Speaking to reporters earlier Thursday, Obama said his “main concern” was to immediately remedy the IRS debacle.
“I promise you this, the minute I found out about it, my main focus was making sure we get the thing fixed.”
Obama appoints Werfel as IRS commissioner – The Hill’s On The Money
Translation
“I promise you, the minute my advisers explained to me that this was going to wreck my presidency, my main focus was finding a scapegoat whom I could trust not to rat me out.”
Anyone see Obama deflect a question from the Bloomberg reporter today at the press conference with PM Erdogan?
Obama was asked if anyone at the White House knew about the targeting of conservative groups before the White House Counsel was informed April 22.
Obama answered, “I certainly did not know anything about the IG report before the IG report was leaked to the press,” without addressing the actual question of whether any of his political appointees in the White House were aware that the IRS was playing political favorites. All he said was that he PERSONALLY did not know about the IG REPORT. This leaves open the possibility that others in the White House knew or directed the IRS to target conservative groups, and that he knew about the activity before the IG report came out.
He could not say that no one in the White House knew, because he would be caught later in a lie. Is this Clintonian, or Nixonian?
Quote attributed to Dennis Miller, but I cannot verify independently:
“The difference between Obama and Nixon is that Obama will require ‘I am not a crook’ on a prompter.”
Another difference is 66 hours and 42 minutes.
Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office
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By John Parkinson
@jparkABC
Steven Portnoy
@stevenportnoy
May 16, 2013 6:15pm
gty internal revenue service building ll 130412 wblog IRS Official in Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office
(Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.
Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.
Her successor, Joseph Grant, is taking the fall for misdeeds at the scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012. During at least part of that time, Grant served as deputy commissioner of the tax-exempt unit.
Grant announced today that he would retire June 3, despite being appointed as commissioner of the tax-exempt office May 8, a week ago.
ABC News’ Abby D. Phillip contributed to this report.
End the IRS and repeal the 16th amendment.