IRS Chief Counsel Was Party To Tea Party Harassment

For sometime I have liked William Wilkins, Chief Counsel for the IRS, as the connection with the White House to the IRS scandal. My reasoning is that every department and agency has an office of chief counsel which is a political appointment. In the IRS scandal not only were tax exemptions held up but frequently the applicants were hit with investigations from other governmental agencies such as the FBI, ATF, and OSHA. A logical conduit for this intergovernmental malfeasance are the offices of chief counsel in the various agencies.
In a letter, four leading 4 congressmen including Rep. Darrell Issa of the House Oversight Committee and Rep. David Camp of Ways and Means said that the office of the IRS’s top lawyer took unique interest in Tea Party cases, reviewing applications even after a veteran specialist said there was enough information to make a decision.
Lois Lerner made the request to send the targeted tea party groups' applications to the Office of Chief Counsel. Carter Hull, a tax law specialist charged with reviewing the tax-exemption forms, told investigators he was asked to send an application to a senior adviser to Lerner, something that had never before happened in his 48-year career. That claim had not been revealed publicly before Wednesday.
Michael Seto, the head of Hull’s unit, told investigators that Lerner told him that the Tea Party cases needed to undergo a “multi-tier review” that involved both her staff and the Chief Counsel’s office.
Hull said that after Lerner’s office and the Chief Counsel got involved, he was asked months later for more current information on the Tea Party cases.
Now it becomes clearer why Lerner took the fifth. Wilkins knows his way around the IRS. He was once a staffer on the Senate Finance Committee and has donated over $35,000 to various Democrats over the years including $4,250 to the campaign to Senator Max Baucus. In a post on this blog on May 12 I wrote;

Place your bets. Will Wilkins' name surface in this scandal?

Expect fireworks from Thursday's hearings!
Update: Congressman Issa has evidence linking this scandal to the White House.