Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Scandal Mongering 101
1. Facts don't matter -- just make up the facts (state your case as a "what if" proposition if necessary, or go to the FAUX News classic, "some people say . . .").
2. Logical consistency does not matter -- two diametrically opposed theories can be "true" at the same time. If one theory is not working for you, switch to the diametrically opposed theory.
3. When all else fails, throw shit against the wall and hope that something sticks.
Keep this in mind when reading Steve Benen's breakdown of the IRS "scandal" today. 'The opposite of a cover-up':
When it comes to the IRS controversy, I'm starting to get the impression that the goalposts have moved rather quickly.
The initial allegation raised by the right and other administration critics is that President Obama's White House, if not the president himself, may have been directly involved. As this story goes, Team Obama sent word to an IRS office in Cincinnati to apply extra scrutiny to conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.
When every shred of evidence suggested this allegation is baseless, the charges shifted from "Obama did too much!" to "Obama did too little!"
For example, ABC's Jonathan Karl, who's had a rough go of it lately, said yesterday of the IRS's missteps: "How was this allowed to go on? ... There were public reports that this stuff was going on almost a year before the presidential election.... Is there any responsibility from the administration of saying, 'Hey, IRS, we don't treat groups differently based on politics [instead of waiting] for the report after the election to make a comment?'"
In other words, we've reached the point in the controversy at which critics are raising the opposite of their original charges. "Why did the White House intervene?" has become "Why didn't the White House intervene?"
Jeffrey Toobin's take yesterday rings true.
When you can't prove that the White House did anything wrong, and you can't prove that the White House knew that someone else was doing something wrong, what do you try to prove? That the White House knew there was an investigation into whether someone else was doing something wrong! That may sound scandalous, but, in fact, it's perfectly appropriate. [...]
White House officials seem to have engaged in the opposite of a cover-up. They let the investigation proceed, and let the Inspector General do his job. They let the process play out. They played by the rules, which is what lawyers are supposed to do.
I'd note that congressional Republicans learned about the IG's inquiry last summer [The Treasury inspector general for tax administration sent a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa in July 2012 saying it would audit the agency] -- to use Karl's words, they knew "this stuff was going on almost a year before the presidential election" -- and they too let the process play out, as they should have.
Dave Weigel added, "What started as a question of whether the White House ordered 'Tea Party targeting' has become a Byzantine investigation of on what day which staffers were informed that the inspector general was digging into this."
Ryan Grim reported at the Huffington Post last week, Darrell Issa: 'You Don't Accuse The IRS Until You've Had A Nonpartisan, Deep Look':
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said earlier this week in a little-noticed interview that he knew "approximately" what the IRS inspector general would report about selective targeting of conservative groups, but that it wasn't appropriate to "accuse the IRS until you've had a nonpartisan, deep look."
The comments back up the White House argument that administration officials did not know enough about the investigation to condemn the IRS until the IG completed his work recently. A Treasury Department official, Neal Wolin, was informed that the IG was looking into the situation this past summer, a revelation the media and GOP have seized on to suggest the White House may have covered up the scandal in the midst of a campaign.
Issa is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
"I know approximately what's in it," Issa told Bloomberg Businessweek on Monday when asked if he knew what would be in the report. "I knew what was approximately in it when we made the allegations about a year ago. This is one of those things where it's been, in a sense, an open secret, but you don't accuse the IRS until you've had a nonpartisan, deep look. That's what the IG has done. That's why the IGs in fact exist within government, is to find this kind of waste and fraud and abuse of power."
Jeffrey Toobin's post at The New Yorker When You Shouldn’t Tell the President adds:
At Monday’s press briefing, Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said Kathryn Ruemmler, the President’s counsel, was told of the investigation on April 24th. She shared that information with Denis McDonough, the chief of staff, and a handful of other officials. None of them told the President.
Is there anything wrong with what Ruemmler and the other officials did? I asked Glenn Fine, who served as the Inspector General of the Department of Justice from 2000 to 2011.
* * *
Fine pointed out that the existence of inspector-general investigations is “not secret”: “The people you are auditing know they are being audited. And the list of pending audits is generally public as well.” Indeed, Darrell Issa, the Republican congressman leading the inquiries of the White House, knew that the audit was in process. In any event, the report wasn’t even final until May 12th, by which time its existence was already widely publicized. “A draft report is never final until it’s final. Sometimes drafts are changed,” Fine said. The affected Department leadership is always allowed a chance to comment on or protest draft reports.
But shouldn’t Ruemmler et al. have told the President about the audit? Actually, that would have been just about the worst thing they could have done. “The thing you most want to avoid is that the White House, or anyone else, tells the I.G. what to do or contacts individuals who are being questioned in the audit and tries to influence their responses as well,” Fine said. By not telling the President, Ruemmler made sure that Obama could not be accused of influencing the audit.
In other words, White House officials seem to have engaged in the opposite of a coverup. They let the investigation proceed, and let the Inspector General do his job. They let the process play out. They played by the rules, which is what lawyers are supposed to do.
So attempts by the Beltway media villagers in thrall of "scandal mania" to conflate the date on which the IG report became known to the White House into some Nixonesque "What did you know and when did you know it?" analogy is without merit, and has no basis in reality.
Nixon expressly directed the IRS to use audits to attack his political enemies. There is no evidence that this occurred in this case. There are no "audits" to speak of. As Ed Kilgore explained at the Political Animal blog, Bordering On a Big Lie:
I hate to keep confusing the “narrative” with facts, but when it comes to the 501(c)(4s), we aren’t talking about tax audits. These were reviews of applications that nobody was required to submit, and that nobody needed to submit unless they were pretty sure they were on the borders of political activities incompatible with tax-exempt status (otherwise, they could just file their tax returns like anyone else and claim tax-exempt status).
Of the 298 groups subjected to additional review, 72 were “tea party” groups, 11 were “9/12″ groups and 13 were “patriots” groups, according to the inspector general’s report. The only groups actually denied special tax status were progressive groups, not conservative groups. The New York Times reported, 3 Groups Denied Break by I.R.S. Are Named: "The I.R.S. denied tax exemption to the groups — Emerge Nevada, Emerge Maine and Emerge Massachusetts — because, the agency wrote in denial letters, they were set up specifically to cultivate Democratic candidates."
As Glenn Fine pointed out, the existence of an Inspector General audit is a public record, so there is no "cover up." This investigation was identifed in the Annual Audit Plan - Fiscal Year 2013 (pdf) for the Treasury inspector General for Tax Administration.
See Page 18:
And Page 22:
As Rep. Darrell Issa said, it was an "open secret." The fact that the media only recently discovered the IG audit speaks more to the incompetence of the media than it does to any "cover up."
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