With Trump’s impeachment trial underway, Larry decides to look back at two scandals from Barack Obama’s presidency: the IRS and Fast & Furious scandals. Larry discusses whether these incidents were impeachable or not.
Fast and Furious
Obama Presidency Scandal Free? >>>>Cue Laughter
Larry Elder plays a great refutation of Valerie Jarrett’s assertion that the Obama administration was scandal free. In fact, this claim is demonstrably false, as THE DAILY WIRE highlights, here are four of their thirteen (with inserted media) — BREITBART lists eighteen:
1. Operation Fast and Furious. This egregious example of a reckless government endangering lives and then scrambling to cover it up has haunted Obama for years. As Daily Wire has explained, “Operation Fast and Furious involved the Obama administration arming drug cartels and thugs south of the border as a means to undermine the Second Amendment. The program resulted in the death of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. One of the Islamic terrorists in the Garland, Texas, attack also used a gun that was obtained through the Fast and Furious program.”…
2. Benghazi. The terror attacks in Benghazi, Libya resulted in four brave Americans dying despite the fact that help could have been sent, but wasn’t. Requests for security prior to the attack were repeatedly denied, and after the attack Obama and Hillary Clinton falsely blamed it on a video considered offensive to Muslims. During the election, Benghazi became associated with Clinton—and rightly so—but it is also Obama’s scandal as well. It is still not known what Obama was doing that night.
3. The IRS targeted conservative organizations. In 2013, Lois Lerner, who directed the Internal Revenue Service’s Exempt Organizations Unit, admitted that Tea Party organizations were targeted under the agency, but blamed it on lower-level employees. Such organizations were heavily scrutinized with invasive questions. Since then, Lerner and IRS commissioner John Koskinen have denied any wrongdoing and have stonewalled congressional efforts to investigate the matter, citing computer crashes for being unable to turn over related emails.
Meanwhile, a federal court concluded in August that conservative groups might still be facing targeted scrutiny from the IRS. It has also been reported that the Department of Justice (DOJ) knew about the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups as early as 2011.
The use of the IRS to punish political opponents is a proud Democrat tradition:
The first step of Johnson’s climb to power was accomplished by cheating during the 1948 Senate race in Texas, when he “miraculously” won the election by only eighty-seven votes.
Johnson’s dishonesty and ruthlessness were chronicled in 1964 by J. Evetts Haley in his book A Texan Looks at Lyndon as Johnson was facing Barry Goldwater in the upcoming presidential election in November of that year. Haley’s book was roundly trashed by liberals, who claimed he had gotten his facts all wrong, but decades later, after all the damage was already done to our culture, liberal historians like Robert Caro confirmed that Johnson did indeed steal his 1948 election by having his operatives stuff Ballot Box 13 with fake votes. He was called “Landslide Lyndon” for having “won” the election by only eighty-seven votes.
While in the Senate and running for reelection in 1954, Johnson faced criticism from two anti-Communist nonprofit groups that were educating the public about his liberal views. In retaliation for this attack, Johnson managed to insert language into the IRS Code that prohibits nonprofits, including churches, from endorsing or opposing candidates for political office. In effect, this corrupt man used the power of the IRS to silence his opposition. From that time forward and to the detriment of American society, the churches became less involved in public life and were too often unwilling to speak out on moral issues. Johnson would not be the last to use the IRS to silence opponents. President Obama’s operatives used the IRS to silence opposition at a level that could make an opportunist like Lyndon Johnson blush.
William J, Murray, Utopian Road to Hell: Enslaving America and the World With Central Planning (Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2016), 158-159.
4. The DOJ seized Associated Press phone records as well as phone and email records from Fox News reporter James Rosen. In the AP’s case, the DOJ was investigating a story involving “a CIA operation in Yemen that foiled an al-Qaeda plot in the spring of 2012 to set off a bomb on an airplane headed to the United States,” according to the Washington Post. The DOJ seized two months of phone records from the AP without informing the news outlet. …
In the Rosen case, the DOJ was investigating a story Rosen did involving North Korea and tracked “his movements and conversations,” according to Fox News, including phone numbers belonging to Rosen’s parents. The DOJ had listed Rosen as a “co-conspirator” under the Espionage Act in regards to the story—allegedly pressing a source for classified information. Rosen was never charged with a crime….
Hear/Watch Obama and His Admin`s Lies For Yourself!
CNN Takes Apart Obama Super-PAC Ad Blaming Romney for Woman’s Cancer Death (Plus: Who Is the Real Murderer?)
Hot Air has this quick comment in their post on the matter, entitled, “CNN: Wife of steelworker in new Obama Super PAC ad still had job and health insurance after he lost his.”
There appears to be no actual policy or business critique here. It’s just a string of events spread over five whole years, with certain key data omitted, and you’re supposed to infer causation without really being told why or how.
Via NewsBusters:
Red State has this:
The Obama supporting Super PAC Priorities USA yesterday introduced us to Joe Soptic. Mitt Romney killed his wife. Except it is complete and utter crap.
Mitt Romney and Bain Capital bought GST Steel at some point. Romney left day to day operations of Bain in 1999. Thereafter, Bain offered Joe Soptic a buy out and he refused. Eventually the steel plant went out of business and Joe went on the unemployment line. That happened in 2001.
In 2002 or 2003, Mrs. Soptic injured her rotator cuff and left her job. She lost her insurance. In 2006, she was diagnosed with cancer and died a few days later. It is a terrible tragedy that Mitt Romney had nothing to do with.
It seems Mr. Soptic chose poorly on the buy out offer, lost his job, and would prefer to blame Mitt Romney than anyone else. Priorities USA has set a new standard — Mitt Romney killed a woman, despite being removed from both time of death and decision making.
We need far less than the convoluted logic of Priorities USA to conclude that Barack Obama is a murderer.
He is covered in Brian Terry’s blood.
Brian Terry was a border patrol agent.
Barack Obama’s Administration — while Obama was serving as President — started Operation Fast and Furious. An American fire arms dealer, working with the Obama Administration, sold a fire arm to a Mexican gun runner who took the gun into Mexico to use in the ongoing drug/civil war.
That gun came back across the border in the hands of someone who used it to kill Brian Terry.
There is a much more direct link between Barack Obama and Brian Terry’s murder than between Mitt Romney and Ilyona Soptic’s death from cancer.
If we are playing by Priorities USA’s rules, from here on out we can refer to Barack Obama as a murderer, considering his administration made the decisions that led to Brian Terry’s murder at a time period when Barack Obama was still on the job.
Take note that Bain spent 100-million dollars to try and save Joe Soptic’s Job:
Pissed! White House Finally Admits Brian Terry Was Shooting Beanbags Against Cartel Assault Rifles
Via Gateway Pundit:
US Border Agent Brian Terry was shooting beanbags at cartel members before they shot him dead with assault rifles. (Truth about Guns)
For the first time the Obama Administration today admitted that Brian Terry and fellow border agents were firing beanbags and not bullets during their shootout with armed cartel members.
FOX News reported, via Free Republic:
For the first time, federal officials revealed Monday that murdered Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and an elite squad of federal agents first fired bean bags — not bullets — at a heavily armed drug cartel crew in the mountains south of Tucson in December 2011.
The announcement came as the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment charging five individuals allegedly involved in Terry’s death. A sixth suspect has also been charged in a related incident.
The U.S. is also offering a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to the arrest of four outstanding suspects believed to hiding out in Mexico. The names of the four suspects were revealed, and their pictures released, to the public. Police in the US and in Mexico are cooperating and under intense pressure to find them.
More… Roark added:
“Disarmed by the very bureaucrats that armed their killers.”
Differences Between “Fast & Furious” and “Wide Receiver”
From video description:
The liberal media continues to make a connection between “Operation Fast and Furious” under the Obama and “Operation Wide Receiver” under Bush, and major news outlets have made no effort to explain the difference.
MRCTV sat down with NRA president David Keene, who explains the fundamental difference between these two operations.
Reason’s Nick Gillespie Schools Rachel Maddow and Bill Maher on Fast and Furious (UPDATED w/ `Afterburner` that Explains the Difference)
Jon Stewart NOT On-Board with White House ~ Its that bad
`Mind-Numbingly Stupid` Is What Pelosi Is
Via Gateway Pundit