Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney, 5/20/2013

James S. Brady Press Briefing Room / 2:15 P.M. EDT

MR. CARNEY: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for being here. I have no announcements to make, so I will go straight to your questions. Julie Pace.

Q: Thank you. There seems to be a little bit of confusion about what exactly the White House Counsel’s Office was told the week of April 22nd about the IG report. Can you tell us what Kathy Ruemmler was told?

MR. CARNEY: Sure. Well, I appreciate the question. (Laughter.) There have been a lot of questions this morning that we’ve gotten based on recent reports about when we here at the White House learned of the Inspector General’s report, what we learned and how we learned, so I’d like to back up and just go through the fundamentals here first, if I may.

Number one, as the independent Inspector General testified and as his report says, he found no evidence that anyone outside of the IRS had any involvement in the inappropriate scrutinizing of conservative groups who were applying for tax exempt status.

Number two, no one in this building intervened in an ongoing, independent investigation or did anything that could be seen as intervening in that investigation.

Number three, the misconduct had stopped in May of 2012. So despite all the media interest in our April 2013 awareness, it’s important to remember that the misconduct, of course, had stopped almost a year earlier.

But going to your question, and in light of those questions, let me walk you through this because we don’t have any interest in being anything other than clear with you about that timeline.

So, as we have said, the White House Counsel, Kathy Ruemmler, learned during the week of April 22nd — the specific date is April 24th — that the Inspector General was finalizing an audit. That’s what they call this kind of report. At the time, the audit was still ongoing and the Inspector General had not issued its final report.

The White House Counsel’s Office routinely receives notification of pending Inspector General matters, as does Congress, and in fact, this was one of several IG reports likely to be released soon that were communicated to staff in the White House Counsel’s Office on April 16th in a series of items.

But on April 24th, as I said, the White House Counsel, Kathy Ruemmler, was informed that the Inspector General for Tax Administration was completing a report about line IRS employees improperly scrutinizing what are known as 501(c)(4) organizations by using words such as “tea party” and “patriot.” Counsel was further informed that the report had not been finalized and the publication date of the report was uncertain but likely soon.

While we had an indication of the likely findings, until the IG finalizes his report, the findings and conclusions are subject to change. And in fact, many IG reports do change significantly before they are published.

So to be clear, we knew the subject of the investigation and we knew the nature of some of the potential findings, but we didn’t have a copy of the draft report; we did not know the details, the scope or the motivation surrounding the misconduct; and we did not know who was responsible. Most importantly, the report was not final and still very much subject to change.

After that initial notification in April, the White House Counsel informed the Chief of Staff and other members of the senior staff. At no time did anyone on the White House staff intervene with the IRS Inspector General audit. There were communications between White House Counsel’s Office and White House Chief of Staff’s Office, with Treasury Office of General Counsel and Treasury’s Chief of Staff Office to understand the anticipated timing of the release of the report and the potential findings by the IG.

We know that the Hill also got briefings. As Congressman Issa said, he was aware of “approximately” what was in the report. But he, rightly, chose to not take action, because the cardinal rule is to not intervene in an independent investigation or take any steps that could be seen as intervening. That’s what we abided by, and that’s what any White House should do.

I just want to say that some reporting today suggests — and this is I think worth noting — suggests that given awareness of the potential findings, we should have done more. That could not be further from the right course of action. The cardinal rule, as I said, is that you do not intervene in an independent investigation, and you do not do anything that would be — that would give such an appearance, particularly when the final conclusions — as was the case here — have not been reached. And that’s the doctrine we followed.

And the bottom line is — and this isn’t just the most important fact, it’s what we have said from the beginning — not the White House, nor Treasury intervened in the Inspector General’s audit. So I hope that — anticipating this question, understanding there was some confusion about it, I hope that supplies the answers that you were hoping to get.

…So our whole point has been that knowing that this was coming does not change the fact that there was nothing we could have or should have done about it, because it was an independent Inspector General report. And, again, as I said at the end, I think it’s somewhat ironic that there has been some suggestion that action should have been taken because we were aware that the IG was — an independent IG was reaching the conclusion of a report and that it might have these findings, that somehow the President should have been notified or that we should have done something.

And, of course, the opposite is true, because these kinds of independent investigations need to be independent. There should be no intervention by a White House. And, of course, there was not in this case. And that’s why we had to wait, appropriately, until the report was publicized, or published, for the President to be able to review it and respond, as he did very quickly. He took action right away. He made sure that Secretary Lew asked for and accepted the resignation of the acting commissioner. He appointed a new acting commissioner. He very quickly made sure that the new acting commissioner would institute a top-down 30-day review of everything we could find out about this, or they could find out about this, to make sure that those who participated in the failings are held responsible, and that the activity doesn’t happen again.