Last updated on April 14th, 2018 at 04:11 pm
Sometimes a thing is so obvious it burns. But no one sees it because it’s been pre-framed in such a way that everyone is busy examining the defense and missing the offense. So it is with the fake IRS “scandal”, that I warned from the beginning appeared to be an attempt to work the refs for Karl Rove’s Crossroads and other conservative dark money groups, as we now know is true. Why did I make that claim? Logic.
It’s a simple exercise of what was going on at the time that the unsubstantiated and inaccurate claims were made. The IRS was investigating Crossroads. Who would it benefit if the narrative was established that the Obama administration was targeting conservatives? Dark money conservative groups. Whose playbook is this? Karl Rove. Accuse first, loudly, of what you are doing in order to exhaust the public of the subject, so that when the facts finally come out no one is paying attention. The inaccurate headlines “inform” the public: “Obama IRS scandal”.
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I’ve also been saying that I suspect Lois Lerner was set up by the GOP to make these accusations in the first place. Everyone is focused on the ball the Republicans threw at the Obama administration, so they’re saying, gee it looks like Lois Lerner wasn’t working on the orders of anyone high up in the Obama administration. But that’s totally missing the forest for the trees.
Darrell Issa misled the public. There is no evidence that anyone in the Obama administration gave an order to the IRS and Lois Lerner, because conservatives were not being targeted. So now that we have cleared that up, and it’s been cleared up for months, that leaves us with Lois Lerner and the Republicans accusing her of all kinds of things because she won’t testify.
Issa went on Fox News and said Lerner would be testifying, when he knew she wouldn’t be. He did this in a way that suggested that Obama was close to being “caught”, and then he played surprised when she refused to testify, just like her attorney told everyone she would do. This move was that perfect Fox News move of suggesting guilt and conspiracy without saying it.
Republicans pretended to be outraged that she wouldn’t testify, suggesting with their puffed up pointed fingers that if only she would testify, they would have a case against Obama and the IRS.
But Republicans could fix all of that by giving Lois Lerner immunity.
Is there anyone remotely sane and awake in this country who believes that if Darrell Issa and/or any Republican had a chance at a real smoking Obama gun, they would turn it down?
Andrew Rosenthal noted in the New York Times on Monday that Chris Wallace actually asked the Republican Chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight why they haven’t offered Lois Lerner immunity if hard facts is what they are after (my bold):
Mr. Wallace did not let that go. He said many people, “including Republicans,” think that Mr. Boustany’s committee (House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight)and the other dog-with-a-bone panel in the House, headed by Representative Darrell Issa, “have blown” the I.R.S. investigation.
“I mean, let’s face it,” Mr. Wallace said, “nobody really cares what Lois Lerner did, the question is did she get it from higher ups or just the decision by a mid level bureaucrat in the IRS?”
He asked why the committee didn’t give Ms. Lerner immunity and ask a simple question: “were you given direction by anybody above you?”
Mr. Boustany deigned to admit that Mr. Wallace was raising a “debatable point” that was “worthy of discussion.” But the Fox anchor again did not let him slide. “You’ve had a year sir,” he said. “You’ve had a year.”
Why wouldn’t Republicans want an answer to this question: “Were you given direction by anybody above you?”
Darrell Issa says he wants the truth. Republicans claim they wasted all of these resources and $14 million and counting in taxpayer money for the “truth”, and yet when the “truth” is in arm’s reach, they run away.
So a logical person is left to ask, why won’t they give her immunity?
And from there, she blew the whistle publicly on something that was not happening. Where did she get the idea that this was happening? What or who prompted her to make this bizarre public declaration?
Who benefited from the declaration?
And you see, the answer to these questions leads us right back to the very people who are benefiting from this false narrative/scandal, who have already been found guilty of deliberately misleading the public by refusing to release full transcripts that would have proven them wrong, in order to advance their false narrative. Republicans have established a pattern of misleading the public in service of establishing a false Obama scandal (e.g., not allowing certain testimony on TV, Benghazi emails, not calling experts who can really answer their questions, etc.), so it would be rather ignorant to pretend that it couldn’t have happened earlier as well. In fact, it would be an anomaly at this point if the Republicans were being honest in their witch hunts.
Unlike Republicans, we don’t say a thing is so just because it makes sense and the evidence suggests it. Facts matter. But they could clear all of this up simply by granting her immunity and asking her who, if anyone, gave her any direction regarding this “scandal”?
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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