“A few” low level IRS employees turns out to be … 88

If the practice was contained to just “a few” people working on their own without orders, there is no way that you’d have eighty-eight people connected to it. Unless the IRS wants to argue that it’s supervision is so poor and ineffective that 88 employees can conspire to target people for their political beliefs and no one in authority would have the first clue about it, that’s an absurd posture to take. Don’t bet against that argument getting rolled out at some point, though.