Despite demands from across the political spectrum to release the full transcripts of interviews conducted with IRS agents about how tea party applications for non-profit status were handled, House Government Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa is continuing to play games by releasing them in drips and drabs. As HuffPost's Sam Stein reports, Issa's goal is blatantly political: Instead of shedding light on what actually happened, Issa is trying to manage the release of information to form a narrative that the activities were politically motivated, and driven from the highest levels of the Obama administration.

In recent days, the California Republican has allowed reporters from local and national news outlets to review portions of his panel's investigative work into the IRS targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. The move looks like a rebuke to the ranking Democrat on his committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), and even some Republican lawmakers, who have publicly worried that selective leaking imperils the integrity of the investigation.

According to one journalist who attended a briefing session at Issa's committee office, the ground rules have been fairly strict: Reporters have been given access to a limited number of pages of interview transcripts from which they can take notes (no photocopies). And they have been given access to only a few interview transcripts at a single time, although Issa's staff has spoken with at least half-a-dozen IRS employees about the targeting of tea party groups.

Despite Issa's goals, not even his cherry-picked releases actually support the narrative he's trying to develop. The best he's been able to do is release transcripts that reinforce what we already knew: That IRS officials in Washington, DC were aware of some of the actions. Not only is that not surprising, there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

Issa hasn't put forward any evidence suggesting that White House directed any of this activity. Moreover, he's failed to surface a single shred of evidence that the motive for the targeting was political as opposed to an inappropriate effort to deal with ambiguous laws. The fact that he refuses to release all the information he has is a pretty clear indication that he's got nothing except a yearning for scandal.

Continuing to play these sorts of games is completely dishonest. But what else would you expect from Mr. Grand Theft Auto?