The Obama administration scandals that won't go away: Benghazi and the IRS have staying power as Congress gears up for yet another series of public hearings

Verne Strickland July 14, 2013

By David Martosko In Washington
PUBLISHED: 20:10 EST, 12 July 2013 | UPDATED: 20:10 EST, 12 July 2013

President Barack Obama's second-term scandals have become catnip for Republicans, but not all scandals are equal - and there's only so much mind-share to go around

Congressional Republicans will re-open two of the Obama administration's most persistent wounds the week of July 15, refocusing public scrutiny on the State Department's failures in Benghazi and the Internal Revenue Service's reputation for unfairly targeting conservatives.
House committees controlled by the GOP have regularly torn off the White House's rhetorical band-aids on the IRS and Benghazi, refusing to let the administration claim the healing power of closure.
The third of the mid-spring troika of scandals that beset the administration - the Justice Department's apparent pattern of spying on reporters, following government employees' leaks of classified information to the press - may, however, be well past the bloodletting stage.
Attorney General Eric Holder's office circulated a draft Friday afternoon of a report that he presented to the president. It outlines a narrowed set of circumstances under which the administration would be permitted to collect communications records from journalists.
The report capped a good will tour by Holder that included contentious meetings with journalists and a less antagonistic rap session - attended by MailOnline - with media executives.
Barely two months after the disastrous disclosure that the DOJ collected telephone records from the Associated Press and a variety of phone records and emails from Fox News reporter James Rosen, that embarrassing episode appears to be winding down. Main Justice also labeled Rosen a criminal 'co-conspirator' in an argument to a judge related to an investigation into a national security leak.

Attorney General Eric Holder (R) announced new Justice Department guidelines on Friday that are designed to keep the government on a short leash when it wants to snoop on reporters

I'm from the government and I'm here to help: IRS charity chief Lois Lerner refused to testify before Congress, and was put on paid leave. The House oversight committee later voted that when she offered an opening statement defending herself, she waived her Fifth Amendment right not to testify

But Holder later conceded in his June 4 meeting with media executives that Rosen 'wasn't aiding the enemy - he was just reporting news.'
Holder said Friday that the reforms he's now advocating 'will make a meaningful difference,' adding that 'there are additional protections that only Congress can provide. For that reason, we continue to support the passage of media shield legislation.'

 

More...

• EXCLUSIVE: Holder told media executives in a private meeting that Fox News reporter James Rosen 'wasn't aiding the enemy - he was just reporting news'
• Republicans hit IRS with flurry of new proposals to slash its budget, remove it from Obamacare enforcement and fire its employees who engage in political targeting
• Congressman blasts Obama's Defense Department for blocking Marine colonel from appearing before Congress as key witness in Benghazi probe
• 'Allah-u-Akbar': State Department unclassifies first official photos from aftermath of Benghazi attack, including jihadi graffiti left behind

Holder's tactical about-face in Friday's report to the president, paired with journalists' waning interest in a subject that was initially laced with personal affront and righteous anger, has pushed the DOJ to the scandal back-burner.
Not so with the IRS or Benghazi.
Rep. Ed Royce, a California Republican who chairs the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, will gavel in a hearing on July 18, focusing on what he has characterized as a lack of accountability inside the State Department for the Sept. 11, 2012 terror attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Republicans are eager to reclaim momentum targeting Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, for security lapses before the attack and a post-attack response that appeared universally deceptive to those on the political right.

Fireworks or duds? Victoria Nuland, Obama's nominee to be Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, testified Thursday in her confirmation hearing. But the expected blistering attacks about Benghazi from Republicans failed to materialize

Republicans haven't let up in targeting Hillary Clinton (R), who was Secretary of State when heavily armed terrorists attacked the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Clinton is expected to contend strongly for the Democratic Party's 2016 presidential nomination

Clinton, considered the favored contender for the Democrats' 2016 presidential nomination, is vulnerable on Benghazi, polls show, owing to the remaining unanswered questions about how far up the State Department's chain of command the scandal will ultimately reach.
Royce said Friday that the hearing will focus on an Accountability Review Board (ARB) report from inside the State Department, one that he called 'incomplete.'
'The Board declined to interview the Department’s senior-most officials,' he said, 'including former Secretary Clinton.'
The hearing, he continued, 'will examine the State Department’s ARB inadequacies, including whether the appropriate employees have been held responsible for the security failures in Benghazi.'
The foreign affairs committee hearing will feature testimony from Raymond Maxwell, a former Assistant Secretary of State for Maghreb Affairs, Royce's office said Friday.
The Maghreb is a region traditionally understood to include North African nations that are west of Egypt.
Maxwell was placed on administrative leave following the release of the ARB report. He says he was wrongly accused for the substandard security conditions at the Benghazi diplomatic outpost where U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other American personnel were killed.
Ronald Neumann, a former U.S. ambassador to Algeria, Bahrain and Afghanistan, will also testify. He leads the American Academy of Diplomacy.

Reps. Darrell Issa (L) of the House oversight committee and Ed Royce (R) of the House government affairs committee will chair hearings next week on the IRS and Benghazi, respectively

Maryland Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings (L) has crossed swords with Issa (R), the House oversight committee chairman, since Republicans began investigating the IRS

Beginning a half-hour earlier next Thursday, and just a minute's walk down the hall in the Rayburn House office Building, Issa's oversight committee will reconvene what has become a cottage industry of hearings on the IRS's partisan malfeasance.
It was Issa who pushed for a vote - which passed along party lines - on whether or not IRS exempt organizations chief Lois Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment right to withhold testimony after she gave a self-serving opening statement during a May 22 hearing. 
And as Issa's dogged investigative staff finds ever-newer angles from which to approach the IRS's targeting of conservative groups during and after the 2010 election season, a picture has emerged of a both impatient and unflagging GOP eager to leverage the public's distaste for the IRS into political scorn.
His oversight committee's July 18 witness list will include IRS employees from both Cincinnati, Ohio and Washington, D.C. A committee spokesman told MailOnline on Friday that a witness list wouldn't be announced before the weekend.
But Issa said in a statement that the IRS employees 'will be asked to explain why, even as dozens of applications for progressive groups were being approved, orders from senior levels within the IRS resulted in inappropriate and disparate treatment for Tea Party applications.'
'While President Obama has already dismissed the head of the IRS in the wake of this scandal,' Issa added, 'this hearing will examine why decisions to elevate cases to more senior levels of the IRS led to unjust delays and unfair treatment of Tea Party applications.'

Ronald Neumann (L) and Raymond Maxwell (R) will testify next Thursday about Benghazi. Maxwell contends he became a convenient scapegoat for the State Department's failure to adequately protect its LIbya mission

The one that won't get away? Tea party groups and other conservatives have kept the IRS's political partisanship on the front burner for months, and show no sign of letting up

'The evidence gathered in this investigation makes clear that had Washington IRS officials simply kept their hands off these cases and allowed employees in the Cincinnati office to process applications independently, instead of facing excessive delays, these cases would have been processed just like other advocacy cases.'
Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking oversight committee Democrat, fired back Friday with a letter asking Issa to recall Treasury Department inspector general J. Russell George for more testimony.
George, he said, failed to tell Congress during his earlier hearing appearances that his own lead investigator reviewed 5,500 emails from IRS employees and concluded that there was 'no indication that pulling these selected applications was politically motivated.'
Tax-exempt status applications from tea party groups, Cummings alleged, were held up only because IRS workers in Cincinnati were unsure about how to handle them.
He also unveiled an IRS PowerPoint presentation file from an agency 'screening workshop' which seemed to indicate that both 'tea party' and 'progressive' groups were subject to some level of screening when they applied for favored tax status.
Cummings did not suggest, however, that left-wing organizations were targeted as aggressively, or in numbers as great, as their right-wing counterparts.
An email to Cummings' office Friday afternoon was not answered.

Read more:

• Justice Department Report on Revised Media Guidelines

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