Friday, October 23, 2015

DOJ IRSgate Whitewash Lets Lois Lerner Off Scot-Free

by JASmius



Please, please, please, please don't anybody try to tell me that this eminently predictable, preordained travesty is a surprise to any of you in the slightest, because I will know that you're lying if you've paid the slightest iota of attention to this process over the past three years:

Lois Lerner will not be charged by the Justice Department for the IRS targeting scandal, CNN reports.

The Justice Department told Congress Friday that it was closing its two-year investigation into whether the agency targeted conservative, tea party and religious groups.

Which they illegally did,

No charges will be filed against Lerner, who formerly headed the department that screened applications from the groups seeking tax-exempt status, or any other IRS employee in the scandal, CNN reports.

Even though her felonious actions were clear, cut, and dried.  She just perpetrated them on the "right" targets and advanced the Obama cause of his 2012 reelection, which covers any and all such "sins".

In a letter to Congress from Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik cited by CNN, the Justice Department's investigation found "substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia leading to the belief by many tax-exempt applicants that the IRS targeted them based on their political viewpoints.

"But poor management is not a crime," Kadzik said.

No, but blatantly partisan management in violation of the law is.  But again, it advanced the Cause had targeted the "right" people, so all is forgiven.

"We [ignored all] evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt, or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution [we never had any intention of mounting]" he continued. "We also [ignored all] evidence that any official involved in the handling of tax-exempt applications or IRS leadership attempted to obstruct justice.

"Based on the evidence [partisanly cherry-picked] in this investigation and the recommendation of experienced career prosecutors and supervising attorneys at the department, we are closing our investigation and will not seek any criminal charges."

This is how Obama scandals die: not with a bang, in the words of T.S. Eliot, but with a whimper.  They erupt, Barack Obama claims to have read about it in the newspapers like everybody else, claims to be "more angry than anybody," vows to "get to the bottom of it".  And then it disppears off the media radar screens, and weeks and months later O, no longer faux angry, says it was no big deal and much ado about nothing - in the case of IRSgate, that there was "not a smidgeon" of corruption or lawbreaking or criminal wrongdoing.  After the pointless GOP congressional hearings run their course, it disappears into the black hole of a DOJ investigation, and two years later we are told that - SURPRISE! - the Obama DOJ has reached the same conclusion that their boss did two years ago.

Fancy that.

There were some conservatives that somehow managed to muster up some pyrrhic outrage, of course:

Conservatives were outraged Friday that the Justice Department closed its two-year investigation into the IRS targeting scandal without charging former supervisor Lois Lerner or anyone else at the agency, with tea party activist Mark Meckler slamming the decision as "a whitewash and miscarriage of justice."

"Lois Lerner made an entire career out of attacking conservatives and Christians," said Meckler, president of Citizens for Self Governance. "There is a reason the majority of Americans fear their government, and Lerner is the poster child for that reason."

"She has been rewarded for abusing her government positions to attack her fellow citizens," he added. "And until the Department of Injustice [Revenge & Coverups] once again becomes the Department of Justice, Americans will live in fear."...

The "wrong tribe" Americans, that is.

Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote, the Houston group that also sued over the scandal, referenced such Obama administration debacles at the Fast & Furious gun-running scheme and the email probe over the 2012 Benghazi attacks.

"This is a lawless administration," she said. "The FBI closing their investigation is par for course in the Obama administration, where criminals walk free and honest Americans fear their government."

Indeed.  But that's what sixty-two million Americans voted for, not once, but twice.  And once they kept that lawless Regime in power for (at least) another four years, this outcome was foregone conclusion.  What conservatives would be much better served doing is not wasting time on futile outrage but uniting the party in an effort to ensure that no such gang of corrupt, vicious leftwing extremists ever gets close to power in this country ever again.

And we know how THAT effort is going, don't we?

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