Prepare to have your world rocked.

“[I]t’s like he didn’t see what he knew people certainly right, left and center could see, that when you target particular groups, you’re targeting particular groups. I mean, if this were on the other foot, and this was a George W. administration, they were targeting groups that were calling themselves progressives, I would say it’s prima facie evidence of targeting. I don’t think it’s complicated.”

It was apparently too complicated for the story to get from Treasury officials over to the White House, as Allahpundit noted earlier today:

The Treasury Department’s inspector general told senior Treasury officials in June 2012 he was investigating allegations that the Internal Revenue Service had targeted conservative groups, disclosing for the first time on Friday that Obama administration officials were aware of the matter during the presidential campaign year.

At the first Congressional hearing into the I.R.S. scandal, J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, told members of the House Ways and Means Committee that he informed the Treasury’s general counsel of his investigation on June 4, and Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin “shortly thereafter.” The new information came as part of a routine briefing of the investigations that the inspector general would be conducting in the coming year, and he did not tell the officials of his conclusions that the targeting had been improper, he said.

And, it may have been too complicated for Treasury Sec. Jack Lew to tell the White House when he found out about the investigation in March:

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew learned in March that an inspector general was investigating the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups, but he did not know the details until last Friday.

Lew said in an interview with Bloomberg TV today that he met with the inspector general closely after assuming his post, but he was presented only with a list of ongoing investigations, not specific details of the audit on conservative groups.

“I didn’t know any of the details of it until last Friday,” Lew said.

The fact that there was an investigation going on was on the IG website as of fall, 2012, according to the same Lew interview with Bloomberg today. “The heads-up that I got was something that was a matter of public knowledge. It was posted on the IG’s website in the fall of 2012,” Lew said. “I was not aware of any details. My deputy was not aware of any details until it became a matter of public knowledge.”

Jim Geraghty:

While the inspector general’s report was still ongoing, anyone at the highest level of the Treasury Department could see that the IG had been investigating the topic for several months. And yet no one in the entire Treasury Department felt the president should be notified?

Here’s to another good week, Jay.