Kimberly Strassel has more on the "phony" IRS scandal that continues to plague the administration.
In late summer of 2008, Obama lawyer Bob Bauer took issue with ads run against his boss by a 501(c)(4) conservative outfit called American Issues Project. Mr. Bauer filed a complaint with the FEC, called on the criminal division of the Justice Department to prosecute AIP, and demanded to see documents the group had filed with the IRS.
Thanks to Congress's newly released emails, we now know that FEC attorneys went to Ms. Lerner to pry out information about AIP—the organization the Obama campaign wanted targeted. An email from Feb. 3, 2009, shows an FEC attorney asking Ms. Lerner "whether the IRS had issued an exemption letter" to AIP, and requesting that she share "any information" on the group. Nine minutes after Ms. Lerner received this FEC email, she directed IRS attorneys to fulfill the request.This matters because FEC staff didn't have permission from the Commission to conduct this inquiry. It matters because the IRS is prohibited from sharing confidential information, even with the FEC. What the IRS divulged is unclear. Congressional investigators are demanding to see all communications between the IRS and FEC since 2008, and given that Ms. Lerner came out of the FEC's office of the general counsel, that correspondence could prove illuminating.
Keep in mind that Lois Lerner is the former head of the exempt-organizations division of the IRS who took the fifth when questioned by congress about IRS targeting of conservative groups. Releasing that information as she did is against the law. As Ms. Strassel points out, Ms Lerner was at the IRS in the summer of 2008. This was prior to the election of Barack Obama when he was not yet President Obama.
Would candidate Obama have been shielded from knowledge of the improper release of confidential tax information by the IRS? Is it possible that his campaign staff would have acted independently, without Senator Obama's knowledge? Keep in mind, this is the president who has promised to bypass congress and take action by executive order or by regulatory means to achieve his policy (or more accurately political) goals.
Obama may be an abysmal president, but he is a brilliant politician. Can you be a brilliant politician without paying attention to detail? He is a community organizer. Community organizing tactics are about getting in people's faces. Take power, then see what anybody is going to do about it. It's my opinion that President Obama didn't know specifically about Lerner's improper actions because he and his staff knew that he shouldn't know about them. The term is "plausible deniability".
Church Committee
A U.S. Senate committee, the Church Committee, in 1974-1975 conducted an investigation of the intelligence agencies. In the course of the investigation, it was revealed that the CIA, going back to the Kennedy administration, had plotted the assassination of a number of foreign leaders, including Cuba's Fidel Castro. But the president himself, who clearly was in favor of such actions, was not to be directly involved, so that he could deny knowledge of it. This was given the term plausible denial.[3]
Non-attribution to the United States for covert operations was the original and principal purpose of the so-called doctrine of "plausible denial." Evidence before the Committee clearly demonstrates that this concept, designed to protect the United States and its operatives from the consequences of disclosures, has been expanded to mask decisions of the president and his senior staff members.
It would seem that the doctrine of plausible deniability also protects a president from the inconvenient inquiries of an opposition party. His administration cronies and his boosters in the mainstream press are on board with that. They say this IRS stuff is a phony scandal, there's no evidence of White House involvement. But, there is. Circumstantial, maybe, but yes there is evidence of White House involvement.
Obama has only to suggest, and sycophants leap to his bidding. Like King Henry II of England who asked, "Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?" The murder of Thomas Becket followed. King Henry, of course, denied that he ever meant for that to happen. Of course not.
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