The IRS: Still Weaponized Against Conservatives
Arnold Ahlert: While Americans remained distracted by the presidential election, the rioting in Charlotte and the terror attacks in New York and New Jersey, some equally important news remained below the radar: IRS Commissioner John Koskinen's impeachment hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. Important because while elections, riots and terror are transient events, IRS power — and the agency's apparent willingness to abuse it — remains a constant threat to the republic.
During his testimony last Wednesday, Koskinen's demeanor was in sharp contrast to the arrogance he demonstrated when he appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in 2014. Perhaps that's because he was forced to admit he made false statements two years ago. "Some of my testimony later proved mistaken," he stated. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) wasn't buying it and questioned the Commissioner's earlier assertion that "every email" of former Exempt Organizations Division director Lois Lerner had been preserved. "What did you mean by every email?" Gowdy asked. "I meant that every email that the IRS had that I knew of had been preserved," Koskinen stated. "That was my honest belief." "Well why didn't you say that?" Gowdy asked.
"Well, if I knew then what I know now, I would have testified differently," Koskinen answered. "But at the time, I testified honestly about what I knew and what I'd been told. Nobody regrets more than I do that in some ways this case has been the case that keeps on giving with more information coming out. I wish that all the information had been put out to begin with."
Such a statement strains credulity. In June 2014, Koskinen asserted that no emails had been destroyed since congressional investigations began. Yet IRS workers erased backup tapes containing many of Lerner's emails in March 2014. Moreover, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) explained that a top senior management official at the agency had learned about missing emails in early 2014, before the backup tapes were destroyed. "We're supposed to believe that's just a coincidence?" Jordan asked. Among a rather amazing number of coincidences, apparently. First Americans were told Lerner's records were "accidentally" lost when her desktop computer crashed, as if that were the only device that contained them, despite networked and cloud computing, and redundant email backup systems required by government. Then we learned Lerner's hard drive crashed during a time frame critical to the investigation, and that six additional IRS employees could not produce investigation-related records, with one also citing computer failure as the reason. After that, IRS Deputy Associate Chief Counsel Thomas Kane, in charge of producing documents for congressional investigators, revealed even more IRS officials "have had computer problems over the course of the period covered by the investigations and the chairman's subpoena." This coincidental destruction of evidence was so thorough, the House Armed Services Committee asked the NSA and the Defense Department to see if they could find anything. Then it became a question of accessing a secretive government database established for continuity of operations in case of national disaster. At that point the DOJ told Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton it would be "too hard" to retrieve Lerner's emails from that system. All of these "coincidences" occurred even as Koskinen told Congress he had "moved heaven and earth" trying to find them — yet that somehow precluded him from notifying Congress immediately after he discovered what had occurred. His excuse? He wanted to produce as many emails as he could before revealing some of them had been destroyed. That assertion infuriated Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH). "You circled the wagons, you clammed up, you took the Fifth [Amendment], you destroyed evidence and you betrayed the country," he said, blasting Koskinen. "And most sadly, you got away with it."
With plenty of help from an equally corrupt DOJ. Despite its own involvement in the scandal, revealed in a series of documents released by Judicial Watch in July 2015, DOJ closed its investigation of IRS corruption in October of that year, with Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik stating in a letter to Congress that the DOJ found "substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia leading to the belief by many tax-exempt applicants that the IRS targeted them based on their political viewpoints. But poor management is not a crime." That "poor management" continues to this day. Despite Koskinen's insistence the IRS is "absolutely not" still targeting Tea Party and other non-profit conservative groups, Jordan revealed otherwise. "You can't sit there and say you're not still targeting," he stated. "These organizations still don't have their tax-exempt status."
"We would do well to remember just how outrageous the IRS's actions in this matter were," states National Review's editorial board. "Conservative organizations, particularly those with tea-party leanings, were singled out by the IRS and subjected to an extraordinary degree of scrutiny on everything from the political ambitions of their donors (and their donors' family members) to — hard as it is to believe — the contents of their prayers. IRS officials misled and stonewalled Congress and federal investigators. This harassment happened after Democratic grandees including Chuck Schumer and Max Baucus demanded that the IRS investigate tea-party organizations and other entities on the Democrats' enemies list. It was a pure political witch hunt and a gross, criminal misuse of one of the federal government's most fearsome agencies." More important, it may have tipped the scales in the 2012 presidential election.
Nonetheless, Republicans seem determined to maintain their spinelessness in the face of overt corruption. Before last week's hearing, House Republicans agreed to avoid a floor vote on Koskinen's impeachment. Why? GOP leaders surmised the effort could "irritate" voters.
In other words, GOP leaders would have one believe that so many Americans stand behind the most powerful and misery-inducing agency in the nation that pursuing justice could hurt their election prospects.
"We will not survive as a free society operating under something roughly resembling the rule of law if federal law-enforcement agencies — which is what the IRS really is — are permitted to run amok," writes columnist Kevin Williams. But they are running amok. And liar-Hillary Clinton, who promised to "build on the successes" of the nObama administration, will allow it to continue. ~The Patriot Post .
Grading the First Debate
As we have said before, voters are tasked this year with electing a candidate who is less unfit than the other. That was abundantly clear in last night's first, generally awful presidential debate between liar-Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the two most unpopular candidates in American history. Trump began well enough, with measured temperament, hitting a number of the themes that won him the nomination. He landed good punches on several things — liar-Clinton has experience but it's bad experience, her opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal came only after his, and especially how she and Barack nObama created the vacuum that allowed for the rise of the Islamic State. Unfortunately, Trump was also his usual pinball self, giving wandering, sometimes downright incoherent answers. That meant he failed to land a couple of key blows against liar-Clinton. For example, even though he slammed her email as "not a mistake," he didn't get to the core issue of her illegal and obfuscating behavior, or the systemic corruption that allowed her to get away with it. And though it was a brilliant stroke to demand liar-Clinton release her 33,000 deleted emails in exchange for his tax returns, he also babbled on and on about being "extremely underleveraged" and so forth, sounding like an out-of-touch rich guy. Why not attack the liar-Clinton Foundation instead? Worse, when liar-Clinton accused him of not paying federal income taxes, he said, "That makes me smart." He practically confirmed liar-Clinton's charge — she couldn't have asked for more. In general, Trump took way too much of the bait liar-Clinton (and moderator Lester Holt) threw his way. In too many answers, instead of digging into the issues that resonate with Americans — the disastrous nObama/liar-Clinton record of a lackluster economy and foreign policy disasters around the world — he ended up trying to explain the "small loan" ($14 million!) from his father, or why his insults of Rosie O'Donnell were exactly what she deserved. That only served to make him look like the rich snob and misogynist bully liar-Clinton said he is.
All that said, the "vibe" he communicated was quintessential Trump, and it has served him well. The overall takeaway is that America is headed in the wrong direction and liar-Clinton will only continue that path. Trump, on the other hand, can fix it.
As for liar-Clinton, she clearly prepared well. She was so proud of her own preparation, in fact, that she openly boasted about it. liar-Hillary rattled off a State of the Union-worthy list of federal programs and leftist grab-bag items she'd implement or grow. She harped on inequality and how Trump wasn't for the middle class. She sounded like she knew what she was talking about. But for those of us who actually remember the details of her career, it was nothing but lies, sprinkled with divisive race-, class- and sex-bait. Trump "has a long record of engaging in racist behavior," she charged. She might as well have called him deplorable. Arguably, liar-Clinton prepared too well, because her vibe was one of robotic rehearsal. You could almost see her thinking, "This is the part where I smile and wait." She awkwardly delivered insults ("Trumped-up trickle-down economics") and was oddly impersonal in recounting her personal story of her father's small business record. liar-Hillary is a lying phony, and that came through loud and clear.
Finally, Lester Holt was both obviously and discreetly on liar-Clinton's side throughout the night. (What else would we expect from Leftmedia moderators? He ran interference for liar-Clinton several times — twice with overt "fact checks" on Donald Trump, and once by admonishing the audience after many cheered for Trump's attack on liar-Clinton's email. Holt did not similarly admonish the audience for cheering for liar-Hillary. In one confrontation on "stop and frisk" policing, Holt was visibly angry with Trump as he challenged the candidate — and Holt misrepresented the facts, to boot. Holt's influence was also blatantly obvious in the topics he chose (and didn't choose). He asked Trump about nObama's birth certificate, Trump's questionable position on the Iraq war (but not liar-Hillary's), and his tax returns. Holt did not ask either candidate about nObamaCare, immigration, the liar-Clinton Foundation, Benghazi, liar-Clinton's email (except to invite her to respond to Trump) or her "basket of deplorables" slander of a quarter of the American population. Holt steered clear of anything that would be inconvenient for liar-Clinton. More than that, one of his questions essentially boiled down to this: "Secretary liar-Clinton is historically awesome. Why don't you think so?"
Holt clearly got the liar-Clinton memo appealing for such help, and he heard loud and clear the message behind the Left's eviscerating of Matt Lauer after the NBC forum. All told, the debate was a complete disservice to the American people. A blatantly biased moderator faced off against one of two unfit candidates, neither of whom successfully made the case that they should be trusted as the leader of the free world. And we're asked to sort it out. Welcome to 2016. ~The Patriot Post
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