The IRS abuse of hundreds of conservative groups has gripped the nation since it broke on May 10. President Obama declared that he was outraged by it, and fake-fired the acting IRS commissioner to show his rage. Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress on May 15 “I can assure you and the American people that we will take a dispassionate view of this.”
He has evidently made good on the dispassionate part, if not the view. Because to date, there is no evidence that the Federal Bureau of Investigations is even investigating the abuse. At all.
Testifying before Congress Thursday, FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted under questioning that he knew nothing at all about the status of the investigation. He didn’t know who the lead investigator is. He didn’t know if anyone had been interviewed about it. He didn’t know anything, but he did assure Congress that it’s at least an active investigation.
But how active is it? Attorneys Jay Sekulow and Cleta Mitchell represent several of the victims. They tell the Daily Caller that the FBI has contacted none — zero — of their clients.
“We have not been contacted by any federal investigative agency and, to date, none of our clients have been contacted or interviewed by the FBI,” Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice told The Daily Caller on Thursday. The ACLJ has filed suit against the IRS on behalf of 25 conservative groups, with additional groups being added in the next couple weeks, according to a spokesman.
“I have been very surprised that I have not heard from anybody and frankly, none of my clients have. I talk to other tea party leaders on a regular basis,” said Cleta Mitchell, the lawyer largely credited with pushing the IRS abuses to the forefront.
Zero.
It’s obvious that the Obama administration isn’t interested, from the top down, in really investigating the abuse scandal.
That may be because they all already know the answer.
The FBI, which is tasked with the investigation, was itself involved in the flurry of government activity that came Catherine Engelbrecht’s way after she filed for tax-exempt status for True the Vote. The involvement of the IRS, FBI, OSHA and BATFE in harassing Engelbrecht and her family suggest that someone above all of those executive branch agencies had a hand in what those agencies were doing. Those agencies belong to different sections of the executive branch — IRS belongs to Treasury, FBI and BATFE belong to the Department of Justice, while OSHA belongs to the Department of Labor. No one cabinet officer atop any of the major departments could order any personnel in the other departments to launch investigations. If there was such an order, it had to come from the White House.
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