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Howard Dean, former Vermont Governor and DNC chairman, blew the whistle on Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) politicking on the Last Word Monday night. After Lawrence O’Donnell pointed out that Darrell Issa refused to release the full IRS transcripts because they didn’t fit with his scandal mongering narrative, Howard Dean said, “Darrell Issa is basically a fraud. I mean, Darrell Issa is a propagandist who instead of doing his job for the United States government the way he’s paid to do thinks this is all about politics.”
He then announced that Darrell Issa is about to be undressed by the ranking member, something none of us want to see.
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Lawrence O’Donnell: Darrell Issa has previously quoted very selectively from those interviews but he has refused to publicly release those interviews. Among the facts Darrell Issa has refused to release but congressman Cummings has now revealed, the IRS manager who supervised the team of screeners that evaluates applications for tax-exempt status in Cincinnati has 21 years of experience at the IRS, and he described himself to the Republican committee staff as “a conservative Republican.” The IRS manager also said, “I do not believe that the screening of these cases had anything to do other than consistency in identifying cases that needed to have further development.” When asked if he was aware of any political motivations behind the screenings, screening centralizing and development of tea party cases, he said he was not. When asked if he had any reason to believe that anyone in the White House was involved in the decision to screen tea party cases, he said he did not…
Howard Dean: Yeah. The interesting thing about this is first of all, Elijah Cummings has been a very courageous congressman for a long time. He leads with what he thinks is right, which is a reasonably unusual quality in congress these days. And Darrell Issa is basically a fraud. I mean, Darrell Issa is a propagandist who instead of doing his job for the United States government the way he’s paid to do thinks this is all about politics. And it isn’t. And he’s about to be undressed by the ranking member. And I think it’s great. It’s about time somebody told the truth in Washington. and Elijah Cummings is telling the truth.
One of the “problems” with Washington is that Republicans, who claim they are not a part of D.C. and are there to shake things up, are actually abusing the system by doing almost nothing except politicking. (That would be the opposite of their claim that they are “outsiders” and “reformers.) Darrell Issa is a big part of that.
Issa was chosen by the Republican Party to lead the Obama witch hunt precisely because he has no ethics to stop him from misleading the public, abusing taxpayer money, and making wild accusations with no proof. Issa is another Sarah Palin, too ignorant and full of himself to realize he’s being used by the GOP.
Republicans are telling Issa to shut it because of moments like this, when his lies are called out and challenged publicly and he once again taints the GOP brand as the party of do-nothing obstructionists hell bent on punishing Obama for winning an election fair and square.
The IRS scandal is not a scandal. A conservative Republican chose to use words like “Patriot” as search terms because Tea Party groups were hiding their primary purpose. The real scandal here is why Darrell Issa is using your tax money to lie to you and failing to release the full transcripts, all the while House Republicans refuse to pass a jobs bill or meet with the Senate to begin the budget reconciliation process. Issa claims he’s after the “truth” but his actions belie this claim at every turn.
Sadly, according to a recent Pew poll, the majority of the public believes that the IRS targeted conservatives for political reasons, rather than the fact that conservatives were trying to cheat the government and the taxpayers by forcing taxpayers to subsidize their political activity.
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