AFP PHOTO / Karen BLEIER
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In the pantheon of scandals in this administration we focus on the IRS once again. Obstruction of justice has a way of focusing one's mind.
In just six years melodrama has descended to farce.
June 3, 2008: “Generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last best hope on Earth,” said then-Sen. Barack Hussein Obama in St. Paul, Minnesota.
June 13, 2014: “The dog ate my homework,” to paraphrase IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.
AFP PHOTO / Karen BLEIER
The agency that can capture your bank account and put you in jail if you fail to produce copies of your business records has informed Congress that the emails they are seeking in their investigation of the IRS targeting scandal disappeared in the crash of Lois Lerner’s hard drive in 2011.
And by the way, six others with whom she may have been communicating regarding the scandal have had hard drive crashes too. Thankfully, no one was injured.
George Will once explained that the Obama presidency was typical Chicago politics. You get so many scandals going that none can be focused on.
In President Obama’s first year of office we released terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to Iraq. On his release he told the captors, “I’ll see you in New York.”
Within a year he was free and the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which is moving on Baghdad leaving thousands of bodies – absent their heads – in its wake.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Fast and Furious was intended to build political support for gun control by selling arms to drug cartels in Mexico in hopes that the carnage they caused would be sufficiently offensive to Americans. Unfortunately the guns were used to kill Americans.
Attorney General Eric Holder lied under oath to Congress and refused to comply with a subpoena. He also lied to a judge to get approval to wiretap reporters. He was voted in contempt of Congress.
Tens of billions of dollars given to Obama contributors for “green” energy projects were lost to bankruptcy.
The Benghazi attack left us with four dead Americans and the grandest lie an administration has propounded in my memory. We still do not know what the president and secretary of state were doing during the battle that was being watched in live action by administration officials.
Obamacare was passed based on a fundamental lie and during its collapse Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made illegal fundraising calls to insurance companies under her jurisdiction to raise money to shore up the failure.
A Syrian “red line” was handed off to Vladimir Putin while we stood by. Crimea was annexed by Russia while we stood by.
The brutal ISIS army is closing in on Baghdad. Syria is in turmoil and helpless. Jordan is defenseless and Israel sits naked and alone.
Into this scenario the president released another five terrorists in exchange for an army deserter promising that the Taliban Five are no threat to the United States.
AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File
Today veterans are dying while waiting to be seen by a corrupt Department of Veterans Affairs and our southern border resembles a third world nation harboring a refugee camp full of children from Central America.
But let us return for a moment to the IRS scandal and its cover-up. Obstruction of justice does focus the mind. We are now asked to believe that seven people at the center of the IRS scandal all had computers crash, losing emails sought in a Congressional investigation. Someone is being protected.
It is beyond credulity to believe that a scandal which includes the White House, the Treasury Department, the IRS, the Department of Justice, the Federal Election Commission and the office of the ranking Democrat on the Oversight Committee could possibly have been managed by one mid-level person in the IRS.
It wasn’t. When the inspector general informed top Treasury officials of the investigation a year before the report was public, rest assured that the Treasury chief of staff was informed immediately. He told the secretary who told the White House chief of staff. Those conversations would have occurred if only for personal cover. The president was then informed so that he could be prepared in case the issue erupted during the campaign.
Three conclusions are ineluctable in the path the crashing IRS computers. The White House was involved. The president knew. They are lying through their teeth.
John Linder served in Congress for 18 years from Georgia. He and his wife, Lynne, have retired to a farm in Northeast Mississippi. He can be contacted at: linderje@yahoo.com
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