Last Friday, CBS News investigative journalist, Sharyl Attkisson revealed that her computers had been hacked into “by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions in late 2012.” She talked about the breach of her privacy on the CBS morning show, Monday.
Monday evening, Attkisson had even more information for Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly. After being asked if she had “any suspicions” about who did it, she told O’Reilly that she thought she knew, but couldn’t yet reveal who it is.
If it is who we all suspect it is, this could be the next massive scandal to rock the Regime.
O’REILLY: And they found out that you indeed were being hacked and made the announcement on Friday. So where does it go from here? I guess CBS could sue somebody, but you got to have somebody who is under suspicion, right? Do you have somebody who is under suspicion?
ATTKISSON: Well, we’re being cautioned, you know, what to say and what not to say at this point.
O’REILLY: By whom?
ATTKISSON: I have attorneys at CBS who are helping us through this. I also have personal counsel.
O’REILLY: And so all your counsel is saying don’t say anything. Do you have the same counsel that the Attorney General has and that Mueller has? No, it’s a joke. Bad joke. Sorry. So all of your counsel is saying don’t accuse anybody right now.
ATTKISSON: Well, they’re just telling us what we can say more than anything right now which is, you know, which you basically heard that there has been an intrusion of the computer. This is not phishing. This is not malware. This is not an ordinary as someone asked me old boyfriend trying to look through my files.
O’REILLY: Okay, this is big?
ATTKISSON: Yeah.
O’REILLY: And, but in order to go after somebody, you’ve got to have a suspicion, and I assume you have a suspicion. You don’t have to tell me. I don’t want to get your lawyers mad but I assume you have a suspicion.
ATTKISSON: Well, I think I know, but I, I’m just not prepared to go into that. So, we’re continuing our investigation. There are multi-facetted, you know, looks at what to do next.
6:05 – Laura: So they were literally screaming at you?
Attkisson: Yes. Well the DOJ woman was just yelling at me. The guy from the White House on Friday night literally screamed at me and cussed at me. [Laura: Who was the person? Who was the person at Justice screaming?] Eric Schultz. Oh, the person screaming was [DOJ spokeswoman] Tracy Schmaler, she was yelling not screaming. And the person who screamed at me was Eric Schultz at the White House.”
Michelle Obama picked a bad time to grow out her bangs.
She was in Belfast to give a speech, today, while the president was is in the city for the two-day G-8 Summit. She’s spending the evening in “the $3,300-per-night Princess Grace suite of Dublin’s Five-Star Shelbourne Hotel” which White House Dossier’sKeith Koffler reports, ”adds credence to accusations she is in the city for a quick vacation at taxpayer expense.”
The White House is billing Michelle’s trip to Dublin as having diplomatic significance, but her itinerary suggests otherwise. She and her daughters will visit the Trinity College library to explore President Obama’s Irish family roots, attend a performance by the world-famous Riverdance troupe, and visit the Wicklow Mountains national forest.
Judging by the tail number of her plane on the ground at Dublin Airport, it appears Air Force Two has been flown to Europe along with Air Force One and is being used to transport Michelle around.
This, after David Cameron, the host of the G8 summit encouraged Obama and others, back in February to leave their spouses at home ”to ensure leaders remain ‘focused’ on issues like tackling tax avoidance, without the distraction of having their wives and girlfriends in tow.”
Oh well! “What sequester”, right?
The First Lady’s overly long bangs (or fringe as the call it in the UK) caused a stir on Twitter and many of the comments were”a bit less than complimentary.”
MSN UK went so far as to say: Michelle Obama is embroiled in an “Obama-bangs scandal”.
See, Mrs Obama appears to be growing out her fringe (a most stressful process, as anyone who’s endured the months of desperately tanking on it to encourage growth will know), which means sometimes it gets in her eyes.
And, whilst Mrs O touched on various important topics during her speech – including how today’s youth are the world leaders of the future - it seems that the Twittersphere only cared for her distracting hair. Here’s what tweeters had to say…
@wilde23m: ’Note to self – cut fringe (bangs if you’re US). Makes Michelle #Obama look cross-eyed trying to see through hair. Don’t want to follow suit.
@chiller: ‘I love Michelle O, but when every time you blink, your entire fringe twitches, you need a fringe trim.’
@SheilaMcWade: ‘Somewhere there’s a Press Secretary screaming ‘FRINGE! FRINGE! WHO HAD THE FRINGE?!’ #ObamainBelfast #Michelle #G8′
Here’s some video of the speech via the BBC:
Look, I can sympathize. I’ve been trying to grow my bangs out since the eighth grade. Then they get to the length you see in the pictures above and I break down and cut them. I’m surprised she didn’t wait until the big trip was over to grow them out.
UPDATE:
Commenters tell me she’s most likely wearing a wig – (Of course!) – making her bad hair issues doubly embarrassing for her. ”Bad hair day” – eh, happens to all of us. “Bad wig day” – Ay yi yi!
So Biden came down pretty hard on the president regarding the NSA spy program:
“I don’t have to listen to your phone calls to know what you’re doing. If I know every single phone call you made, I’m able to determine every single person you talked to – I can get a pattern about your life that is very, very intrusive. And the real question, here is – what do they do with this information that they collect that does not have anything to do with al Qaeda?”
Psych.
Yeah, that was 2006 – he was talking about President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
I certainly trusted the last administration a lot more than I trust this current hive of villainous scum. After 9/11 the Bush administration had a pretty good track record of keeping Americans safe from Islamic terror.
The current Regime has declared the War on Terror over, and has instead waged a low intensity war on its domestic enemies – i.e. people who identify as Christians, patriots, veterans, and believe in the Constitution, and limited government, etc. That’s why we’ve seen an uptick of terrorist attacks on American soil throughout the Obama years, and conservatives groups have been targeted for harassment by the government.
It’s a sickening situation made even more nauseating by the abject hypocrisy on display by so many Democrats – the President and Vice President first and foremost among them.
In other news, the ACLU is suing the Obama administration for illegally collecting the phone records of millions of Americans, to which I say – congrats to them – even a broken clock is right twice a day?
A State Department whistleblower has accused high-ranking staff of a massive coverup — including keeping a lid on findings that members of then-Secretary Hillary Clinton’s security detail and the Belgian ambassador solicited prostitutes.A chief investigator for the agency’s inspector general wrote a memo outlining eight cases that were derailed by senior officials, including one instance of interference by Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills.
…
A DS agent was called off a case against US Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman over claims that he solicited prostitutes, including minors.
…
Via Hot Air,the Post ID’s him as a big Obama bundler:
A DS agent was called off a case against US Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman over claims that he solicited prostitutes, including minors.
“The agent began his investigation and had determined that the ambassador routinely ditched his protective security detail in order to solicit sexual favors from both prostitutes and minor children,” says the memo.
“The ambassador’s protective detail and the embassy’s surveillance detection team . . . were well aware of the behavior.”
***
Gutman was a big bundler for Obama in 2008, raising over $500,000 for his campaign and cutting checks for the inaugural.
Today, Attorney Gen. Eric Holder testified before a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on the Justice Department’s FY2014 budget. He was asked about the seizure of Associated Press phone records and the IRS targeting conservative groups for investigation.
Senator Kirk (R-IL) asked Holder if the DOJ monitored phones for members of Congress, and shockingly, he refused to answer.
In an interview with the Huffington Post, White House Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett said there’s no chance Attorney General Eric Holderwill resign in light of revelations that his Justice Department has spied on journalists.
“You can take it from me,” she said. “He will be in his position for quite a while.”
All of the witnesses who testified at the House Ways and Means Committee hearing, this morning, were impressive and compelling, but perhaps the most impressive, passionate and articulate was the National Organization For Marriage’s John Eastman who is a professor of law.
In his response to Congressman Price’s query about the publishing of names of his organization’s donors, he took the opportunity to lash out at a couple of the Democrat hacks on the Committee – publicly humiliating them to great applause.
Eastman testified Tuesday alongside several Tea Party activists who all claim they were targeted by the IRS. The Tea Party groups offered a first-hand account of how the IRS singled them out when they applied for tax-exempt status, asking them onerous questions and dragging out their application process.
But Eastman shed light on another potential controversy involving the IRS — the unauthorized disclosure of tax document information. He recalled how information on their donors was leaked last year and published on the website of the Human Rights Campaign, which Eastman described as their “principal political opponent” on the marriage issue. The documents showed Mitt Romney’s political committee as a donor.
Asked by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., if he had “proof” that the IRS leaked that material, Eastman said that he did.
Eastman explained that while some information was redacted in the posted version, his group’s “forensic” specialists were able to strip layers from the document and found “the original document that was posted there had originated from within the IRS.”
He said the version had “internal IRS stamps,” which “only exist within the IRS.”
Eastman added: “You can imagine our shock and disgust over this. … We jealously guard our donors.”
He later alleged the information was “deliberately” provided to their opponents.
“If that’s inadvertent, the word no longer means anything,” he said, claiming his group has been “stonewalled” in its request for an investigation.
MORE:
Professor John Eastman Talks to Dennis Prager About the Felonious Actions Taken by the IRS:
Eastman’s interview starts at 6:50.
A couple of bombshells, here…..
Eastman said while it was possible that the HRC got their hands on the donor list and tax info through less nefarious means, the most likely scenario is that someone within the IRS who is against the cause of traditional marriage leaked the info to their political opponent so that they could in punish, harass and intimidate those people in order to silence their opposition.
“A couple of other pieces to this that I think is extremely important. The Human Rights Campaign has been trying for a long time to get our donor list so they could do just that to our donors. And the president of the HRC, Joe Solmonese had just recently become a National Co-Chair of the Obama Re-election Campaign.”
That story was broken a couple of weeks ago by Matthew Boyle at Big Government.
Both the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein and HRC described the leak as coming from a “whistleblower.” The Huffington Post used the document to write a story questioning former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s support for traditional marriage. The document showed Romney donated $10,000 to NOM. HRC went a step further than the Huffington Post in its criticism of Romney and accused him of using “racially divisive tactics” in a press release.
Solmonese, then still the HRC’s president, said in the release he felt Romney’s “funding of a hate-filled campaign designed to drive a wedge between Americans is beyond despicable.”
“Not only has Romney signed NOM’s radical marriage pledge, now we know he’s one of the donors that NOM has been so desperate to keep secret all these years,” Solmonese added.
Solmonese resigned his position at HRC the next day and took up a position as an Obama campaign co-chair. He had announced the then-pending resignation from HRC the previous autumn.
NOM announced Tuesday that it will sue the IRS for this alleged leak. Under immense political pressure, Attorney General Eric Holder launched a criminal investigation into the IRS’s actions. Congress will conduct ts own investigation.
In early April 2012, NOM published documents which it said showed this leaked confidential information did not come from a “whistleblower” but “came directly from the Internal Revenue Service and was provided to NOM’s political opponents, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).”
Eastman said in the interview with Prager that NOM had asked for an investigation from the Treasury Dept and the DOJ and the initial investigation actually focused on NOM itself to see if someone internally had leaked the donor list to HRC, (the so-called whistle-blower theory) and when that was not fruitful, it was the last they heard about it for a year. They’ve filed a series of FOIA requests to find out what was going on with the investigation, and they were stonewalled. In the he latest stonewall, the IRS said that “the very statutes that prohibits IRS officials from disclosing your tax returns prohibits us from telling you whether we’ve identified the culprit because that’s a taxpayer, too so we can’t identify him.”
Unbelievable.
NOM president Brian Brown argued in that April 2012 release that the leak was made to benefit President Obama’s re-election campaign against Romney, his GOP challenger. “The American people are entitled to know how a confidential tax return containing private donor information filed exclusively with the Internal Revenue Service has been given to our political opponents whose leader also happens to be co-chairing President Obama’s reelection committee,” Brown said.
“It is shocking that a political ally of President Obama’s would come to possess and then publicly release a confidential tax return that came directly from the Internal Revenue Service,” he declared. “We demand to know who is responsible for this criminal act and what the Administration is going to do to get to the bottom of it.”
Democrat Congressman Jim McDermott took the floor at today’s Ways and Means hearing and blamed the conservative groups that were improperly targeted by the IRS. According to McDermott, if they didn’t apply for tax-exempt status, they would have never been scrutinized.
After the horror stories that have come out, Congress’s biggest hack. Jim McDermott suggests that the conservative groups brought their problems with the IRS on themselves.
At The Conversation, Joel Pollak commented, “if the IRS scandal lacked a bully figure, it has one now.”
McDermott repeated the same attacks on 501(c)4 organizations that other Democrats have recycled in their talking points since the scandal began. But he made the mistake of attacking the witnesses–and misrepresenting the testimony of at least one in particular. All of them, he said, were before Congress because they had been seeking tax subsidies; but as Dr. John Eastman of the National Organization for Marriage–already a tax-exempt organization–had just testified, his specific complaint was about the apparently criminal leak of their donors’ names to a liberal organization.
Paul Ryan inspired applause from spectators in the hearing room when deviated from his original question to respond to McDermott’s absurdities.
Rep. Aaron Schock piled on, bringing up Obama’s Organizing for Action group.
Ace: ”Paul Ryan administered the Donkey Punch to McDermott, and then Aaron Shock applied the Dirty Sanchez.”
Whether they acted on bad advice or out of frustration, Democrats missed badly with their attacks on the witnesses. They came across as bullies–with the exception, perhaps, of Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), who once falsely accused the Tea Party of racism but undoubtedly knows about the importance of 501(c)4 status in the history of the civil rights struggle. Worse, Democrats saw their cherished Citizens United defense crushed.
***
The coup de grâce came during questioning by Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL), who pointed out the elephant in the room: President Barack Obama’s own Organizing for Action, a 501(c)4 group specifically devoted to the defense of the president’s policies. Rep. McDermott interrupted to state that Organizing for Action should also disclose its donors as well. Yet clearly that is not on the agenda for Democrats or the White House.
“There have been a lot of stupid conspiracies in American and world history,” said Charles Krauthammer on Special Report Monday evening. “The idea of arguing that [the White House ordering the IRS targeting] is dumb because it would have been stupid is nonsensical. It shows you how afraid they are.”
He said the only question at this point was how far up the scandal goes, and advocated giving “people like Lois Lerner immunity” so we can find out.
Extra scrutiny for conservative groups isn’t something that began organically among 88 different employees. We already know from a New York Times story a few weeks ago that some “manager” up the chain told them to get cracking on this. Oddly, though, the Times couldn’t nail down which manager it was. Steve Miller, in his testimony before Issa’s committee, claimed that he’d been told once before who was responsible but … had since forgot. And now we find that Treasury’s own inspector general, whose report noted that the targeting began when a specialist in the Determinations Unit “was asked” to take a closer look at conservative groups, couldn’t figure out who did the asking. Which raises two possibilities. One: Collective amnesia. Two: A whole lot of employees are intimidated by the thought of getting on the wrong side of whoever it is who ordered this, a realization that’s doubly interesting given the transcript Issa released suggesting interest among IRS officials in Washington in some of these cases at the time.
The answer, in a general sense (and, perhaps, a specific one, too), is President Barack Obama, who created a culture of intimidation around conservative donors and non-profits, going back to the 2008 campaign. That effort sharpened in early 2010 when President Obama did the unthinkable: humiliating the Supreme Court on national television during his State of the Union Address over their recent Citizens United ruling.
Dick Morris made the same point a few days ago when it was revealed that former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman had visited the White House approximately 157 times. However Morris goes a bit further, saying it’s “obvious” that Obama was personally involved:
The obvious reason is that Obama was following the IRS audits with an obsessive, personal involvement. Apparently, the Citizens United scandal so galvanized him into action and tapped so deeply into his psyche that he was determined personally to supervise the castration of the wealthy people and groups whose access to the political system was opened wide by the Court.
To see a man who held a subordinate, non-policy making position 157 times, you have to be a president on a mission.
Meanwhile, according to Drudge editor and Washington Times columnist, Joseph Curl, the scandal is about to explode because the so-called “rogue employees” in Cincinnati are sick of being scapegoated.
One source says there’s a paper trail to DC, and some who were worried from the get-go kept a paper trail. Wouldn’t say WH, but said ‘high.’
Carney told reporters at a recent press briefing that the White House tries to give out the best information they have, as quickly as possible during rapidly moving stories, and when new information comes in, he updates reporters with the new information. So see – if the story changes – that’s why.
But of course he has it completely backwards. His job as the White House Spokesliar is to present a narrative to the media that pleasing to the Regime. That requires that he stonewall questions, and conceal the truth for as long as possible, (with direct lies if necessary) and when the truth can no longer be concealed, the narrative is updated. I chronicled the evolving White House line on Benghazi, here.They didn’t provide the media with the facts as soon as they knew them. They provided them with malarky that was “convenient at the time.”
But that’s just me – a conservative blogger in flyover country talking.
Here’s Darrell Issa the Chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, today on CNN with Candy Crowley, calling Carney a “paid liar”:
“Their paid liar, their paid spokesperson, the picture behind, he’s still making up things about what happened and calling this a local rogue,” Issa told Candy Crowley of CNN on Sunday. “This is a problem that was in all likelihood right out of Washington headquarters,” he said. “We’re getting to proving it.”
Issa blasted away at Carney, stating, “The president’s spokesman – spokesperson – is saying whatever’s convenient at the time. The story changes.”
Harsh but very true, and a reason I think, so many reporters are refusing to go along with the WH spin any longer. The constant, ridiculous lies can no longer be defended.
A committee spokesman sent MailOnline partial transcripts of two interviews with unnamed IRS workers about the agency’s actions in early 2010, on whose testimony Issa based his bombshell statement.
One of those interviewees said it was ‘impossible’ for a few IRS agents to have orchestrated such widespread partisan targeting on their own.
‘Did [your supervisor] give you any indication of the need for the search [for tea party groups], any more context?’ one IRS witness was asked in a closed-door interview.
‘He told me that Washington, D.C., wanted some cases,’ came the reply.
The employee, who said he or she was evaluating 40 such applications for tax-exempt status from conservative organizations at the time, said ‘some went to Washington. D.C. … I sent seven.’
The interviews, which are still ongoing, are being conducted by oversight committee staff in conjunction with House Ways and Means committee staff, and include both Republicans and Democrats.
The employee told those congressional investigators that IRS headquarters had also requested two specific cases for review.
I think most of us who have been paying attention kinda figured out already that this wasn’t orchestrated by two rogue agents in Cincinnati, but now that Issa has publicized what they’ve discovered from their investigation, thus far, look to hear Jay Carney alter his story, this week, as “new information” has come in.
Salvi said the FEC controversy filed in 1996 lingered through his 1998 challenge of Secretary of State Jesse White. The Democrats used the questions raised in campaign ads that implied he had been involved in criminal activity.
“I remember getting a pizza with my kids, and looking up to see the TV showing the [Democrat] ad, and I didn’t want to upset my kids, so I distracted them away,” he said. “I’ll never forget the concern that went on for months, affecting my law firm and my business.”
And Salvi said when he thinks of that, he recalls the shock on Lerner’s face when the judge dismissed his case. “We never lose!” Lerner said, and then, he said she distinctly threatened, “We’ll get you!“
Salvi said he told his wife right away to get ready for an IRS audit – that it would be coming. He instructed his firm’s accountants to err on the conservative side when filing tax returns, just in case.
But after the May 2000 dismissal, there was no contact from the FEC or from the IRS. However, there was from the FBI. In the fall of 2000, FBI agents knocked on the door of the Salvis’ home and said they wanted to ask him about his mother’s $2000 donation to his 1996 U.S. Senate campaign.
“That visit from the FBI was significant,” Salvi said. “That meant a criminal investigation, not a civil disagreement with the elections commission. And, if a person lies to the FBI, they can go to jail.”
Salvi said he reviewed the situation with the agents, and told them they were being used for political purposes. The two agents visited with his elderly mother and soon after, notified Salvi they were terminating the investigation.
“It was a nightmare,” Salvi said. “People ask me today why I’ve never run for office again after being a state representative for two terms, winning a GOP primary against the sitting lieutenant governor to run for U.S. Senate, and then finally losing an intense campaign against Durbin. All the time this long FEC ordeal continued while I ran for Secretary of State in 1998 and beyond. Why would anyone run for office again after all that? I’m very happy now,
WASHINGTON – House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) revealed new testimony from IRS employees in Cincinnati involved with the IRS’s political targeting today on CNN’s State of the Union.
The Committee released excerpts from bipartisan transcribed interviews between Committee Investigators and Cincinnati IRS employees. In these interviews Cincinnati IRS employees reject the White House’s claim that the targeting was merely work of “rogue” agents and say targeting of conservative political groups came from Washington, D.C.
“As late as last week, the administration was still trying to say the [IRS targeting scandal] was from a few rogue agents in Cincinnati, when in fact the indication is that they were directly being ordered from Washington,” Issa told CNN.
Below is an excerpt from the transcribed interviews between Committee Investigators and Cincinnati IRS employees:
One Cincinnati IRS employee interviewed by the Oversight Committee rejects the White House assertion and points to Washington as being responsible for targeting effort:
Breaking:4Liberty at Free Republic reported – I live in Los Angeles. Our San Fernando Tea Party coordinator will be testifying BEFORE CONGRESS along with 5 or 6 others at 10 AM Eastern to 1 PM Eastern. CSPAN DOES NOT HAVE ANY SCHEDULE SHOWING THEY WILL BROADCAST.
UPDATE: I plan on attending the hearing this week.
On Sunday’s broadcast of ABC’s “This Week,” former George W. Bush Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and former senior adviser to President Barack Obama David Plouffe faced off over whether the Internal Revenue Service’s abuse of its powers to target conservative political groups was a political matter.
According to Plouffe, there were no indications those abuses were politically motivated.
“There’s been no suggestion — the independent, the prosecutor looked at this, excuse me, the inspector general said there was no politics involved in this,” Plouffe said. “No one has indicated at all that the White House is involved. The IRS director was appointed under President [George W.] Bush, served under both presidents, attested…. So this was not a political pursuit.”
But Plouffe’s remarks drew a sharp response from Rove: “Baloney.” This led to a heated exchange between the two.
I see the strategy has shifted from feigned shock and outrage (It’s outrageous!) at the IRS, to assertions that the targeting was “not politically motivated.”
Wow, this Lois Lerner is a piece of work, isn’t she?
We’d already heard about some of her anticswhile she was head of the Enforcement Division of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), under Clinton.
In the late 1990’s, the FEC initiated a burdensome investigation of the Christian Coalition, an endeavor that ended up costing the organization hundreds of thousands of dollars and many hours of time.
***
One of the most shocking and startling examples of this irrelevant and intrusive questioning by FEC attorneys into private political associations of citizens occurred during the administrative depositions of three pastors from South Carolina. Each pastor, only one of whom had only the slightest connection with the Coalition, was asked not only about their federal, state and local political activities, including party affiliations, but about political activities that, as one FEC attorney described as “personal,” and outside of the jurisdiction of the FECA [Federal Election Campaign Act]. They were also continually asked about the associations and activities of the members of their congregations, and even other pastors.
Now, via Illinois Review we find out how in 1996, Lerner went after Republican State Rep. Al Salvi who was running for US Senate in Illinois.
According to Salvi, Lerner was without question, politically motivated, and went so far as to make him an offer: ”Promise me you will never run for office again, and we’ll drop this case.”
Salvi, who had nothing to hide, declined her offer and the case against him was eventually dismissed.
Reported bank loans to Mr. Salvi as personal loans from the candidate, never identifying the source of the funds;
Failed to report debts to the candidate;
Failed to file 48-hour notices for personal advances from the candidate; and
Failed to disclose campaign-related payments by the candidate to vendors and a bank.
A federal district court dismissed the case against Salvi in 1999, and the FEC appealed it to the 7th U.S. District Court of Appeals.
The FBI was called in at one point to gather evidence on the case. According to Salvi, two FBI agents unexpectedly visited the Salvis’ home, and interrogated his elderly mother about her $2,000 check to her son’s campaign and where she got “that kind of money.”
Salvi says he saw the visits as nothing but intimidation, making it clear the FEC intended to use his case as a example to others.
At the same time, Salvi said, other conservative groups such as the Christian Coalition were besieged by the FEC demands. One time, representatives from several investigated conservative groups even convened on a conference call to compare notes on how the Clinton Administration was scouring their organizations’ financial and activity records.
In fact, Salvi’s case (and name) was highlighted as an example several times in the FEC’s monthly publication until the case was finally dismissed in 2000.
It was while dealing with the FEC complaint that Salvi says he first met Lois Lerner, then the head of the FEC Enforcement Division.
No wonder the Obama administration liked this modern day Madame Defarge.. She was the perfect totalitarian to enforce the means to Obama’s ends.
At today’s WH press briefing, CBS’s Major Garrett and Fox News’ Ed Henry tag teamed Jay on the question of whether the Attorney General lied under oath to congress when he told the House Judiciary Committee he’s never been involved with the “potential prosecution” of the press for security leaks:
“In regard to potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material — this is not something I’ve ever been involved in, heard of, or would think would be wise policy,” Holder said during the hearing.
However, NBC News reported last week that Holder personally approved a search warrant that labeled Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen a co-conspirator in a national security leaks case.
The panel is investigating whether NBC’s report contradicts Holder’s claim that he had not looked into or been involved with a possible prosecution of the press in a leaks case.
The White House apparently hasn’t made room under the bus for Holder, yet. Carney insisted he sees no conflict, there.
Yesterday, the Daily Beast embarrassed itself with a Holder profile so glowing and so obviously aimed at tamping down the media’s frustration with him, that even BuzzFeed’s left-wing Ben Smith raised his eyebrows over it on “Morning Joe” Wednesday.
We also learned Wednesday that Holder has already set up meetings with various representatives from a number of print and television organizations to discuss how the DOJ will handle leak investigations in the future.
During his Congressional testimony two weeks ago, Holder didn’t seem at all contrite during questioning about his department’s role in the seizure of phone records from the Associated Press. In fact, the Attorney General came off as cocky, bored, and peevish.
What has come out since, though, has obviously knocked the smug out of him. The House Judiciary Committee is now investigating Holder’s statements during his recent testimony. It seems that Holder’s statement about never hearing or having anything to do with attempting to prosecute a journalist or reporter doesn’t quite reconcile with an application that accused Rosen of espionage. A perjury charge could be forthcoming.
What has to worry Holder the most, though, is that the revelations surrounding the Justice Department’s hysterical actions toward Fox News have not elicited the kind of reaction from the mainstream media that Holder likely expected. The media hates Fox News almost as much as the Obama administration does, but only almost.
On the O’Reilly Factor, tonight, Charles Krauthammer brought up the 10:00 pm phone call between Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, whose activities on the night of the 9/11 attack in Benghazi have yet to be scrutinized. What did he do for those eight hours? Krauthammer posited that the answer to this question could be the biggest scandal of all.
I think there is a bigger story here that will in time come out. The biggest scandal of all, the biggest question is what was the president doing in those eight hours. He had a routine meeting at five o’clock. He never after during the eight hours when our guys have their lives in danger, he never called the Secretary of Defense, he never calls the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he never called the CIA Director, Who does he call? But five hours in he calls the Secretary of State. And after the phone call she releases a statement essentially about the video and how we denounce any intolerance. It looks as if the only phone call is to construct a cover story at a time when the last two Americans who died were still alive and fighting for their lives. There’s the scandal and that has to be uncovered.”
As you may remember, Clinton said in a statement following the 10:00 pm phone call; “some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation.”
Curiously, the truth that has finally begun to emerge has yet to shed light on the involvement of two other women who almost certainly were players before, during and after the Benghazi attacks.
The first is Valerie Jarrett. She is Mr. Obama’s longtime consigliere. Such is her relationship with him and the first lady that she is permitted to involve herself in virtually all portfolios, including the most sensitive foreign affairs and national security ones. That would surely be the case in this instance in light of Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan’s insightful observation:
“The Obama White House sees every event as a political event . Because of that, it could not tolerate the idea that the armed assault on the Benghazi consulate was a premeditated act of Islamist terrorism. That would carry a whole world of unhappy political implications and demand certain actions. And the American presidential election was only eight weeks away. They wanted this problem to go away, or at least to bleed the meaning from it.”
To rephrase Sen. Howard Baker famous questions from an earlier congressional investigation of a presidential cover-up called Watergate: What did Ms. Jarrett do, and when did she do it?
I think the chances that Obama consulted his “longtime consigliere” at some point between 5:00 and 10:00 are extremely high.
Representative Jason Chaffetz has been saying that Obama could face impeachment over the Regime’s response to the Benghazi attack.
“They purposefully and willfully misled the American people, and that’s unacceptable,” Chaffetz told NRO’s Robert Costa. “It’s part of a pattern of deception.”
The kids at Revealing Politics had heard enough comparisons of the two men that they decided to do some hunting. They’ve concluded that the two may have been separated at birth.
Here’s all the latest on the Scandalpalooza front:
We now know through her own testimony and from the Inspector General’s report that Lerner was briefed about this unlawful targeting scheme in June 2011. But nine months later, beginning in March 2012, she sent cover letters to many of our clients – demanding additional information and forwarding intrusive questionnaires. In fact, in March and April of 2012, Lerner sent 15 letters to 15 different clients (including those who were approved after lengthy delays and those who are still pending).
In this Fox News report, Saturday, Jordan Sekulow told the host that the ACLJ has been hearing from clients who have been getting letters from the IRS as late as May 6th 2013 (!) still with the list of “inappropriate” intrusive questions.
This clown show of a government gets more ridonculous every day. I’ve never understood why so many comics never found Obama funny. In his own special way, he can be a laugh riot:
The Fox News revelation followed the news that the Justice Department had investigated the phone records of reporters working for The Associated Press.
On May 24, however, Obama reacted to growing alarm in the media by asking Holder to review the Justice Department’s procedures for investigating the media.
“We must keep information secret that protects our operations and our people in the field,” the president said at a speech in Washington D.C.
“But a free press is also essential for our democracy [and] I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable,” he said.
“Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs … [and] I have raised these issues with the Attorney General, who shares my concern. So he has agreed to review existing Department of Justice guidelines governing investigations that involve reporters, and will convene a group of media organizations to hear their concerns as part of that review,” he said.
Friday it was revealed that the Atty. Gen. personally signed off on the Rosen probe, but he testified at a House Judiciary hearing, last week otherwise. Now, it looks like Holder lied under oath to congress.
The Five reacted to the news that Holder lied about his involvement with the James Rosen probe, and found Obama’s decision to put Eric Holder in charge of reviewing the Justice Department’s policies for investigating reporters “incredibly inappropriate.” As Greg Gutfeld put it, “essentially it’s like having a kid grade his own paper.”
He’s already been held in contempt of Congress.
On Friday’s Special Report, Charles Krauthammer said that Holder’s days are numbered. But the man’s crimes require more than his being allowed to resign with his head high. He should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Obama was telling the truth when he said that Holder “shares his concerns,” I’ll grant him that.
And as the drip drip drip of Regime scandal revelations come to the fore, they both have good reason to be concerned.
