I read a piece by Bob Frum in the Daily Beast this morning in which he stated boldly –
In the end, events and the evidence will lead to the overwhelming conclusion that IRS conduct in the Cincinnati field office is a quintessential incarnation of that portion of government that the science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein called “stupid fumbling.”
For the White House, there is no crime here, there is no scandal, no matter how feverishly, irresponsibly, or demagogically the GOP labors to concoct one.
It struck me as interesting that Frum should be so certain of something he acknowledges has yet to come to pass… that “the evidence will lead to the overwhelming conclusion…” (emphasis mine).
Yet, barely 12 hours later comes this from NBC,
Additional scrutiny of conservative organizations’ activities by the IRS did not solely originate in the agency’s Cincinnati office…
Cleta Mitchell, another attorney representing conservative groups that allege they were targeted, said an IRS agent in Cincinnati told her a “task force” IRS office in Washington, D.C., was making the decisions about the processing of applications, and that she subsequently dealt with IRS representatives there.
“(The IRS agent in Cincinnati) told me that in fact the case would be transferred to a special task force out of Washington, and that he was told – he was the originally assigned agent – that he wasn’t allowed to make decisions, the decisions were all going to be made in Washington,” Mitchell said.
So whatever else the evidence leads to, Bob Frum’s overwhelming conclusion seems unlikely to be concerned merely with what happened in Cincinnati.