Gangsta

Just imagine, if you will, that a major government agency, say the IRS, under the direction of a Republican president (say, George W. Bush), repeatedly and abusively did everything possible to impede an investigation looking into evidence that progressive organizations were targeted for audit and harassment. Imagine further that the major government agency repeatedly lied before congress, actively destroyed evidence of wrong-doing that probably lead to the GOP White House, and stonewalled every attempt to get to the truth. Further assume that this agency was aided and abetted by the sitting president and his administration, his attorney general, and his party.

Gangsta? Right?

Do you think the the main stream media might have interest in the situation as it's described above? When the GOP president said there's not a "smidgen of evidence, "do you think the media would take that statement at face value and move on? When his AG did nothing to investigate and when pressured, then had the chutzpa to appoint a DoJ lead investigator who recently worked for the IRS, do you think the media would shrug their collective shoulders and look away? When members of his party filibustered congressional investigations, suggesting that they were a waste of money, do you think the media would trumpet their comments without critique?

Yesterday, we learned this from Sidney Powell of The New York Observer:

The IRS filing in federal Judge Emmet Sullivan’s court reveals shocking new information. The IRS destroyed Lerner’s Blackberry AFTER it knew her computer had crashed and after a Congressional inquiry was well underway. As an IRS official declared under the penalty of perjury, the destroyed Blackberry would have contained the same emails (both sent and received) as Lois Lerner’s hard drive.

We all know by now that Lois Lerner’s hard drive crashed in June 2011 and was destroyed by IRS. The emails of up to twenty other related IRS officials were missing in remarkably similar “crashes,” leading many to speculate that Lois Lerner’s Blackberry perhaps held the key. Now, the Observer can confirm that a year after the infamous hard drive crash, the IRS destroyed Ms. Lerner’s Blackberry—and without making any effort to retain the emails from it.

Judge Sullivan has had to pry information from the IRS to learn anything about Ms. Lerner’s Blackberry. Now, with these latest revelations, I’m confident he’s not finished.

In two elusive and nebulous sworn declarations, we can glean that Ms. Lerner had two Blackberries. One was issued to her on November 12, 2009. According to a sworn declaration, this is the Blackberry that contained all the emails (both sent and received) that would have been in her “Outlook” and drafts that never were sent from her Blackberry during the relevant time.

With incredible disregard for the law and the Congressional inquiry, the IRS admits that this Blackberry “was removed or wiped clean of any sensitive or proprietary information and removed as scrap for disposal in June 2012.” This is a year after her hard drive “crash” and months after the Congressional inquiry began.

The IRS did not even attempt to retrieve that data. It cavalierly recites: “There is no record of any attempt by any IRS IT employee to recover data from any Blackberry device assigned to Lois Lerner in response to the Congressional investigations or this investigation,” according to Stephen Manning, Deputy Chief Information Officer for Strategy & Modernization.

There's plenty of evidence, plenty of corruption, plenty of reason to investigate, but for Obama's trained hamsters in the media, there's not a "smidgen" of interest.

There are few real heroes in this major scandal, but U.S. District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan is one of them. He seems committed to get to the truth, has been angered by the stonewalling he has encountered from the Obama administration and the IRS, and is doing something about it. I, for one, hope he succeeds and that the people responsible for the acts and the coverup go to jail.

UPDATE (8/28/2014)
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Is there a strategy behind the "gangsta" behavior of the Obama administration with regard to the IRS scandal? Seth Mandel believes there is. He writes:

If the latest revelations about the IRS are correct, then its officials have approached the abuse-of-power scandal with a clear strategy, pretty much from the beginning. They have been betting that, since their illegal targeting campaign against those who disagree with President Obama has had the backing of Democrats in Congress, they needed only a media strategy, not a political one. And that media strategy appears to have been: conceal or destroy potential (and actual) evidence, and assume that this activity will be less damaging than whatever is in the files they’ve worked to hide.

It’s a direct challenge to the media, in other words.

After reviewing recent news outlined in my post, Mandel goes on to write:

It is especially a challenge to the press if it’s true that the emails still exist but the government doesn’t want to go through the hassle of finding them. It’s actually more brazen, in some ways, than even trying to destroy them. It’s the sign of a government with nothing but pure contempt for the people. As Walter Russell Mead argues:

But if Fitton’s claim is true, then the IRS scandal really has arrived, and it is difficult not to conclude that we are dealing with a genuine constitutional crime. This wouldn’t be a matter of bribes or personal blackmail or sexual misconduct or any of the ordinary forms of corruption that are unfortunately far too common. Rather, it’s about the deliberate use of the power of the federal government to go after political opponents, and then a desperate attempt by others to cover it up. We’re still hoping that this story is exposed to a lot more light (and perhaps less heat), but the more we see, the worse and worse it looks.

Indeed, it would go beyond the sadly all-too-routinized forms of corruption, which are bad enough. The newest round of revelations describe a government agency (and its elected allies) not only thoroughly corrupted but also insistent on its entitlement to stand above accountability. The allegations warrant front-page headlines from the country’s major newspapers, surely. So where are they?

They're doing what trained hamsters have been taught to do—protecting Barack Obama, disregarding their ethics, their objectivity, and their job, and doing a tremendous disservice to the American people. The main stream media can no longer be trusted to 'speak truth to power.' Sad.

UPDATE (9/5/2014)
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The Obama administration gangsta ethic keeps on coming. This from the AP today:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The IRS says it has lost emails from five more workers who are part of congressional investigations into the treatment of conservative groups that applied for tax exempt status.

The tax agency said in June that it could not locate an untold number of emails to and from Lois Lerner, who headed the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt status. The revelation set off a new round of investigations and congressional hearings.

On Friday, the IRS said it has also lost emails from five other employees related to the probe, including two agents who worked in a Cincinnati office processing applications for tax-exempt status.

The agency blamed computer crashes for the lost emails. In a statement, the IRS said it found no evidence that anyone deliberately destroyed evidence.

No evidence, huh? The emails for everyone involved have been "lost" and various "computer crashes" are to blame. No only is this the most incompetent administration in history, it's also the most dishonest.