In response to Justice Dept. Watchdog Says DOJ Is Impeding Investigations:
The DOJ inspector general complaining about the stonewalls littering his department makes a lovely companion piece to the black comedy of Attorney General Eric Holder’s aide Brian Fallon trying to get in touch with a House Democrat – most likely the investigation-thwarting Rep. Elijah Cummings, himself a major player in the IRS scandal – for assistance with leaking some documents to the media… only to realize he had accidentally contacted the office of House Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa instead.
Fallon, who used to work for Senator Chuck Schumer – himself no stranger to the weaponization of the Internal Revenue Service – wanted to dribble out some documents to get them into circulation before Issa and his committee could make some headlines with them. The documents have something to do with the mysteriously unavailable Andrew Strelka, who managed the neat trick of going from serving Lois Lerner as a henchman in the politicized Tax Exempt Organizations Division to representing the IRS in civil suits related to the scandal as a Justice Department lawyer.
A few minutes into the conversation, as astonished Issa staffers listened to him on speakerphone, Fallon realized he’d called the wrong damn congressman, put them on hold for three minutes or so, and returned to the conversation “audibly shaken” at his mistake, according to a letter sent to AG Holder by the unamused Rep. Issa. (Well, maybe he was just a little amused in addition to being justifiably angry, because he described the remainder of the phone call as a “circuitous monologue,” which is a hilariously dry term for describing a panicked apparatchik babbling his way through a hastily-constructed pretense that he knew he was talking to Issa’s office all along, and really wanted to “pitch the idea that the Department and Committee should ‘help one another.'”
So that’s the state of affairs at the Justice Department: roadblocks, ignored subpoenas, agonizingly slow responses designed to stretch scandals out for years, and if all else fails, highly dubious claims of executive privilege to thwart investigations, but they’re always eager to team up with congressional Democrats and massage the Administration’s media coverage.
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