Quick Fact: Republican Attempt at IRS Scandal Mongering Foiled by Released Transcript

A few days ago I wrote about the IRS "scandal" and how John Shafer, a self-described conservative Republican who is employed by the IRS in the Cincinnati office, testified before Congress that he was the one who decided to isolate Tea Party groups applying for tax exempt status.  http://whateyethynk-politics.blogspot.com/2013/06/quick-fact-self-proclaimed-conservative.html

Representative Darrell Issa (R-California) continued to insist that there was a White House cover-up while refusing to release full transcripts of the hearings.  Yesterday, Representative Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland), who had accused Rep. Issa of withholding the transcript for political reasons and threatened to release the entire transcript himself,  got tired of waiting for Mr. Issa, and did exactly that.

In this exerpt from Mr. Shafer's testimony, we find there was a simple explanation for making the choice to isolate Tea Party tax exempt applications:

"The manager, further testified that the Tea Party groups were deliberately grouped together so that they would receive consistent treatment.  'There was a lot of concerns about making sure that any cases that had, you know, similar-type activities or items included, that they would be worked by the same agent or same group,' (Mr. Shafer) testified.

In the testimony, the screening manager also flatly stated he had no reason to believe there was White House involvement."

And so ends another saga of attempted scandal mongering by the Republican Party.