On Wednesday April 9, the House Oversight Committee voted to send a criminal referral to the Department of Justice for former IRS official Lois Lerner. Despite the severity of this most recent revelations into the IRS’ targeting of Tea Party organizations, ABC and NBC continue to ignore the story.
After all three networks failed to cover the story [1] on their nightly news broadcasts on Wednesday, only CBS This Morning bothered to mention the revelations on Thursday April 10. Co-host Norah O’Donnell described the events as such: “The House Oversight Committee today is expected to hold a retired IRS official in contempt of Congress. Republicans say Lois Lerner led an effort to investigate Tea Party organizations. She's refused to testify at two committee hearings claiming her Fifth Amendment rights.”
O’Donnell then brought on Jan Crawford to give a full report:
Yesterday we saw this House committee really ratchet up the stakes. It voted along straight party lines to ask the Justice Department to consider criminal charges against Lerner for allegedly directing the IRS to target conservative groups. In a letter to the Justice Department, Chairman Dave Camp said the committee had information that Lerner allegedly engaged in willful misconduct and potentially violated multiple federal criminal statutes.
Crawford then noted new details in the scandal that showed “Ethics investigators also reporting that IRS employees at several different offices were actively supporting president Obama while they were on the job including one employee they reported, who was urging people that were calling into this taxpayer help line to vote for the president.”
Rather than report on the latest in the IRS scandal, NBC’s Today is currently engaged in a week-long series entitled “Spring Breakers” where they attempt to break world records. On Thursday, they attempted to break the world record for the largest exercise class using exercise balls. Over on ABC, the folks at Good Morning America participated in a world-wide sing-a-long of “It’s a small world after all” for the 50th anniversary of the song.
See relevant transcript below.
CBS This Morning
April 10, 2014
7:15 a.m. Eastern
NORAH O’DONNELL: And the House Oversight Committee today is expected to hold a retired IRS official in contempt of Congress. Republicans say Lois Lerner led an effort to investigate Tea Party organizations. She's refused to testify at two committee hearings claiming her Fifth Amendment rights. Jan Crawford is in Washington where another panel is also taking aim at Lerner. Jan, good morning.
JAN CRAWFORD: Well, good morning. And Lerner really has been refusing for the past year to answer those questions from Congress about the scandal. Yesterday we saw this House committee really ratchet up the stakes. It voted along straight party lines to ask the Justice Department to consider criminal charges against Lerner for allegedly directing the IRS to target conservative groups. In a letter to the Justice Department, Chairman Dave Camp said the committee had information that Lerner allegedly engaged in willful misconduct and potentially violated multiple federal criminal statutes. Now, the Justice Department said in a statement it's already investigating the IRS’ handling of these tax exempt groups, and that it quote remains a high priority of the department. Democrats, of course, are saying that the Republicans on the committee are just playing politics. But adding fuel to the fire here, I mean this is not all. Yesterday ethics investigators also reporting that IRS employees at several different offices were actively supporting President Obama while they were on the job including one employee they reported, who was urging people that were calling into this taxpayer help line to vote for the president. Norah?
O’DONNELL: All right, Jan, thank you.
— Jeffrey Meyer is a News Analyst at the Media Research Center. Follow Jeffrey Meyer on Twitter. [2]