FLASHBACK IRS SMIDGENS – […] Acting Commissioner Steven Miller, who turned in his resignation last week [May 2013], repeated the apology he made to a House committee for mistakes and poor customer service and took responsibility for the events that brought the scandal to light 11 days ago. It was his idea, he said, to have Lois Lerner, the IRS official who heads the Exempt Organizations Division, plant a question at a meeting of tax lawyers in Washington to ask her whether the IRS targets conservative groups. Her affirmative answer opened the political floodgates.

Why did he think it was a good idea to have a government employee secretly plant a question? “Obviously the whole thing was an incredibly bad idea,” Miller said. “I thought mistakenly we should get in front and apologize, then reach out to the Hill—we were wrong.”

The question of who knew what when reaches beyond the White House to the Treasury Department and to Capitol Hill. Inspector General Russell George, testifying alongside Miller and Shulman, said he routinely briefed Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin and Rep. Darrell Issa, the chair of the government-reform committee, last summer about the report he had in the works on the improper targeting of conservative groups.  (link)