The Obama administration says that the White House wasn't involved in any IRS irregularities, but Bob Woodward says that's nonsense because, well, it just is:
The Washington Post's Bob Woodward says the Obama administration has explaining to do on the IRS scandal and needs to answer questions about who knew what, when.Here's what Woodward said to O'Reilly (video at Fox News Insider):
"This fiction that somehow [The IRS is] totally an independent agency is absurd," the legendary journalist said Monday on "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News, saying that in the Nixon era, the Treasury secretary refused to audit Democratic groups when the IRS commissioner was asked to do so by the White House.
"Clearly in the pipeline, lots of people knew some of this or should know it...."
It's part of the government. This fiction that somehow it's totally an independent agency is absurd. When George Shultz was the treasury secretary for Nixon, and the IRS commissioner at the time, Johnny Walters, came to see Shultz and said, "The White House wants me to audit this list of Democrats," you know what George Shultz did? He said, "If they want me to do that, they can get a new treasury secretary." He refused to do it. Clearly, in the pipeline, lots of people knew some of this, or should know it.Wait -- that's your argument, Bob? The IRS must have been politicized by someone high up in the White House, because it was politicized that way under Nixon, the most criminal-minded president of our lifetime? Isn't that like looking at Rob Ford and Marion Barry and concluding that when any big-city mayor does something ill-advised, it must be because the mayor was smoking crack, because that's what mayors do?
I understand the suspicion, but "Nixon did it, so they all do it" hardly constitutes proof.
