On the recordFebruary 26, 2014
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, we have all heard the outrage and the innuendos from my Republican colleagues and their chief mouthpiece, FOX News. The facts should show this is phony, a phony investigation against President Obama launched for political purposes: facts like the person who began these investigations was a self-described conservative Republican; facts like more than 500,000 pages of documents have been provided to Congress, and there is no smoking gun; facts like, of the five dozen interviews of IRS employees at 15 congressional hearings, that nothing was found. These are the facts, but I realize some will choose to not believe the facts versus fiction. Let me provide some basic commonsense information. The inspector general who oversees the IRS, someone who was appointed by then-President George W. Bush--someone who has admitted that he covered up political targeting of progressive groups in his report to Congress; someone who had a number of private meetings with the Republican chair of the Oversight Committee, Darrell Issa, and then came out to issue public statements as facts--this someone, J. Russell George, has testified under oath that he notified Congressman Darrell Issa of his investigation into the IRS in the summer of 2012. Do you know what else was happening in the summer of 2012? A very close Presidential election.…
