A.B. Stoddard: IRS Believes ‘Public Isn’t Paying Attention’

A.B. Stoddard, Associate Editor of The Hill, argued that the IRS has “absolutely bought the idea the American public isn’t paying attention to this” on Wednesday’s “On the Record” on the Fox News Channel.

“This investigation has gone on for a very long time. The administration has not given the Congress the information that the IRS has been asked for. We had a big story this week, you know Bob Cusack, my Editor-in-Chief submitted Freedom of Information requests to the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Taxation asking for 512 emails many, many months ago. Not one came back. They said it was personnel privacy issues, some inter-agency issues, and finally the fact there could be some legal proceedings underway. There are absolutely no known criminal or legal proceedings coming against Lois Lerner that we know of. But still her emails can’t come. What you see, both in their responses to requests for information, and in their testimony on the Hill is they’ve absolutely bought the idea the American public isn’t paying attention to this, the administration can keep on focusing on other problems, that everyone is on to ISIS or Ebola, or what’s going on with the NFL or Benghazi, but certainly not the IRS” she stated.

Aaron Blake, Senior Reporter for the Washington Post‘s The Fix, added “Republicans have a pretty decent case here that there have been a lot of missteps going on in this whole thing, and they just kind of are trying to put that together in a narrative that’s going to show and get people interested in this again.”

Stoddard also argued “if you look at the scandal at Veterans Affairs, the president put someone in to clean up who was credible and effective and has quieted the problems there, for all we know. He’s obviously providing oversight that’s required, I don’t know how many people have been punished, but–and how many consequences there are. But, that was obviously of more political concern to this administration than the IRS situation is, or it would have been cleaned up and it would have been quieted by now.”

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