Well, it looks like I was right earlier this afternoon when I thought that the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, was among those holding off on reporting the Wall Street Journal's Sunday evening disclosure that Kathryn Ruemmler, the head of the Office of the White House Counsel, "learned weeks ago that an audit of the Internal Revenue Service likely would show that agency employees inappropriately targeted conservative groups" was "nervous about the Journal’s report, waiting for administration apparatchiks to tell them what to say, or both."
It turns out that the AP, in an unbylined report, waited until Jay Carney told them what to say and then pretended that the Journal's Sunday story didn't exist (the time stamp seen at story as carried at the AP's national site at the time of this post was 2:51 p.m.; the graphic which follows is of the identical story at Yahoo News):
Isn't that great? The White House came out and admitted that a lot of people there already knew about the IRS's audit and its preliminary conclusions weeks ago. These people are so forthright and honest to reveal this spontaneously aren't they? (/sarcasm) That's what one believe if they only read this AP report.
As to Carney's claim that the IRS practice ended in May 2012, I guess that explains why so many conservative and Tea Party groups didn't have their tax-exempt applications approved until this year (the specific example cited at the link took 37 months). Give me a flippin' break.
As a reminder, Lanny Davis, who served as President Clinton’s special counsel from 1996 to 1998, has called for Kathryn Ruemmler to resign if she withheld the information about the status of the IG's report from the President. Based on what Carney said, that's no longer an "if." Replace "if" with "because."
There is no way AP would have waited for a White House response in similar circumstances in a Republican or conservative administration.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
