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The Smidgen Surfaces
Perhaps I should say, “A big damn smidgen of corruption has surfaced.”
It’s rare in real life when the investigator becomes the investigated. This is the stuff of movies and courtroom dramas on TV. But something very interesting happened on Capitol Hill, because someone who shouldn’t be a person of interest in an ongoing investigation just became one. Explosive new e-mail evidence has come to light in the IRS Tea Party targeting scandal, indicating that the ranking Democrat member on the House Committee for Oversight and Government Reform, Elijah Cummings, may have had his staff colluding with the IRS in 2012 to put pressure on Catherine Engelbrecht’s fledgling voter integrity group in Texas, True The Vote, for information about the group’s software and training materials and information on its volunteers— information and requests that are virtually identical to what the IRS was demanding from Engelbrecht’s group. Coincidence or collusion?
When questions surfaced in February that Cummings’ office may have been engaged in coordination with the IRS, the congressman vehemently, as National Review reports, denied it.
True the Vote’s lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, raised the prospect that the minority staff had exchanged information with the IRS at a hearing in February. “We want to get to the bottom of how these coincidences happened,” Mitchell said, “and we’re trying to figure out whether any — if there was any staff on this committee that might have been involved in putting True the Vote on the radar screen of some of these federal agencies.” Cummings said in response that Mitchell’s tacit allegation was “absolutely incorrect and not true.”
Of course, Congressman Cummings is also on record saying that this whole business about the IRS deliberately targeting Tea Party groups is a phony scandal. Despite all the congressman’s ire and protestations to Darrell Issa, the Oversight Committee chairman, it now looks as though Issa’s fellow congressional investigator (cough) may have just found himself stuck in a tangled web of lies and deceit that he himself has spun.
If further damning evidence solidifies the link between Cummings, his congressional staff and operatives at the IRS, will the congressman recuse himself from the committee and relinquish his leadership position? If it can be shown that Cummings willfully and deliberately lied and deceived members of the committee in which he plays the leading role for his party and the American people (for what that’s worth nowadays), will a House ethics probe be initiated and pushed by Speaker Boehner? Will Nancy Pelosi publicly rebuke and admonish her colleague for such dishonest and deceitful behavior — behavior that might be proven to be an obstruction of justice in an ongoing investigation? Is there a smidgen of a chance that President Obama will declare Cummings unfit to hold public office for attempting to derail an investigation into a phony scandal that, per the Prez, hadn’t a smidgen of corruption?
What to look for in the coming days: the further desperate demonization of Darrell Issa. Will you really be surprised if Congressman Issa is in turn investigated by the FBI or the Justice Department? Don’t be. Our contemptible Attorney General may just go there. If he’s willing to attack a state for upholding federal immigration law; if he’s willing to continue to stonewall Congress on a number of investigations — including one that caused the death of an American DEA agent and hundreds of Mexican nationals — don’t think for a minute that he wouldn’t be happy to make an example of Darrell Issa or any of the Republican members of his committee. After all, we know who has his back.
In the meantime, as a meager American citizen, I would simply and timidly offer a just a wee smidgen of advice for Representative Cummings. You might want to lawyer up, because the dark cumulus clouds of censure may soon coalesce around the Capitol dome.
This puts a different spin on the recent dust-up between Issa and Cummings during hearings.
I said at the time that I thought Issa’s body language suggested he had the goods and only doggedly following procedure was preventing him from blowing the lid off the whole thing. Lies gush forth like a fire hose, but the truth comes out in drips.
This is more drip, drip, drip.
The congressmen from Maryland doth protest too much…and too often apparently.
Oh my gosh! It’s Christmas in April!
Trying to take some delight in this.
But it will get buried with all the others.
Brian, what an awesome story. If prosecutions ever happen, we have a chance for a future without tyranny. Cummings showed himself to be a very strange fellow these past few years.
Thanks for posting this, I wanted to post, but I found myself sputtering with glee, unable to put together more than two sentences. And perfect title. With any luck, we’ll see the original “smidgen” quip on the news introducing Thursday’s contempt vote story.
In answer to your questions in the third-to-last paragraph: no, yes, no, no. These guys play hardball, they fight as a team, and they’re not finished transforming the country. Issa, Boehner, and all the Republicans in Congress must stand up and fight, but the only way this scandal breaks out into the open and sticks with the public is for a few courageous mainstream investigative reporters to risk their careers and push this into the open. Who wants to be the next Woodward/Bernstein? Maybe this scandal is the one that triggers the unraveling of the whole mess.
Meanwhile, Lerner will be voted in contempt of Congress today. Will media outlets cover it accurately or cover it up? Will the press try to finesse this in order to cover the royal ass, or will some among them calculate that it’s time to defect, and cover their own?
Brian, this is certainly suspicious. Didn’t Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin and some other Democrat senators write to the IRS early in 2011 asking the IRS to investigate Tea Party groups? I’ve come to the conclusion that Lois Lerner must be given immunity if we are going to get to the bottom of this scandal. As distasteful as that is, she is the one with her finger in the dike preventing this scandal from flooding the Obama administration.
Virtues are moral habits that are difficult to attain – they involve the perfection of a faculty. Our President and all his minions seem to strive for the opposite – they have perfected the art of ‘weaving a tangled web of lies and deceit’ and given us a government of vice.We have always had bad politicians, but now, with this administration, we take most of the vice for granted. The president flagrantly breaks the law, his AG runs guns to criminals, federal bureaucracies are used as political thugs and bullies; a US Ambassador is killed on foreign soil and the electorate yawned. The country settled for mediocrity.It will require incredible perseverance and courage to keep after this corrupt administration. I hope that men like Issa, Gowdy, and Boehner can teach us what virtue is once again.Putting stories like these in the light will help. Thanks Brian.
You make a good point, but I fear that even if granted immunity Lerner wouldn’t testify honestly. She is “all in,” and has no choice but to protect the higher-ups. When it comes to protecting the mission, these people are ruthless. Scott alludes to this in the first part of his post (#8).
Having said that, I have no idea where it goes from here. Eric “you don’t wanna go there” Holder certainly isn’t going to prosecute. The court of public opinion may be the only realistic avenue, but my hope is that Issa and company have devised an effective strategy.
I’m afraid for Democrats, censure is NOT a dark cumulus cloud, but rather a brief shadow caused by a light cloud, cirrus variety, whisking across the sun. In 1983, Dem Rep Gerry Studds was censured for getting a 17 year old Congressional page drunk and having sex with him. His constituents gave him two standing ovations at his first meeting with them after the censure, and he continued to serve until 1997.
Any attempt at censure of Rep Cummings I suspect would be met by the Congressional Black Caucus with rebuke of any and all involved (I think “Issa,” “witch hunt,” “tireless servant of his constituents” and – of course – “the undeniable factor of race” would figure prominently). Any errors on Cummings part will be deemed “inconsequential procedural missteps.”
You may be right. Or as others have suggested, this may be the tipping point. The next few days will tell. Let the games begin.
Lerner needs to spend some considerable time behind bars if necessary.
From the Washington Examiner:
Among those tools is the House’s “inherent contempt” authority under the Constitution, which was initially exercised in 1795 during the First Congress and on multiple occasions thereafter. Lerner could be held until January 2015 when a new Congress is seated, which could issue another subpoena and throw her in the clink again if she still balks at testifying.
The last paragraph is problematic. Despite his outburst to the contrary, Holder doesn’t care about being discredited. He’s shown time and again that the President’s radical agenda trumps the rule of law. As the AG of the land, he is walking embarrassment to the ideal of equal justice under the law and upholding federal law. He also belongs in jail. If the DOJ takes the Lerner case it will languish and go nowhere. I don’t know if Congress is compelled by the Constitution to offer DOJ the case against Lois Lerner before she gets tossed in Congress’ jail cell…but if so, how does it make sense to toss Lerner’s case to them when the AG himself has been slapped with Contempt of Congress? Hopefully, Issa, Boehner and company are taking the time to think this through and consulting with attorneys.
Brian here is a link to a parody I wrote on the Schumer letter to the IRS in 2013. Durbin wrote a letter to the IRS in 2010, Schumer wrote a letter to the IRS in 2012.
http://pilgrimspathaquinas.blogspot.com/2013/05/we-are-not-fascists-by-way-where-is.html
http://www.schumer.senate.gov/Newsroom/record.cfm?id=336270
Excellent work, Brian.
Given that a congressman, of either party, is nose-deep in dispensing favors as a routine part of his day … and having the access and clout of being a congressman … I just assume that this is the sort of thing that happens regularly. I have no doubt that Cummings sees nothing wrong in anything he did. He’s surely going to call this “working on behalf of constituents,” and skip over the idea that the coercive power of government can’t be used as a political favor.
I’ll bet other representatives (of both parties) are now a little nervous about their favor-dispensing-through-bureaucratic-pressure tactics. It may explain why others don’t jump on the Issa bandwagon.
That’s why it’s so important that everyone in Congress live by the same lies. The entire house of cards will fall if one of them (of either party — but let’s face it, there’s really only one party) starts telling the people what’s really going on in the halls of power.
How could you get Rep. Cummings on obstruction of justice? No matter how much he colluded with the IRS his ‘opinions’ and ‘judgement’ about the validity of investigation he would still defend as being valid.
Maybe I am missing something or something else is will come out.
I suspected all along that Cummings’s constant “Move along; nothing to see here,” attitude betrayed a sense of fear.
It’s fun being right.
No justice, no peace.