Breaking the Obama omertà

ABC News now reports that Lois Lerner of the IRS planted the question at the ABA conference that allowed her to reveal that the IRS had inappropriately targeted conservative groups prior to the 2012 elections. What the fuck?!?

Celia Roady, a prominent Washington lawyer in private practice has made a written statement that she received a call from Lerner the day before the May 10 conference, requesting that Roady ask a question about tax exempt groups. “I received a call from Lois Lerner, who told me that she wanted to address an issue after her prepared remarks at the [American Bar Association] Tax Section’s Exempt Organizations Committee Meeting, and asked if I would pose a question to her after her remarks,” Roady said in a statement obtained by ABC News. “I agreed to do so, and she then gave me the question that I asked at the meeting the next day.

ABC also reports that Lerner had appeared before the House Ways and Means Committee just days before the conference and failed to disclose what she knew about the targeting.

“A little more than a week ago Lois Lerner was in front of our Oversight Subcommittee. She serves as the director of the Exempt Organization Division, and she has been directly involved in this matter, yet she failed to disclose what she knew to this committee, choosing instead to do so at an ABA conference two days later,” Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) said on Friday morning. “This is wholly unacceptable.”

This begs the following questions: How long before the ABA conference did Lerner know about the targeting of conservative groups? (What did she know and when did she know it?) Who did she tell about this targeting? For example, did she tell anyone in the White House? What discussions did she have with whom about how to disclose the targeting? Whose idea was it to plant the question at the ABA conference? Whom did Ms Lerner meet with in the weeks prior to the ABA conference? Are there any records of telephone conversations or emails?

We can imagine the scenario. IRS officials realize that they have a major scandal on their hands. They consult with the political operatives to figure out the least damaging way to disclose it. They decide that they will get one of their lackeys to ask an apparently innocuous question, hoping that it will go mostly unnoticed, but will still allow them to say that they have "disclosed" it so that they will have covered their political asses, so to speak. Unfortunately, it does not go unnoticed and all hell breaks loose.

And then add in Jay Carney's spin: "The IRS, as you know [nice touch], is an independent enforcement agency with only two political appointees." Sorry, Jay, but it's all just a little too neat. Are you trying to tell me that, as soon as a major scandal at the IRS starts to blow wide open (and, btw, this is the agency that is going to enforce your "landmark" Obamacare legislation), you conveniently have ready at hand an explanation for why there is clear separation and no connection between the IRS and the White House? How stupid do you think I am?

Celia Roady has already betrayed the Obama omertà. Others will crack too. An independent counsel is going to be appointed and follow this one right up the chain of command.

Update: WSJ reports:

The conference revelation was itself stage-managed. Ousted IRS acting Commissioner Steven Miller testified he planned it with the director [Lois Lerner] of the division in question.

So, now we know that the IRS acting commissioner and Lois Lerner together planned the disclosure through the planted question, but we are asked to believe that the IRS commissioner did not inform anyone in Treasury or the White House about this. WSJ goes on:

Mr. Miller said the IRS, meanwhile, had "called to get on the calendar" to also brief the Ways and Means committee—a statement Republicans met with barely disguised disbelief.

Did no one at the IRS think that they should get on the White House calendar to brief Obama? This is simply unbelievable.