Free Republic

There's no official Sen. Ted Cruz presidential team — yet. But the Texas Republican is already surrounding himself with key strategists and advisers that could make his transparent White House ambitions a reality. The tea party firebrand relies on a small circle of advisers to inform his views and amplify his ultraconservative message. The inner circle breaks down into two groups: his chief advisers in the Senate office, and the chiefs of his nationally-focused political operation, which he beefed up in the summer of 2014 by hiring a crop of seasoned Republican campaign operatives. These are the key players that...

...Interview after interview of IRS employees by congressional investigators began to expose the inconsistencies in the administration’s narrative. There were no “rogue” agents, only employees who followed the implicit or explicit directions of more senior IRS officials in Washington. When Washington told Cincinnati IRS employees to “hold” other tea party cases while officials in Washington scrutinized early “test cases” concerning the group, they did it. When Washington told them to assign a tea party case coordinator, they obliged. Employees also told investigators that the IRS chief counsel’s office was not, as the American people were first led to believe, merely...

Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on Monday pushed back at House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa’s (R-Calif.) claims that top officials from the IRS’s Washington, D.C. office directed the targeting of conservative groups, calling the allegations unsubstantiated and “shameful.” “Republicans are on the verge of overplaying their hand publicly and the American people will quickly lose interest on their side in this,” Gibbs said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “They want to see the IRS cleaned up, but they understand that Darrell Issa is doing nothing more than politicizing this event. To throw around the words ‘liar’ and ‘perjury’...

California Rep. Darrell Issa, who asked Twitter followers Friday to tweet photos of their family members in the U.S. military, was duped into retweeting support for some of history’s most notorious killers. A Twitter user by the name @BrooklynJuggler trolled the Republican into retweeting a photo of his dear “Uncle Lee,” which was really a photo of Lee Harvey Oswald, the former Marine believed to have assassinated President John F. Kennedy, The Daily Dot reported. Another user by the name @Butt_C_Planet tricked Mr. Issa into retweeting a photo of his “late grandfather,” which was actually a photo of Heinrich Himmler,...

State governors are enacting quarantines on healthcare professionals returning from Ebola-stricken West Africa because the American public does not trust the Obama administration to handle the growing crisis, California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa said Sunday. "Governors of both parties are reacting to an absence of leadership," Issa, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told CNN "State of the Union" host Candy Crowley. Over the weekend, the states of New York, New Jersey, and Illinois have all imposed mandatory quarantines on people returning from West Africa, particularly healthcare workers, after Doctors Without Borders physician Dr. Craig Spencer was...

[snip] As the hearing continued, the White House announced that President Obama would meet with the nurse in the Oval Office for a photo-op. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest additionally mocked Chairman Darrell Issa for his pronunciation of the word "Ebola" and dismissed the hearing. "I didn't see much of it," Earnest said to reporters during the White House Press briefing. "It does seem that most of the criticism was registered by somebody who struggled to pronounce the name of the virus at the hearing." Earlier in the hearing, Issa was pronouncing the word "Ebola" like "Eboli."

Let she who is without geography sin cast the first globe! On her MSNBC show last night, Rachel Maddow mercilessly mocked Darrell Issa for confusing Guinea with Guyana. The Republican congressman made his mistake during a discussion of the country in which the latest Ebola outbreak began. Issa said it was "Guyana," a South American country, whereas in fact it was Guinea, a West African one. Fair enough. Issa should have gotten his countries straight. But of all the hosts in the MSNBC lineup, Rachel Maddow should have been the last to have the chutzpah to highlight Issa's blooper. For...

A senior communications aide to Attorney General Eric Holder seemingly called House oversight committee chairman Darrell Issa's staff by accident and asked for their help spinning new revelations about the IRS scandal, Issa said in a September 8 letter to Holder. The aide, Brian Fallon, is a former senior aide to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and a well-known personality on Capitol Hill. The letter describes Fallon as “audibly shaken” when he realizes his request to leak documents to help get ahead of news stories about them was mistakenly made to the very office he was seeking to undermine. Issa believes...

Judge Susan Dlott may not be a household name among conservatives; but the federal judge’s decision last week allowing a lawsuit against the IRS to move forward might make her one. By rejecting the demand from federal government attorneys that the case be dismissed, thereby allowing some of the charges to continue to trial, Dlott has struck a meaningful blow in support of those of us in America still committed to the pursuit of the truth and the rule of law. Her ruling is by no means a slam-dunk for the Tea Party groups involved in the lawsuit; but it...

Issa to IRS Commissioner: Want to Revise Your Testimony? Sharyl Attkisson Today, House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) sent a letter to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen asking if he wants to amend his earlier testimony about Lois Lerner. Koskinen testified on June 23 that Lerner, a former IRS official at the center of the controversy over the tax agency’s targeting of conservative groups, followed terms of the Federal Records Act in her handling of public records and materials. When asked about emails that have been reported as lost when Lerner’s hard drive crashed in 2011, Koskinen stated, “The responsibility is,...

Washington (CNN) - Expanding his IRS investigation by more than two decades, House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa, R-California, has sent a subpoena to the Federal Elections Commission for all communications involving former IRS administrator Lois Lerner from January 1, 1986 to the present day. This new search is the broadest-yet for records in a year-long investigation by Issa and congressional Republicans, who are trying to assess why the agency targeted tea party and other political groups for extra scrutiny.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans in Congress aren't buying the contention by the head of the Internal Revenue Service that he has seen no evidence anyone committed a crime when the agency lost emails that might shed light on the targeting of tea party and other political groups before the 2010 and 2012 elections. On Tuesday, a House panel will hear from a White House official who once worked at the IRS. Jennifer O'Connor worked at the IRS from May to November 2013, helping the agency gather documents related to the congressional investigations, said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the...

“I said I would provide all the emails. We are providing all the emails. The fact that three years ago, some of them—not all of them, but some of them—were not available, I never said I would provide you emails we didn’t have,” IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told a Monday evening hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Frustrated Republicans and apologetic Democrats questioned Koskinen about Lois Lerner’s vanished emails for several hours, beginning with Committee Chair Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who asked Koskinen if he knew those critical emails were missing when he testified before Issa’s committee on...

The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is questioning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service about the agency’s decision to prosecute a tree-trimmer who accidentally knocked herons out of a tree. Ernest Pulido is expected to face charges from the U.S. Attorney’s Office within a week for violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. He could face a maximum fine of $15,000 and six months in jail. Pulido was hired by the U.S. Postal Service to prune trees May 3 outside an Oakland, Calif., branch, where postal officials were upset with birds pooping on mail trucks. One branch...

Either Darrell Issa is so miffed at Republican leaders for yanking the Benghazi investigation out from under him that he's intentionally undermining the new House Select Committee, or he just vindicated those who believe he wasn't up to the task. Either way he just blew a hole in one big piece of the conspiracy theory.

Republican Rep. Darrell Issa claimed that an email he’s reviewed shows the White House decided to reach out to YouTube within hours of the Benghazi terror attack, to warn the website about the consequences of posting an anti-Islam video. The email would suggest the White House was connecting the attack to the video almost from the outset -- though their initial claim that the attack sprung out of protests over the film would later be proven false. According to Issa, who discussed excerpts from the otherwise classified emails on Wednesday, the email was sent at 9:11 p.m. ET on Sept....

Republican Congressman Darrell Issa on Thursday strongly condemned comments by GOP gubernatorial front-runner Tim Donnelly, in which the state lawmaker has tried to tie his Indian-American rival to fundamentalist Islamic law, calling his statements “hateful and ignorant garbage.” Donnelly, a state assemblyman who is popular with the tea party, has repeatedly said this week that Neel Kashkari supported Shariah banking code when he was a senior official at the U.S. Treasury Department in 2008. On Facebook, Donnelly posted a link to a banking seminar hosted by the department during which Kashkari, a Hindu, delivered opening remarks. “As far as I’m...

House Republicans have run out of patience with President Obama's administration, Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said Wednesday. Issa, who has been investigating employee misconduct at the Environmental Protection Agency, demanded that deputy administrator Bob Perciasepe produce documents within one month.

Several hearings we're keeping a close eye on today on Capitol HIll. There are two hearings on health care and the Affordable Care Act. One in the Senate, one in the House. We're expecting new data on enrollments today including who has paid after signing up. Insurance companies will reportedly testify that 80-85% of those who signed up have made their initial insurance payments. We're also awaiting a contempt vote for Lois Lerner. She is the IRS official accused of helping politically target certain political groups. There's a hearing on the IRS today where it could come up. Mike Emanuel...

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa is issuing a subpoena for Secretary of State John Kerry to testify before the committee May 21 about Benghazi, Issa announced Friday. The move comes in the wake of new, "smoking gun" emails that show top White House officials working to craft a narrative that the attack was the result of a YouTube video and "not a broader failure of policy." Republicans have expressed outrage that the documents were not provided earlier under subpoenas for them, but instead came out via a Freedom Of Information Request lawsuit by the conservative non-profit group Judicial Watch....