Senator: Former IRS Chief is Being Coached

A senator on the Finance Committee says he believes former IRS commissioner Doug Shulman is being coached on his testimony before Congress.

Shulman, who stepped down three days after President Obama’s re-election, testified before the Finance Committee yesterday and is a witness before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee this morning.

Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) chided Shulman for answering “I don’t know” most of the time.

“I’m not an attorney, but I’ve been in enough depositions to watch somebody who’s been coached by an attorney. I think he was advised by an attorney not to make any statements, and he didn’t,” Isakson said last night on Fox.

“I only learned that there still is a culture in the IRS on this issue of mystery, of not disclosing everything that went on. There has to be a who, there has to be a when, there has to be a what. We’ve got to find out those answers. It just didn’t happen in Cincinnati with a handful of operatives,” he added.

However, the senator said he thinks the White House is being honest about its displays of outrage over the IRS scandal.

“It’s quite obvious when they planted a question at a press conference to finally get the information out, they were struggling with how the American people were going to learn of what’s a very bad situation in the IRS,” Isakson said.