Jay Carney catches spears and defends Obama for not knowing about IRS abuses, but said 'senior staff' were notified and never told the president

Amid the political boiling oil of three simultaneous scandals, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney continued Monday to defend the Obama administration's handling of troubles involving the Departments of Justice, Treasury and State. But reporters' eyebrows raised when he said that White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough knew about abuses taking place in the IRS and decided not to tell the president.

In a briefing that started 45 minutes late after a one-hour announced delay, Carney said that 'no one in this building intervened in an ongoing, independent investigation' by the IRS Office of Inspector General, which was examining 'line IRS employees' who were targeting conservative groups for special scrutiny.

'We did not have a copy of the draft report, we did not know the details, the scope, or the motivation surrounding the misconduct,' Carney said. 'And we did not know who was responsible.' But he confirmed that on April 24 Kathy Ruemmler, the White House Counsel, was notified about the investigation.

He also said the White House chief of staff learned about it, as 'some other members of the senior staff - I don't have a list.'

They decided, Carney recalled, to keep Obama in the dark.

'Some matters are inappropriate to convey to him,' Carney said.

'It is entirely appropriate that the president not be notified' of ongoing investigations,' he told reporters. 'The suggestion of alerting him is that he should do something,' perhaps prematurely.

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White House Counsel Kathy Ruemmler (L)  is the White House Counsel who first learned about the IRS investigation into agents who targeted tea party groups. James Rosen (R) is a Fox News reporter whose personal emails, phone records, and entry logs into federal buildings were snooped on by the DOJ

On April 16, he added, the White House Counsel's Office had received a 'top line,' non-specific notification that an investigative report would be forthcoming.

'The Hill also got briefings,' Carney said, referring to members of Congress on Capitol Hill. And like the White House, he said, Congress took no action.

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'The cardinal rule,' he insisted, is that 'you do not intervene in an independent investigation.'

Polls show an increasing number of Americans believe the IRS's targeting of tea party groups, the State Department's involvement in sanitizing a CIA assessment of the 2012 Benghazi terror attack and the Justice Department's investigation of reporters at the Associated Press are serious problems that have caused them to lose faith in the president and his team.

Ruemmler embraced President Obama upon the news that the Supreme Court had upheld the Obamacare law, as then-White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew (L) looked on

On Monday, Fox News Chief Washington Correspondent James Rosen became the second First Amendment casualty in the Obama administration's probes into journalists' sources and communications.

The Washington Post reported Monday that the Justice Department investigated Rosen's contacts with a State Department source, tracking his phone calls, rummaging through his personal emails and tracing his entries into and exits from government buildings.

Carney refused Monday to comment on 'an ongoing investigation,' falling back on previous statements that straddled the line between press freedoms and national security.

Obama, he said, is 'a strong believer in the first amendment' but also 'insistent that we protect our secrets' as a nation.

'We take very seriously the leaks of classified information,' he added,' referring to both the AP and Fox News cases.

But he wouldn't answer a question from Fox News about whether the While House believes Rosen is a criminal because he did his job and developed a source inside the State Department. And he dodged a question about how he personally views the scandal.

Carney was the Washington Bureau Chief for Time Magazine before joining the Obama administration.

'I'm here as a spokesman for the president,' he insisted, before saying 'we need to find a balance' between protecting journalists' constitutional rights and preventing leaks of classified information to the media.

Rosen reported in June 2009 that North Korea would respond to new UN sanctions by conducting a new round of nuclear tests. That report was based on a confidential source whom the DOJ has now identified.

Carney continued to face brutally frank questions from reporters who may feel their ability to do their jobs without government interference has now been threatened by the Obama administration

Reaction from the press corps in general has been fast and furious, even bringing condemnation from left-leaning reporters who typically support the president's agenda.

Liberal radio host Bill Press, Current TV host David Shuster and former MSNBC luminary Keith Olbermann have called for the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder.

And Glenn Greenwald, the progressive columnist at The Guardian in London, opined Monday on Twitter that '[a]ccusing James Rosen of committing crimes - for basic reporting - may be the most dangerous thing the Obama DOJ has done yet.'

'Who will be the first progressive pundit to defend the criminalization of James Rosen's report by the Obama DOJ or argue it's no big deal?' he asked his social media audience.

Despite President Obama's claims on May 16 that he was unaware of the storm swirling around the IRS until media reports on May 10 put it on America's front-burner, news emerged Monday that Ruemmler was briefed on the agency's program targeting tea party groups and other political adversaries of the president in April.

Full press briefing rooms have been the norm at the White House since a trio of scandals broke earlier in May. Jay Carney is the Obama administration's designated flak-catcher, parrying journalists' questions as nerves in the press corps fray

Obama told reporters on Thursday that 'I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything about the report' from the IRS Inspector General before portions of it were leaked to the media.

Observers on the political right have speculated that either Obama was untruthful, or his White House is dysfunctional enough to lack a clear line of communication between the president and his top lawyer on matters of high importance to the American people.

Carney also said 'no' to a question about whether or not the White House knew IRS Exempt Organizations chief Lois Lerner was planning to plant a question at an American Bar Association conference on May 10 about the tea party scrutiny - the action that launched the scandal.

Republican lawmakers have come down on the IRS especially hard, grilling the now-former acting IRS commissioner in a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on Friday and gearing up for committee bloodbaths Tuesday and Wednesday, in the Senate Finance Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul suggested Sunday on television that the IRS had a written policy'' outlining how agents should single out right-wing groups for audits and other special scrutiny, 'targeting people who were opposed to the president.'

Sen. Rand Paul spoke at a May 16 press conference in Washington with tea party leaders including Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann (L)

Sen. Paul claimed Sunday there was a 'written policy' inside the IRS aimed at 'targeting people who were opposed to the president'

'We need to know who wrote the policy and who approved the policy,' Sen. Paul told CNN anchor Candy Crowley.

'We keep hearing the reports and we have several specifically worded items saying who was being targeted. In fact, one of the bullet points says "those who are critical of the president," he said.

Among the arguments IRS officials have made for their dramatic increase in scrutiny of tea party groups is the claim that applications for nonprofit tax-exempt status increased substantially in the wake of the Supreme Court's 'Citizens United' ruling, which cleared the way for such groups to enter into the political arena.

But the Post ran a 'Fact Check' article on Monday giving that claim a dubious 'Four Pinocchios' rating for untruthfulness.

Lois Lerner, head of the IRS's exempt organizations office admitted to targeting conservative organizations for special scrutiny, attributing it to a 'very big uptick' between 2010 and 2012 in the number of applications her office received for 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status.

The Post reported that the increase 'was relatively small,' however.

'The real jump did not come until 2011, long after the targeting of conservative groups had been implemented' in May 2010, wrote the Post's fact checker.

A recently released IRS Inspector General's report indicated that 501(c)(4) applications actually declined between 2009 and 2010, from 1,751 to 1,735. The Post adjusted those numbers to reflect a calendar year instead of the federal government's fiscal year, and found a slight increase in the rate of applications per year, from 1,745 to 1,865.