Embattled IRS chief counsel met with Obama 2 days before agency changed targeting criteria
...The Obama appointee implicated in congressional testimony in the IRS targeting scandal met with President Obama in the White House two days before offering his colleagues a new set of advice on how to scrutinize tea party and conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
IRS chief counsel William Wilkins, who was named in House Oversight testimony by retiring IRS agent Carter Hull as one of his supervisors in the improper targeting of conservative groups, met with Obama in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on April 23, 2012. Wilkins’ boss, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, visited the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on April 24, 2012, according to White House visitor logs.
On April 25, 2012, Wilkins’ office sent the exempt organizations determinations unit “additional comments on the draft guidance” for approving or denying tea party tax-exempt applications, according to the IRS inspector general’s report....
IRS Chief Counsel William Wilkins, One of Only Two Politically-Appointed IRS Officials, Visited the White House for Seven Hours Before Changing the Criteria for Targeting Tea Party Organizations Two Days Later
... Carter Hull, recently retired after 48 years of service at the IRS, was the tax analyst in D.C. in charge of the Tea Party applications. Hull indicated that he was told by the top assistant to Lois Lerner (remember her? In May, she refused to testify and invoked her Fifth Amendment right to remain silent) that Wilkins's office had to review all of the tax-exemption applications from Tea Party groups that Hull was overseeing.
Hull noted that the one application he had actually approved was immediately routed to Wilkins's office for review. When Hull disagreed with the counsel’s office and Lerner about how the Tea Party cases should be handled, the files were taken away from him and transferred to a woman with only several months experience at the IRS.
In addition, lawyers from Wilkins' offices met with Lerner to discuss the targeting.
Former IRS lawyer Carter Hull told the House Oversight Committee on Thursday that Lerner attended an August 2011 meeting where she, Hull, and lawyers from the agency’s chief counsel’s office, among others, discussed the test cases....
IRS Chief Counsel William Wilkins a Big Donor and Loyal Democrat
...But who is William Wilkins? According to the 2009 announcement of his appointment to the IRS, Wilkins was a registered lobbyist with Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr since 1988. At WilmerHale (the firm's new name after 2003), he was a part of the Tax Practice Group, where he practiced a wide range of tax law services, including “counseling nonprofit organizations, business entities, and investment funds on tax compliance, business transactions, and government investigations.” Before his lobbying career, Wilkins was staff counsel for the Democratic side of the Senate Finance committee, from 1981 to 1988...
...Other congressional Democrats Wilkins donated to include David Pryor, Bill Bradley, Tom Foley, J.J. Pickle, Paul Simon, John Kerry, John Breaux, Tom Daschle, Dianne Feinstein, Robert Abrams, George Mitchell, Cody Graves, Vic Fazio, Paul Sarbanes, Barbara Kennelly, Bruce Vento, Chris Dodd, Patrick Leahy, Charlie Rangel, Kent Conrad, Tim Johnson, Jack Reed, Blanche Lincoln, Jeff Bingaman, Sherrod Brown, Jay Rockefeller, Brad Miller, Ken Salazar, and Bob Graham. He has also donated to the Democratic Congressional Dinner Commmittee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and other Democratic campaign groups.
And in an interesting twist, Wilkins appears to have led the defense team of former Obama pastor Jeremiah Wright and the United Church of Christ in Chicago back in 2008. The UCC was under investigation by the IRS at the time for being violation of its 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. The Wall Street Journal reports that Wilkins apparently did the legal work for Wright and UCC pro bono.
