Report Finds White House Was Not Involved in IRS Scandal

You are likely tired of reading blogs about the IRS scandal, but at least this one isn’t about Lois Lerner. A report released yesterday, at the request of Maryland Democrat Elijah Cummings, focuses instead on the White House. The report concludes that the White House never instructed the IRS to specifically target conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

The report’s conclusion is based on interviews conducted by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee of IRS and Treasury Department employees and officials. The report makes public “key portions” of these interviews.

Cummings is using the report as evidence that the Republican probe into the scandal is politically motivated. And of course, he’s particularly aiming his assertions at committee chairman Darrell Issa (R-Ca). In a statement accompanying the report’s release, he said: “Now that the American people can actually see what each one of these 39 witnesses told the Committee … it is clear that there was no White House involvement or political motivation in the screening of tax exempt applicants, contrary to the accusations made by Chairman Issa before we began this investigation.”

Coming soon: back to Lois Lerner. The House is scheduled to vote this week on a resolution that would hold Lerner in contempt of Congress and another that would call for the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to consider criminal charges against Lerner. Like it or not, we will blog about it.