What Did The President Know about the IRS Scandal and When Did He Know IT?

Updated on 24 May, 2013:  A later post shows that the meeting referred to below does not appear to involve discussions of IRS targeting with the President or any briefing on the Inspector General's audit.  While Shulman should have been aware of it in June of 2011 (Lois Lerner was), the meeting attendee list is too broad for such a briefing.  Read the later post for a full discussion.  

Is the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups a bureaucratic SNAFU or was the White House Involved?  While all of the President's critics, including me, might like to believe this, it appears that White House involvement was at most limited to cover-up activities.  Whether or not the President was involved will be determined but I am inclined to believe he was not.  Or, I should say I believed this until today.  While it has been reported that Douglas Shulman, former IRS commissioner, visited the White House 118 times over 2 years, most of the visits look quite innocent.  Since the IRS will be extensively involved in the Affordable Health Care Act (ACA), there were many, many meetings with White House health care representatives, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) members, and Economic Council members.  There was one meeting with Rahm Emanuel's brother but he is an MD and so-called bioethicist and not likely a conduit for political messages.   Shulman also met with the President on 4 occasions.  Only one of these is not so easily explained.  According to the White House Visitor's Logs, Shulman met with the President in the Situation Room on 6 June, 2011.  This is only a question in my mind because Lois Lerner, that upstanding IRS lawyer who took the fifth yesterday, earlier reported that she learned of the now-infamous tea party targeting in June of 2011.  So, what was discussed at this meeting.  I am not saying that the President knew then but we could use an explanation.


The timeline of the IRS Inspector General's audit/investigation is included in the IRS Inspector General's Report beginning on Page 36.  There is a flurry of activity around the time of Shulman's meeting with the President.  Whether this was discussed in the Situation Room that day remains to be seen.  I, like many other commentators, continue to wonder why a White House staff could know about a potentially scandalous report for nearly a month without informing the President.  It has been reported that the Treasury Secretary, the White House General Council, and the White House  Chief of Staff were informed on 24 April.  Of course, investigation of the Administration's mishandling of the Benghazi talking points certainly does not convince me of their competence.