Washington (CNN) – The Internal Revenue Service has told House GOP investigators they have identified 88 IRS employees who may have documents relevant to the congressional investigation into targeting of conservative groups, according to a congressional source familiar with the investigation.
The IRS asked these employees to preserve all the “responsive documents” on their computers, and it has been in the process of collecting it all to comply with congressional requests for information. The IRS missed its May 21st deadline to turn over documents to the House Ways and Means Committee.
Of course, CNN must get in its digs that it is only the Republicans who have craven motives in this investigation
The request for documents was a bipartisan one, but Republicans are privately preparing to seize on the fact that if nearly 90 IRS employees may have been somehow involved in this targeting, it is evidence that the controversy extends well beyond the mistakes by a few low level employees.
However, with no documents in hand, there is no way to know how many of the employees being asked to preserve documents were truly involved in the activity in question. The IRS, in a statement to CNN, said the large number reflects its effort to ensure they are as responsive as possible to the Congressional requests.
Poor, put-upon, IRS! They are trying so hard to comply with those meany, hyperpartisan, extremist THEY-ARE-DESTROYING-THE-COUNTRY!!1!1, Republicans.
Can’t we all get along? Time to move on dot org.
Remember that whenever a government employee or member of the Religion of Peace™ does something wrong like go after conservative/libertarian organizations or bombs Boston, the term of art to describe that the persons acted independently, and are not part of a larger pattern of behavior, is “Lone Wolf.” Even if there are 88 of them, there is no pack. People who talk about packs are crazy conspiracy wackos, who by the way are crazy and can’t be believed because of the crazily crazy craziness.
? Ah-oooo! ? Lone Wolves of Rev’nue! ? Ah-oooo! ?
Those question marks are musical notes.
I WANT PREVIEW BACK, DAMMIT!
I WANT PREVIEW BACK, DAMMIT!
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How to setup a smoke screen and slow roll any investigation…(From “Rules for radicals”)
– Give the boys plenty of time to sanitize the paper trail.
– Flood the process with piles of irrelevant material.
– Make sweeping statements that on casual inspection imply you’re going overboard to cooperate.
– Smile a lot, but avoid smirking.
– I woukd imagine that all 88, and anyone else among the rank and file that Issa calls have been told in no uncertain terms, but coached in lots of plausible deniability lawyerspeak: “Keep your fucking mouths shut or you’ll never work again.”
– Washingtons version of taking the fifth: “The agency is prohibited from commenting on the cases of individuals.”
And that will work until someone takes a page from the Sons of Liberty and reminds the King’s tax collectors their homes don’t enjoy the 24/7 security their boss has.
– “No, no, you’ve got it all wrong….Requiring them to promise to stop picketing Planned Parenthood was just a management oversight, and the isolated actions of a few thousand rogue agents, and had nothing to do with political targeting, and besides we’re working diligently to insure this sort of thing never happens again, so you see theres nothing too any of this beyond a Republican witch hunt.”
It’s only a few hundred thousand rogue Federal employees. It’s no big deal.
[…] protein wisdom notes that suddenly a few rogue IRS agents became 88 […]