Trey Gowdy: IRS Scandal Leads Directly to White House [VIDEO]
Monday, April 28th, 2014We’ve uncovered in recent months that tremendous political pressure, coming from Democrats both in Congress and the White House, likely caused Lois Lerner and the IRS to begin targeting conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
There is even evidence in the form of emails between Lerner and other IRS employees that there was collaboration between the agency and the Department of Justice to harass and bully conservative organizations to make it difficult for them to be involved in the political process.
We also have emails from the staffers of Democrat members of Congress that suggest that some members sought, and the IRS gave them, conservative groups’ tax information.
Remember, outrage among Democrats at the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision was directed at conservative “secret money” that was being poured into elections from Tea Party and related organizations. As we noted before, Obama himself heavily criticized the decision in public speeches, lending credence to the notion that there was tremendous political pressure on Lerner to, as she put it, “deal” with this problem.
Lerner, as we have reported, has been very uncooperative in the congressional investigation thus far. She tried to plead the Fifth and refuse to answer questions from a congressional panel, but at the same time read a prepared statement in the hearing, which arguably constituted testimony and thus waived her Fifth Amendment right.
This has led the House Oversight Committee to vote to hold her in contempt of Congress.
Now, her attorney has agreed that she will testify, but only if she is granted immunity from criminal prosecution.
Trey Gowdy recently appeared on Fox News to discuss this new development in the investigation. Gowdy pointed out that Congress would be crazy to grant her immunity, given that we have no idea of the full extent of what she’s done.
He said that Lerner would be wise to write out a statement of what she would testify to, then Congress can decide whether to give her immunity, treating her as a witness rather than a defendant. However, Gowdy said he would prefer to treat her as a defendant since he believes she has no credibility.
When asked whether he would consider going to federal court to make a determination on whether Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment privilege and compel Lerner to testify, Gowdy said that the process would take too long and we wouldn’t get the answers we need right now.
He went on to say that the DOJ’s failure to take the investigation seriously is a major hang-up, as Lerner and her lawyers should be discussing immunity with them, not with the House Oversight Committee. Gowdy pointed out that Congress can’t prosecute or throw anyone in jail, so until the DOJ decides to prosecute, there’s not much Congress can do other than hold Lerner in contempt.
Finally, Gowdy was asked what he thought Lerner was hiding, and he said, “I think she connects this scandal all the way to Washington.”
He said that Lerner can’t expect to “sit there and say you’ve done nothing wrong and nothing illegal and hide behind the Fifth Amendment and expect us to give you immunity.”
Check out the video below:
Obviously, the idea that Lerner should get immunity is pure insanity, because 1) she should be held to answer for what she did, 2) we don’t know how involved she was and thus don’t know just how egregious her criminal activities were, and 3) even if she did testify, it’s very unlikely that she would give any names of “bigger fish” in the Administration who were involved, so granting immunity would be fruitless.
She shouldn’t get immunity, she should get imprisonment. No doubt Trey Gowdy won’t sleep until he sees the job done.
Sponsored by RevContent
No comments:
Post a Comment