS’s work on tax-exempt groups, Carney said, and conversation about testimony by the acting commissioner of the agency and “what he would say” if asked about the issue…

The press secretary said the Treasury Department worked with Mark Childress, a deputy White House chief of staff.

I’m pretty sure there will be a seventh version of events from the White House later this week.

Years ago, I had the misfortune to work for a business that committed a major faux pas. The company admitted its mistake saying the equivalent of “We goofed and we want to make things right.” There was no cover up, just a forthright admission of the facts and a desire (followed up by actions) to correct the problem. Here, we’re seeing what to me is looking like a cover-up. It might not be–it’s possible that the White House is clueless (that says something else, too)–but as my father once told me, “It’s the appearance of impropriety that matters.” When you combine the changing stories from the White House with a senior IRS employee taking the Fifth Amendment, you have a huge appearance of impropriety.

Tags: IRS.Scandal

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 21st, 2013 at 7:36 pm and is filed under IRS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.