Question for Fired Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller: Who is ‘We’

An interesting tidbit based upon an email tip. Now fired acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller never really answers the question here – who was in on consultations as regards planting the question that kicked off the IRS controversy. He says, “I will take responsibility for that.” That’s not really a direct answer though, is it?

The secretly planted question and its very public answer that triggered the IRS scandal now gripping the nation’s capital came from the top of the agency, fired Acting Commissioner Steven Miller testified on Tuesday.

Grilled by the Senate Finance Committee, Miller went farther than prior comments when asked whose idea it was to plant a question at an American Bar Association conference about the inappropriate targeting of conservative groups.

“I will take responsibility for that,” Miller said, expanding on last week’s admission that he knew mid-level manager Lois Lerner had answered a question planted by a member of an IRS advisory council. “Now that we had the (inspector general’s) report, we had all the facts … we thought we’d get out an apology.”

The report he referenced was a much-anticipated audit, released last week by the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George.

“Obviously the entire thing was an incredibly bad idea,” Miller said of the planted question. “I think what we tried to do is get the apology out and start the story. The report was coming, and we knew that.”

So, who is ‘we?’ Meanwhile, the White House is equivocationing as well: White House, Treasury discussed how to handle disclosure of IRS story. They’re now admitting to being part of the “PR” discussion, but not part of the leaked question discussion. Huh? Does that really make sense? If nothing else, it might be interesting to have Steve Miller get a little closer to the truth than “we,” as to who he consulted with and when.

The White House said Tuesday that senior officials took part in discussions over how the IRS would disclose its targeting of conservative groups, marking the latest shift in the White House’s official line on the matter.
Press secretary Jay Carney told reporters that Mark Childress, deputy chief of staff, spoke twice with Treasury Department officials about the IRS’s public relations strategy.

“This was just part of trying to find out when and under what circumstances this information would be released, made public and what those findings would be,” the press secretary said.

Carney, however, made clear that White House officials were not involved in the discussions leading up to Lois Lerner’s disclosure at a May 10 conference of the American Bar Association that groups had been targeted, an apology the IRS now acknowledges came from a planted question.

Lerner is the head of a section that oversees tax-exempt groups, and knew by June 2011 that conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status were under special scrutiny.
“It’s a nice hypothetical, but that didn’t happen,” Carney said.

I’d like to think we can believe Carney, unfortunately – his lips were moving and I’m not sure we can believe much of anything this WH has to say on this at this point. Steve Miller should be able to clear this up with more specifics. So, who is “we.”

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