On Wednesday, I compiled five examples of Obama protecting his allies from justice to highlight the Democrats’ hypocrisy and faux outrage over Trump’s tweets regarding the Roger Stone case, which they claim was improper pressure of the Justice Department to protect his friend… or something, even though any objective person can see the sentencing recommendations of the Mueller prosecutors were excessive.
Nevertheless, the media and the Democrats piled on. Adam Schiff, of course, weighed in, claiming that Trump “demands his enemies be investigated and prosecuted” and “retaliates against witnesses and public servants.”
That’s rich.
So, as a follow up to my five examples of Obama protecting his friends from justice, I’d like to present five examples of Obama actually using the government to retaliate against his enemies.
It goes without saying that these are just five of many examples.
5. Senator Robert Menendez
I previously mentioned how Barack Obama protected Senator Bob Menendez by delaying the arrest of an illegal immigrant sex-offender who was a Menendez intern, but to demonstrate just how vindictive Obama can be, I have to mention that Obama was just as quick to use the government to punish Menendez when he stepped out of line. In 2015, the Department of Justice suddenly decided to move forward with criminal charges against Menendez on a five-year-old case. What happened that made the Obama administration suddenly decide to go after Menendez? According to Washington insiders, the decision was politically motivated, since the criminal charges against Menendez came soon after he spoke out against Obama regarding his plan to normalize relations with communist Cuba and his nuclear deal with Iran.
No one believed that to be a coincidence.
4. Dinesh D’Souza
In January 2014, Dinesh D’Souza, the conservative author and speaker who wrote several books critical of Obama and produced the wildly popular anti-Obama documentary in 2016, Obama’s America, was indicted for campaign finance violations for having orchestrated $20,000 in straw donations to the campaign of a friend who ran for the U.S. Senate. Legal experts saw it as a partisan selective prosecution. Harvard Law School professor and Obama supporter Alan Dershowitz called it “an outrageous prosecution and is certainly a misuse of resources. It raises the question of why he is being selected for prosecution among the many, many people who commit similar crimes.”
“This sounds to me like it is coming from higher places. It is hard for me to believe this did not come out of Washington or at least get the approval of those in Washington,” he added.
National Review’s Andrew McCarthy also noted that the Obama administration essentially charged D’Souza twice for the same crime. “By gratuitously piling on another felony, Obama and Holder portray D’Souza as a serious crook and subject him to the onerous potential of seven years in prison—all for an episode that ordinarily would not be prosecuted at all.”
3. James O’Keefe
Project Veritas, the undercover journalism outfit founded by James O’Keefe, has been a thorn in the side of the left for years, and the Obama administration tried to make them pay for it. In 2014, O’Keefe found himself targeted by the Obama administration after recording himself, dressed as Osama bin Laden, crossing back and forth from the United States to Mexico and back again without getting stopped.
The video went viral, and while he was traveling into the United States was detained by U.S. customs agents because of the video exposé, and experienced excessive questioning several times upon reentering the United States. “It is our contention that this is retaliation for our journalism along the Mexican border,” O’Keefe said in 2015. “It’s troubling that they are doing this to a citizen reporter. […] These questions have nothing to do with national security or border issues or smuggling narcotics into the country. They are questions that they would never ask a Washington Post reporter, that they would never ask NBC News.”
2. Ben Carson and other individuals targeted by the IRS
We’re all aware of how the Obama administration used the IRS to illegally target Tea Party groups before the 2012 election. But, the Obama administration also improperly slapped conservative individuals with audits.
The most notable example is Dr. Ben Carson, who criticized Obama during his speech at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast. It was an embarrassing moment for Obama, and when Carson refused to apologize after the Obama White House demanded an apology, Carson was audited by the IRS. Does anyone really think that was a coincidence?
Oh, but there’s more. A cancer patient who appeared on Fox News to discuss how Obamacare cost him his health insurance was audited by the IRS shortly after his interview aired. Also, individual donors to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign found themselves the target of IRS audits, some within weeks of donating.
Hollywood’s only conservative group, Friends of Abe, became another target of Obama. Their tax-exempt status was kept under review for over two years, and the IRS even demanded to see their membership list. Talk about a shakedown.
1. Donald Trump
Nothing defines using the government to target political enemies more than Obama’s spying on Donald Trump’s campaign. We know it happened. We know that this spying was justified using a bogus dossier funded by the Hillary campaign. We know an FBI lawyer altered evidence. 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, turned up nothing—as expected. The Inspector General’s investigation proved political bias in the FBI’s investigation of President Trump’s campaign.
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Matt Margolis is the author of Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama’s Legacy and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
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