X

GOP Quietly Releases IRS Report Finding Little Substantiation Of Wrongdoing, No Obama Involvement

Just as they did last month with the Benghazi report, the House GOP today released the results of its IRS investigation that found pretty much nothing.

Most Americans have become pretty media savvy. For instance, many people know late Friday afternoon or evening is when politicians release information they’d rather no one know anything about. It’s called “taking out the trash.” Before the rise of Internet-based media, it was effective. Today, not so much.

You could say a close cousin of taking out the trash is the House GOP’s method of trying to hide damming reports that show they are wasting millions of your tax dollars investigating nothing.

Remember last month, just before Thanksgiving, when the House GOP released its Benghazi report, a report that proved practically every conspiracy theory that had fuel countless hours of Fox News programming was, in fact, nothing? There was no “there,” there. 

No conspiracy, no dereliction of duty, nothing whatsoever in the way of wrongdoing by the President or his administration during the tragic events we now call Benghazi.

Remember the supposed IRS scandal? Obama is worse than Nixon, he’s using the IRS to target Tea Party groups, Tea Party groups claim. The GOP, conservatives, and, of course Fox News have been claiming that the White House has been co-ordinating with the IRS to suffocate Tea Party groups, and those damning emails will prove it, they’ve been claiming.

Well, wrong.

This afternoon, Republican Congressman Darrell Issa released the results of his 18-month investigation into the IRS. 

The report found there was no conspiracy, no co-ordination with President Obama or the White House.

In fact, the worst thing he could find was an email exchange between IRS employees who wanted to refuse to grant tax-exempt status to a Tea Party group that didn’t smell right. They called the group “icky.”

The right-leaning Politico calls the “icky” comment Issa found his “prime example in the report” of supposed wrongdoing.

“Icky.”

“Missing from the report,” Politico writes, is “evidence that the White House orchestrated a plot — a connection Republicans originally sought to make but later scaled back as they failed to find a smoking gun. But they still slam IRS officials for what they call biased behavior.”

“Conservative organizations were not just singled out because of their political beliefs — they were targeted by IRS officials and employees who expressed a general loathing toward them even while begrudgingly admitting that those organizations were in compliance with the only thing the IRS should care about: the federal tax code,” the report reads.

Horrors.

The AP reports that Issa’s investigation “fails to link IRS scandal to White House,” noting the “report says conservative groups were given improper scrutiny for more than two years from 2010 to 2012. It says senior IRS officials covered up the misconduct and misled Congress about it.”

The report specifically faults eight senior IRS leaders who “were in a position to prevent or to stop the IRS’s targeting of conservative applicants.”

Like their obsession with Benghazi, the House GOP will continue their investigation into the IRS, right up until a Democrat is elected to the White House.

 

Image via Flickr

Related Post