There’s not a “smidgen of corruption” in the IRS scandal, and if you believe otherwise, you’re a paranoid winger who believes in wacky conspiracy theories. That’s the narrative being pushed by the Obama White House, Democrat congressmen and Dem strategists in the wake of the latest highly suspicious developments in the scandal.
Let’s review for a moment what we’re being asked to believe:
In May 2013, ahead of a damning IG report on their malfeasance, the IRS admitted to and apologized for politically targeting and, subjecting to undue scrutiny 501(c)4s that were flagged for containing words like “conservative, Christian, tea party, patriot, and Constitution.”
Lois Lerner, the head of the tax exempt organizations division, said at the time, “We made some mistakes. Some people didn’t use good judgment… For that we’re apologetic.”
The president and Attorney General were outraged and vowed to get to the bottom of it. Holder put one of his best attorneys on the case – Barbara Bosserman, who maxed out in donations to both of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns.
At first, we were asked to believe it was just a few rogue agents in Cincinnati.
As the scandal heated up, the Regime and its acolytes tried another tack – they claimed progressive groups were targeted just as much as conservative groups. Nothing to see, here.
Lois Lerner would go on to plead the Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate oneself at a Congressional hearing, last year.
But we’re being asked to believe she has nothing to hide.
Now, after months of stonewalling congressional inquiries, the IRS is asking us to believe that for the period of January 2009 to April 2011, all e-mails between Lerner, and anyone outside the IRS were wiped out by a “computer crash.” Coincidentally, the same darn thing happened to six other IRS employees’ emails – one of whom was a frequent White House visitor, and was in discussions with Lerner about helping the DOJ prosecute conservative non-profit groups. Huh!
Computer experts are coming out of the woodwork to say that the IRS’s story strains credulity.
Norman Cillo, a former program manager at Microsoft, told The Blaze: “I don’t know of any e-mail administrator [who] doesn’t have at least three ways of getting that mail back. It’s either on the disks or it’s on a TAPE backup someplace on an archive server.”
Bruce Webster, an IT expert with 30 years of experience consulting with dozens of private companies, seconds this opinion: “It would take a catastrophic mechanical failure for Lerner’s drive to suffer actual physical damage, but in any case, the FBI should be able to recover something. And the FBI and the Justice Department know it.”
As House Ways and Means chairman Dave Camp put it – this loss means that “we are conveniently left to believe that Lois Lerner acted alone.”
But according to the White House and its loyal praetorians, if you’re suspicious of any of this, you’re a right-wing conspiracy nut.
On Friday, soon-to-be White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest repeatedly stressed to credulous reporters that “Republican conspiracy theories” were behind any and all questions involving the scandal.
Eric Bolling, filling in for Bill O’Reilly Friday night, debated a Democrat strategist who pushed the same talking points – including the now completely debunked claim that progressives were targeted by the IRS in equal numbers.
Emmy award winning former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson, who recently signed on with the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal website, says that the Regime is engaged in a propaganda campaign to discourage reporters from reporting on stories that are damaging to them.
Asked by Lou Dobbs, why the media was behaving more like lapdogs than watchdogs, Attkisson explained, “I think to some degree they have been played by propaganda interests who suggest that if these stories are covered they are simply phony scandals that Republican generated.”
Which they’re not, in my opinion. From a neutral viewpoint there are many important questions to be asked and implications here. But the propaganda campaign says that if you’re interested in the story you’re a conservative and a right-wing nut. And media should not be swayed by that but, I think to some degree they are.
Because of the Regime’s success at “controversializing” such stories, the American public may never learn the truth about any number of Obama’s scandals until he is long gone and it no longer matters.