You could see this coming a mile away and now the story has been broken at the National Review. (I posted about it the morning after the story broke, and then again here, about a week later. Although I mentioned the title of Chief Counsel and the Office of Chief Counsel, I didn't report on the chief counsel's name earlier because I wanted to wait for more definitive evidence that he was part of the story.) Key graf:
"The inspector general’s report says that [Chief Counsel's] Wilkins’s office was notified of the inappropriate targeting of conservative groups as early as August 2011, but does not indicate whether Wilkins was made aware of it. The IRS has said that Wilkins did not participate in the August 2011 meeting, and White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters that Wilkins did not inform the White House of the discrimination against conservative groups. It remains unclear when Wilkins was made aware of the discrimination. According to the source, current acting IRS commissioner Danny Werfel recently hired Jennifer O’Connor, a partner at the law firm WilmerHale in D.C. specializing in litigation/controversy and regulatory and government affairsm to serve as an adviser to Wilkins."
While I have been sympathetic to the argument that WH counsel was correct not to inform President Obama about the targeting shortly before the IG Report was due, I cannot see any reason why the office of chief counsel could properly not inform Wilkins. Let's see where this leads. Presumably, Wilkins advised the IRS to comply with law, to be candid with Congress, and to promptly correct any previous mis-statements to Congress.
This raises three interesting questions: (1) who was Wilkins' client?; (2) did Wilkins have a duty to advise the IRS to be candid to the Congress in its oversight role?; (3) shouldn't the president waive privilege as to ACP communications with Wilkins?