The House Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing this morning to examine the allegations of misconduct against IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and decide whether he deserves to be impeached.
Lawmakers on the committee summoned Koskinen to answer accusations from the House Oversight panel that he failed to preserve documents Congress requested, and didn’t tell the full truth about Lois Lerner’s erased backup tapes, but the IRS chief will not be appearing at the hearing.
The IRS issued the following statement:
“When the committee announced this hearing, he was returning from China after meeting with tax administrators of 43 nations,” the statement reads. “The committee’s quick timetable left him without the time to fully prepare for Tuesday’s hearing. In addition, he also has been preparing for a previous commitment to appear before a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on Wednesday.”
Obama wasn’t in office very long before his hyper-partisan administration was using brute political force to punish his political foes. It began almost immediately with the firing of Americorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin who ran afoul of Obama when his investigation identified misuse of AmeriCorps funds by a prominent Obama supporter.
As the Obama administration winds to a close, it seems as though the retaliations have accelerated. In fact, we’ve seen four glaring examples of leftists using the levers of power to attack conservatives in just the past WEEK alone.
“These are creepy people and they have a creepy agenda” – Dinesh D’Souzarecently noted. He’s absolutely right.
For the sake of posterity, I’ve compiled a list of the many times Obama and/or his allies retaliated against his political foes from2009 to the present.
Only six months into his presidency, Obama had fired two IGs and “leashed”another.
Not long after settling into the White House, President Obama fired Gerald Walpin, the inspector general for AmeriCorps, because he had exposed a scam involving a close presidential friend. Mr. Walpin filed a report about the misuse of $847,000 in grant money by Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacramento, Calif. Mr. Johnson, a former NBA star, was accused of using government cash to pay “volunteers” to keep his car sparkling clean and to run personal errands. The firing of Mr. Walpin sent a clear signal to his colleagues: Investigate a friend of the president, and you’ll be looking for a new job. Many got the message.
Treasury Department IG Neil Barofsky ruffled feathers in April of 2009 “when his watchdog report showed that the Obama administration had placed insufficient safeguards on Porkulus spending.”
Treasury Department’s J. Russell George, found his job in jeopardy after he uncovered the IRS scheme to undermine Tea Party groups. Two Democratic congressmen, Reps. Gerald E. Connolly of Virginia and Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania filed a formal complaint against George with the watchdog council that oversees the inspectors general.
The congressmen questioned Mr. George’s “independence, ethics, competence and quality control” in the hopes that the council would impose sanctions.
• The IRS Scandal:
Perhaps no other government agency has been as prolific and insidious as the IRS, when it comes to attacking enemies of the Regime. The most feared government agency has done this in a variety of distressing ways.
The IRS under Obama targeted and quashed the free speech of conservative (mainly tea party) groups in the run up to the 2012 election, probably contributing to his reelection.
According to the Tax Professor, the IRS continues to deny conservative groups tax exempt status and leaves other conservative groups “twisting in the wind.”
The IRS rejected a total of 67 tax-exempt status applications last year (2015), and 57 of them were from religious groups. Another 5,681 applications were left in legal no-man’s land, which has exactly the same effect as a flat-out denial.
Conservatives know about the raid on Gibson Guitars where armed agents from the Dept. of Fish and Wildlife raided four Gibson factories, confiscating guitars and sending hundreds of employees home. Gibson was accused of using illegal wood in violation of the century-old Lacey Act, while other (Democrat) guitar makers doing the same thing were left alone.
Grossly underreported at the time was the fact that Gibson’s chief executive, Henry Juszkiewicz, contributed to Republican politicians. Recent donations have included $2,000 to Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and $1,500 to Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.
By contrast, Chris Martin IV, the Martin & Co. CEO, is a long-time Democratic supporter, with $35,400 in contributions to Democratic candidates and the Democratic National Committee over the past couple of election cycles.
Mountain Pure water was also targeted by government agents for trumped-up charges pertaining to an SBA loan the owner secured through the Federal Emergency Management Agency to recover tornado losses to his home, warehouse, and associated equipment. Mountain Pure Water’s chief executive, John Stacks, is also a Republican who has donated to Republican candidates.
At 8:00 a.m. on January 18, 2012, 40 -50 heavily armed, hostile government agents raided Mountain Pure water, scaring the dickens out of everyone in the building.John Stacks, the owner of Mountain Pure Water said that he was cursed at, spat on, and bullied in such an egregious fashion, he felt like they were trying to provoke him to react violently. His son, Court Stacks, the General Manager, had a loaded gun pointed to his face. His seven and a half month pregnant wife watched news coverage of the raid at home in horror. She would later lose the baby.
Bill Elliott and his insurance broker C. Steven Tucker, were both audited on the same day after they went public with their complaints about Obama’s “signature achievement.” You can read their full story, here.
You can hear them tell their story in their own words, here:
In July of 2015, Judicial Watch obtained documents from the IRS that confirmed that they used donor lists to tax-exempt organizations to target those donors for audits. The documents (from 2010 and 2011) also showed IRS officials specifically highlighted how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce may come under “high scrutiny” from the IRS.
In early 2012, someone at Obama’s weaponized IRS leaked a confidential list of National Organization for Marriage (NOM) donors to the Human Right’s Campaign (HRC), a homosexual advocacy group. NOM was formed in 2007 specifically to pass California Proposition 8 which created a constitutional amendment preserving the traditional definition of marriage in California.
Prop 8 was passed by voters 52% to 48% in November of 2008. Joe Solmonese, president of the HRC, was a national co-chair of Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012. He leaked the names and addresses of NOM donors to the Huffington Post which proceeded to publish the list, as did several other left-wing blogs.
Here are some examples of what the IRS, HRC and Huff-po had in mind for the people on that list:
Gay rights supporters, dressed in pink and black, stormed a Lansing, Mich., church during its services Nov. 9 throwing condoms, pulling the fire alarm and yelling such things as “It’s okay to be gay” and “Jesus was a homo.”
One media account said two lesbians then went to the pulpit at Mount Hope Church where they began making out in front of the congregants, which included children.
Police were called and the demonstration, sponsored by a group called Bash Back, ceased. The group is described as pro-homosexual and pro-anarchist. The group’s blog promoted its actions saying it was “targeting a well known anti-queer, anti-choice, radical right-wing establishment.”
[…]The incident is one of dozens reported in California and across the country in the aftermath of the passage of Proposition 8, which has prompted passionate protests nationwide. In California, cases of violence were reported even before the election. Post-election, the Mormon church has been a major target because its members donated millions to the cause.
Catholics, including the Knights of Columbus, have also been targeted for their support.
[…]Mormon temples in Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, as well as the Knights of Columbus headquarters in New Haven, Conn., were sent suspicious looking white powder, reminiscent of the 2001 anthrax attacks and scares.
At least eight Mormon buildings in Salt Lake have been vandalized with spray-painted epithets criticizing the church’s support of Proposition 8.
A group of young Christians with the Justice House of Prayer— meeting on a sidewalk for their weekly prayer session in San Francisco’s Castro district—had to be escorted out of the area by police, some in riot gear, as an angry mob turned on them shouting, “Shame on You,” blowing whistles and screaming profanities.
Marjorie Christoffersen, daughter of the owners of the Los Angeles restaurant El Coyote, left town after hundreds of protesters targeted her parent’s eatery because she made a personal $100 contribution to the Yes on 8 fund. Police in riot gear were called to restore order. Gay rights activists also began a campaign to post negative restaurant reviews online. The restaurant employs several gays and lesbians who said they were taken aback by the protests.
A Palm Springs news crew captured an unruly protest group ripping an oversized cross from a woman’s hands and then stomping on it. A reporter trying to interview the woman, Phyllis Burgess, about the incident had to move the woman to safety as the crowd encircled them while shouting.
The artistic director of a Sacramento theater was forced to resign his post after donors, ticket holders and others protested outside the theater because the man, Scott Eckern, a 25-year employee of the venue donated $1,000 in his personal money to the Yes on 8 campaign.
In a separate case reported at press time, the director for the Los Angeles Film Festival resigned under pressure from gay activists for donating $1,500 to Yes on 8. Richard Raddon, who tried unsuccessfully to resign several days earlier but was blocked by his supportive festival board, resubmitted his resignation when the berating calls and e-mails failed to cease.
In 2012, when it was discovered that Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich donated $1,000 to the successful Proposition 8 campaign, there was an initial outcry, but it took a couple of more years for the gaystapo to feel strong enough to destroy him for it.
OkCupid, a popular dating site, posted a message to those who access the site with Mozilla Firefox, urging users to switch to another browser because Eich is “an opponent of equal rights for gay couples,” as the message said. It continued: “OkCupid is for creating love. Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure.”
Their well-executed intimidation campaign hounded him out of his job. Eich stepped down about a week later.
The IRS agreed to hand over the $50,000 as part of a settlement of the case. Judge James C. Cacheris of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia granted the settlement as part of an order he entered Tuesday morning.
The $50,000 the IRS has agreed to pay represents actual damages NOM incurred to fight the leak of its donor list in court, not punitive damages. NOM was unable to prove that the disclosure of the private donor list was intentional because Boston-based gay rights activist Matthew Meisel invoked his Fifth Amendment rights and refused to testify.
Through their investigation, the House Ways and Means Committee was able to identify the IRS employee who divulged the information, but was was barred from releasing his name to the public or to NOM because the code that was supposed to protect the confidentiality of the taxpayer information also (allegedly – according to the IRS) makes it a felony to disclose anything related to taxpayer information. If that makes sense. (It doesn’t. The Ways and Means Committee should never have accepted that BS excuse.)
It can’t even confirm when the leak took place, whether the perpetrator was disciplined, or even whether he is still employed by the IRS or the U.S. government. That’s because of a peculiarity of the Internal Revenue Code’s section 6103, which is intended to protect the confidentiality of taxpayer information. The law makes it a felony to disclose tax returns or related information to the public, but in an odd twist, the results of investigations conducted by congressional committees or by inspectors general are considered the confidential tax information of the alleged perpetrator.
Honest judges throw “bad faith” arguments like that right out of court.
Obama goes after people/groups that make him look bad:
• Obama DOJ investigates S&P after it lowers the United States’ credit rating:
(NYT) — The Justice Department is investigating whether the nation’s largest credit ratings agency, Standard & Poor’s, improperly rated dozens of mortgage securities in the years leading up to the financial crisis, according to two people interviewed by the government and another briefed on such interviews.
David Axelrod attempting to subtly intimidate the respected polling firm when its numbers were unfavorable to the president.
After Gallup declined to change its polling methodology, Obama’s Department of Justice hit it with an unrelated lawsuit that appears damning on its face.
Internal emails between senior officials at The Gallup Organization, obtained by The Daily Caller, show senior Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod attempting to subtly intimidate the respected polling firm when its numbers were unfavorable to the president.After Gallup declined to change its polling methodology, Obama’s Department of Justice hit it with an unrelated lawsuit that appears damning on its face.
It was payback time for Obama in January of 2014, when federal prosecutors announced campaign finance charges against Dinesh D’Souza.
D’Souza pleaded not guilty on Friday, though his attorney did not outright deny that a violation of some kind may have occurred.
But colleagues rallied to D’Souza’s defense, calling the decision to prosecute the case politically motivated.
“When you make a film that hits the president between the eyes and could shift an election, you become a target,” conservative filmmaker Dennis Michael Lynch told Fox News, referring to D’Souza’s “2016: Obama’s America.”
In 2012, one of Obama’s campaign websites posted an item entitled “Behind the curtain: A brief history of Romney’s donors.”
In the post, the Obama campaign named and shamed eight private citizens who had donated to his opponent. Describing the givers as all having “less-than-reputable records,” the post went on to make the extraordinary accusations that “quite a few” have also been “on the wrong side of the law” and profiting at “the expense of so many Americans.”
These are people like Paul Schorr and Sam and Jeffrey Fox, investors who the site outed for the crime of having “outsourced” jobs. T. Martin Fiorentino is scored for his work for a firm that forecloses on homes. Louis Bacon (a hedge-fund manager), Kent Burton (a “lobbyist”) and Thomas O’Malley (an energy CEO) stand accused of profiting from oil. Frank VanderSloot, the CEO of a home-products firm, is slimed as a “bitter foe of the gay rights movement.”
Just 12 days after being put on Obama’s enemies list, VanderSloot found an investigator “digging to unearth his divorce records.”
This bloodhound—a recent employee of Senate Democrats—worked for a for-hire opposition research firm.
Now Mr. VanderSloot has been targeted by the federal government. In a letter dated June 21, he was informed that his tax records had been “selected for examination” by the Internal Revenue Service. The audit also encompasses Mr. VanderSloot’s wife, and not one, but two years of past filings (2008 and 2009).
Two weeks after receiving the IRS letter, Mr. VanderSloot received another—this one from the Department of Labor. He was informed it would be doing an audit of workers he employs on his Idaho-based cattle ranch under the federal visa program for temporary agriculture workers.
What would you do if the White House engaged in derogatory speculative innuendo about the integrity of your tax returns? Suppose also that the president’s surrogates and allies in the media regularly attacked you, sullied your reputation and questioned your integrity. On top of all of that, what if a leading member of the president’s party in Congress demanded your appearance before a congressional committee this week so that you could be interrogated about the Keystone XL oil pipeline project in which you have repeatedly—and accurately—stated that you have no involvement?
Consider that all this is happening because you have been selected as an attractive political punching bag by the president’s re-election team. This is precisely what has happened to Charles and David Koch, even though they are private citizens, and neither is a candidate for the president’s or anyone else’s office.
In the run-up to the 2014 elections, Senator Harry (Dingy) Reid took over the reins of the Bash-the-Kochs bandwagon, castigating them on the Senate floor in one bizarro speech after another for months on end. It would have been comical if it wasn’t such despicable abuse of his office. Clearly, politically toxifying the Koch brothers was/is high on the Organizer-in-Chief’s list of priorities.
FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai rang alarm bells in February of 2014, warning of an FCC pilot program that would have sent “researchers” to newsrooms to grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run. Make no mistake. The target of this program was conservative-leaning news and opinion, not left-leaning news that conformed to the Obama administration’s political ideology.
The plan was abandoned only because of the public outcry thank’s to Commissioner Pai’s warnings. Media pundits were appalled.
On her Fox show, “On the Record,” an outraged Greta Van Susteren proclaimed that the whole thing was “meant to intimidate and to stifle and to chill.” She expressed shock and horror that someone thought that this was a good idea to begin with, as did the Hill’s AB Stoddard: “it seems so ludicrous – so unAmerican – that I can’t believe that it would ever become real,” Stoddard said. “But the fact that someone had an idea about it and it didn’t get slapped down – is more than strange.”
National Review exposed the sordid tale of Wisconsin’s “John Doe” investigations, in which partisan prosecutors launched expansive — and unconstitutional — campaigns of harassment against Badger State conservatives.
The worst of this harassment included a series of dawn and pre-dawn raids, executed by police officers armed to the teeth and equipped with battering rams, pounding on doors and terrifying conservative families.
The officers turned those conservatives’ homes “upside down,” in a search for something, anything that could be used to discredit, defeat, and even imprison Republican governor Scott Walker and his allies. Ultimately, four raid victims came forward to tell their stories to NR — three anonymously and one on the record.
Their stories made an impact. The Wisconsin Supreme Court cited our reporting in its decision halting the most current John Doe investigation, which held that Wisconsin law enforcement was investigating “crimes” that were not crimes at all: Wisconsin prosecutors were launching raids to investigate constitutionally protected speech — issue advocacy in support of conservative causes.
As gay marriage was being made legal in state after state, and after the SCOTUS decision legalizing gay marriage nationwide, Christian wedding vendors came under under attack by activist gays. Not content with doing business with venders who were comfortable with gay marriage, they specifically targeted those who were not.
■ Masterpiece Cakeshop, Colorado: Owner Jack Phillips refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple in July. The Lakewood bakery has faced at least two protests, a Facebook-driven boycott, and a discrimination complaint from the state Attorney General that was scheduled for a hearing in September. Phillips has said he would rather close his bakeshop than compromise his Christian beliefs. (Sources: news reports including Washington Times and Huffington Post.)
■ Victoria’s Cake Cottage, Iowa: Baker Victoria Childress denied service to a lesbian couple hoping to get married in 2011. The Des Moines baker was called a “bigot” and faced a protest and Facebook boycott but refused to budge, citing her Christian faith. (Sources: news reports including Washington Times and Huffington Post.)
■ Fleur Cakes, Oregon: Pam Regentin, the owner of the Mount Hood-area cake shop, refused to make a cake for a lesbian couple earlier this year, sparking anotherFacebook boycott in May. (Sources: news reports including local television.)
■ Liberty Ridge Farm, New York: The family-owned farm in mid-state New York is facing a human rights complaint after refusing to host a lesbian wedding in 2012. (Sources: local news sources here and here and the Huffington Post.)
■ All Occasion Party Place, Texas: In February, the Fort Worth-based wedding venue declined to host a wedding reception for a gay couple. An online boycott has now been launched against the business. (Sources: local news and the Huffington Post.)
■ Gortz Haus, Iowa: After refusing to host a gay wedding (reported in August), Betty Odgaard, the owner of the business, received threatening calls and e-mails and now must contend with a complaint the couple has filed with the state civil rights commission. (Sources: local news sources here and here and the Huffington Post.)
■ Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, New Jersey: In 2012, a state judge ruled that a Methodist-owned events venue in Ocean Grove violated state law when it refused to host a gay wedding in 2007. Also, while the discrimination case was still pending, the facility lost its state tax exemption because it was deemed “no longer met the requirements as a place open to all members of the public,” the New York Timesreported. (Sources: TheNew York Timeshere and here, Philadelphia Inquirer, andLifeSiteNews.)
■ Elane Photography, New Mexico: The state Supreme Court ruled in August that a New Mexico photography business owned by Elaine Huguenin and her husband Jon could not legally deny services to same-sex couples. The photographer had refused service for a lesbian commitment ceremony in 2006. One of the women had filed a complaint with the state Human Rights Commission, which ruled against the photographers in 2008, prompting an appeals process that led to the high court decision. It’s now unclear what will happen to the business. (Sources: press releases and news reports including the Catholic News Agency and the Santa Fe New Mexican. The case is discussed further below.)
■ Arlene’s Flowers, Washington: A florist refused to provide flowers to a gay wedding last March and now owner Baronelle Stutzman is facing a lawsuit from the state Attorney General. (Sources: news reports including local television and theAssociated Press.)
■ Wildflower Inn, Vermont: A lesbian couple sued the Wildflower Inn under the state public accommodations law in 2011 after being told they could not have their wedding reception there. The owners were reportedly open to holding same-sex ceremonies as long as customers were notified that the events personally violated their Catholic faith. It wasn’t enough. The inn had to settle the case in 2012, paying a $10,000 fine and putting double that amount in a charitable trust. Also, the inn is no longer hosting weddings, although the decision reportedly was made before the settlement. (Sources: The New York Times and Huffington Post.)
These cases represent a new battlefield in the clash between the freedoms of Christians and the “radical homosexual agenda,” said Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of The Thomas Moore Law Center. “Despite their relatively small numbers, radical homosexuals wield enormous power. They dominate our cultural elite, Hollywood, television, the mainstream news media, public schools, academia, and a significant portion of the judiciary,” Thompson said in an e-mail interview. “As a result of their power, homosexual activists are able to intimidate and silence opposition.”
Recriminations against religious conservatives who oppose abortion:
Obama’s HHS mandate forces religious groups and businesses to pay for contraceptives and abortion-causing drugs in their employee health care plans. When many groups and businesses conscientiously objected on religious grounds, the Obama administration – instead of standing down – made them fight the mandate in court.
The National Organization for Women put out a list of what they originally called the “Dirty 100″ — plaintiffs who have filed for an exception to Obamacare’s contraception mandate. The list includes such nasty notables as the Little Sisters of the Poor, Priests for Life, EWTN, American Family Association, and Ave Maria School of Law.
• Whistleblower retaliation:
Whistleblower complaints in the Obama administration have soared to such epic levels, the number of cases are difficult to quantify and impossible to condense down to fit into a single blog post. Virtually every agency in the Obama administration has retaliated against whistleblowers – to the point that even left-wing blogs have taken notice and have condemned the practice. Any list I do here will be incomplete because the actual numbers could fit inside a very thick volume – which no one would want to read because it would be too damn depressing.
After their complaints went public, Mr. Rhoades said, he was punished by the top TSA official at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, Federal Security Director Cliff VanLeuven, who ordered him to be transferred to Tampa, Florida.
“It was a total shock,” Mr. Rhoades said in an interview. “They couldn’t get me on a performance issue, so they reassigned me to try to get me to resign.”
Ms. Roering was suspended twice after raising her concerns about security.
But the Office of Special Counsel has intervened, blocking the transfer ofMr. Rhoades and halting Ms. Roering’s suspension late last month while the agency investigates their complaints.
Retaliation against Fast and Furious Whistleblowers:
The Justice Department’s inspector general concluded Monday that a high-ranking political appointee destroyed Mr. Dodson’s credibility and ruined a career. The Justice Department scheme, to allow criminals and gangbangers to purchase guns in the United States and slip them across the border to the Mexican drug cartels to track the movement of illegal guns, was weird and nutty from the beginning. The death of a Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, who was killed with one of the 2,000 guns “walked” to the gangbangers, moved Mr. Dodson to blow the whistle.
In addition to Dodson, Special Agent Pete Forcelli also went public while Obama loyalist Scot Thomasson headed up ATF Public Affairs.
Thomasson was also allegedly heard to have said “ATF needs to f__k these guys.” And when asked if the whistleblower allegations were true, Thomasson purportedly said he didn’t know and didn’t care. The accounts are contained in a May 3, 2012 House Oversight memo attached to Congress’ draft contempt report against Attorney General Eric Holder.
Victoria Toensing, a former Justice Department official and Republican counsel to the Senate intelligence committee, is now representing one of the State Department employees. She told Fox News her client and some of the others, who consider themselves whistleblowers, have been threatened by unnamed Obama administration officials.
“I’m not talking generally, I’m talking specifically about Benghazi – that people have been threatened,” Toensing said in an interview Monday. “And not just the State Department. People have been threatened at the CIA.”
“It’s frightening and they’re doing some very despicable threats to people,” she said. “Not ‘We’re going to kill you,’ or not ‘We’re going to prosecute you tomorrow,’ but they’re taking career people and making them well aware that their careers will be over [if they cooperate with congressional investigators].”
The offices of a Dallas law firm representing Aurelia Fedenisn, a former investigator at the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General, were broken into in July of 2013.
Fedenisn said she was threatened by Regime goons after turning over documents to Senator Ted Cruz, IN June, alleging cover-ups of investigations involving State Dept. employees using drugs and prostitutes. Fedenisn claimed that senior State Department officials interfered with the investigations she was involved in, and then interfered with a report about the interference, causing it to be watered down. In other words, they tried to cover up wrongdoing – and then tried to cover up the cover up.
The firm Schulman & Mathias was the only suite burglarized in the high-rise office building, although an unlocked office nearby was left alone.
Burglars stole three computers and broke into the firm’s file cabinets. But silver bars, video equipment and other valuables were left untouched, according to local Fox affiliate KDFW, which aired security camera footage of the suspected burglars entering and leaving the offices around the time of the incident.
“It’s a crazy, strange and suspicious situation,” attorney Cary Schulman told Foreign Policy. “It’s clear to me that it was somebody looking for information and not money. My most high-profile case right now is the Aurelia Fedenisn case, and I can’t think of any other case where someone would go to these great lengths to get our information.”
Reportedly the personal e-mail account of a the Diplomatic Security Service Criminal Investigator who had been helping Fedenisn, was hacked and “four years worth of messages — some detailing alleged wrongdoing at the agency — were deleted.”
In 2013, DHS used sequestration as a pretext to release thousands of illegal immigrants with criminal convictions, and ICE agents were frantic.
Sheriff Babeu of Pinal County, AZ told Jed Babbin of The American Spectatorthat he was receiving frantic calls from ICE and Border Patrol agents who were calling him unofficially. Babeu said, “Good people who work for ICE, work for Border Patrol, they call me all the time.…They said, ‘Sheriff, help us. We’re releasing all these criminals. This order just came down from Washington and now they’re all out in the streets.”
Babeu told Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro that some of the detainees had been convicted for weapons violations and drug smuggling. “These are people who have been in fights, and aggravated assaults against police officers,” Babeu said. “How in the world can you say these are low risk, non criminal detainees?! These are the worst of the worst. These are people who have been convicted of child molestation! We have people who have been released, I’ve been told by ICE agents, who have been charged with man-slaughter.”
When Pirro asked about the whistleblowers who wanted to come forward and expose what’s going on, Babeu claimed that several memos had been sent out to ICE agents about the prisoner releases and anyone who talked about it “outside our agency shall be disciplined up to and including termination.” This created “an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.” He added, “these federal agents, who swore an oath to protect our country, are being intimidated from doing the right thing.”
One example out of many: A doctor at the veterans hospital in Phoenix claims “she was harassed and humiliated after complaining about problems at the hospital, where dozens of veterans died while on waiting lists for appointments.”
Dr. Katherine Mitchell said the hospital’s emergency room was severely understaffed and couldn’t keep up with “the dangerous flood of patients” there. Dr. Mitchell, a former co-director of the Phoenix VA hospital’s ER, said in testimony prepared for the House committee that strokes, heart attacks, internal head bleeding and other serious medical problems were missed by staffers “overwhelmed by the glut of patients.”
Her complaints about staffing problems were ignored, Dr. Mitchell said, and she was transferred, suspended and reprimanded.
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) officials ordered subordinates not to talk to congressional investigators about their investigation into illicit hiring practices and related whistleblower retaliation allegations, according to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Darell Issa (R-Calif.).
Issa, in a letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, revealed that the deputy secretary of energy issued a gag order following the release of a highly critical inspector general report last week.
The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), a division of the DOE, allegedly violated DOE hiring guidelines in a manner than disadvantaged military veterans, according to the scathing IG report.
The BPA employees who cooperated with the IG’s investigation were fired, suspended or disciplined in other ways, the report found.
Further, Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman “verbally instructed Elliot Mainzer, the individual [Poneman] chose to serve as acting administrator of BPA, that no BPA employees were to talk with anyone regarding these allegations, including congressional investigators,” Issa wrote in a July 17 letter.
A key lawmaker who exposed a troubling federal turf battle in the immediate aftermath of December’s San Bernardino terror attack charged Wednesday that government officials are following a familiar pattern by hunting down the whistleblowers behind the disclosure.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., said he learned his sources are being sought by Immigration and Customs Enforcement immediately following a dramatic hearing Tuesday in which ICE and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials acknowledged the disturbing incident on Dec. 3, one day after a terrorist couple gunned down 14 at a county office party.
“I am concerned that ICE is attempting to identify and retaliate against whistleblowers who revealed a lack of cooperation between USCIS and ICE in the aftermath of the terror attacks in San Bernardino,” Johnson said in a follow-up hearing Wednesday. “Those who have the courage to come forward should not be retaliated against.”
Like I said, there are enough of these stories to fill a very large volume. The longest book ever written is Devta, written by Mohiuddin Nawab with 56 volumes and 11,206,310 words. A book on Obama era whistleblower retaliation could give Devta a run for it’s money.
The videos made the Regime’s beloved allies Planned Parenthood look very very bad.
The California Department of Justice, led by hyperpartisan state Attorney General Kamala Harris, raided the home of the man behind the series of undercover Planned Parenthood videos Tuesday. Harris is investigating David Daleiden, whose Center for Medical Progressvideos exposed Planned Parenthood’s macabre fetal tissue Harvesting activities last year.
On her Harris for Senate web page is the following in red type and capital letters: “ADD YOUR NAME TO DEFEND PLANNED PARENTHOOD.”It adds: “We need you to take a stand and join Kamala in defending Planned Parenthood.”
Lila Rose, the president and founder of Live Action, said, “Harris can’t even pretend to be objective in this case.”
The growing scandal over cooked ISIS intelligence just got much worse. Now, analysts are saying they’re being forced out for not toeing the Obama administration’s line on the war.
U.S. Central Command say the military has forced them out of their jobs because of their skeptical reporting on U.S.-backed rebel groups in Syria, three sources with knowledge of their claim told The Daily Beast. It’s the first known instance of possible reprisals against CENTCOM personnel after analysts accused their bosses of manipulating intelligence reports about the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS in order to paint a rosier picture of progress in the war.
Speaking at a press conference on March 29, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said “The bottom line is simple: Climate change is real.” He went on to say that if companies are committing fraud by “lying” about the dangers of climate change, they will “pursue them to the fullest extent of the law.”The coalition of 17 inquisitors are calling themselves “AGs United for Clean Power.” The coalition consists of 15 state attorneys general (California, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, and Washington State), as well as the attorneys general of the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands. Sixteen of the seventeen members are Democrats, while the attorney general for the Virgin Islands, Claude Walker, is an independent.
The inquisitors are threatening legal action and huge fines against anyone who declines to believe in an unproven scientific theory.
One of the first victims of the new Torquemada has been ExxonMobil, which is being investigated for allegedly funding research that questions climate change. “It’s too early to say what we’re going to find,” Schneiderman said, admitting that his five-month-old inquisition is basically a fishing expedition. “We intend to work as aggressively as possible, but also as carefully as possible.”
Exxon emphatically denounced the accusations as false, pointing out that the investigation that “uncovered” this research was funded by advocacy foundations that publicly support climate change activism.
Schneiderman, asked what he thought the effect of his investigations and prosecutions would be on free speech, insisted that because climate change dissenters committed “fraud,” they are not protected by the First Amendment.
The three Democrats on the Federal Election Commission, in their latest and boldest move to regulate conservative media, voted in unison to punish a movie maker critical of President Obama after he distributed for free his latest work, Dreams of My Real Father: A Story of Reds and Deception.
Thankfully, the three Republicans on the FEC voted in his favor.
The tie vote blocked any action,and was followed by a unanimous 6-0 vote to close the file. Had he lost, Gilbert would have been required to report who helped fund the anti-Obama movie.
A common theme in the left’s retribution schemes is their never-ending quest to get their grubby mitts on the names of conservative donors so they can sic their goon squads on them. The ultimate objective is to neuter conservatives who are involved in the political process.
It’s only April, folks. We still have 7 months of “fundamental transformation” to go and I have no doubt Obama and his minions are going to try to make the most of it.
I expect this already lengthy list to expand quite a bit more before the year is up.
UPDATE:
Gonna just keep adding to the list as more examples emerge…
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a civil lawsuit against Texas Attorney General (AG) Ken Paxton and others on Monday, just one week to the day before the Texas AG will represent Texas and lead more than half the states in the nation at the U.S. Supreme Court in the executive amnesty case, the United States v. Texas.
The IRS employees told 13 Investigates they routinely see the same Social Security number used to report income on as many ten, twenty, even thirty different ITIN tax returns. They say raising concerns to IRS supervisors – which they have attempted to do multiple times – is risky.
“We can’t say anything because we’ll be reprimanded and written up. The last time I said something I was told ‘watch your step.’ Every year we go to mandatory briefings where they tell us ‘sit down, shut up and don’t say anything.’ They need to be more honest with the taxpayer,” said a whistleblower, shaking her head in discouragement.
A top House Republican is calling on the Department of Homeland Security not to retaliate against a border patrol agent who has recently criticized President Obama’s immigration policies.
“I fully expect that you will personally ensure that no DHS employee or contractor will be targeted for reprisal or any other form of adverse employment action on the basis of voicing their legitimate concerns regarding compliance with unwritten departmental policies that contradict your written policies,” Judiciary Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., wrote in an April 18 letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.
Documents released by Judicial Watch Tuesday showed the Department of Justice colluding with the Internal Revenue Service to cook up criminal prosecutions of targeted non-profit conservative groups, begging the question of how the DOJ can possible investigate a scandal that it was involved with itself.
The newly obtained records include an official “DOJ Recap” report detailing an October 2010 meeting between Lois Lerner, DOJ officials and the FBI. The documents also reveal that the Obama DOJ wanted IRS employees who were going to testify to Congress to turn over documents to the DOJ before giving them to Congress.
Records also detail how the Obama IRS gave the FBI 21 computer disks, containing 1.25 million pages of confidential IRS returns from 113,000 nonprofit social 501(c)(4) welfare groups – or nearly every 501(c)(4) in the United States – as part of its prosecution effort. According to a letter from then-House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, “This revelation likely means that the IRS – including possibly Lois Lerner – violated federal tax law by transmitting this information to the Justice Department.”
“These new documents show that the Obama IRS scandal is also an Obama DOJ and FBI scandal,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The FBI and Justice Department worked with Lois Lerner and the IRS to concoct some reason to put President Obama’s opponents in jail before his reelection. And this abuse resulted in the FBI’s illegally obtaining confidential taxpayer information. How can the Justice Department and FBI investigate the very scandal in which they are implicated?”
In January of 2014, Senator Ted Cruz sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder asking for the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to look into actions by the tax-collecting agency.
Fox News Political analyst Monica Crowly was on Fox News to talk about this weaponization of federal agencies to target Obama’s enemies.
“This now cries out for a Special Prosecutor,” Crowley said. “Because obviously we’re not going to get answers if left to the congressional members of congress -who were trying to get answers, but can’t because the administration continues to stonewall.”
According to reports, the White House knew back in August of last year that Hillary had a secret email account. But Obama – as always – was left in the dark.
We can add this scandal to the host of other Obama-era scandals that he first learned about in the news:
By now you’ll have read (or heard about ) the NYTs piece on the good Reverend Al Sharpton:
Mr. Sharpton has regularly sidestepped the sorts of obligations most people see as inevitable, like taxes, rent and other bills. Records reviewed by The New York Times show more than $4.5 million in current state and federal tax liens against him and his for-profit businesses.
And though he said in recent interviews that he was paying both down, his balance with the state, at least, has actually grown in recent years. His National Action Network appears to have been sustained for years by not paying federal payroll taxes on its employees.
With the tax liability outstanding, Mr. Sharpton traveled first class and collected a sizable salary, the kind of practice by nonprofit groups that the United States Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration recently characterized as “abusive,” or “potentially criminal” if the failure to turn over or collect taxes is willful.
Why now? According to the Times piece, Sharpton’s been flouting our tax laws (while living the high life) for many years. I’m guessing it’s not exactly a secret in liberal circles that the guy’s a corrupt shyster. It’s also not a secret that he’s become a bit of a laughingstock as host of his own show on MSNBC.
Is he becoming a liability to the progressive cause? Magic 8 Ball says….“Signs point to yes.”
Mediaite has an embarrassing clip from his press conference: Sharpton Disputes NY Times Report About His Taxes, Clashes with Reporter
Here’s today’s quiz: When I say “Al Sharpton,” what other name immediately comes to mind?
A. Bill de Blasio.
B. Barack Obama.
C. Tawana Brawley.
Tick-tock, time’s up. The correct answer is “all of the above,” which explains much of the current racial trouble in New York and America.
Sharpton, left to his own antics, is a public nuisance. It is a free country and he is entitled to his prejudices and polarizing activism. Sometimes he happens to be right and his megaphone occasionally brings attention to deserving cases that otherwise get none. America is big enough and strong enough to have space for people like him.
On the other hand, his personal conduct is often reprehensible, with his behavior in the Brawley hoax Exhibit A. And it’s not as if he’s cleaned up his act.
He remains a cop hater to the core, a race man who cannot see past skin color and whose business model is based on using a charge of racism as a negotiating tactic. The corporations buying his silence with their “contributions” ought to be boycotted.
He’s also a tax scofflaw who refuses to pay his fair share, thus ripping off fellow citizens, black and white.
Two members of the Benghazi Annex Security team who disobeyed stand down orders to rush to the sound of guns on 9/11/2012, joined Sean Hannity on Fox, Wednesday night, to talk about their new book, “13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi.”
Mark Geist and Kris Paronto were asked by Hannity to respond to Democrat members of Congress who have essentially accused them of lying, asserting that the stand-down order was never given. This issue may be key to what exactly was going on that night and why they were there in the first place.. There is something very fishy about the Democrats’ refusal to admit the truth.
Congressmen Smith and Schiff have both heard closed door testimony in which the security team members made the same assertions about the stand down order, and yet in front of the cameras, they call it a Fox News conspiracy theory. Geist and Paronto would like for them to say that to their faces.
GEIST: They’re trying to play on words — no official stand-down…
KRIS “TANTO” PARONTO, BENGHAZI ANNEX SECURITY TEAM: No improper…
GEIST: … no improper stand-down…
PARONTO: It happened.
GEIST: I mean…
PARONTO: We were delayed. The stand-down — the words “stand down” were given and we were delayed (INAUDIBLE)
HANNITY: The words — the actual words “stand down” were given.
PARONTO: Yes. And John Tiegen Tigg (ph) has said that on multiple occasions…
HANNITY: The person that gave them.
PARONTO: Yes…
***
PARONTO: He was the one that received it. I received the two waits…
HANNITY: You wouldn’t — you wouldn’t possibly know where the — where it started from.
PARONTO: No. We know from our immediate chain of command, which was — which we say in the book is Bob.
HANNITY: Would he make that decision on his own, when he knows — you guys were listening to the communications at the consulate, right?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were — yes. The distress calls, definitely. Oh, yes.
HANNITY: And what finally pushed you over the top to disobey orders – – you disobeyed orders.
PARONTO: Yes, we did.
HANNITY: What finally pushed you to that point was you heard over the communications, If you don’t get here, we’re going to die. True?
(CROSSTALK)
PARONTO: … say that multiple — multiple times, yes, we did.
GEIST: Yes.
HANNITY: And you believe that people did die in the — in the 30 minutes, the interim…
(CROSSTALK)
PARONTO: And keep in mind, 30 minutes that we stood down, and it took us another 30 minutes to go on foot just to get there because their defenses were — they basically were able to reinforce their defenses. So it cost us 30 minutes just for the stand-down, but we don’t know how much longer it really cost us because we couldn’t drive all the way. We actually had to disembark and go the rest of the way on foot.
HANNITY: You know, there’s a lot of things — my kids, if they get in trouble, like every kid, you know, I’m fine with it. I can live with mistakes. All kids are going to make them. But when they lie to me, they’re in big trouble.
Now, my question is, they are — you’re telling us that these politicians that weren’t there, and you were there…
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
HANNITY: … and you left your safe annex at the time and you went into the firefight at the time and you brought back 25 people, which makes, in my mind, you guys are heroes that night. And they’re calling you liars. So I want to know, you know, what would you like — what do you want to do about that? I would be pretty pissed.
GEIST: I’d like to invite Mr. Schiff to a debate.
PARONTO: We could talk — and we can talk to him about it.
GEIST: We can talk about it.
PARONTO: We can discuss it.
GEIST: He wants to see and say that to my face, we can talk about it and talk about everything.
PARONTO: It’s difficult for me because you’re calling a Ranger, a SEAL and three Marine liars.
HANNITY: Two of the SEALs died.
PARONTO: Well, then you’ve got all — yes, and two of the SEALs did, and you also still have the one Jack (ph), the living SEAL. He’s still alive. We all — we all went, we all testified at one point, some point during the hipsy(ph), said the same thing we’re telling you now.
HANNITY: I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I am willing to invite all of these Democrats…
PARONTO: Fine.
HANNITY: … that accused you two of lying on this program, and see – – I would be surprised if they’ll say it to your face. Let’s see if they have the guts to come on the program, gentlemen. You’ve accused American heroes of lying. Congressman Smith, Congressman Schiff, they’re invited on the program. We’re going to make calls first thing tomorrow and see if we get statements from their offices.
Have you been called — I’m watching the hearings today, and I’m thinking — all right, I read your book. Your account is so different. You talk about stand-down orders they deny. You said there was no YouTube video connection. You said that there was no spontaneous demonstration, that this was a planned terror attack, right?
GEIST: That’s what it looked like, yes.
HANNITY: OK. And — but that’s — we heard a totally different story! Were the American people lied to, in your opinion?
PARONTO: If their — if it differs from what we said in the book and that same time, same account, I would say, yes, they have been.
HANNITY: Well, you heard almost from the beginning YouTube video, spontaneous demonstration. I don’t know many spontaneous demonstrations where you have RPGs in your pocket, do you?
GEIST: I would agree…
(CROSSTALK)
PARONTO: I haven’t seen any. I haven’t been in any, and I’ve been through a lot of demonstrations and a lot of…
GEIST: You don’t see them bring those things.
PARONTO: … a lot of protests. No, doesn’t happen.
GEIST: You know, I it to the readers and there listeners out there and the television viewers, just read the book. And you know, you’ll make your decision based on the information you have and what we say in the book because we were there, like you said.
PARONTO: And keep in mind, we quit our jobs. We resigned from working government work and contracts to do this. So it wasn’t that we wanted to sell books or we wanted — it got to us so badly that we actually got together as a team and said, Hey, you know what? This story’s getting spun way out of control. It’s either us standing up and telling the truth, or it’s just going to continue down that (INAUDIBLE)
HANNITY: So when you heard about the YouTube video, when you heard there was no stand-down order, when you heard a spontaneous demonstration and you were both there and you say this didn’t happen and you hear from the president, you hear from Susan Rice, you hear from Hillary Clinton, you hear from, I think Leon Panetta — they all said it. And you — so are you guys watching this on TV? And what are you thinking?
GEIST: I was laying in a bed, a hospital bed…
(CROSSTALK)
GEIST: … surgery in Germany. And there was a consul general from State Department and his wife right there. They could have asked, or — and any question they would have wanted about what happened there and gotten the truth from on the ground.
HANNITY: Why have you never been called to testify?
PARONTO: No, we have. We have gone in front of the House Intel subcommittee.
HANNITY: OK.
PARONTO: And we did tell them…
HANNITY: Behind closed doors?
PARONTO: Behind closed doors. Why our testimony wasn’t part of their findings, or maybe it was and they just decided not to listen to it, I don’t know. But we said the same thing to them as we’re telling you now on TV, as we wrote in the book. It has not changed.
HANNITY: All right, so what we’re going to do — I’m going to follow up with these congressmen, and we’re going to — hopefully, we’ll put you all in the same room…
PARONTO: OK.
HANNITY: … and we’ll hash this out because if they lied about men that were heroes that night, the country needs to know that. And if they want to call you a liar, I think they ought to do it to your face. They ought to have the character to do it to your face.
PARONTO: I would say so.
GEIST: I would — I agree with that 100 percent. Looking forward to it.
PARONTO: We’re OK with that, too. I’m OK with that.
HANNITY: All right. And what you did that night was amazing. You were there when Ty Woods died, too.
PARONTO: Yes.
GEIST: Yes, he was right beside me.
HANNITY: Right beside you. He died right in front of you.
GEIST: Yes.
PARONTO: Yes.
At some point the Select Committee on Benghazi is going to address this little discrepancy. Democrats are still determined to shoot down Fox News’ two year old “Stand Down Order” scoop as a “conspiracy theory.” Dems in Congress know that if they just keep denying it happened even though the guys who were there on the ground on 9/11 say it did happen, the MSM will carry their water. There are probably conversations about this on left-wing “journo-lists” as we speak. Just keep denying. Call it a “conspiracy theory” propagated by ideologues trying to sell a book.
Nice Deb 