Monday, October 26, 2015

A truly impressive investigation

Yes, I'm of course talking about the Obama "investigation" into the antics of the IRS, which (Lois Lerner) flat out admitted using political affiliation as a proxy for enhanced scrutiny.  It was, according to the DOJ, evidence of mismanagement, but not a crime.

Of course, they're not going to tell us what kinds of corrective actions were performed to prevent it happening again....because quite frankly, the results of this "mismanagement" were awfully convenient to Mr. Obama, keeping some of his political opponents on the sidelines in 2012 and 2014. 

Now let's ignore Lois Lerner's obvious perjury before Congress when asked about the matter in 2012, when she stated point blank that nothing of the sort happened.  Let's ignore, for the moment, egregious violations of FOIA provisions and destruction of evidence--yes, both are prosecutable crimes.  Let's ignore emails not backed up, the whole nine yards.

Rather, in one article I read, it was noted that they'd done over 100 interviews and reviewed over a million documents.  It sounds impressive, but....let's be real here.  All this means is they did an interview each week of the investigation (don't overwork yourselves, boys!) and reviewed what is a fairly small number of documents considering the extent of what plaintiffs like the ACLJ are alleging and documenting.   Even the number of emails sent and received by the IRS employees directly involved would likely exceed this number.

For comparison, if one follows this case of a tragic drug overdose, you'll be able to infer that the NYPD interviewed most of the residents of the building where the body was found, family and neighbors, friends, and others at the bars the deceased went to.  I would also guess that emails and other communication were also taken as evidence--if only to possibly put drug dealers behind bars.  So what the IRS took two years to do, the NYPD did in two days or so.

In other words, the very numbers presented by the DOJ indicate that the investigation was halfhearted at best, not following up on obvious leads, parallel sources, and the like.  This also explains why we don't see  any protest resignations; the investigation was probably only a part time project for a few people.  Being politically trustworthy--like the ones I anticipate will be used to investigate Hilliary Clinton's abuse of confidential information--they could keep it all hush-hush.

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