. >>> president obama chose danny wuerffel to lead the irs temporarily. john has been following the story and joins us with more. >> the president continued today to try to tamp down this scandal and bring it to a conclusion as much as he can. yesterday he fired the acting irs commissioner who he replaced with danny wuerffel today. he said we don't need a special council to investigate this. all the congressional committees, we have plenty of investigations. >> the i.g. has done an audit, it's my understanding it's going to be recommending an investigation. and attorney general holder also announced a criminal investigation of what happened. between those investigations, i think we're going to be able to figure out exactly what happened, who was involved, what went wrong, and we're going to be able to implement steps to fix it. >> of course, it's going to start right up again tomorrow because the chairman of the ways and means committee is having a hearing on this, he told me he was not satisfied with the inspector general's report, he wants answers from

he assigned danny wuerffel to report to secretary jack lou and see where this is going. you're seeing the white house take action on this. i think they're a little scared of what's happening. >> nbc news received a letter from the lobbying arm of the heritage foundation, addressed to speaker john boehner and house majority leader eric cantor. it urges republicans not to bring forth any new legislation, rather just focus on the controversies. if they take that advice, do the republicans risk overplaying their hand? >> that's why you've seen republican leadership tell the rank and file, look, we understand there are a few different issues we need to be looking into. let's not jump to conclusions. let's not run out there and say and do things that would smack of partisanship in a way that might turn off voters that might be generally concerned about this and interested in supporting us come 2014. the biggest comparison is what happened during the lewinsky scandal, the republicans focused too much on it. things were a little different there, and it was only one situation. he

the president yesterday appointed a new acting irs commissioner, his name is danny wuerffel.anagement and budget and has served both democratic and republican presidents. norah? charlie? gayle? >> nancy, thank you. >>> and for the third time in two weeks, an official assigned to deal with sexual assault in the military is in trouble. lieutenant colonel darren haas at fort campbell, kentucky, was arrested in a domestic dispute. president obama discussed the sexual assault issue yesterday with defense secretary chuck hagel and senior military leaders. the president says this is a problem that will not be tolerated. >> there's no silver bullet to solving this problem. this is going to require a sustained effort over a long period of time, and that's why i'm very pleased to know that secretary hagel's going to be having weekly meetings on this. this is a priority. and we will not stop until we've seen this scourge from what is the greatest military in the world eliminated. >> army chief of staff general ray odierno said yesterday that the army's efforts to reduce sexual assault a