Krauthammer on IRS Testimony: ‘You've Got to be a Knave or a Fool to Say That and an Idiot to Believe It’

May 17th, 2013 7:01 PM

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer had some harsh criticism for acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller’s testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee Friday.

Appearing on Fox News’s Special Report, Krauthammer said, “You've got to be a knave or a fool to say that and you have to be an idiot to believe it.”

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: The testimony from Miller comes under the category of “How stupid do you think we are?” Here is a guy who said that the IRS openly discriminated against groups on the basis of their politics, but the action was not a political action. It was instead an attempt at efficiency. You've got to be a knave or a fool to say that and you have to be an idiot to believe it. It's simply a contradiction in terms. It's a matter of definition. It isn't even a matter of fact.

So that, I mean, he starts off way, way out there, and then he obviously was withholding the truth when he went before the committee before and said, well, I answered the questions, but he concealed from them the fact that this was going on. He knew it was a deep concern. He said nothing.

And let me just add the last bit of news that we got, how this was released by the IRS. This is peculiar, and I'm not even sure I can understand why. But they decide knowing the IG report will come out this week, they decide a week ago to plant a question in a closed meeting of the ABA so that Lois Lerner answers it and gives an answer, assuming I think that it's going to leak out, but I'm not even sure I understand the logic of doing that. Why not just issue a press release, say it? But to do it in a sort of ridiculously devious way shows you an institution that is sort of given intrinsically to being untruthful and deceptive.