Obama's "Phony" Scandals are Anything But Phony

President Obama recently started talking about "phony" scandals which are "distracting" Washington from the business at hand.  When asked what the president saw as a "phony" scandal, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney talked only about the IRS scandal and the Benghazi investigation. 

Really, Mr President?  Those are "phony" scandals? 

With the IRS, the White House first claimed that it was just a few rogue employees in Cincinnati who were responsible.  That false narrative was quickly dispelled by the evidence, and as more investigation was done the scandal was tied to White House appointees, and potentially even the president himself, as this coordinated effort to illegally target conservative and Jewish groups began days after a meeting the head of an anti-tea party union head had with the president.  Now comes revelations that the Federal Election Commission may have illegally colluded with the IRS to also target conservative groups.  The more the investigation continues, the more damning evidence is discovered and the closer to the White House it goes, so I can see how the president wouldn't want anyone to focus on that scandal.  Oh, and don't forget the president proclaimed that those who were responsible for the targeting of conservative and Jewish groups would be held accountable, yet only 2 people no longer work for the IRS because of this scandal, one of them was on his way out anyway, and no one who actually did the targeting was fired.  The head of the FBI couldn't even name the person in charge of the investigation, nor how many people were assigned to the case.  How is anyone being held accountable for what the White House admitted was wrong?

The other scandal the White House mentioned was the attack in Benghazi, where 4 Americans were killed when Muslim extremists attacked a CIA safe house, including the US Ambassador to Libya.  The administration claimed that they couldn't get miltary assistance to the safe house in time to help.  The administration first tried to blame the attack as a spontaneous event because of an anti-Muslim video, but that quickly fell apart when the facts came out that intelligence reports almost immediately tied the attack to planned terrorism.  At the time, the president promised he would hold everyone accountable for the attack accountable.  Yet no one had been detained for questioning, much less brought to trial.  (See a pattern here?  The administration always tries to blame events that make them look bad on something else, all while saying they will hold everyone involved accountable.)  One of the main people named as being involved in the attack was recently interviewed by CNN, and he stated that no one from the FBI or the US government has even tried to contact him.  Now comes reports that dozens on CIA agents were on the ground at the safe house when the attack started, and that they were there because the administration was running guns to the Syrian rebels through Libya and Turkey.  Which would be illegal in a big way, so you can understand why the president doesn't want anyone looking into what they were doing. 

Another interesting thing is that only one person in Congress has even asked what Ambassador Stevens was even doing in Benghazi in the first place.  Now we also need to know if there were actually that many CIA agents there, and if so what they were doing.  Reportedly the CIA is giving lie detector tests to agents every couple weeks to try to ensure they aren't talking to the media or Congressional investigators.  A key general who was on duty during the attacks and reportedly wanted to send troops to help protect the Ambassador was not made available for interview by Congress because he was supposedly retired and couldn't be compelled to testify.  Then suddenly it was discovered that he really hadn't been retired, just hidden by this administration.  So not only does the White House not want Congress to investigate or the media to report on the scandals, they're tying to ensure that no federal employee or military member does, either.

So it would appear to be abundantly clear that the reason the administration doesn't want anyone to investigate these scandals is because they were involved in illegal activities and are trying to cover it up.  We cannot let them get away with it.