Priebus: Issa will have ‘quite a summer’ investigating Obama.(TheHill).
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on Tuesday predicted more damaging disclosures about the scandal over the IRS targeting of conservative groups and said GOP lawmakers would press the investigation all summer.
“This isn’t the end of the line, this is just the beginning,” said Priebus on “Fox and Friends.” “And I’ve got a good feeling [House Oversight Committee Chairman] Darrell Issa [R-Calif.] is going to be having quite a summer in reviewing what’s been going on here at the White House as far as this scandal is concerned.”
Lawmakers are probing the IRS decision to target Tea Party groups seeking tax exempt status with higher scrutiny, questioning when senior Treasury and White House officials first learned about those actions and what steps they took to stop them.
The administration has said Obama only learned about the IRS targeting when the public did. Last week, press secretary Jay Carney acknowledged senior White House officials, including counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, knew about an inspector general report detailing the targeting, but decided not to tell the president.
Carney said the decision was made to avoid the impression of interference in an ongoing investigation, but some GOP lawmakers have suggested an effort to shield Obama from the embarrassing scandal.
“If the president actually knew something, well then clearly he’s not being truthful and no one around him is,” Priebus said on Tuesday. “If he didn’t know anything then it suggests a level of aloofness or perhaps even incompetence that I think is pretty disturbing.”
Lawmakers are continuing their investigation over the Memorial Day recess, identifying further witnesses and gathering evidence for a new round of hearings. "I’ll be working full time,” Issa said last week. Read the full story here.
