Also, consider this timeline of IRS activity in the spring of 2010, as midterm elections loomed and the tea-party groups targeted by the IRS began seeing their applications for nonprofit status slow-walked or put into deep freeze.

April 23, 2010: Wilkins visits President Obama in the Roosevelt Room at the White House. That room is traditionally the only part of the White House where a president discusses political matters.

April 24, 2010: IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visits the White House

April 25, 2010: Wilkins’s Office of Legal Counsel sends the IRS units that handle exempt organizations’ applications “additional comments on the draft guidance” that it had prepared for approving or denying applications from tea-party groups.

Even though President Obama personally assigned Lew the job of finding out “exactly what happened on this,” Lew proved evasive last Sunday in answering the questions that Fox’s Chris Wallace asked about the investigation.