Yet more twists and turns have been added to the IRS scandal. Last week Brian Fallon, the top spokesman for attorney general Eric Holder, meant to call the office of Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, to ask for help leaking information to select reporters about the IRS targeting scandal. But Fallon didn’t call Cummings’s office at all — he called the office of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA):
The administration official calling House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa’s (R-Calif.) office last week had an odd request.
Could the Justice Department get some help leaking information about the IRS’s scrutiny of conservative groups? asked Brian Fallon, a top spokesman for Attorney General Eric Holder.
Apparently thinking he had reached the office of Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), Fallon said the department wanted congressional staffers to get documents to selected reporters so that officials could comment on them “before the majority” did.
After Issa spokesman Frederick Hill replied that Oversight Committee staffers would have to examine those documents first, the line went silent, and Fallon placed the call on hold for three minutes.
When he returned to the line, Fallon was “audibly shaken,” according to an account of the conversation that Issa recounts in a letter sent to Holder.
The Justice official then said there had been a “change in plans,” that no documents would be released on Friday and that the main reason for the call was to seek a thaw in relations between the department and Oversight Republicans.
Issa said it’s clear that the Justice official meant to call Democratic staff and argued the mix-up is proof that President Obama’s administration and Cummings have been collaborating to “prejudice the committee’s work through under-the-table coordination.”
Caught. Red. Handed.
When did the Department of Justice become a partisan puppet as opposed to an agency of law enforcement? If we were lacking evidence that Holder wants to protect the IRS, we certainly have it now.