On Tuesday, former Vice President Joe Biden channeled his inner Barack Obama by falsely claiming that their administration was scandal-free.”Know what I was most proud of? For eight years, there wasn’t one single hint of a scandal or a lie.”
You can actually watch him make this absurd claim with a straight face here:
Joe Biden: "Know what I was most proud of? For eight years, there wasn't one single hint of a scandal or a lie." pic.twitter.com/Yb8Mm8DdIC
— The Hill (@thehill) June 12, 2019
The scandals of the Obama-Biden administration have been well-documented, but also well-covered-up by the media. They refused to give the scandals of the Obama-Biden administration the coverage they deserved when they happened, and they refused to challenge Obama when he repeatedly made claims of having a scandal-free administration and they certainly aren’t going to challenge Biden echoing those same claims. I will, however, because unfortunately, too many people believe the myth of the scandal-free presidency of Barack Obama. So, here are just ten scandals of the Obama-Administration that Sleepy Joe is apparently proud of.
10. New Black Panther Party Scandal Scandal
On Election Day 2008, members of the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) stood outside a Philadelphia polling place wearing military garb making racial remarks and discouraging people from voting. A voter intimidation case against the NBPP began weeks before Obama took office. It was an open-and-shut case, and the NBPP didn’t even show up in court to defend themselves. The government was on the verge of victory by default in the case. But the case was inexplicably dropped by Attorney General Eric Holder in May 2009. When the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights investigated, the Obama-Biden administration refused to respond to requests from the commission and Congress. Federal attorneys were instructed not to cooperate with the investigation and then-Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Tom Perez (the current chairman of the Democratic National Committee) lied under oath about who was involved in the decision to drop the case. If this wasn’t a scandal, why did the Obama-Biden administration obstruct the investigation?
9. Walpin-Gate AmeriCorps Firing Scandal
In 2009, Barack Obama fired Inspector General Gerald Walpin for investigating his friend and donor, Kevin Johnson. Johnson was under investigation for misusing federal grant money for AmeriCorps. Johnson took $850,000 of that money for his own nonprofit organization, where he used it to pay for political activity. Walpin’s investigation revealed a cover-up of sexual abuse allegations against Johnson made by three underage students. These three girls were offered some of this grant money as hush money. When Walpin recommended charges against Johnson, Obama, in violation of federal law, fired him. An investigation by Congress into the illegal firing was met with stonewalling by the Obama White House, and the withholding of documents. The Obama White House also deliberately misled Congress about the reasons for the firing. Is Biden really saying that isn’t a scandal?
8. The Green Energy Loans Scandal
Does Joe Biden really think that when more than fifty clean energy companies backed by the Obama-Biden administration went bankrupt or found themselves in major financial trouble that isn’t a scandal? Tell that to the taxpayers who footed the $80 billion for their “green economy” initiatives that went to companies that supported their campaign. The most well-known example of one of these companies that went belly-up was Solyndra. Solyndra received more than a half-billion-dollar loan despite the fact the Department of Energy (DOE) knew they were on the verge of bankruptcy.
Perhaps the reason Sleepy Joe wants us to forget this one is because he and Obama were both personally involved in the decision-making process to determine who got loans. According to a lawsuit, only companies that donated to the Obama-Biden campaign and other Democrats got these green energy loans and the Obama-Biden administration stole proprietary technology from companies that didn’t get the loans to give to Obama-Biden cronies that were awarded the loans.
7. The Secret Service Prostitution Scandal
In 2012, members of the Secret Service were caught up in a prostitution scandal during Obama’s visit to Columbia. A member of the White House advance team was reportedly also caught up in the scandal, and the White House responded with a bogus internal White House investigation that predictably found that no White House staffers were involved in the scandal. When evidence emerged that a White House staff member may have been involved, the White House tried to cover that up. Covering up a staffers’ involvement in a prostitution scandal sounds like a really big scandal to me, Joe.
6. Iran Ransom Scandal
A few short months after Obama had completed negotiations for the Iran Nuclear Deal, resulting in the lifting of sanctions and the unfreezing of billions in Iranian assets, the Obama administration made a shady payment to Iran in the amount of $400 million. The payment was made with foreign currency and done under the cover of night. The payment also coincided with the release of four hostages and was done completely in secret. Not even Congress knew about the payments or the hostage exchange. An investigation began, and, of course, it was met with obstruction by the Obama-Biden administration. Attorney General Loretta Lynch refused to answer questions from Congress about the payments. Details of the deal weren’t classified, but the Obama-Biden administration hid key documents at a secure site to make access difficult. If this wasn’t a scandal, why did they feel they had to hide information from Congress.
5. Fast & Furious Scandal
Okay, Creepy Joe, your administration sent two thousand firearms across the border, lost hundreds of them, and a border agent was killed with one of those guns. Is that really not a scandal? If it wasn’t, why did your administration lie, stonewall, and obstruct the investigation? Remember how Attorney General Eric Holder falsely claimed to have no knowledge of the operation, and your best buddy in the whole wide world Obama personally obstructed the investigation by claiming executive privilege over documents requested by Congress? Not a scandal? Really? Attorney General Eric Holder was held in contempt of Congress in a bipartisan vote, for obstructing the investigation. What more do you need to admit this was a scandal?
4. The Benghazi attack cover-up
The terror attack at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, not only threatened the Obama-Biden administration narrative that they’d been crippling al Qaeda and making progress in the War on Terror, but it also threatened their reelection. So, when Congress investigated, the Obama-Biden administration obstructed their investigation with vigor. They attempt to excuse their obstruction by saying they were launching their own internal investigation, which was a complete joke because we know how their internal investigations go. State Departement employees weren’t allowed to testify, and Hillary Clinton deleted thousands of subpoenaed emails. That’s what obstruction of justice looks like Joe. Just like that.
3. The IRS Scandal
No one can deny that the Obama-Biden administration used the IRS to improperly target conservative and Tea Party groups. Lois Lerner, the former director of the IRS Exempt Organizations division at the time, admitted it happened!
Not only were tea party groups improperly targeted, according to documents obtained by Judicial Watch, but the whole scheme was orchestrated out of Washington, D.C. There was also evidence of White House involvement. IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman was at the White House at least 157 times while the IRS was targeting tea party groups. Obama’s cabinet members didn’t even visit the White House that often. Some IRS employees even claimed that Obama himself requested the crackdown of tea party groups. There was certainly ample reason to suspect coordination with the White House. The IRS was also exchanging confidential taxpayer information with the White House the year Obama and Biden were reelected.
2. The Veterans Health Administration Scandal
If you need an example of how bad the government is at running healthcare, look no further than the Veterans Health Administration. Notorious for large backlogs of benefits claims, Obama had promised on the campaign trail to do better than his predecessor and reduce the backlog. When Obama and Biden took office, the backlog had been in decline, falling by nearly 100,00 during George W. Bush’s second term. Sadly, once Obama and Biden took office, the backlog started going back up. It didn’t just go up marginally… it more than doubled during their first term, from approximately 390,000 outstanding claims to roughly 884,000 outstanding claims. The backlog increase resulted in the number of veterans dying while waiting to receive care skyrocketing.
Attorney General Eric Holder refused to investigate the problem. Want to know why? Because the Obama-Biden transition team had been warned about the VA using secret lists to hide the true state of the backlog, and warned twice more in 2010 and again in 2012, but they did nothing about it, letting the problem spiral out of control. Maybe Joe Biden doesn’t think that 307,000 veterans dying while waiting for medical treatment from the Obama-Biden administration isn’t a scandal, but most of us would beg to differ.
1. The Trump Spying Scandal
Seriously, is Joe going to pretend that spying on Donald Trump’s campaign wasn’t a scandal? We know it happened. We know that this spying was justified using a bogus dossier funded by the Hillary campaign. What began as a means to undermine Trump before the 2016 election ultimately became a means to undermine his presidency. The Mueller investigation, a 22-month effort to uncover alleged Russian collusion, predictably turned up nothing.
If it wasn’t a scandal, Attorney General William Barr wouldn’t be investigating the shady origins of the spying right now. When you combine the spying on Trump with Obama’s role in meddling with the investigation of Hillary Clinton, we have what can only be described as the biggest political scandal in history.
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Matt Margolis is the author of The Scandalous Presidency of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
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