Free Republic

A top Republican who spent the past two days investigating the border surge of illegal immigrants from Central America said Thursday that most of them are trying to reunite with relatives who are already living illegally in the U.S., and the best way to stop the surge is to speed up the threat of deportations. Virginia Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said that after speaking with immigration agents who are on the front lines intercepting and processing the families and unaccompanied children, it’s clear illegal immigrants don’t believe there are any consequences for jumping the...

More than 30 Republican lawmakers are calling on President Obama to end his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and make a public assertion that new arrivals will not receive legal status. In response to the ongoing flood of unaccompanied immigrant minors illegally crossing the nation’s southern border, 33 Republican congressmen, lead by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), are pressing Obama to roll back policies and perceptions that they say have helped spur the onslaught. "As our country faces an unprecedented surge in the arrival of unaccompanied alien children (UACs) at our southwestern border, we call on you to immediately end...

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,...

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa battled this past Sunday with Candy Crowley on CNN's State of the Union over the ex-IRS official’s lost emails. The IRS has informed congressional investigators probing the tea party targeting that Lois Lerner's emails from 2009 through mid-2011 were lost when her hard drive crashed. Coincidentally, the time period encompasses the first year IRS agents in Cincinnati began pulling tea party applicants for a closer look.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrel Issa (R-CA) demanded a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS over its targeting of conservative groups and the disappearance of emails from key officials. Issa declared that IRS Commissioner John Koskinen is “not the ideal person, not even an appropriate person” to oversee the investigation into the IRS’ conducts, and that this case calls for a true, special, independent prosecutor who has the ability to issue warrants, to seize materials, to safeguard documents and other information before it goes away and get to the truth.” He added that a special prosecutor will almost certainly...

Lois Lerner, the controversial director of the tax-exempt organizations division at the Internal Revenue Service, has a long sordid history of targeting conservatives. Under the direction of Lois Lerner, the Federal Election Commission sued the Christian Coalition in the 1990s. She harassed the Christian Coalition for three election cycles. Eventually, she lost her case. At one point Lerner even asked a targeted conservative if Pat Robertson prayed over him. (Sound familiar?)

CNSNews.com) - "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...

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa has subpoenaed an attorney in the White House counsel's office, who used to serve as counselor to the head of the IRS, to testify about the missing emails of former agency official Lois Lerner. The committee sent a letter on June 19 asking for Jennifer O'Connor to appear at a Tuesday hearing about the missing emails, as a part of its investigation into IRS targeting of conservative groups. [....] However, O’Connor’s boss, White House Counsel W. Neil Eggleston, responded by telling the committee O’Connor’s testimony was not necessary.

Committee announces subpoena after White House Counsel’s office declines to make attorney who supervised IRS’s response to congressional inquiry available for testimony House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., today issued a subpoena to Ms. Jennifer O’Connor of the White House Counsel’s office for testimony on Tuesday, following Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner John Koskinen’s testimony this evening at 7 pm. The subpoena follows a letter from White House Counsel Neil Eggleston declining to make Ms. O’Connor available on a voluntary basis as requested last Thursday. Chairman Issa issued the following statement on the issuance of the...

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) told America’s Newsroom Monday that IRS Chief John Koskinen was not honest with Congress about the lost Lois Lerner emails. Issa also said Lois Lerner was acting on President Obama’s behalf when she targeted conservative groups. “You came before us. You said you’d tell the whole truth but the truth under oath. Do you believe you told the whole truth? And, of course, the answer would be he did not tell the whole truth… I believe Lois Lerner is hiding something. I believe the Justice Department, the IRS and the...

(The following is not the exact text from Issa, but rather our own summary of the questions): 1. Explain, in detail, Lois Lerner’s 2011 hard drive failure, including the date it happened, and give the names of all employees who worked on retrieving data from it. 2. When did you learn that the hard drive failure affected the Oversight Committee’s subpoena into the IRS targeting scandal, and which IRS staffers realized that the subpoena could not be fulfilled? 3. Explain all the steps the IRS took to retrieve data from Lerner’s hard drive 4. Name all IRS employees that worked...

House Committee Requests Testimony from White House Official by Sharyl Attkisson on June 19, 2014 Today, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, (R-Calif.) requested that Jennifer O’Connor of the White House Counsel’s office testify next week.In a letter, Issa requested O’Connor’s appearance at a hearing on Tuesday at 9:30a, a day after IRS Commissioner John Koskinen is scheduled to testify. The Tuesday hearing is entitled, “IRS Obstruction: Lois Lerner’s Missing E-Mails, Part II.”In a series of disclosures that began last Friday, the IRS notified Congress that it has “lost” two years worth of key emails to and...

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa on Tuesday issued a subpoena to the Internal Revenue Service, ordering the agency to turn over the hard drive they claim is responsible for wiping out two years of critical email communications. Issa has dramatically widened his probe into the IRS after the agency announced last week that it had lost the emails, which may have provided information about an IRS policy of targeting for extra scrutiny and delay many conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

Here are the items Issa is asking the IRS to produce: + All back-up tapes, external drives, thumb drives, or other storage media the IRS used to capture, archive, back up, or otherwise record e-mails sent or received by Lerner from Jan. 1, 2009, to Sept. 23, 2013. + All hard drives, external drives, thumb drives, and computers Lerner used from Jan. 1, 2009, to Sept.23, 2013. + All electronic communication devices the IRS issued to Lerner from Jan. 1, 2009, to Sept. 23, 2013. + All electronic files, including, but not limited to, .pst files, relating to the IRS...

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa has subpoenaed the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service to testify next week before Congress about a trove of lost emails that could contain evidence of a plan to targeted conservative groups. Issa, R-Calif., will hold a June 23 hearing aimed at finding out more about two year´s worth of emails -- from 2009 to 2011 -- that the IRS has reported lost. The emails were from former top IRS official Lois G. Lerner to Justice Department and Treasury officials. ssa had requested the emails because he and other Republicans believe

(Reuters) - Two powerful congressmen have opened separate inquiries into whether a Department of the Treasury bureau charged with policing money laundering may have flouted federal hiring rules, including regulations that require military veterans be given preference for government jobs. :snip: Reuters reported on May 2 that the Treasury had temporarily suspended FinCEN’s hiring authority and forced it to rescind 11 job offers after a federal government labor watchdog determined that the bureau had illegally screened candidates in a quest to hire only lawyers for certain positions. :snip: "The fact that FinCEN allegedly rejected pools of candidates made up of...

A House panel has canceled a June hearing with Secretary of State John Kerry and will no longer call him to testify. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., had planned to grill Kerry about the Sept. 12, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. But Issa, who had subpoenaed Kerry to appear, said he is "releasing him from the upcoming hearing commitment." Issa said Kerry was using the Oversight hearing "as a shield" against cooperating with a newly created House select committee that has been empaneled to examine the Benghazi attack and the...

TOPICS: HOUSE OVERSIGHT John Kerry won't testify before House Oversight Committee after all BY JOEL GEHRKE | MAY 30, 2014 | 2:08 PM Secretary of State John Kerry won't testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about the Benghazi terrorist attacks after all. Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., dropped his subpoena in order to eliminate a State Department argument against Kerry appearing before the House Select Committee on Benghazi chaired by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., who sits on the regular oversight panel with Issa. "We have been clear that we're willing to work with the committee, despite the fact...

The House Committee on Oversight and Government reform has compiled a scathing report on the Department of Justice's “Operation Choke Point” program that critics believe is aimed at “targeting industries deemed objectionable” by the Obama administration. The report, released Thursday by panel chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., accuses the Justice Department of abusing its authority by going after the payday lending industry and other merchants and working to put them out of business. According to the report, the Justice Department “secretly” discouraged banks from conducting business with groups deemed to be “high risk,” for triggering a federal investigation. Sign Up for...

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.