A Culture Of Intimidation Throughout The Administration

by Gary Varvel

Today in Washington, D.C. - May 20, 2013
The Senate reconvened at 2 PM. The Senate will begin consideration of S. 954, the farm bill. Later today, the Senate will take up and also vote on the nominations of Sheri Chappell to be U.S. District Judge for the Middle District of Florida and Michael McShane to be U.S. District Judge for the District of Oregon.

Today the House is considering and expected to vote on HR 258 — Stolen Valor Act of 2013 and HR 1073 — Nuclear Terrorism Conventions Implementation and Safety of Maritime Navigation Act of 2013. Both are expected to pass with little or no objections.

As more details of the IRS scandal involving improper scrutiny of tea party groups come out, ever more questions about the Obama administration are being raised.

Wall Street Journal reported last night, “The White House's chief lawyer learned weeks ago that an audit of the Internal Revenue Service likely would show that agency employees inappropriately targeted conservative groups, a senior White House official said Sunday. That disclosure has prompted a debate over whether the president should have been notified at that time. In the week of April 22, the Office of the White House Counsel and its head, Kathryn Ruemmler, were told by Treasury Department attorneys that an inspector general's report was nearing completion, the White House official said. In that conversation, Ms. Ruemmler learned that ‘a small number of line IRS employees had improperly scrutinized certain…organizations by using words like “tea party” and “patriot,”’ the official said. President Barack Obama said last week he learned about the controversy at the same time as the public, on May 10, when an IRS official revealed it to a conference of lawyers. The president's statement drew criticism, focusing attention on his management style and whether he has kept himself sufficiently informed about the agencies under his authority.”

Meanwhile, The Washington Post’s Fact Checker goes through statements by Lois G. Learner, the director of the IRS division responsible for granting tax-exempt status, and finds her earning “a bushel of Pinocchios.” Glenn Kessler writes, “In the days since the Internal Revenue Service first disclosed that it had targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, new information has emerged from both the Treasury Inspector General’s report and congressional testimony Friday that calls into question key statements made by Lois G. Lerner, the IRS’s director of the exempt organizations division.” Kessler dings her claims that 501(c)(4) applications rose dramatically prior to the IRS targeting, that she only learned about targeting of tea party groups from news reports last year, and saying that no one had asked her about such targeting prior to the conversation that broke the news initially. Kessler concludes, “In some ways, this is just scratching the surface of Lerner’s misstatements and weasely wording when the revelations about the IRS’s activities first came to light on May 10. But, taken together, it’s certainly enough to earn her four Pinocchios.”

Yesterday, White House communications advisor Dan Pfeiffer made the rounds on Sunday shows giving the Obama administration’s spin on the swirling scandals, but when he got to Face the Nation and CBS’ Bob Schieffer, Schieffer had apparently run out of patience with Pfeiffer’s answers. Describing the interview, Mediaite writes, “Cutting to the chase, Schieffer questioned whether the White House is approaching the issues in earnest (‘Does that mean you don’t take any of this seriously?’), which Pfeiffer quickly denied. . . . It’s ‘very difficult,’ Schieffer argued, to understand how the White House would have been ignorant to the goings-on within the agency. Pfeiffer claimed it was so, as Schieffer continued to express skepticism. ‘Is this president out of touch?’ the CBS host asked, addressing the talk about Obama often appearing to be a bystander. . . . Schieffer pressed on though: Later in the interview, he denied any desire to be ‘argumentative,’ but pointed out that when the executive branch does something right (e.g. killing Osama bin Laden), the White House has no ‘hesitancy’ in taking credit. ‘But with all of these things, when these things happen, you seem to send out officials many times who don’t even seem to know what has happened,’ he added, as contrast.”

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” yesterday, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell emphasized that there is a larger “culture of intimidation” in the Obama administration towards those they consider their political opponents. Leader McConnell said, “[T]here is a culture of intimidation throughout the administration. The IRS is just the most recent example. Let me just recount a few for [the] audience. Over at HHS back during the Obama care debate, Secretary Sebelius sent out a directive to help insurance companies telling them they couldn't inform their policyholders of what they thought the impact of Obamacare would be on them. Now she's trying to shake them down for contributions in effect to agree to go out and how to convince the public that they should love Obamacare. Over at the FCC there have been efforts by Obama appointees to shut down or make [it] difficult [for] people who are seeking to buy advertising to criticize the administration. Over at the SEC the Obama appointees have been engaged in an effort to make it difficult for corporations to exercise their First Amendment political rights. [C]oming back to the IRS, the head of the union at the IRS gives 99 percent of her campaign money to Democrats. She openly criticizes the Republican House for trying to reduce government spending and has specifically targeted Tea Party groups in her public comments. It's no wonder that the agents in the IRS sort of get the message."

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