#IRS scandal: White House counsel knew last April

**Posted by Phineas

ViaΒ Rick MoranΒ at PJM, Politico is reporting that the White House counsel, the president’s legal adviser, knew about the IRS targeting conservative groupsΒ three weeks ago:

The White House counsel’s office was informed in April of an inspector general’s review of the Internal Revenue Service, press secretary Jay Carney said Monday.

Carney told reporters that the counsel’s office was told of the examination into the targeting of conservative groups during the week of April 22, but not given details about the review’s findings. President Obama, Carney said, was not told about the review and learned of it only after news reports emerged Friday, justΒ what Obama said earlier Monday.

Uh huh. Right. The Treasury IG hands the president’s lawyer bombshell revelations, and yet that lawyer never tells his client? “Uh… Hi, sir! Nice morning, isn’t it? Huh? Wha…? No, nothing going on today, sir! Nothing at all!”

Care to buy some swampland in Arizona?

I’m with Moran:

I do not believe that Barack Obama first learned of the IRS’s targeting of conservatives β€œfrom news reports” on Friday. That doesn’t pass the smell test, especially since a close aide was told of the program three weeks ago. Are we to believe that the president’s own counsel didn’t immediately go to the Oval Office after learning of this and tell Obama β€œWe’ve got a bigΒ  problem, sir”? And the fact that the White House is now in full-blown circle-the wagons damage-control mode would suggest that their primary goal is to keep the president a thousand miles away from anything having to do with this scandal.

Good luck with that, guys. Just remember β€” it’s always the cover-up that gets ya.

Just ask any White House occupant circa 1974.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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