RUSH: I, ladies and gentlemen, want you to hear Trey Gowdy in action. He was named the chairman of the select committee looking into this. He’s actually on Benghazi, too, but he’s also looking at this. He’s on the government reform subcommittee. He’s on Issa’s committee. But, boy, is he good when he starts tearing into these Democrats. He’s a trial lawyer from South Carolina.
He’s just good, and he doesn’t take any guff, and he’s not afraid of confronting these people just dead on. I had some of these sound bites from yesterday. I didn’t have a chance to get to ’em so I held ’em over to start today. This is during a House oversight government reform subcommittee hearing on the IRS response to congressional oversight.
It’s all of this stuff with the e-mails being lost and the servers being erased and the tapes not being backed up and the hard drives being scratched and all of this happy horse manure. Trey Gowdy is questioning the IRS commissioner John Koskinen, and he said, “I want to read a quote to you from June of 2014. I want you to tell me if you know who said it, okay? ‘We confirm the backup tapes from 2011 no longer existed because they have been recycled pursuant to the IRS normal policy.’ Do you know who said that?”
And then Gowdy and Koskinen went at it.
KOSKINEN: Sounds like me.
GOWDY: It is you. Can you tell us who “we” is in that quote?
KOSKINEN: The “we” is the IRS. I tend to take responsibility for the agency and talk about it. I was advised when the, uh, draft report was submitted to me that people had talked to everyone in the agency to ensure that in the course of our several months of looking for backup tapes —
GOWDY: So “we” is the royal “we.” You’re speaking on behalf the entire IRS. How about the word “confirmed”? What does the word “confirmed” mean to you?
KOSKINEN: Uhhh.
GOWDY: That you “confirmed” the backups tapes no longer exist?
KOSKINEN: “Confirmed” means that somebody went back and looked and made sure that, in fact, all — any backup tapes that had existed, uh, had been recycled.
RUSH: Right. Okay. And so Gowdy said are you still “confirmed”?
KOSKINEN: At this point I have no basis for not being confirmed. I do understand the IG advised me that they were looking at tapes. I have not been advised as to whether any of those tapes —
GOWDY: Well, “confirmed” is a pretty strong word, Commissioner. Are you still “confirmed” that no backup tapes exist?
KOSKINEN: Well, at this point (snickers), I know the IG’s looking, and he hasn’t found anything.
RUSH: Finally, Gowdy nukes him for claiming that morale is low in the IRS.
GOWDY: I’m gonna say this in conclusion, Mr. Koskinen. I really could not believe the colloquy that you had with one of our colleagues about the morale at the IRS. It takes a lot to stun me, but that stunned me. Here’s a piece of advice I would give: If the folks like Lois Lerner and others would have spent more time working on the backlog, more time working their caseload — and less time targeting groups and less time trying to overturn Supreme Court decisions they didn’t agree with — maybe morale would be better and maybe their backlogs would be lessened.
RUSH: Amen! Maybe they wouldn’t be in such a depressed state if they simple went about doing their jobs instead of politically targeting Obama’s opponents! What, are we supposed to feel sorry that the IRS morale is low? Well, whose fault is that? He did. He came forward he said, “Morale at the IRS is very low.” Why, ’cause you got caught? Is the morale at the IRS low because the light is finally shining on what you did in there to these Tea Party groups?
Is morale low because Lois Lerner’s out of there now and got caught and didn’t get away with it and the jig is up? Why is the morale low? I mean, you guys are the IRS! You hold a hammer on everybody. How can morale be low? It’s mind-boggling. So today Trey Gowdy went to the floor of the House during one-minute speeches just to sum up this whole thing.
GOWDY: The IRS has offered eight different explanations for targeting our fellow citizens! If we, Madam Speaker, changed our story to government eight different times, we would be called inmates. We can’t lie to government! Therefore, government should never be able to lie to us. We agree the president… No president should ever prejudge the outcome of an investigation while that investigation is ongoing. No president should ever say there’s “not a smidgen of corruption” while an investigation is ongoing. We agree government should play by the same rules that we play by. We have to keep our e-mails! We have to keep our receipts! We have to keep our records! Why should it be any different for the IRS?
RUSH: Exactly right — on the money right.