Full House Committee Transcripts Reveal What Issa Wanted to Hide
Here’s a pretty amazing development that may finally destroy the last shred of partisan hitman Darrell Issa’s credibility: Breaking: Full House Committee Transcripts Shed New Light on Genesis of IRS Targeting.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have just released a full transcript of testimony from a key witness in the investigation of IRS targeting of conservatives — and it appears to confirm that the initial targeting did originate with a low-level employee in the Cincinnati office.
It also shows a key witness and IRS employee — a self described conservative Republican — denying any communication with the White House or senior IRS officials about the targeting.
The ranking Dem on the committee, Elijah Cummings, has promised that the account provided by the witness — the IRS manager who supervised the screeners of applications for tax exempt status, a self described conservative Republican — would undercut Committee chairman Darrell Issa’s suggestion that the decision to target conservative groups had originated in Washington.
Cummings released the full transcript today in two parts, making it available to a select group of reporters, with redactions of names of individuals, and accompanied it with a letter to Issa explaining his decision, in which Cummings concludes that the transcript “debunks conspiracy theories about how the IRS first started reviewing these cases.”
The letter from Cummings to Issa concludes:
These facts are a far cry from accusations of a conspiracy orchestrated by the White House to target the President’s political enemies. At this point in the investigation, not one witness who has appeared before the Committee has identified any involvement by any White House officials in the identification or screening of Tea Party applicants for tax exempt status, and the Committee has obtained no documents indicating any such involvement.
How much money has Darrell Issa wasted with this series of fruitless, politically-motivated witch hunts?