How corrupt is corrupt?

The Webster’s Dictionary for accuracy should have a picture of the Obama Administration right next to the word corrupt. It isn’t just Eric Holder’s department of Injustice, or even Barack Obama himself. It is a culture of pure political corruption that obviously runs through the administrative levels of every federal bureaucracy. Lois Lerner is the poster child for that corruption.

Lerner speaks! (To Politico)

posted at 9:21 am on September 22, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

The woman who made herself infamous for refusing to testify in the IRS scandal has finally broken her silence … to Politico, anyway. Flanked by lawyers during the interview, Lerner insists she did nothing wrong while running the tax-exempt unit at the IRS when it singled out conservative groups for investigation. If that’s the case, though, why is she telling that to Politico now rather than the House Oversight Committee then?

Lois Lerner is toxic — and she knows it. But she refuses to recede into anonymity or beg for forgiveness for her role in the IRS tea party-targeting scandal.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Lerner said in her first press interview since the scandal broke 16 months ago. “I’m proud of my career and the job I did for this country.”

The Inspector General of the Treasury certainly thought someone did something wrong. The original report revealed a concerted effort to target conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status for their efforts, while progressive applicants got a much easier ride. That targeting took place in Lerner’s unit, and just to emphasize that, Lerner and her management staged an apology right before the IG report went public in May 2013. Then-IRS commissioner Steve Miller acknowledged that he and Lerner staged that apology to take the sting out of the exposure of the targeting plot a week after it was given:

IRS Lawyers Admit Lois Lerner Obstructed Justice

Via FoxNews, IRS lawyers have dropped a bombshell admission that Lois Lerner’s Blackberry was intentionally wiped and destroyed after the start of the Congressional probe into the activities of her division:

Lois Lerner’s Blackberry was intentionally destroyed after Congress had begun its probe into IRS targeting of conservative groups, a senior IRS lawyer acknowledged in a sworn declaration.

Thomas Kane, Deputy Assistant Chief Counsel for the IRS, wrote in the declaration, part of a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch against the IRS, that the Blackberry was “removed or wiped clean of any sensitive or proprietary information and removed as scrap for disposal in June 2012.”

That date – June 2012 – is significant because by that time, ex-IRS official Lerner had already been summoned before congressional staffers who interviewed her about reports of the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups.

This is a fairly astonishing admission and it’s difficult to see how this does not constitute textbook Obstruction of Justice under 18 USC 1505 (and possibly other statutes):

Whoever, with intent to avoid, evade, prevent, or obstruct compliance, in whole or in part, with any civil investigative demand duly and properly made under the Antitrust Civil Process Act, willfully withholds, misrepresents, removes from any place, conceals, covers up, destroys, mutilates, alters, or by other means falsifies any documentary material, answers to written interrogatories, or oral testimony, which is the subject of such demand; or attempts to do so or solicits another to do so; or
Whoever corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication influences, obstructs, or impedes or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper administration of the law under which any pending proceeding is being had before any department or agency of the United States, or the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress—
Shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or, if the offense involves international or domestic terrorism (as defined in section 2331), imprisoned not more than 8 years, or both.

Caselaw on obstruction of justice indicates that it does not matter whether the emails in question were in fact held on a central server, you can be dinged for obstruction for the attempt to destroy the information if you delete mails in, say, your Outlook inbox even though your company keeps all emails on a central server. It is intended to protect against the eventuality where (as here) the emails in question mysteriously go missing from the central server or the person responsible for retrieving them claims that it would be impossible or impractical to do so. Not to mention the fact that you don’t get a free pass for obstruction of justice just because you’re not smart enough to do it properly.
Every new revelation in this case points to an aggressive effort on the part of the IRS to improperly and possibly illegally hide evidence from the public as to its activities. It is past time for someone at DOJ to show as much interest in the proper administration of justice with respect to the IRS as they did to Arthur Andersen.

Her protestations to the contrary, there is simply no doubt that Lois Lerner knowingly willingly and with a full forethought of malice committed felony level criminal actions. Richard Nixon was forced to resign from the Office of President of the United States of America mere hours ahead of certain Impeachment over far less serious criminal actions taken on his behalf by his subordinates.

After his assertions that there was not even a smidgen of corruption over at the IRS, Barack Obama should be held to the exact same standard as Richard Nixon was held to.

If there is any place in America more corrupt that the Obama Administration (shocking as this assertion may seem) then it can only be Congress itself. It is Congresses responsibility to ensure that Lois Lerner and every other bureaucrat who like Lois Lerner, willfully and knowingly breaks the law, is held to the fullest accountability by the law. Failure by Congress to do so has but only a single solitary consequence, and that is to destroy the public’s faith in the America legal system and by extension, the government of the United States of America.

The Department on Injustice tells Congress to fuck off.

Go to the 4:25 mark and start watching there. Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis asks James Cole, deputy attorney general in the Department of Justice, why after Congress held Lois Lerner in contempt that the DOJ, who is required by Law, has not begun prosecuting Lerner. Cole respond by telling DeSantis that the Department of Injustice has decided to exercise prosecutorial discretion. In other words, Cole told Congress to fuck off they weren’t going to prosecute Lois Lerner and there isn’t a damned thing Congress can do about it.

The smidgens have come home to roost…

The not so Reverend Jeremiah Wright once presumed to proclaim that America’s Chickens were coming home to roost, now it appears that Barack Obama’s smidgen’s are instead coming home to roost.

The Lerner Files: “smidgens upon smidgens” of corruption

Do you remember way back in February when the President said that not only was there not massive corruption in the IRS scandal, but not even a smidgen of corruption? Ah… good times, my friends. This weekend I highly recommend that you check out a piece by Ed Rogers, writing at the Washington Post, with the amusing title, More IRS smidgens show up. ‘Perfect.’

Anyone paying attention to the Internal Revenue Service scandal has been waiting for the next smidgen to drop. Well, two more hit pretty hard this week. At the president’s next encounter with the media, I will scream collusion if no one asks him for his exact definition of a “smidgen,” and if he thinks he has seen a smidgen of corruption yet. At this point, only the most gullible or culpable can continue to claim there is no compelling evidence in this case. Given the delays, lies and stonewalling, there is no viable argument against a special prosecutor.

The two items in question are ones which we’ve already discussed here. One – perhaps the most damning in recent months – was the shocking (meaning, not shocking) revelation that Lerner had previously told her co-workers that, “we need to be cautious about what we say in emails” and wanted to know if instant messaging texts were recorded.

The second was the oh-so-understandable “misunderstanding” about whether or not she had printed out any of her e-mails. And let’s face it… who can be sure what was meant when somebody asks you if you printed something? Did they mean “print” the documents, or print print the documents? It’s all terribly confusing.

First we hear that U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan has ordered the IRS to testify under oath regarding exactly what transpired regarding the destruction of Lois Lerner’s emails. Justice Sullivan is no one to toy with, he is as demanding and fearless as they come. I think it is a fair prediction to make that someone is going to testify before him and the result is that someone is going to end up going to prison as a consequence of that testimony.

Federal judge orders IRS to explain lost Lerner emails ‘under oath’

A federal judge has ordered the IRS to explain “under oath” how the agency lost a trove of emails from the official at the heart of the Tea Party targeting scandal.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan gave the tax agency 30 days to file a declaration by an “appropriate official” to address the computer issues with ex-official Lois Lerner.

The decision came Thursday as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, which along with GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill has questioned how the IRS lost the emails and, in some cases, had no apparent way to retrieve them.

Now we are hearing that another Federal Judge wants in on the action, it would seem that U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton smells blood in the water. While considering this information, remember that it took quiet a while for Watergate to come up to speed and force Richard Nixon from office.

Second federal judge wants info on lost IRS emails

WASHINGTON — A second federal judge has ordered the IRS to provide information about lost emails from a central figure in the agency’s tea party controversy.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said Friday he wants to know whatever became of Lois Lerner’s computer hard drive. IRS officials say Lerner’s computer crashed in 2011, destroying an untold number of emails.

At the time, Lerner headed the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt status. She has since retired.

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has told Congress that Lerner’s hard drive was recycled and presumably destroyed. If that’s the case, Walton said he wants a sworn affidavit saying so by the end of next week.

Walton also wants information about the IRS inspector general’s investigation into the lost emails.

Walton spoke at a hearing Friday in a lawsuit by a conservative group against the IRS. True the Vote, which says it advocates for the integrity of elections, sued the IRS over delays in its application for tax-exempt status.

Walton’s order came a day after another federal judge ordered the IRS to explain under oath how it lost the emails. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who issued his order on Thursday, gave the tax agency a month to submit the explanation in writing.

When we throw into this now toxic mix former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin publicly calling for Obama’s impeachment it would seem that the situation might very well be getting drastic for Obama.

Palin makes the case for impeaching Obama

Her op-ed earlier this week focused on immigration. Today’s op-ed is a more comprehensive indictment, starting with the case that “high crimes and misdemeanors” includes dereliction of duty, not just statutory crimes.

I want to quote this part:

Impeachment is the ultimate check on an out-of-control executive branch. It is serious, not to be used for petty partisan purposes; and it is imperative that it becomes a matter of legitimate discussion before the American people lose all trust in our federal government.

Impeachment requires moral courage to advance what is right, and it requires political will. A complacent or disheartened electorate may silently endure these abuses from the administration, the permanent political class is only too happy to maintain the status quo, and the mainstream media is not a fair watchdog. So, the nation’s last line of defense is for We the People to rise up and say, “enough is enough.”…

Some argue that at best the House might vote for articles of impeachment, but the Senate is unlikely to convict. But that is no argument against holding a president accountable and sending the people’s message to all successors…

The only thing necessary to transform America into something unrecognizable is for good men to do nothing! If not these violations and the president’s promise to continue to “go it alone” in ignoring the separation of powers and rule of law, what will it take for you to take a stand? How bad does it have to get?

Ultimately, she’s saying, this all comes down to public outrage, which is exactly right — but that’s why there’s going to be no impeachment. Right? If the wider public shared her many objections to Obama — power grabs, amnesty, ObamaCare, NSA spying, Benghazi, the Bergdahl prisoner swap — his job approval would be in single digits. As it is, he’s at 41 percent, which is poor but not nearly so atrociously bad that any congressional Democrats would feel compelled to remove him from office. Even among the 54-55 percent who disapprove of his job performance, there are bound to be loads of people who think that he’s guilty of nothing more than incompetence, not dereliction of duty worthy of the first successful forcible ouster of the president in American history. I haven’t seen any polls on impeachment lately, but I’d guess that impeachment supporters would start with something like 55-60 percent of the public opposed (all Democrats and a majority of indies) and 40 percent or so in favor (most Republicans). Once the media went to work on “GOP extremism,” Democrats started rolling out talking points about how the “party of no” isn’t interested in real solutions for the middle class, and a few centrist Republicans in Congress publicly expressed opposition, it’d probably move another 10 points against. What then?

Which no doubt explains Eric Holder’s reaction to Palin calling for Obama’s Impeachment. Eric would of course lose any possibility of receiving a Presidential Pardon for his role in the IRS scandal as well as his part in “Operation Fast and Furious”. Yes, Eric Holder has plenty of reason to attack Sarah Palin, since he is neck deep in trouble himself.

Eric Holder: Palin Wasn’t a Good VP Candidate, Even Worse Judge of Who Should Be Impeached

Attorney General Eric Holder is challenging Republicans who are calling for his and President Obama’s impeachment, and denouncing what he calls a “gridlocked Washington” stalled by what he says is a Republican Party bent on blocking any of the administration’s efforts.

“For whatever reason, [some] Republicans decided early on that this was a president they were just simply not going to cooperate with,” Holder said in a rare interview with ABC News’ Pierre Thomas. “And over the past five-and-a-half years, we have seen demonstrations of that, where the president has reached out his hand, offered compromises that have simply not been met [in the way] they have been in the past by a Republican Party willing to do the appropriate things.”

Administration efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform, for example, have failed. Asked about calls by Sarah Palin to impeach Obama over the administration’s immigration policies, Holder said: “She wasn’t a particularly good vice presidential candidate. She’s an even worse judge of who ought to be impeached and why.”

Holder similarly dismissed calls for himself to be impeached for declining to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS scandal. Holder insisted that a special prosecutor isn’t necessary, with “career people” and FBI agents “doing a good, professional job” investigating the matter.

Things are starting to look as if they could take a really bad turn for the Obamanation Administration and Obama’s various cronies. Obama and company apparently never learned anything from the Nixon or Clinton scandals, in the end, it come down to this. It’s the cover up stupid.

Hat Tip to Hot Air’s partsnlabor for the phrase “The smidgens have come home to roost…”

What could go wrong?

It’s a simple enough question, and yet, even so, when it comes to various political issues, it never seems to get asked. Often, it doesn’t get asked, because the obvious answers are answers that those pushing various issues do not want to happen, regardless of how likely those outcomes might be.

When the Whitehouse and Lois Lerner both failed to get an individual through confirmation hearing that Lois Lerner and the Whitehouse needed to be able to target TEA Party groups for political reasons, Lois took the insanely unprecedented action of targeting a sitting Senator for legal attack. Apparently not one single time did it occur to either Lois nor anyone in the Obama Administration to ask, “What could possible go wrong”.

Report: Lerner Targeted Grassley After He Blocked Obama Nominee She Needed To Help Prosecute Conservatives…

Hmm, I’m beginning to think this scandal isn’t as “phony” as Obama’s been claiming.

Via Daily Caller:

Ex-Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner tried to audit Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley after Grassley blocked President Obama’s nominee to head the Department of Justice (DOJ) tax division, an executive branch insider told The Daily Caller.

Grassley made it more difficult for the IRS and DOJ to work together to target conservative groups by blocking Obama’s political appointee Mary L. Smith from taking over the DOJ Tax Division, which prosecutes criminal cases for the IRS. Grassley held up the nomination in early 2010, just as Lerner and fellow IRS officials were mapping out their targeting strategy. The White House later withdrew Smith’s nomination.

The source confirmed to The Daily Caller that the White House and IRS officials “were very upset at Senator Grassley and Republicans for blocking a vote on Mary Smith’s nomination.”

The IRS relies on the DOJ Tax Division to prosecute both criminal and civil cases, and has entire legal teams devoted to making DOJ referrals. Placing a political appointee as assistant attorney general for the DOJ Tax Division was a top priority for the Obama White House.

Grassley made sure that no Obama political nominee got confirmed for the post, and kept in a “career,” or non-political, DOJ tax head for another two years.

The IRS claims that incriminating emails that most likely incriminate the Obama Whitehouse were accidentally destroyed when Lois Lerner’s hard drive crashed, over 70%% of American’s straight up believe that the IRS is lying and that they intentionally destroyed those emails.

Most Americans believe IRS destroyed subpoenaed emails to obstruct investigation

Most Americans believe somebody at the IRS deliberately destroyed nearly two years’ worth of subpoenaed emails in an attempt to obstruct the congressional investigation of the tax agency’s illegal targeting of Tea Party and conservative nonprofit applicants, according to a new Rasmussen survey.

Seventy-one percent of respondents say they don’t believe IRS claims that a mysterious computer crash destroyed emails to and from Lois Lerner and other high-ranking colleagues and officials outside of the agency.

Rather, the survey found, respondents think the agency deliberately destroyed the emails as part of a cover-up.

The poll, which was conducted from June 26-27, also found that two of three respondents also believe that the IRS officials involved in the scandal should either be jailed or fired.

Approximately 53 percent of respondents say they believe the IRS knowingly broke the law when improperly targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.

That is a four-point increase from earlier this year, pushing the number of people who suspect wrongdoing on the IRS’ part back to September 2013 levels.

“Little changed from the early surveys are the 22% who think the IRS did not break the law. Slightly more (25%) are not sure,” Rasmussen said.

Further, a plurality of respondents said they believe the targeting scandal occurred because the IRS was looking out for President Obama.

This is a level of blatant and in your face corruption that has never before existed in The United States of America, it’s what you expect of a third rate failed Banana Republic like Zimbabwe or Haiti, not the United States of America. Yet it is exactly where we find ourselves today.

Is there no one in this once great republic both capable and willing to stand up and say, enough is enough? Maybe, maybe we are about to find out.

BREAKING: Meet Emmet Sullivan, IRS Judge Who Once Sicced a Special Prosecutor on DOJ

Americans are appalled over the false testimony of four consecutive IRS Commissioners, Lois Lerner’s countless acts of malfeasance, and the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups and specific individuals, among them Senator Grassley. The ultimate outrage came over the lame, intellectually insulting assertions that all of the most relevant emails have gone missing from multiple IRS computers at the same time.

Today, Judicial Watch found a federal judge who has the integrity and fortitude to seek Justice—and this isn’t his first whack at the Department of Justice either. Enter Emmet G. Sullivan, United States District Judge for the District of Columbia. Mark July 10 in RED on your calendars.

Now, “Internal Revenue Service officials will have to explain to a federal judge July 10 why the tax agency didn’t inform the court that Lois Lerner’s emails had been lost,” the Washington Examiner reports.

Earlier today, attorneys for Judicial Watch sought a courtroom status conference “as soon as possible to discuss the IRS’s failure to fulfill its duties to this court under the law, as well as other ramifications of this lawsuit.” It took Judge Sullivan just a few hours to grant the hearing.

Now the IRS will have to talk to Judge Sullivan about all this—and he has the power to do something about it.

Judge Sullivan is the judge who held federal prosecutors in contempt, dismissed an unjust indictment against a United States Senator, and publicly excoriated the Department of Justice. He also had the moral conviction, courage and gumption to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Justice Department and the individual prosecutors.

The IRS, the White House, and the DOJ have a lot of explaining to do (and some emails to locate). The Washington Examiner reports that “No mention was made in that production of the lost Lerner emails, even though the original Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit filed in May 2013 specifically sought them. Judicial Watch further noted that ‘although IRS had knowledge of the missing Lois Lerner emails and of the other IRS officials, it materially omitted any mention of the missing records’ in an April 30 status update on its document production.”

Emmet G. Sullivan, a graduate of Howard University and Howard Law who was appointed by President Clinton, is one of the heroes of my new book, Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice. Judge Sullivan ordered an independent investigation of the Department of Justice, which revealed its corrupted prosecution of United States Senator Ted Stevens.

Regarding Justice Sullivan, it would be interesting to hear his reaction to learning that Lois Lerner and the Whitehouse conspired to prosecute a sitting Senator, not for crimes he committed, but because he thwarted their plans to use illegal methods of intimidating the Presidents political opponents.

What could possibly go wrong you ask? Well considering that Barack Obama has completely disregarded the United States Constitution and the United States various and sundry laws, that the United States Congress has done absolutely NOTHING in response to his indisputably illegal actions, and that the Judicial system has had zero ability to enforce their ruling on his administration, one could be forgiven for thinking that even asking that question is like temping fate.

Indeed, what could go wrong?

The IRS and Stout Hemp Rope should have a serious and mutual Come to Jesus moment.

There are all kinds of lies, there are the innocent kind, where I tell you something because I don’t want to hurt your feelings. No those pants don’t make your butt look big, yes those shoes look pretty. There are the lies told out of spite to hurt people, there are lies told because you are scared. There are the lies told so that you can take advantage of someone. Then their are the lies that are told because you hold the person you are telling them to in such disregard that you honestly do not believe they deserve hearing the truth.

In order for a lie to be believed, it has to hold enough truth for those hearing it to think that what they are being told is at least plausible. Someone at the IRS just threw out the mother of all, “You don’t deserve the Truth” lies, and topped it off with a level of arrogance that is utterly mind boggling, in that it didn’t contain enough truth to fool even a Neanderthal magically transported to modern day America.

Lois Lerner’s emails disappeared when her personal computer crashed and are totally unrecoverable. That is utter and complete unadulterated bullshit. Email’s are the next closest thing to forever that there is. They are not just stored on your computer’s hard drive, they are also archived on the hard drives and tape back ups of every single Email server that they transit through.

The Blaze’s Jason Howerton has an article where an IT guru utterly obliterates the IRS claim that a hard drive crash destroyed Lois Lerner’s emails.

Veteran IT Professional Gives Six Reasons Why the IRS’ Claim That It ‘Lost’ Two Years of Lois Lerner’s Emails Is ‘Simply Not Feasible’

A veteran IT professional tells TheBlaze that the IRS’ claim that the agency lost two years’ worth of former IRS official Lois Lerner’s emails is “simply not feasible.”

On Friday, members of Congress revealed that the IRS would not be able to hand over Lerner’s emails to and from other IRS employees from January 2009 to April 2011, possibly due to a “glitch” or “crash.” Lawmakers were seeking the emails as part of their investigation into the IRS targeting scandal.

Norman Cillo, an Army veteran who worked in intelligence and a former program manager at Microsoft, argued it is very difficult to lose emails for good and laid out six reasons why he believes Congress is “being lied to” about the Lerner emails:

1. I believe the government uses Microsoft Exchange for their email servers. They have built-in exchange mail database redundancy. So, unless they did not follow Microsofts recommendations they are telling a falsehood. You can see by the diagram below that if you have three servers in a DAG you have three copies of the database.

IUn short, not only should the individuals at the IRS who told Congress that Lois Lerner’s emails were destroyed go to prison for lying to Congress, they should have an additional 10 years added to their sentence for indefensible stupidity in public, and another 10 additional years thrown on for incomprehensible incompetency on the job.

Congress shit’s it’s pants and claims it smells like flowers.

Congress is corrupt, pretty much everyone know this by now. Yet somehow, they just can’t seem to resist shoving in America’s face just how corrupt they are. As if Darrell Issa’s incessant go nowhere do nothing grandstanding investigations aren’t bad enough. Now we are treated to another Hollyweid fictional episode of Congressional corruption aka Kabuki theater.

BREAKING: Committee Votes to Refer Lois Lerner for Possible Criminal Prosecution

The House Ways and Means Committee voted 23 to 14 today to refer former IRS official Lois Lerner to Attorney General Eric Holder for possible criminal prosecution. The vote broke along party lines.

Before the vote, in a contentious open-to-the-public hearing that lasted only few minutes, the House Ways and Means Committee voted to immediately go into a closed session to discuss the letter proposed by the committee’s majority to refer Lerner for possible criminal prosecution.

Is there anyone with two functional brain cells out there who honestly believes that Department of Injustice Attorney General Erick Holder, the same Erick Holder who just threatened Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert for asking questions about Operation Fast and Furious, and Holders current state of contempt of Congress, will prosecute Lois Lerner just because Congress demands it?

Congress can’t even get Holder to turn over documents, it could not be any more clear that congress, who is in full and indisputable knowledge of who is in charge of the Department of Injustice knows beyond any possible shadow of a doubt that their referring Lerner for criminal prosecution is 100 percent pure bullshit theater.

This is how you define corruption. Stand on top of your soapbox and make proclamations you not only know will never ever come to pass, but you only make because of the certainty of your knowledge that they will never come to pass. Referring Lois Lerner for prosecution is exactly such an act.