Posted by
William A. Jacobson
Saturday, May 18, 2013 at 2:47pm
At congressional hearings yesterday, it was revealed that
the IRS
planted a question at an ABA meeting in order to give Lois
Lerner of the IRS the opportunity to get ahead of the pending
Inspector General Report and make it seem as if the IRS had
voluntarily disclosed the targeting of Tea Party and
conservatives.
The person with whom the IRS planted the question was Celia
Roady, a tax lawyer who handles tax
exempt issues and is very close to the IRS.
There is some dispute as to whether Roady initially denied the
question was a set-up, with clear reporting by TPM as to
Roady’s denial being partially
walked back by two attendees who initially stated that Roady
denied the set-up but now say it may not have been that clear.
Regardless, Roady now is at the center of a firestorm, as the
IRS setting up the question and answer sends a message of
consciousness of guilt. The
mainstream media now is
all over it.
Jonathan Steele at
Legal Ethics Forum sees Roady as something of a victim
here:
The story is still developing but it now appears that the lawyer
who was prompted to ask the planted question at the ABA conference
did not know the answer and was surprised at Lerner’s answer. If
that’s true, think about how rotten that was: set up a colleague to
ask what will become a notorious Q-and-A when she assumed it was
just an ordinary question at an ordinary conference and would be
answered with the same, ordinary answer the IRS had been giving
Congress and the public for some time. Now, unfortunately, when
that lawyer’s name pops up here or there it will be associated with
the IRS’s deceptive scheme. When a federal agency has been falsely
answering a persistent, urgent question from Congress, the agency
should report the truth directly...
+2
