Michele Bachmann only litigated two cases in the four years she worked as IRS tax attorney

NPR reports that Bachmann claimed, at a GOP presidential debate in New Hampshire earlier this month, that she's spent her "whole life in the private sector."

Then NPR reminded its audience that the truth is for nearly her entire professional life, Michele Bachmann has been on the public payroll.

In Columbia, S.C., in August, Bachmann claimed that she "went to work in that system because the first rule of war is know your enemy. So I went to the inside to learn how they work, because I want to defeat them."

But Minnesota tax attorney Genelle Forsberg, who worked with her at the St. Paul IRS legal office for more than four years, says she doesn't think Bachmann worked at the IRS to infiltrate it. "I think she came there for a job."

"She had indicated to some of us that she really wasn't interested in taxes — this was a job that she got, and I think, you know, she was learning as she went," says Forsberg. "But I didn't see any indication that she was ambitious in making tax law her career."

    ... Forsberg says that while she herself generally took about half a dozen cases to tax court each year, records indicate that Bachmann litigated only two court cases the entire time she worked for the IRS.

     "She and myself, we both had two maternity leaves during that period of time that she was there, so you obviously wouldn't have a case during that period of time. But I would say, on average, most people would have more cases for litigation than that," she says.