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Anonymous IRS official: 'Everything comes from the top'

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Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

According to an anonymous staffer who works at the Cincinnati IRS office, agents do what they are told to do from higher-ups at headquarters, the Washington Examiner reported Sunday, citing another report at the Washington Post.

“We’re not political,’’ one staffer told the Post.

“We people on the local level are doing what we are supposed to do. . . . That’s why there are so many people here who are flustered. Everything comes from the top. We don’t have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on them. There has to be a directive,” the staffer said.

"The staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job, said that the determinations unit is competent and without bias, that it grouped together conservative applications 'for consistency’s sake' — so one application did not sail through while a similar one was held up in review," the Post said.

"This pretty plainly contradicts the story coming out of the IRS that rogue agents in Cincinnati were responsible," Sean Higgins wrote.

Moreover, while the President claims he heard about the scandal at the same time everyone else did, the New York Times reported that the administration knew of the IRS probe months before the 2012 election.

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said Sunday that he suspects more information about the IRS scandal will be forthcoming -- a curious statement, considering that he called on the IRS to engage in the very activity he now condemns.

"With growing scrutiny of the role of tax-exempt groups in political campaigns, Congressional Republicans are pushing back against Democrats by warning about the possible misuse of the Internal Revenue Service to audit conservative groups….And the Republicans are also upset about an I.R.S. review requested by Senator Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who leads the Finance Committee, into the political activities of tax-exempt groups," the New York Times reported in 2010.

"Such a review threatens to "chill the legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights," wrote two Republican senators, Orrin G. Hatch of Utah and Jon Kyl of Arizona, in a letter sent to the I.R.S. on Wednesday," the Times added.

Democrats, however, dismissed the claims as groundless. Now, America has learned that some 500 conservative groups have been targeted by the federal government.

Worse yet, the official in charge of the division handling tax-exempt organizations during the time conservative groups were targeted is now in charge of the unit overseeing the enforcement of Obamacare.

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