IRSgate Update: IRS Still Withholding Documents

by JASmius

It must be "state the obvious" day on the House Government Reform & Oversight Committee:

Representative Darrell Issa, the House Oversight and Reform Committee chairman tasked with running  congressional investigations into the IRS tea party targeting scandal, blasted the agency's new commissioner Wednesday, accusing him of being more concerned with managing the political fallout than cooperating with the probe.

According to Politico, the California Republican went head-to-head with IRS Chief John Koskinen over the "dismal" pace at which the agency was supplying documents related to the investigation which the panel requested last year.

"went head-to-head"?  When did Issa's committee hearing room get remodeled into an Octagon?

Koskinen said that IRS employees have spent nearly 100,000 hours and $8 million sending more than 1 million pages of documents to the committees, Politico reported.

Well, that's great, Kosk, it sounds impressive and all, but are those the documents that were actually requested?  Did you provide Issa with wheat or a blizzard of chaff?  And no matter what you may think, kitty photos and Photoshopped beefcake pics of O's joggling pecs are in the latter category.

"We are working through the process. We never said we wouldn't provide those. We will provide, we are actually trying to, in an orderly way, conclude the investigation," Koskinen said, according to Politico. "You may want this investigation to go on forever."

(1) What anybody in the Regime says is irrelevant because they're all filthy liars; (2) you're trying to "conclude" this investigation by starving it to death - i.e. "conclude" = "make go away"; and (3) I'm quite sure Chairman Issa would be delighted to conclude this investigation, and could, if you animals would stop obstructing it.

He also acknowledged at that time that the scandal, which saw many cases of conservative groups being targeted for heightened scrutiny, cost the agency the public trust but he hoped to turn that around.

Lost "the public trust" in the IRS?



The Committee majority, however, wasn't laughing:

Other Republicans on the committee, however, were clear that they do not trust the IRS and accused Koskinen of obstructing the congressional probes.

"Our witness today won't get us [former IRS official Lois Lerner's] emails. The guy who can give us the emails won't give us the emails. The same people who pressured Lois Lerner to fix the problem are the same people who picked John Koskinen to finish the job," Ohio GOP Representative Jim Jordan said, according to Politico.

They never will give you those emails, Congressman.  And if you think you can somehow force the Regime to cough them up, well, see the video above.

Democrats on the investigation's panel say Republicans are deliberately trying to give the controversy new life purely out of political motivations.

You mean like Dirty Harry Reid calling the Koch brothers "un-American"?  I guess they would know.