White House spokesman Jay Carney said President Obama did not ask senior advisors why he learned of the IRS targeting of conservatives from news reports rather than his own staff.
The Office of the White House Counsel and chief lawyer Kathryn Ruemmler were told the week of April 22 by Treasury Department attorneys that an inspector general's report was nearing completion, a White House official told the Wall Street Journal. In that conversation, Ruemmler discovered "a small number of line IRS employees had improperly scrutinized certain…organizations by using words like 'tea party' and 'patriot.'"