Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” host Bill O’Reilly used his “Talking Points Memo” segment to question the decision-making within President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice.
According to O’Reilly, after a series of recent events, there was indeed now enough evidence of “corruption” for an independent prosecutor to pursue charges in the cabinet department.
Transcript as follows:
Many Americans, including this one, now believe the fix was in regarding investigations into the IRS hammering some right-wing groups and the Clinton email fiasco.
Evidence is mounting that the FBI did not behave properly while looking at Secretary Clinton and her staff.
There are two more articles about that today in the Wall Street Journal.
The crux of the matter is this:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
House Judiciary Committee Sept. 28, 2016
REP. JIM SENSENBRENNER (R-WI): “Doesn’t it concern you as an investigator that your chiefs in the Justice Department decided to become an immunity producing machine for many people who would have been very key witnesses should there have been a prosecution?”
JAMES COMEY, FBI DIRECTOR: “I don’t think of it that way. Doesn’t strike me there was a lot of immunity issued in this case.”
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Director Comey’s statement is strange to say the least.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
Sept. 28, The O’Reilly Factor
JONATHAN TURLEY, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY LAW PROFESSOR: “These five immunity deals are very baffling. I mean, it’s like playing a game of tag and nobody is it. It makes for a rather boring game when you give out immunity to people like Cheryl Mills. And her immunity deal just — I find it perplexing.”
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Cheryl Mills is Hillary Clinton’s lawyer and was one of her top advisers at the State Department.
Now we don’t try cases on TV here but the FBI and the Justice Department have a lot of explaining to do on the email front.
Same thing happened in 2013 when an IRS boss — Lois Lerner — was accused of illegally targeting conservative groups for audits.
Lerner took the Fifth in the case and was never really held legally accountable.
Something then Attorney General Eric Holder refused to explain.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
House Judiciary Committee, April 8, 2014
REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): “When did you interview Lois Lerner? Where did the interview take place? Who was the personnel who conducted the interview at the Justice Department? And at any time during the interview did she exercise her Fifth Amendment rights and refuse to answer questions?”
ERIC HOLDER, THEN-ATTORNEY GENERAL: “Because this is an ongoing matter, I’m not going to answer those questions.”
JORDAN: “You can’t answer. Well, let me ask you this. Did you interview Lois Lerner?”
HOLDER: “As I said, this is an ongoing matter and I’m not going to comment on an ongoing matter.”
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Mr. Holder never clarified the situation to the American people, something he was honor bound to do.
But President Obama did make a statement when I asked him about the IRS deal:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
Feb. 2, 2014
O’REILLY: “You’re saying no corruption?”
OBAMA: “No.”
O’REILLY: “None?”
OBAMA: “No. There were some — there were some bone-headed decisions…”
O’REILLY: “Bone-headed decisions …”
OBAMA: “– out of — out of a local office …”
O’REILLY: “But no mass corruption?”
OBAMA: “Not even mass corruption, not even a smidgeon of corruption, I would say.”
O’REILLY: “Okay.”
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Talking Points believes there is now enough evidence of corruption in the Justice Department that an independent prosecutor should be appointed.
We all know that Mr. Obama will not do that.
But he should.
We need honest government.
And that’s the memo.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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