The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing, Wednesday on the IRS political targeting scandal.
“The IG report indicts IRS for a colossal management failure, but leaves many questions unanswered,” said Chairman Issa.
Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) started off by asking former IRS Commissioner, Doug Shulman to give himself a grade on how he performed as the head of the IRS, and Shulman declined.
Chaffetz asked Shulman when he first heard that the IRS was targeting conservative groups, and Shulman answered Feb or March of 2012.
Chaffetz reminded him that on June 3rd of 2011, the Chairman of the Ways and Means Cmte sent him a letter regarding the selective targeting of taxpayers. “How is it that the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee writes to you, the head of the IRS, a letter like this, and you can say you don’t know about it?” Chaffetz demanded.
“So….I that’s where I was going to go….” Shulman began.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing, Wednesday on the IRS political targeting scandal.
Rep Trey Gowdy (R-SC) grilled the former IRS Commissioner but didn’t get much in the way of answers. Rep. Gowdy focused his time on why Mr. Shulman did not take any corrective actions when he learned of the IRS targeting certain groups.
“Can you give me the name of a single person who was involved in the original decision to target conservative groups for disparate treatment?” he asked. Shulman had no clue.
His line today was that when he learned of the inappropriate behavior, he was told that it had stopped. When asked if he did anything to make sure “the insidious, discriminatory practice was stopped”, Shulman stammered that the Inspector General was looking into it.
“If there’s someone wielding a knife in the parking lot, are you going to call the Inspector General? Are you going to wait until the IG report is out before you stop it?” Gowdy thundered.
Shulman just stared at him blankly.
Gowdy asked him why the culture under his watch allowed conservative groups to be targeted.
Shulman answered that he wasn’t sure that the targeting was political, causing Gowdy to explode: “You STILL DON”T KNOW THAT THIS WAS POLITICALl?!”
From Benghazi to Fast and Furious to the Associated Press, keeping track of Obama scandals requires sharp focus. The IRS scandal involves government employees deliberately targeting politically conservative and other organizations that Obama dislikes, as well as targeting individuals who have irritated the Obama machine.
California Congressman Darrell Issa’s committee wants one major question answered: Who decided to use the IRS to target political opponents? Lerner may know. She decided to invoke her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. She refused to answer questions. Yet she badly miscalculated.
She began with a self-righteous opening statement claiming she did nothing wrong. Only after defending herself did she invoke her Fifth Amendment rights.
Republicans on the committee thought they had been defeated, but Gowdy knew better. Once a person issues a statement, Fifth Amendment privilege is waived on the substance of the statement. By issuing an opening statement, Ms. Lerner was testifying. Her right to stay silent on that testimony was gone forever.
A panicked liberal Elijah Cummings of Maryland pointed out that while congressional hearings are “like” a court of law, they are not in actuality a court of law. Even Congressman Issa, normally a very sharp and prepared operator, had to check on whether Gowdy’s interpretation applied.
It absolutely does. So what do Republicans do next?
Long ago, Obama took the gloves off because he rightly concluded that Republicans did not have the stomach for a protracted fight. They would back down because they always do. They are so scared of being seen as “mean” and “partisan” that they would rather just say they tried their best and roll over.
Gowdy does not roll over, but he is not in charge. Issa has a major decision to make.
Since Lerner waived Fifth Amendment privileges, Issa must compel her testimony. If she refuses, then she must be arrested and held in contempt of Congress. She can sit in a cell until she agrees to testify.
This might not end the matter. Susan McDougal spent eighteen months in jail to protect the Clintons. Maybe Lerner is willing to remain in jail to protect President Obama.
Maybe she is not.
Her defenders would portray her as a victim, a poor helpless woman being attacked by mean men on the committee.
This woman is no victim. There is a criminal element in our government. Using the IRS to target political opponents is a crime. Lerner is suppressing information on who may have been in charge of ordering those crimes. She blundered on the stand, which is her fault.
Like many Obama employees, she has used the legal system to keep the truth at bay. Unlike her colleagues, she was less clever about it. She turned out to be the weak link.
Tempers flared in a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing Wednesday, with members on both sides of the aisle castigating the Internal Revenue Service for targeting conservative groups with special scrutiny, and then hiding the practice from Congress.
Rep. Darrel Issa, the committee’s chairman, said that the committee learned just yesterday that the IRS completed its own investigation a year before a Treasury Department Inspector General report was completed.
But despite the IRS recognizing in May 2012 that its employees were treating right-wing groups differently from other organizations, Issa said, IRS personnel withheld those conclusions from legislators.
‘Just yesterday the committee interviewed Holly Paz, the director of exempt organizations, rulings and agreements, division of the IRS,’ Issa said. ‘While a tremendous amount of attention is centered about the Inspector General’s report, or investigation, the committee has learned from Ms. Paz that she in fact participated in an IRS internal investigation that concluded in May of 2012 – May 3 of 2012 – and found essentially the same thing that Mr. George found more than a year later.’
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is holding a hearing on the IRS political targeting scandal, this morning at 9:30 am. Eastern.
“The IG report indicts IRS for a colossal management failure, but leaves many questions unanswered,” said Chairman Issa.
You can watch the hearing streamed live at http://oversight.house.gov or on CSPAN.
The Committee has invited the following witnesses to testify:
Neal S. Wolin, Deputy Secretary, Department of the Treasury
J. Russell George, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration
Lois Lerner, Director of Exempt Organizations, Internal Revenue Service (Pleading the 5th.)
Douglas Shulman, Former Commissioner, Internal Revenue Service
The Regime and its sycophants have proven over and over again, they’re not serious about leveling with the American people about Benghazi. After sending out Susan Rice to all the Sunday talk shows five days after the attack to spin a not believable yarn about what happened, and then again, eight months later, make the same mistake by sending out yet another stooge, to spin wildly and unconvincingly for the Regime, they havs proven once and for all, that they really have no interest at all in telling the truth and frankly little respect for the intelligence of the American people..
In this excellent video by Ben Howe for Heritage, their never-ending mendacity is laid bare for all to see. Benghazi: Demand the Truth:
Contrary to the election-time narrative that “al-Qaeda is on the run,” defeated by the Obama Administration, President Obama and his staff are now pleading ignorance across the board. Pfeiffer’s problematic media appearance could fit into an emerging narrative that the Obama Administration may have been more incompetent, than Machiavellian in its handling of the Benghazi terrorist attack. Administration officials spoke to CBS News on condition of anonymity, proffering the line that bungling, ignorance, and inexperience may have been at the root of the debacle that left four Americans dead in Benghazi.
On very short notice, and with very little organization, other than hearing about it on the radio, or online, tea partiers across the nation gathered at their IRS offices to protest the targeted abusive treatment conservatives have received from what increasingly appears to have operated as branch of Obama’s thug regime.
One of the bigger protests was in Cincinnati, Ground Zero for the IRS scandal. According to attendees on Twitter, the crowd swelled to around 500.
Which means she’ll be about as forthcoming as Jay Carney is at the average WH press briefing. Who could she be protecting, I wonder?
Oh. I should mention that Lerner did bad thingsduring the Clinton administration when she was at the FEC, too. I think we can assume the woman will not be praying or engaging in any prayerful activities ahead of the hearing, tomorrow.
ABC News’ Jonathan Karl had an interesting exchange with Jay Carney, Monday during the daily press briefing.
Carney: “Nobody’s been more outraged by the reported conduct than the president of the United States”, Carney asserted, (as he likes to do.) No one ever cares as much, works as hard, is more dedicated, more outraged, or more whatever than this president. He’s the POTUS with the MOSTUS.
Karl: “Jay, with all due respect, the outrage from the president came, last week….”
Carney: (interrupting) “his outrage came within hours of the release of the report”...(I’m so impressed!)
Karl:” But, but, but what I’m saying is that there were public reports that this was going on for almost a year before the presidential election. How is it that no one in the White House has a responsibility even before the IG report to say, ‘hey! By the way, this kind of activity shouldn’t be going on…let’s make sure, and take steps to get this to stop?’”
Carney: (bored, resigned tone): “Again, I refer you to the IG, who investigated this matter, the treasury Dept and others who investigated this matter.”
And then he launched into a long dissertation about the IG report, which I’m not going to bother to transcribe, because it was stupid, (and irrelevant.)
(At this point, I would have asked, “HEY DOES THE PRESIDENT NOT HAVE ACCESS TO TV, RADIO, NEWSPAPER, INTERNET? THE NEW YORK TIMES REPORTED ON THE PROBLEM AT LEAST A COUPLE OF TIMES. YOU HAD TO BE LIVING UNDER A ROCK NOT TO HAVE KNOWN THAT THIS WAS GOING ON. A FAIR AND IMPARTIAL LEADER WOULD HAVE SAID SOMETHING TO STOP IT. GEE, MAYBE YOU’RE JUST GIVING US THE RUN AROUND, HERE, BECAUSE THE PRESIDENT DID KNOW, AND WAS IN FACT ORCHESTRATING IT.”
Karl: ”You’re missing the point of the question – public reports almost a year before the election… Is there any responsibility on the part of the administration of saying, “hey IRS, we don’t treat groups differently based on politics.”
Carney: “It is absolutely our view, (crosstalk) but you’re saying accusations, and in response to these accusations there was an IG audit launched. Uh – that was appropriate and the findings are that which we now know. And the president’s response to those findings could not be more clear(finger comes out signalling a huge whopper is ahead) We need to hold people accountable and we have to make sure that this activity doesn’t happen again because it’s very important that the American people believe that the IRS applies our tax laws fairly and neutrally.”
A poll must have told him that, because I doubt anyone in this Regime could have figured that one out on his own.
So what’s the takeaway, here? Well, apparently, before the President is allowed to say anything about accusations, he must wait until there’s a full investigation, and a report comes out (after an election, of course.) Because to do otherwise would just be irresponsible, or something.
But this President has used the bully pulpit like a bully for years. On any number of controversial issues, he was happy to share his strong opinions. Even non-political issues like the professor who was accosted by police when it looked like he might be breaking into a house, (it was his own) and was arrested for behaving belligerently, Obama was happy to share his opinion that “the police acted stupidly,” even before he knew all of the details about the case. When George Zimmerman shot Travon Martin, (allegedly in self defense,) Obama was happy to share his opinion on the case before it was investigated or litigated. Travon looked just like Obama’s son, if he had one, in case you don’t know. When Sandra Fluke was insulted by Rush Limbaugh, the otherwise reticent President jumped right in there! He called Fluke and said, “there there, now”, and then he weaponized her to beat all pro-life Republicans over the head for the rest of the year. (Big coincidence. Pro-life groups were some of the IRS’s targets, too.)
But most of all, Obama constantly voiced his opinions on divisive issues that pitted groups of Americans against each other. Almost like it was a political tactic, or something,.
Will someone please rein in our relentlessly hectoring President? Barrack Hussein Obama has taken his gift for inspirational oratory—one of the traits that got him elected—and turned it into something darker and more insidious.
Bam is a bully. Bad enough that he bashes Wall Street, but this President has gone farther than any in modern history in the wrong kind of “bully” back into what Teddy Roosevelt had called the bully pulpit.
Obama’s latest broadside came over the weekend, when he vehemently criticized the state of Arizona and its (Republican) governor for passing a tough new law on illegal immigration.
The President called the measure “misguided” and all but labeled it un-American. He even ordered the Department of Justice, before the ink on this bill-signing has even dried, to examine the civil-rights “implications” of the new law. Seems like the courts and rights groups could handle that once any problem actually emerges.
Can you remember any other modern President, wagging a finger from on high, so directly and bitterly criticizing a new law passed by any state?
It’s funny how Obama’s “bully pulpit” has become the new normal, and people now pretty much expect him to pit Americans against each other.
Obama’s visceral dislike of the tea party was noted by Jake Tapper at ABCin May of 2010.
Three days after he decried the lack of civility in American politics, President Obama is quoted in a new book about his presidency referring to the Tea Party movement using a derogatory term with sexual connotations.
In Jonathan Alter’s “The Promise: President Obama, Year One,” President Obama is quoted in an interview saying that the unanimous vote of House Republicans vote against the stimulus bills “set the tenor for the whole year … That helped to create the tea-baggers and empowered that whole wing of the Republican Party to where it now controls the agenda for the Republicans.”
To those of us who were paying attention during the 2008 election, this behavior was wholly expected of Obama. In May of 2011, I wrote,Obama Still Poised To Silence Critics.
Very early in Obama’s presidency, on February 19, 2009 to be exact, I wrote a post about how this thin skinned president was poised to silence criticsof his regime.
We already knew about Obama’s history of intimidation, and character assassination. We knew how he had tried to destroy his political enemies – at least regular readers of this site know, because I covered it while it was happening, here, and here, and here. While projecting an outward appearance of near messianic magnanimity, his underlings, lawyers, and political allies were always working feverishly to steamroll over critics,(and plaintiffs).
Mark Hyman of The American Spectator wrote about Obama’s Chicago brand of hardball politics, recently in an article entitled, Obama’s Enemies List. As many of us feared, the “Chicago way” has found a home in The White House:
In only his third full day as the 44th president Obama personally went on the offensive against a media personality. On January 23rd, Obama warned Congressional Republicans against listening to Rush Limbaugh. The man who offered to sit down with Holocaust denier and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without any preconditions whatsoever views an American radio talk show host as a dangerous threat.
In precedent-setting action, Obama moved his director of political affairs, a highly partisan post, from the Old Executive Office Building into the West Wing. Political operative Patrick Gaspard was given White House access not experienced by his predecessors. Obama official Shauna Daly, a non-lawyer and career opposition researcher described as a “partisan dirt-digger,” was assigned to the White House counsel office. The move signals not only a new low in partisan activities, but suggests the office assignment may be intended to hide Daly’s political activities under the guise of the counsel’s attorney-client privileges.
Well, the new normal has come up and bit Obama on the a$$. People are sick of the lies. They’re not fooling anyone, anymore, and what do you know? The media has been burned , now, so they’re not in the mood to play pattycake with the Regime anymore. For five years now, they were happy to give Obama a pass. But now, finally, as I’ve previously noted, I’m sensing a change in their reporting which is becoming increasingly unfriendly to their former God King. I don’t want an MSM on any one person or group’s side. I want them on the side of all Americans and on the side of the truth. I suspect an honest search for the truth could lead to a very bumpy ride for Obama in the coming weeks and months.. With an MSM that has an allegiance to the truth and not some fictional hero President (which Obama never was), the Regime is in big trouble.
On behalf of Tea Party, Patriot groups, 9/12, liberty activists, and the American people, we are calling for anyone and everyone to protest the IRS’ complete abuse of power on Tuesday, May 21, 2013 at noon local time.
Tea Party leader, Jenny Beth Martin spoke at a press conference about the IRS scandal. Senator Rand Paul, Rep. Michele Bachmann, Rep. Louie Gohmert, Sen. Ted Cruz, and other Tea Party leaders speak out regarding IRS Intimidation.
Here’s Ted Cruz’s speech:
Catherine Engelbrecht Discusses IRS Targeting on Huckabee:
