Posted on 06/01/2013 8:45:42 AM PDT by smoothsailing
May 31, 2013
Vince Coglianese
The White House on Friday pushed back against news that former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House at least 157 times from 2009 to 2012.
Shulman is a central figure in the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups, having led the agency while those groups were singled out for harassment.
When challenged last week by congressional investigators about just 118 of the 157 apparent White House visits, Shulman did not dispute the number, only identifying several reasons why he visited so often.
“Um, the Easter Egg Roll with my kids,” Shulman said. “Questions about the administrability of tax policy they were thinking of; our budget; us helping the Department of Education streamline application processes for financial aid.”
The Daily Caller first reported on Thursday that White House visitor access records show “Douglas Shulman” with 157 publicly disclosed visits in that time frame. By comparison, no Obama cabinet member comes close in terms of publicly disclosed visits.
The liberal Atlantic website published a piece Friday morning speculating that the number of Shulman’s actual White House visits could be as low as 11, despite widespread coverage of those revelations on Thursday.
“Complicating the picture is the fact that just because a meeting was scheduled and Shulman was cleared to attend it does not mean that he actually went,” wrote The Atlantic, suggesting that Shulman may have skipped out on up to 146 different White House meetings he was expected at — despite his name appearing on the visitors logs for those meetings.
The Atlantic offers no source for that claim, but Dan Pfeiffer — White House senior adviser to the president for strategy and communications — latched onto the article Friday morning on his official White House Twitter account. “Def Worth a Read,” Pfeiffer tweeted, marking the first time the White House has addressed Shulman’s unusually frequent visits.
The claim that White House visitor records might only show information about a visitor’s pre-clearance — and not an actual visit — is not something the White House reveals in its disclosure policy. Additionally, as TheDC has previously reported, not every visit by top administration officials requires that the official physically signs in.
Some visits by top officials are never even noted in the visitors logs. A comparison of the situation room photo from the night of the bin Laden raid — May 1, 2011 — to the visitor logs, for example, shows that several of the officials in the photo never appear in the public access records.
The White House voluntary disclosure policy does reveal that visitor names are often left off the logs for a variety of reasons — listed below — including personal visitors of the president and national security.
While the White House has fought to keep individuals who fall under those exceptions away from the public eye, Friday’s pushback against Shulman’s name appearing 157 times in the logs appears to mark the first time the White House has suggested that visitors who appear in the access records may not have visited at all.
The White House did not respond to The Daily Caller’s multiple requests for comment for clarification, for either this report or Thursday’s.
When asked about Pfeiffer’s tweet in the White House press briefing Friday afternoon, White House Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest did not dispute that Shulman visited the White House at least 157 times, only saying that the president was committed to “transparency” and that most of the meetings Shulman attended involved Obamacare.
See the reasons why the White House says it leaves names off the visitors logs:
The White House will not release fields within the access records that implicate personal privacy or law enforcement concerns (e.g., dates of birth, social security numbers, and contact phone numbers); records that implicate the personal safety of EOP staff (their daily arrival and departure); or records whose release would threaten national security interests.
The White House will not release access records related to purely personal guests of the first and second families (i.e., visits that do not involve any official or political business).
The White House will not release access records related to a small group of particularly sensitive meetings (e.g., visits of potential Supreme Court nominees). The White House will disclose each month the number of records withheld on this basis, and it will release such records once they are no longer sensitive.
Visitor information for the Vice President and his staff at the White House Complex will be disclosed pursuant to the policy outlined above. It is not possible, however, to release visitor information for the Vice President’s Residence in an identical format to the White House Complex at this time because the Residence is not equipped with the WAVES and ACR systems that are in place at the White House Complex. The Office of the Vice President will, instead, release the guest lists for official events at the Residence and will also review the Vice President’s and Dr. Biden’s daily schedules and release the names and dates of visitors to the Residence who appear on those schedules. The Vice President’s staff is working with the Secret Service to upgrade the visitor records system at the Residence. When the electronic update is complete, visitor information for the White House Complex and the Residence will be released in a common format.
Subpoena Schuman’s diary from the IRS which indicates his daily work schedules, INCLUDING TRIPS AND OUT OF OFFICE MEETINGS, to see how many times he was out of his office.
Ok, I’ll give them 10% for sloppiness. Let’s say it was between 141 and 173 times. Allowing for the least incriminating number, they need to explain why he was there 141 times.
Time to fire the person in charge of record-keeping. That should save a few bucks for the taxpayer.
Lemme guess, “Shulman” is the code name form for his Man’s Country buddies’ sign ins?
And as if that wasn't bad enough...
Due to sloppy record-keeping, records fail to show my visits to the WH. I can attest that when I was there, Zippy confessed to me that he was born in Kenya, rigged both elections, is on the down low and has committed several murders. On 9/11/2012 he didn’t get involved because he was high on cocaine, so it was actually Hillary that gave the stand down order. Unfortunately, he was unable to tell me who his real father is because he didn’t know for sure himself.
Nixon got in trouble over a mere 18 minutes of missing tape. How many missing hours of the WH entrance door video will there soon be? Can’t wait for the excuses to begin - Oh, we only keep the tapes for two weeks... No, we record over old tapes... Oops, the camera wasn’t working that day... Sorry, ABC put their logo across the screen conveniently hiding the person entering.
Baghdad Bob lives!
In addition the idiot who wrote the reasons does not understand the meaning of the word implicate. I believe the word he is looking for is “compromise.”
What a joke by these dissembling A-holes running the greatest nation on earth! How did we get here?
‘Don’t look around, the Commissar’s in town.’
What the hell was Shulman doing, bangin’ Valerie Jarrett or something?
It is called dissembling!
.... Oh .... I get it!!! The logic of Barck Obama's Brain is thinking of the wise old ancient Muslim Proverb that he was taught as a kid .... it goes something like this ..... "ONCE is an accident, TWICE is a coincidence, THRICE is a pattern, 157 times is inconclusive."
.... Ahhhhh ... the wisdom of the ancients ...... Makes perfect sense to me!
What ever happened to Media Matters, who is tax exempt, working directly with Holders Justice Dept to go after enemies of Obama.
That story strangely disappeared....
Obama is making America a bad place, he just is.
My question, too!
Googling reveals that Rebecca Blank is the Deputy Secretary of Commerce. Very curious. Anyone with ideas about what she is up to?
Thomas Perez. Civil Rights lawyer in DOJ.
Penny Pritzker is an entrepreneur in Chicago, nominated to be the next Sec of Commerce. Real estate connections.
So two of the three are Commerce connected. What’s up with that? Who is getting deals under the table? Methinks there are plenty of smoking guns here. Let’s abolish the IRS and the income tax first, then go after whatever other corruption is involved at Commerce. Solyndra type deals?
>>These people can’t maintain a log of White House visitors, but they are going to control all the details of our healthcare, among other issues. Go figure............
We have a winner!
It doesn’t matter all that much to me why they get put in jail. It can be for treason and corruption or for dereliction of duty and incompetence in maintaining proper records. They got Al Capone on tax evasion (and I’m actually beginning to feel some sympathy for that), so let’s jail Zippy for incompetence and lying.
You know, this administration is so fond of surveillance and record-keeping on the rest of us but so protective of its own privacy.
I think it’s about time for a citizen’s group to form and film the comings and goings in and around the WH. They could work in shifts and everyone could keep the info on their private computers. They could share with each other so there would be backups of information. They could also keep meticulous logs of when they did the filming or made observations, what license plates went by, faces they recognized, etc. I think this would be an interesting project for a group of conservative retirees. Kind of like a Neighborhood Watch, but on a national level.
I haven’t seen my mother 157 times in 4 years. This is the smoking gun. Proves that 0bama was planning part of the IRS assault on conservatives to win re-election. This is far less noteworthy than lying under oath or “plumbers” getting into the opponent’s files.
Why is the Obama Administration constantly reminding me of the OJ Trial? OJ discredited the DNA evidence then the gloves didn’t fit. Now when the WH logs suggest Obama is running a secret police war on political opponents through the handmaiden IRS, he quickly denounces his own “transparent” logbooks as highly unreliable records....very convenient. But it could only mean Comrade Schulman was there more than 157 times and they didn’t record it.
Obama is always knocking down evidence of his mismanagement and then dissembling about the facts.
IRS - attack on political opponents
Benghazi
Fox’s James Rosen - horrendous attack on the First Amendment
Obamacare disaster as job destroyer ‘ not costing taxpayers one dime....’
Fast and Furious
Stuxnet revelations - that Holder wont look at for some reason.
Romney as murderer - Millions spent on a despicable lie he knew nothing about..
Rev Wright - racist psycho for 20 years - ‘didn’t inhale’ defense
Rezsko as criminal paymaster - “boneheaded”
Complete zero academic background
Claimed foreign birth to sell books, then it went away.
Obama - making America like the Soviet Union!
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