Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Cummings releases full transcript clearing White House

http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/jay-bookman/2013/jun/18/cummings-defies-issa-releases-full-transcript-clea/

Posted: 3:22 p.m. Tuesday, June 18, 2013
By Jay Bookman

U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, has released the full, complete transcript of a committee interview with the IRS manager who oversaw 501(c)4 applications in Cincinnati.

The transcripts confirm that nobody in Washington, let alone the White House, had anything to do with identifying Tea Party applications for closer scrutiny. To the contrary, the transcripts confirm in direct testimony from the person overseeing the process that the practice originated with low-ranking IRS employees who were trying to process 25 to 30 such applications a day.

It also confirms that the manager is himself a conservative Republican.

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He [the IRS official] explained that he initiated the first effort to gather similar cases in order to ensure their consistent treatment, and that he took this action on his own, without any direction from his superiors, and without any political motivation. He also confirmed that one of his screeners developed terms subsequently identified by the Inspector General as “inappropriate,” such as “Patriot” and “9/12 project,” but that he did not become aware that his screener was using these terms until more than a year later."

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