Obama Dodges Big Question on IRS Scandal

A Marine holds a umbrella as President Barack Obama speaks during his joint news conference with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Thursday, May 16, 2013, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington. (AP)

President Barack Obama on Thursday dodged a question about whether he or anyone at the White House had known about the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups.

Instead, Obama said he hadn’t known anything in advance about an agency report on the matter — a question that was never posed to him.

Obama was specifically asked, according to a White House transcript, “Can you assure the American people that nobody in the White House knew about the agency’s actions before your counsel’s office found out on April 22nd?”

He responded: “…Let me make sure that I answer your specific question. I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything about the IG report before the IG report had been leaked through the press. Typically, the IG reports are not supposed to be widely distributed or shared. They tend to be a process that everybody is trying to protect the integrity of. But what I’m absolutely certain of is that the actions that were described in that IG report are unacceptable.”

Obama spoke during a joint press conference with the Turkish prime minister in the White House Rose Garden.

White House press secretary Jay Carney this week denied that anyone at the White House knew of the IRS’ actions before the report came to light.

“I am certainly not aware of and am confident that no one here was involved in this. We found out about it just a few weeks ago, and only — and when I say ‘we,’ I didn’t, the president didn’t, but the White House counsel’s office only found out about the review being conducted and coming to a conclusion by the inspector general,” Carney told reporters.

A Marine holds a umbrella as President Barack Obama speaks during his joint news conference with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Thursday, May 16, 2013, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington. (AP)

President Barack Obama on Thursday dodged a question about whether he or anyone at the White House had known about the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups.

Instead, Obama said he hadn’t known anything in advance about an agency report on the matter — a question that was never posed to him.

Obama was specifically asked, according to a White House transcript, “Can you assure the American people that nobody in the White House knew about the agency’s actions before your counsel’s office found out on April 22nd?”

He responded: “…Let me make sure that I answer your specific question. I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything about the IG report before the IG report had been leaked through the press. Typically, the IG reports are not supposed to be widely distributed or shared. They tend to be a process that everybody is trying to protect the integrity of. But what I’m absolutely certain of is that the actions that were described in that IG report are unacceptable.”

Obama spoke during a joint press conference with the Turkish prime minister in the White House Rose Garden.

White House press secretary Jay Carney this week denied that anyone at the White House knew of the IRS’ actions before the report came to light.

“I am certainly not aware of and am confident that no one here was involved in this. We found out about it just a few weeks ago, and only — and when I say ‘we,’ I didn’t, the president didn’t, but the White House counsel’s office only found out about the review being conducted and coming to a conclusion by the inspector general,” Carney told reporters.

Is the IRS acting as an agent of Planned Parenthood?

 

 As Billy reported over on the front side, a prominent professor is speaking up in the wake of this week’s IRS scandal, suggesting that the Internal Revenue Service targeted her with an audit for her work defending her Catholic faith against progressive groups

Similarly, the nonprofit Thomas More Society is now alleging that the IRS withheld approval for tax-exempt status from two pro-life organizations because of their demonstrations against abortion provider Planned Parenthood.

In one case, the IRS withheld approval of an application for tax exempt status for Coalition for Life of Iowa. In a phone call to Coalition for Life of Iowa leaders on June 6, 2009, the IRS agent “Ms. Richards” told the group to send a letter to the IRS with the entire board’s signatures stating that, under perjury of the law, they do not picket/protest or organize groups to picket or protest outside of Planned Parenthood. Once the IRS received this letter, their application would be approved…

In another similar case, the IRS withheld approval of an application for charitable tax-exempt recognition of Christian Voices for Life, questioning the group’s involvement with “40 Days for Life” and “Life Chain” events. The Fort Bend County, Texas, organization was subjected to repeated and lengthy unconstitutional requests for information about the viewpoint and content of its educational communications, volunteer prayer vigils, and other protected activities.

Thomas More Society special counsel Sally Wagenmaker calls the IRS authority in these cases is “disturbing.”

“The IRS’s role should only be to determine whether organizations fit the section 501(c)(3) test for ‘charitable, religious, or educational’ qualification, not to inquire about the content of prayers, protests, and petitions,” she says.  ”It’s high time that the IRS be called to account for its workers’ potential to trample on our constitutional rights, through such ostensibly innocuous means…what the Ways and Means committee will discuss may only be the tip of the iceberg of IRS abuses.”

http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2013/05/16/is-the-irs-acting-as-an-agent-of-planned-parenthood/

Obama Naming White House Official as Acting IRS Head

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama will appoint senior White House budget officer Daniel Werfel to be acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, a White House official says.

Werfel will replace Steven Miller, ousted Wednesday amid revelations that the IRS improperly singled out conservative groups for special scrutiny.

The 42-year-old Werfel is the controller of the Office of Management and Budget, a job akin to a chief financial officer. Though Werfel was appointed to that job by Obama, he also worked during the administration of President George W. Bush.

The official was not authorized to speak on the record about the announcement and revealed Werfel’s appointment on the condition of anonymity.

After days of inaction, Obama has tried to move swiftly in response to reports of inappropriate targeting by the IRS.

 

 

What Phone Records Can Actually Reveal

 

The revelation that several weeks worth of Associated Press reporters’ and editors’ phone records were obtained in a federal investigation regarding a leak has outraged many in the media sphere, but an Oregon attorney as a message for them: welcome.

“As much as I sympathize with the media … it’s kind of ‘welcome to the party guys,’” Kevin Sali, an attorney at Angeli Law, told TheBlaze in a phone interview Thursday.

“We’re seeing outrage now because it’s the media, but this sort of thing happens to people across the country everyday.”

But what would such records reveal?

As you can imagine, records reveal phone numbers called as well as date and duration. Sali said it would look very similar to what you would see on your own monthly statement.

What investigators are looking for are specific numbers, how often certain calls might be made, and sometimes certain timeframes in which communications are being had. It all depends on the case.

Atlanta-based Constitutional Attorney Page Pate said such information can also be used as leverage.

“If you have stuff I don’t want you to have, it makes me more likely to do what you want me to do,” Pate said, explaining how investigators could let suspects know they had already obtained their phone records.

Pate also said that in addition to incoming and outgoing calls, cellphone records would include text messages as well. Although content of the message would not likely be provided, the number associated with the conversation, when the conversation was held, and its duration would be recorded.

These days, a toll request gets you more than 20 years ago, or five years ago,” he said.

Government investigators, following the appropriate guidelines, are legally able to obtain such phone records. Sali said he believes the breadth of the government’s “immense power” allowing it to obtain these records is what has some upset.

Pate said that some of the protocols that should have been followed to allow the government to subpoena the AP records do not appear to have been followed properly.

“Initially, I was amazed at how unprecedented and invasive this request was,” Pate told TheBlaze.

Not only were records for more than 20 AP phone lines obtained, but personal phones as well.

Pate noted how there is a provision in the Attorney’s Manual that requires the media be offered the opportunity to comply before a subpoena is issued. In the AP’s case, that doesn’t seem to have happened.

Pate acknowledged there is a provision that would allow the news organization to remain in the dark regarding its records being sought, but it would only occur if telling them would “pose a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation.”

“But that’s just the point of it,” Pate said. “We don’t know because no one has provided documents.”

He said no reasoning has been provided to show how the investigation could be harmed if someone at the AP — not even those whose specific records were being sought — knew these subpoenas were coming. Pate also noted the lack of documentation regarding Attorney General Eric Holder being recused.

Here’s more from TheBlaze’s report of Holder’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday:

“On what date did you recuse yourself?” [Representative Spencer Bachus (R-AL)] asked.

“I’m not sure, I think it was towards the beginning of the matter,” Holder responded.

“Isn’t that sort of an unacceptable procedure?  The statue says that the attorney general shall approve the subpoena.  There was no memorandum, no email — when you recused yourself, was it in writing, was it orally?  Did you tell someone, did you alert the White House?” Bachus probed.

“I would’ve told the deputy attorney general,” Holder replied, though he said there would be no record of it in writing.

Holder also said Tuesday that he wasn’t sure how often he had approved subpoena requests for phone records of the media, but noted he took them “very seriously.” Holder, since he recused himself of the investigation to avoid a conflict of interest, said he did not sign off on the subpoena request for AP phone records.

Attorney General Eric Holder is questioned about the Justice Department secretly obtaining two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press, during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, Tuesday, May 14, 2013. (Associated Press)

In his experience with such cases, government investigators usually seek phone records for about half of their investigations, even if it doesn’t intend to use the information, Pate told TheBlaze.

Going forward, Pate said he first hopes the Justice Department will “not be so sloppy in the way they follow their own requirements.” He continued, adding that he thinks the department needs to make sure that it actually follows guidelines that have long been in place.

“If you’re going to approve a subpoena like this, go through the process and have documents available …for whomever wants to review” it later, Pate said.

And while this would be helpful for news organizations, there is no requirement that private individuals or businesses whose phone records are being requested be notified or negotiated with for voluntary compliance prior.

Pate said it would be nice to see the same protection rights for news media provided to individuals and businesses as well.

–

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/05/16/what-phone-records-can-actually-reveal/

(UPDATED) ‘Stunner’: Congressman Claims AP Phone Scandal Involved House of Reps. ‘Cloakroom Rep. Nune’s director of communications, Jack Langer, clarified the congressman’s comments Thursday morning:

What Rep. Nunes meant by “tapped” was that the DOJ seized the phone records, as has been widely reported. There was a little confusion between him and the host during the conversation: He did not mean to refer to phone records of the cloakroom itself, but of the Capitol. This refers to the phone records for the AP from  the House press gallery, which the DOJ admitted to looking at.

He was explaining that if those phone records were seized, they would reveal a lot of conversations between the press and members of Congress, since reporters often speak to Members from the press gallery phones. The notion of the DOJ looking at phone records from the Capitol of conversations between Members of Congress and reporters is something that concerns Rep. Nunes, bringing up issues related to the separation of powers.

–

Congressman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said Wednesday during an interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show that the Justice Department’s investigation of the Associated Press involved seizing phone records from the United States Capitol.

Here’s how the conversation went down [h/t Hot Air]:

HH: The idea that this might be a Geithner-Axelrod plan, and by that, the sort of intimation, Henry II style, will no one rid me of this turbulent priest, will no one rid me of these turbulent Tea Parties, that might have just been a hint, a shift of an eyebrow, a change in the tone of voice. That’s going to take a long time to get to. I don’t trust the Department of Justice on this. Do you, Congressman Nunes?

DN: No, I absolutely do not, especially after this wiretapping incident, essentially, of the House of Representative. I don’t think people are focusing on the right thing when they talk about going after the AP reporters. The big problem that I see is that they actually tapped right where I’m sitting right now, the Cloak Room.

HH: Wait a minute, this is news to me.

DN: The Cloak Room in the House of Representatives.

HH: I have no idea what you’re talking about.

DN: So when they went after the AP reporters, right? Went after all of their phone records, they went after the phone records, including right up here in the House Gallery, right up from where I’m sitting right now. So you have a real separation of powers issue that did this really rise to the level that you would have to get phone records that would, that would most likely include members of Congress, because as you know…

HH: Wow.

DN: …members of Congress talk to the press all the time.

HH: I did not know that, and that is a stunner.

DN: Now that is a separation of powers issue here, Hugh.

HH: Sure.

DN: And it’s a freedom of press issue. And now you’ve got the IRS going after people. So these things are starting to cascade one upon the other, and you have the White House pretending like they’re in the clouds like it’s not their issue somehow.

For those of you who don’t know what a congressional cloakroom is, it’s where U.S. lawmakers and select staffers go to mingle, socialize, and relax between sessions. The House and Senate cloakrooms, which have their own phone numbers, are ​not ​open to the media or the public.

Now, the press gallery is different. That’s obviously reserved for media. It also has phones. So if AP reporters were making calls to members of Congress via the press gallery, it appears the DOJ looked into those records:

The congressman’s revelation is particularly interesting considering the fact that even U.S Attorney General Eric Holder claims he provided the DOJ with ​his phone records.

“Some of my telephone records were examined,” Holder said during a congressional hearing Wednesday.

“I voluntarily turned them over,” he added.

At this point, who hasn’t had their phone records examined by the DOJ?

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/05/16/stunner-congressman-claims-doj-seized-house-of-reps-phone-records/