IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, who donated over $7,000 to President Barack Obama, denied that he was “a partisan or political operative” in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Thursday afternoon. Koskinen claimed that he did not want to “play games with the Congress,” and had been giving money to “friends” for decades.
Transcript as follows:
BLITZER: You’re a Democrat. You’ve given money to Democratic causes, Democratic candidates including the president of the United States, and so the suggestion is you’re not going to be objective in this kind of investigation. Reassure the American people you’re not going to let your partisanship interfere with this investigation?
KOSKINEN: I’ve never been a partisan operative or political operative. I was actually asked by the Bush administration to come in and work on Freddie Mac.
BLITZER: You did contribute to the Obama campaign.
KOSKINEN: I’ve contributed to campaigns for the last 40 or 50 years, many of them friends. At this point in my career, it’s not my intention at all to play games with the Congress. My goal is help restore people’s faith in a critical institution for the country, the IRS. As I said, people need to feel comfortable that it’s not a politicized agency that it treats people fairly no matter who they are.
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