Inventing phony scandals

I’ll start with the attempted smear of Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J. A shocking e-mail of an interview with the Daily Caller was posted on line Jan. 12, 2013. In that interview a young Dominican prostitute said she was paid to have sex with Menendez and that he had a predilection for young and inexperienced prostitutes and may have slept with a minor. This was published by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics Washington without any verification by the Dominican police.

The far-right attacked Menendez on the internet rumor mill. The truth was revealed days later. According to the Washington Post, court documents reveal the escort who claimed Menendez paid her for sex, told the Dominican police that she was instead paid to make up the claims in a tape recording and had never met or seen Menendez before. The woman identified a lawyer who approached her and a friend to make the videotape. The man in turn identified another lawyer who gave him the script for the tape and paid him to find women to fabricate the claims, according to affidavits obtained by the Post.

Menendez is in enough trouble regarding possible misuse of donor’s funds, why the far right would heap this on him is not explainable. This smear still appears in emails circulated by unapologetic Tea Party prevaricators, including a local member.

To invent a scandal give Darrel Issa, R-Calif., a committee to chair, then wait for his pontifications to be passed off as gospel by Fox news and the Internet rumor mill. This is how the Benghazi non-scandal got started. Issa took a CIA email, altered it, and passed it off as the truth. Fox, desperate for a scandal to hurt Obama’s chances of winning the presidency, took Issa’s assertions and passed them off to their gullible listeners as the truth. Instant scandal. Romney will win, Fox predicted. They couldn’t exactly decide what the scandal was. Finally they decided to go with the old reliable “cover-up scandal.” Problem was, nothing was covered up. When the real CIA emails were released, they exposed Issa’s chicanery and cleared the president.

The Benghazi tragedy was never a scandal; it was a bunch of political cronies trying to influence an election by repeating over and over, “It’s worse than Watergate.” Some Fox listeners will always believe the Benghazi scandal hoax, having been brainwashed for months.

The IRS brouhaha is a recipe on how to bake up a scandal with no ingredients. According to the National Memo, to get it started House Republicans told the inspector general to narrowly focus his investigation on “Tea Party organizations.” Then when the story was released it incorrectly gave the impression that only those groups were targeted.

Truthfully, twice as many progressive groups were subjected to increased intense scrutiny because they had words like, progressive, blue, marijuana, Occupy, or Israel, in them. The only organization denied tax exempt status was a progressive group. Most likely none of these groups, conservative or progressive, qualified for tax exempt status. They’re crooked. That’s the only scandal.

Issa, in an attempt to make his assertions look truthful, edited depositions from IRS witnesses. He then released a statement saying groups allied with the president hadn’t been targeted and used that to suggest the White House was involved since only Obama’s foes were targeted.

Said Issa, “Certainly people knew it was happening that could have done something, and would have done something, I’m sure, if these groups had been progressive groups that supported the president.”

Incredibly Issa knew this when he made this statement. What a liar! Issa continued his tirade long after he knew the truth, suggesting the White House had issued an “enemies list” and that the IRS was engaged in shutting down conservative viewpoints across the country. Fox ate this up like manna from heaven, then spewed it out as fact.

House Republicans echoed Issa claiming the IRS was too biased to handle the Affordable Care Act. I’m convinced that was the purpose of inventing this spurious scandal to begin with. The real target was Obamacare. “Enemies list” became as popular with Fox and Republicans in Congress as “Worse than Watergate.”

The truth hit the fan when the complete depositions, which Issa had chopped up, were released by committee member Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md. Fifteen Republican IRS supervisors totally repudiated all of Issa’s accusations, calling them laughable.

“The scrutiny wasn’t politically motivated, the White House wasn’t involved, and there is no enemies list,” they said.

Issa refuses to let them testify.

I’ve said enough about these trumped up scandals.

Glen McAdoo, a Churchill County resident, can be contacted at glynn@phonewave,net.