The Obama administration insisted that the political targeting of its opposition by the IRS was a high investigative priority.  Attorney General Eric Holder pledged that the FBI would immediately launch a probe into this high-profile scandal. And yet, as Rep. Jim Jordan discovered during FBI Director Robert Mueller’s testimony yesterday, the top man at the bureau doesn’t know who’s leading the investigation, doesn’t know how many investigators are assigned to it, and whether they’ve bothered to start off by, y’know, talking to the victims of the targeting.

Otherwise, man, the Department of Justice is all over this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br_sGQICz8Y

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) didn’t hide his surprise during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday in which FBI Director Robert Mueller told the lawmaker he wasn’t aware of the details surrounding the FBI’s probe of the IRS.

In a heated exchange, Jordan blasted Mueller for not being able to give names of investigators heading the investigation.

“This is the most important case in the country for the past six weeks and you don’t know who the most important person is, leading the case?” Jordan asked.

“Not off the top of my head,” Mueller replied.

Mueller testified that he didn’t “know what the status of the interviews are[.]”  The Daily Caller brings the outgoing FBI Director up to date — they’re not happening:

“We have not been contacted by any federal investigative agency and, to date, none of our clients have been contacted or interviewed by the FBI,” Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice told The Daily Caller on Thursday. The ACLJ has filed suit against the IRS on behalf of 25 conservative groups, with additional groups being added in the next couple weeks, according to a spokesman.

“I have been very surprised that I have not heard from anybody and frankly, none of my clients have. I talk to other tea party leaders on a regular basis,” said Cleta Mitchell, the lawyer largely credited with pushing the IRS abuses to the forefront.

“It’s been a month and I can’t see any evidence of an investigation of the IRS,” Mitchell told TheDC Thursday. She represents nine tea party groups targeted by the IRS.

Tea Party Patriots — a group with thousands of local chapters — “has not been contacted by the FBI” either, according to Jameson Cunningham, the group’s spokesman.

It’s not as if Jordan asked this question out of the blue.  This was a House Judiciary Committee hearing, one of three House committees (Oversight and Ways and Means being the others) actively probing the IRS scandal. Mueller had to know that questions on the investigation were likely to arise.  Yet apparently the investigation is such a low priority for the administration that Mueller hasn’t bothered to familiarize himself with the action within his own department.

The executive branch doesn’t seem very eager to get answers on this scandal, does it?  I wonder why.