A Politicized Justice Department

The latest twist to the ever-evolving IRS political targeting scandal, which began over a year ago now, would have been even bigger news this week were it not for the ISIS terrorist threat.

A top spokesman for Attorney General Eric Holder made a fatal error on Tuesday: Holder’s spokesman, Brian Fallon, mistakenly called House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa’s office in search of “some help leaking information about the IRS’s scrutiny of conservative groups.”

This devastating revelation is just further proof that nothing about Eric Holder’s Justice Department’s investigation into IRS targeting is legitimate, and, as is the case with this current administration as a whole, partisan politics reign supreme.

Rather than conducting a thorough investigation into the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS, the Justice Department is blatantly coordinating with Democrats on the House Oversight Committee to obstruct various investigations, rather than discover the truth. According to The Hill:

“This highly partisan and combative approach to oversight by the department shows a disregard for the independent investigatory prerogatives of Congress and a deliberate attempt to influence the course of a congressional investigation,” Issa wrote to Holder, adding that it was “unseemly” for the department to favor one party over the other when it came to sharing information.

While this boneheaded move sheds more light on how overtly political Eric Holder’s Justice Department has become , it just adds to the frustration felt by Republicans and all who want to know the truth in this ever-evolving case.

Fallon deals with his mistake by saying, “There is nothing inappropriate about department staff having conversations with both the majority and minority staff, as they prepare responses to formal inquiries,” The Hill reports.

However, according to The Washington Post, a Democratic staffer from the Oversight Committee responded to Fallon’s assertion, stating, “We never received any call like this, and we never took any action. Apparently, this individual (Fallon) doesn’t know our staff that well because he didn’t know who he was talking to, and he didn’t even know the right phone number.”

Therefore, not only was Holder’s spokesman blatantly lying upon realizing his mistaken phone call, House Democrats weren’t even willing to associate themselves with any of the Justice Department’s partisan political stunts. Is it believable that this has never happened before? Doubt it.

As the Obama administration continues to disengage, disappoint, and deteriorate, mistakes like this are, unfortunately, par for the course. However, we must not sit idly by and let an unhinged Justice Department block this investigation. My organization, Citizens United, and I have been saying since May of 2013, when the IRS targeting of conservative groups first came to light, that Eric Holder must appoint an independent special counsel to conduct this investigation. Our Justice Department (thanks in part now to Brian Fallon) is clearly only interested in partisan obstruction tactics. If Eric Holder does not appoint a special counsel, he should be impeached.