In this Thursday, Aug. 28, 2014 photo, President Barack Obama leaves
after speaking about the economy, Iraq, and Ukraine, in the James Brady Press
Briefing Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Five years ago last week, Barack Obama attended a press
briefing in a tan suit, and the media wouldn’t shut up about it. Since then,
the tan suit incident evolved into a myth that conservatives had freaked out
about the suit.
So, of course, the media has chosen to turn the tan suit
into the symbol of Obama’s “scandal-free” presidency.
Chris Hayes of
MSNBC marked the occasion with a segment called “Remembering
Obama's biggest scandal: the tan suit.”
CNN, (which once reported on Trump getting two scoops of ice cream while
everyone else gets one) remembered the incident as causing “a
divisive disturbance in America's normal sartorial acceptance of the
President's choices” or something.
The Washington Post also reflected on the
“huge controversy” it caused and called the tan suit a symbol of “the relative
dearth of scandals during the Obama administration.”
Once again, it seems necessary to remind the public that
the Obama administration was not scandal-free.
But, to prove my point, here's are just a few of them that have nothing to do
with Obama wearing a tan suit:
14. The Senate seat for sale scandal
Before Obama even took office he was implicated in a
scandal involving his soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat. Illinois Governor Rod
Blagojevich had hoped to get a cabinet position or ambassadorship in exchange
for appointing an Obama-backed individual to replace him in the Senate. Obama’s
top choice had been Valerie Jarrett, and he offered to appoint Jarrett “in
exchange for the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services in the
President-elect’s cabinet,” but she eventually opted to follow Obama to the
White House as his top advisor.
To sweep it under the rug, the Obama transition conducted
an internal investigation to determine whether the president-elect had done
anything illegal. Naturally, they claimed everything was above board.
Their investigation allegedly “affirmed the public statements of the
president-elect that he had no contact with the governor or his staff, and that
the president-elect’s staff was not involved in inappropriate discussions with
the governor or his staff over the selection of his successor as U.S. senator.”
But, this claim contradicts both the criminal complaint against Blagojevich and
numerous documents obtained by Judicial Watch through
a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
13. The New Black Panther Party
Voter-Intimidation Scandal
In May 2009, the government was on the verge of victory
by default in 2008 voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party
(NBPP), Attorney General Eric Holder inexplicably dropped the case 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 and fought subpoenas.
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?
12. Obama’s Illegal Firing of an Inspector
General
Also in 2009, Barack Obama illegally fired Gerald Walpin,
the Inspector General for the Corporation for National and Community
Service. Walpin’s only crime was that he was investigating Obama’s friend and
donor, Kevin Johnson.
Johnson had misused federal grant money for AmeriCorps by
funneling it to his personal nonprofit group, paying for political activity,
and using it to pay hush money to underage girls he’d sexually abused. Walpin
recommended charges against Johnson and 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.
11. 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.
In an attempt
to cover up the scandal, the White House launched with a bogus internal
investigation that predictably found that no White House staffers were involved in the
scandal.
As the saying goes, it's not the crime, it's the
cover-up that gets you in trouble, well, when evidence emerged that a White
House staff member may have been involved, the White House tried to cover that up, too.
10. 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.
Obama can't claim ignorance on this one because he and
Joe Biden were both personally involved in the decision-making
process to determine who got loans.
Also, only companies that
donated to their campaign (or other Democrats) got these green energy loans. Worse yet, proprietary technology from companies that didn’t get the
loans were given to the Obama-Biden donors that did.
If this wasn’t a scandal, why did the Obama
administration stonewall Congress investigation of the matter?
When House
Republicans subpoenaed documents for their investigation, the Obama White House fired back claiming
their request would put an "unreasonable burden on the president's ability
to meet his constitutional duties." Sure.
9. The Fast & Furious scandal
The Obama administration sent two thousand firearms
across the border in order to trace them to drug cartels, and lost hundreds of
them. That's pretty darn bad. But it got a whole lot worse when a border
agent was killed with one of those guns.
In response to this revelation, the
Obama administration stonewalled and obstructed the investigation into what
happened. Attorney General Eric Holder falsely claimed to have no knowledge of the operation,
and 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?
8. Obstruction of justice, lots of it
Obstruction of justice was standard operating procedure
in the Obama administration from day one.
In August 2014, 47 of 73 inspectors general wrote an open letter to
Congress informing them that the Obama administration of obstructing
investigations by not giving them full access to the
information they need to investigate properly.
Such a letter was unprecedented,
and the systemic corruption and obstruction of the inspectors general would
have been considered an impeachable defense for almost any other president. That letter should have resulted in the appointment of a special counsel… but
Attorney General Eric Holder, who famously called himself Obama’s wingman,
wasn’t going to let that happen.
In fact, neither Holder or Loretta Lynch,
Obama’s second attorney general, ever appointed a special counsel, despite
ample times where one should have been appointed. Obama
didn’t just appoint attorneys general to lead the Justice Department, he
appointed protectors to keep himself from being held accountable for
corruption.
The lack of outrage (thanks to lack of media attention to the
scandal) emboldened the Obama administration to impose new restrictions on the
investigative powers of inspectors general.
Can you imagine President Trump
trying to get away with that today?
7. The VA Backlog scandal
The Veterans Health Administration is notorious for large
backlogs of benefits claims. While running for president, Obama promised to do
better than his predecessor and reduce the backlog. When he took office, the
backlog had been in decline, falling by nearly 100,00 during George W. Bush’s
second term. Sadly, under Obama, the backlog started going back up.
It
didn’t just go up marginally… it more than doubled during his 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.
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.
Does
the media believe that 307,000 veterans dying while waiting for medical
treatment from the Obama-Biden administration isn’t a
scandal?
6. The Sestak job offer scandal
Barack Obama violated at least four federal laws back in
2010, for offering then-congressman Joe Sestak (D-PA) a job in his
administration in exchange for not challenging Arlen Specter for the Democratic
nomination for U.S. Senate.
Specter had recently switched from the GOP to the
Democratic Party, and that switch was contingent on support from Obama. Obama’s
then-spokesman Robert Gibbs wouldn’t confirm or deny that any offer was made,
but was never asked if Obama would resign after Sestak made his bombshell
allegation, even after months of the Obama White House stonewalling a
congressional investigation.
Nor did they ask after the Obama White House finally admitted that Sestak was indeed offered a federal
job to stay out of the election, but only after Sestak
defeated Specter in the primary.
The media was quick to accept the White House
version of events, including the “everybody does it” excuse, and they accepted
the White House claim that nothing improper happened.
Even Republicans lost
interest in pursuing the story after Sestak was defeated in the general
election by Republican Pat Toomey.
5. 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, they lied about it.
They called it a
spontaneous demonstration in order to hide the fact it was a pre-planned terror
attack and that they were grossly incapable of defending themselves from such
an attack.
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 Department
employees weren't allowed to testify,
and Hillary Clinton deleted thousands of subpoenaed emails.
That’s called
obstruction of justice.
4. Media spying scandals
The media loved Obama, but Obama didn’t love them back.
In fact, Obama abused the Espionage Act to target reporters and their
sources.
Less than six months into Obama’s second term we
learned that his Justice Department secretly obtained two months of phone records of AP
reporters and editors. One consequence of this Obama
administration spying was that longtime sources stopped talking to the
Associated Press and other news organizations.
Obama’s Justice Department also secretly obtained then-Fox News reporter James
Rosen’s phone records, tracked his movements, and read his emails while
investigating possible leaks of classified information to Rosen for an article
on North Korea’s nuclear program.
Rosen was also threatened with jail
time when the Obama Justice Department labeled him a “co-conspirator” with one
of his sources who was charged with violating the Espionage Act of 1917 for
leaking the information to Rosen.
Another journalist, James Risen of the New
York Times, was similarly treated as a co-conspirator with a
government source indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act.
Risen was subpoenaed, and originally compelled to testify against one of his
sources.
3. The 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?
2. The IRS scandal
It's amazing that anyone can still pretend the IRS improperly targeting conservative and Tea Party groups wasn't a scandal. 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.
1. The Trump spying /FISA abuse scandal
If spying on Donald Trump’s campaign wasn’t a scandal,
what is? 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.
There’s also an ongoing Inspector General’s investigation of the alleged abuse
of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by the DOJ and FBI. The final
report should be released later this year.
Congressman Andy Biggs (R-AZ) predicted on Sunday that this report will be devastating
and lead to indictments.
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.