Patterico's Pontifications

6/20/2014

New Talking Point: IRS Scandal Is A Conspiracy Theory

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:39 pm



I was pretty much destined to despise any guy who stands in front of that podium in the White House Briefing Room and lies for Obama, but this “Earnest” fellow really gets under my skin. Watch as someone asks a perfectly reasonable question — did the White House search for emails to and from Lerner on its end? — and gets derided for being a conspiracy theorist:

Note how he keeps looking down, almost as if he is reviewing a set of pre-typed talking points in memorandum format:

Call IRS scandal a conspiracy. Compare it to ridiculous conspiracy theories so people will think of it the same way.

Lloyd Doggett got the memo. He lobbed a bunch of silly softballs to that arrogant IRS commissioner today:

“Have you ever been in Benghazi?” Doggett started.

“No,” Koskinen replied.

“Do you know if you or Ms. [Lois] Lerner have ever had any responsibility for anything having to do with Benghazi and our embassy there?”

“No.”

Doggett’s didn’t specify what aspect of the Benghazi attack, which resulted in the death of four U.S. officials, he sees as a conspiracy. However, Republicans have said the Obama administration didn’t do enough to try to save the U.S. officials, and then purposefully misled the country about the cause of the attack in the first few days. Democrats have dismissed these charges as an attempt to hurt Democrats politically.

Doggett then pressed on to see if Koskinen was involved in other conspiracy theories.

“How about Area 51 out in Roswell, New Mexico, where all those space aliens allegedly came? Have you ever had any responsibility for that?”

“No,” Koskinen replied, without clarifying further whether he believed aliens were being held in New Mexico.

“Have you ever had custody of the president’s birth certificate?” Doggett then asked.

“No,” Koskinen replied.

“I believe one of the mistakes that you’ve made in dealing with the committee today is that you did assume professionally that this is a serious inquiry,” Doggett concluded. “I believe it’s an endless conspiracy theory here.”

At that point in the memo, it says: pause for laughter. (They really have no self-awareness in the Obama administration.)

P.S. In addition to the clear distribution of talking points, I had another reaction: Lloyd Doggett?? That guy’s still around? I guess so.

62 Responses to “New Talking Point: IRS Scandal Is A Conspiracy Theory”

  1. Ding.

    Patterico (9c670f)

  2. I believe one of the mistakes that you’ve made in dealing with the committee today is that you did assume professionally that this is a serious inquiry

    when your whore congress is going around *trying* to make people think your whore congress is comprised of a bunch of sleazy whores

    conspiracy theories are probably the least of your problems

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  3. Well, when it is a conspiracy you naturally should expect people to catch on.

    Kevin M (b357ee)

  4. Although it may well be that screwing the public is SOP, no conspiracy required.

    Kevin M (b357ee)

  5. Well there is a conspiracy, involving not only the IRS, but the FEC, OSHA (in the special case of Catherine Engelbrecht) and Justice, and there is a parallel to Benghazi, a threadbare deception,
    at odds with the facts,

    narciso (3fec35)

  6. Lloyd Doggett actually said that? I guess the complete collapse of the Democrat Party in Texas makes you do strange things.

    I remember when he was a star, one of the bright lights of Democrats, a successor to Granny Richards and Mark “Mil-Q-Toast” White. Maybe he still is in the fevered dreams of the Houston-Austin-El Paso-Brownsville section of the state, but I haven’t heard anything about him in years. I mean, you know, he is in Congress, but he represents Austin. Most of Texas ignores Austin except for the hipsters in the “Keep Austin Weird” T-shirts. Like Wendy Davis.

    Ag80 (eb6ffa)

  7. Earnest is not good at lying.

    JD (9fd0e3)

  8. I think all questionings of Obama flunkies from now on should start with a reading of the statute of limitations for perjury and obstruction of justice.

    nk (dbc370)

  9. That’s because he’s not frank.

    Ag80 (eb6ffa)

  10. Lloyd Dogsh*t lends a Legislative Branch hand to an Executive Branch that has repeatedly used the federal government bureaucracy to attack Obama’s perceived political enemies. The criminal, Eric Holder, held in contempt for ignoring the laws of the United States of America, allows this continuing criminal enterprise to break law after law. It is beyond time a Special Prosecuter was appointed to investigate the activities of this gangster government.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  11. The “thorough” internal IRS investigation finds nothing amiss. The long promised emails to congress now are suddenly gone. Lerner, a principal at the center of the controversy resigns and pleads the fifth. But those damn Republicans and their conspiracy theories!

    elissa (f40916)

  12. The Dems and the MFM media had this effectively bottled up until their lies got too brazen.

    JD (9fd0e3)

  13. People need to be reminded, again, that Richard Nixon’s use of the IRS as a tool to compromise and attack HIS perceived enemies was the second article of his impeachment.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  14. It IS a conspiracy.

    So, what compels actual look-sees at WH emails? Are they mandated to follow congressional subpoenae?

    Would the meta-data be subject to congressional oversight if the actual contents are not?

    Ed from SFV (3400a5)

  15. I think it’ll help the reporters in the press room who engage lying Josh Earnest holding his ubiquitous coffee cup if they think of Wally from Dilbert.

    elissa (f40916)

  16. Cut off by the chairman of the committee he
    should have been! In contempt held he should
    have been!

    Yoda (773b62)

  17. Maybe Lloyd might have to eat his hat:

    reason.com/blog/2014/06/20/the-irs-had-a-contract-with-an-email-bac?fb_action_ids=10203926514421456&fb_action_types=og.likes

    narciso (3fec35)

  18. Many of us normal Americans know what Mr Doggett doesn’t. Area 51 is located west of HWY 93 in Nevada. Roswell, where the “aliens” crashed is in eastern New Mexico. Only about 700 miles apart. Also, until recently, Area 51 existence had been denied by the govt. That was a conspiracy theory too, and then it wasn’t.

    Doggett is a libidiot!

    Rich (a5d991)

  19. Rich:

    That is funny. Good luck with that. Also thanks for the contribution from the normal crowd.

    Jeez Louise.

    Ag80 (eb6ffa)

  20. I think the ole tree of liberty could stand a little watering round about now…

    Gazzer (6a76d0)

  21. Earnest is not good at lying.

    He needs to take tips from Jay “I never lied” Carney.

    Patterico (9c670f)

  22. Lloyd Doggett?? That guy’s still around? I guess so.

    Doggett is one of those Democrats who won’t leave Congress except for feet first on a gurney with a white sheet draped over his entire body.

    Every time we hear that Texas is some redoubt of conservatism, let’s recall that it keeps sending Lloyd Doggett to Congress.

    (Just kidding, Lone Star partisans! I love Texas too. Just yanking your chains.)

    JVW (feb406)

  23. You are mistaking Travis County for Texas.

    Ag80 (eb6ffa)

  24. Many of us normal Americans know what Mr Doggett doesn’t. Area 51 is located west of HWY 93 in Nevada. Roswell, where the “aliens” crashed is in eastern New Mexico.

    If he knew anything about Minor League Baseball he would know that the AAA Pacific Coast League team in Southern Nevada is the Las Vegas 51s, and their team logo is an alien head.

    JVW (feb406)

  25. in just the past week we learned the IRS is corrupt cause it doesn’t get enough money and that controlling diseases is not something the Centers for Disease Control does particularly well

    our government sucks ass

    ass is what the United States government sucks

    and the whole world knows it

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  26. “ass is what the United States government sucks.”

    So what, happy? Who cares?

    Ag80 (eb6ffa)

  27. i care

    ME

    it makes me feel sad inside

    it wasn’t supposed to be this way

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  28. People need to be reminded, again, that Richard Nixon’s use of the IRS as a tool to compromise and attack HIS perceived enemies was the second article of his impeachment.

    In Nixon’s case, the article said that he, “endeavored to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposes not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigation to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.”

    Endeavored.

    In the Obama case, it actually took place.

    Dave (in MA) (35a832)

  29. yes Mr. Dave

    the corruption’s on like donkey kong

    and andrew joseph stack the third

    twas like a sheep who left the herd

    a rebel sheep with wings of steel

    the fascists brought him not to heel

    on wings of eagles this sheep he flew

    and struck a blow for me and you

    more of his kind this nation wants

    cronuts to rise from the croissants

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  30. That article said Nixon “endeavored to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposes not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigation to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.” The article is an allegation of wrongdoing and must be proven.

    Any 1L law student would find that Nixon, although ranting and raving about such investigations, never acted and his subordinates, except for one minor aide, never took any actions that could support such an inditement. Nixon could have fought and won on the facts and the law but put the country first and resigned.

    Michael M. Keohane (f4fe2f)

  31. Has anyone heard from Peggy Joseph? did Obama fill her gas tank and pay her mortgage??

    firefirefire (b0457e)

  32. Every time we hear that Texas is some redoubt of conservatism, let’s recall that it keeps sending Lloyd Doggett to Congress.

    There is the saying “who knows what evil lurks in the heart of every man?” Substitute the word “evil” for “liberalism” (or “dumbbell liberalism”) and you’ll never be fully confident in the decisionmaking skills of most of your fellow humans.

    Actually, just about all of us know a liberal or two amongst our circle of family, friends, acquaintances and colleagues, and that is true of people no matter where they live, even in the heart of Texas.

    The only places or situations where you’ll find perhaps little to no ideological diversity would be sub-sections of this society, such as black America. Surveys indicate something like over 90 to 95 percent of folks in that category are of the left or favor liberal politicians. That fact or characteristic should always be seen as a cautionary tale, a warning sign proving the phrase that the road to hell is paved with good intentions (or liberalism run amok).

    Mark (246552)

  33. sure a lot of visits to the White House by IRSers that subsequently lost their emails goin’ on…

    http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/06/20/irs-official-whose-emails-were-lost-visited-white-house-35-times-n1853823

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  34. Earnest is not good at lying.
    JD (9fd0e3)

    You can almost see the puppet strings behind him.

    Patricia (5fc097)

  35. no strings involved with Josh “Lambchop” Earnest.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  36. They will continue to get away with anything they want because the Democrat rank and file has said it’s okay. What would be beyond the pale for these folks now? They’ve already accepted the President lying to sell Obamacare. At the point you accept being lied to, what don’t you accept? If the White House and the Democrats in Congress continue to lie and obfuscate, only the Republicans in Congress can address it. But they don’t have the stones to stand against a media crapstorm. When do we ask for reparations from the Democrat rank and file that are costing us our democracy? Yeah, I question their patriotism.

    East Bay Jay (a5dac7)

  37. Democrats hope and pray to Gaia that Obama’s serial F*ck-ups discredit only him and not their vision of BIG GOVERNMENT.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  38. BTW… this site is worth a little over $42K … at least as deemed by http://urlm.co/www.patterico.com

    But we all know it’s priceless.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  39. $42,934.37 to be precise…

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  40. What amazes me is that some allegedly professional journalists are allowing The White House to make them look like a bunch of fucking morons.

    I mean, you’d think these people in the White House Press Corps would have some self-esteem.

    If the President’s press secretary tried to make me out to be a whackjob conspiracy theorist, I’d make him understand in no uncertain terms that his physical well-being was being jeopardized.

    “Sir, if you suggest one more time that I’m some whackjob conspiracy nut, I’m going to beat your ass right here in this room, live, on television. Now answer my question, you son of a bitch.”

    justwondering (84ecc5)

  41. Democrats cannonizing (pokerface) IRS rep – think this was from Jason Mattera:
    http://dailysurge.com/2014/06/irs-got-exemption-today-fawning-democrats/#ARmyvu1YQ35RT49S.01

    Judy Eaton (213f13)

  42. Progressive Government is a RICO conspiracy.

    askeptic (8ecc78)

  43. People need to be reminded, again, that Richard Nixon’s use of the IRS as a tool to compromise and attack HIS perceived enemies was the second article of his impeachment.

    And he didn’t actually do that, he just wanted to.

    “He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavoured to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be intitiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.”

    0bama hasn’t just “endeavoured”, he’s actually done it.

    Milhouse (b95258)

  44. definitely enemy action;

    http://sharylattkisson.com/epa-in-contempt-for-destroying-computer-files/

    Um, that happened 11 years ago.

    Milhouse (b95258)

  45. If the President’s press secretary tried to make me out to be a whackjob conspiracy theorist, I’d make him understand in no uncertain terms that his physical well-being was being jeopardized.

    “Sir, if you suggest one more time that I’m some whackjob conspiracy nut, I’m going to beat your ass right here in this room, live, on television. Now answer my question, you son of a bitch.”
    justwondering (84ecc5) — 6/21/2014 @ 8:24 am

    And you’d be portrayed as just a run-of-the-mill whackjob. My guess is you’re here to make this blog look like Pat encourages “whackjobs”. Go back to DU, thinkregress, media mutters, or whatever liberal bastion of childishness, and stay there.

    Hadoop (f7d5ba)

  46. there’s always tapping on the wall of the cave;

    http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/06/the_good_news_democrats.html

    narciso (3fec35)

  47. Remember when Hillary went on national TV to claim there was a vast conspiracy to bring her husband down?

    Milhouse (b95258)

  48. Talk about actual nutso conspiracy theories

    Milhouse (b95258)

  49. Does he also deride conspiracy theories at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs? (the Inspector General has now admitted there was vast conspiracy that ran throught the entire Veterans Health Administration)

    Sammy Finkelman (107dde)

  50. truth be told, Barack Obama and Eric Holder make Richard Nixon and John Mitchell look like amateurs in the annals of criminal behavior.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  51. Just watched FNS panel-member Judy Woodruff unwittingly make a damning admission when she said she hadn’t reported on the IRS scandal AT ALL before she weakly defended Koskinen as a man of intergrity.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  52. As far as the IRS is concerned, Richard Nixon was a rank amatuer compared to John F. Kennedy, and anybody else that did znything with the IRS.

    If that had been the only count, Nixon would have come out all right, becausde, indeed, it was all just talk (on Sept 15, 1972)

    Nixon had a problem in that on June 23, 1972, he had tried to conceal the connection of his Re-Election committee to the Watergate break-in, a fact which was already known, but which Nixon and his aides were convinced (by John Dean, who else?) could and should be kept concealed.

    Nothing much happened, actually, though – the CIA did not tell the FBI not to investigate – and after June 30, when John Mitchell resigned as his campaign chairman, Nixon was no longer interested in doing that.

    The next thing that Nixon is supposed to have done in connection with a cover-up is authorize the payment of “hush money” to E. Howard Hunt. Overlooked is the fact that John Dean had already given Hunt the money when he went to ask Nixon for permission on March 20, or was it March 21, 1973, and the argument that John Dean used was that Hunt was threatening to talk about the Ellsberg break-in – a “national security” matter, not a political matter, and Nixon only thought anyway he would be buyng time. Now it happens, if you read the Fourth Amendment, that break-in was also criminal, but they didn’t think of it that way at the time.

    Sammy Finkelman (107dde)

  53. 33. This is an important detail. This news actually was in the paper Friday morning, in an op-ed column on page A11 of the Friday, June 20,2014 Wall Street Journal, although I didn’t read it till later. The best I could get for something that happened around June 13, 2011 was the rushed through retroactive tax exemption approval for the Barack H Obama Foundation. This is better:

    http://online.wsj.com/articles/kim-strassel-about-those-missing-emails-1403220814

    As to Ms. Lerner’s behavior, consider that House Ways & Means Chairman Dave Camp first sent a letter asking if the IRS was engaged in targeting in June, 2011. Ms. Lerner denied it. She engineered a plant in an audience at a tax conference in May 2013 to drop the bombshell news about targeting (maybe hoping nobody would notice?). She has subsequently asserted a Fifth Amendment right to silence in front of the only people actually investigating the affair, Congress. Now we learn that her hard drive supposedly defied modernity and suffered total annihilation about 10 days after the Camp letter arrived.

    Is there something in those lost emails? The fact that they are “lost” at all probably answers that question.

    And an editorial on page A12 fills in some more details.

    Fox News Sunday also has this chronology, and gives the exact dat of the Dave Camp letter as (Friday) June 3, 2011.

    Sammy Finkelman (107dde)

  54. her hard drive supposedly defied modernity and suffered total annihilation

    Defied modernity, because it was a somewhat rare occurrence by 2011 for a hard drive to crash accidentally and for the files also to be irrecoverable.

    I think I did have a 11 or 12 year i-Mac3 hard drive crash in 2013, but I don’t know. I got that computer secondhand in 2012, in part as partial settlement for a debt when somebody moved.

    I liked the fact that when FireFox as running and the session crashed, you could get back not only the web sites you were visiting but even what you had typed in the coomment box, but I didn’t know much about handling files on a Macintosh. I had no deliberately saved files there.

    Earlier, the main icon for Firefox had disappeared. But later it stopped booting. I don’t know if it was a hard disk crash.

    Sammy Finkelman (107dde)

  55. Democrats are claiming there is no evidence Lois Lerner’s hard drive crash was not an accident, and that she “immediately” went to the tech people to get back her files.

    Unless there is some other information I haven’t seen, what I see is that the hard drive was reported to have crashed on Monday, June 13, 2011, and it was over a month later , on Tuesday, July 19, 2011, that she accepted an offer to recover her files, telling them she didn’t expect them to succeed, and gave an e-mail she sent on the matter a Subject of:

    “Careful What You Ask For”

    The initiative clearly came from the technocal people.

    Perhaps Lois Lerner was very publicly moaning and groaning about how bad she felt that her hard drive had crashed. When somebody finally offerd to do something, she couldn’t verywell turn around and say she didn’t really care if the files were recovered.

    There are other things pointing to a deliberate crash. The time interval between the Camp letter and the crash is just right. It’s not the next day. The crash comes on a weekend or discovered after. Now if you needed few people in the office, a weekend might be the time to arrange for a crash.

    Questions to ask:

    1) When was the hard drive crash actually reported? (we know when other people were told about it at 10:19 am Monday morning, but when did she first tell tech support?)

    2) How did Lois Lerner get back to work? Was there a backup of her computer, but not a complete one, or did she not need a back up even?

    3) What was the wrong with the hard drive so that no files could be recovered?

    There was a fuss made over it, and so much work done, they must remember. There are probably also any number of e-mails dealing with this.

    By the weay we shopuldn’t there was any e-mail archive on her hard drive. That’s just a posisbility. She could have deleted old e-mails from the server without archiving them. She could have crashed her drive because of other considerations, like temporrary files, or private e-mail.

    Sammy Finkelman (107dde)

  56. More chronology: (taken from the Friday Wall Street Journal editorial)\

    Senators Wyden and Hatch were about to close a Senate investigation, and had agreed on a consensus statement of facts that was in the process of being drafted, but before tahtSenator Hatch wanted IRS Commissioner John Koskinen to formally attest that all relevant communications had bene produced to Congress. Only at that point did he reveal that some Lois Lerner e-mails could not be retrieved, ad suggested that they might have bene on her hard drive that crashed (they also may never have been put there, but just deleted from the server)and that there was various other e-mail they had which they hadn’t yet produced. Some were personal conveersations with her family on health matters and that would be made available at the IRS for Congressional staff to review.

    The result was the Senate committee re-opened its probe.

    On Monday, June 16, 2014, when Koskinen met with Senators Wyden and Hatch they learned that the IRS had come to the conclusion taht e-mails were missing in late February, 2014. The June 13, 2014 letter had implied (although it did ot state) it was mid-March when they discovered that. Anyway that is clearly before Koskinen’s March testimony.

    The Treasury Department was informed about the kmisisng e-mails in early april, and the White House was informed by the Treasury the same month.

    Koskinen did not disclose the other hard drive crashes, one of which was the hard drive of Nikole Flax, who visited the White House 35 times, and neitehr was ththis mentioned to Senate staff. I don’t think we yet have the date of that crash. Senator Hatch only learned about the other crashes from a press release by the House Ways and Means Committee. (some of these crashes may be genuine ad irrelevant)

    Sammy Finkelman (107dde)

  57. oh, it’s a conspiracy, alright, just not the one they’re pushing…

    http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/22/irs-cancelled-contract-with-email-storage-firm-weeks-after-lerners-computer-crash/

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  58. 60. You think maybe they maintained archives of e-mail, and when the contract was cancelled, they destroyed their copies?

    This article also says the other hard disk crash(es) occured sometime later in 2011.

    Sammy Finkelman (107dde)

  59. I must tell you that it’s hard to find your articles
    in google, i found this one on 15 spot, you should build some quality backlinks in order
    to rank your site, i know how to help you, just type in google – k2 seo tips

    Ariel Deckelman (3c1816)


Powered by WordPress.

Page loaded in: 0.0927 secs.