ohio. this one agent says we are controlled by home team and have to deliver home reports, quoting now and on the screen, i still hear people saying we were low-level employees, so we were lower than dirt according to people in d.c. for take it for what it is. they were basically throwing us underneath the bus. what have you learned about that? well, those interviews that quarrel issa and the other committee has been exploring clearly point out that the instructions on who to target and how to target were coming from washington, without any debate, and that is the subject that we will delve into quite author lee. there is push back from democrats in washington saying that some of the groups that filed for nonprofit status appeared to have political aims and goals. have you found that to be the case? i ve not been involved of course in those in those applications. but how do you determine whether
two former white house insiders. this is david plouffe and karl rove going head-to-head. this was not a political pursuit. baloney. baloney. not baloney, karl. if it is not political were are only conservative groups being targeted. liberal groups. really? name one. name one. what liberal group had tea party or patriot in its name was targeted? not a single liberal group has appeared taking a bright license here, karl. i am not. not at all. this was not an effort driven by the white house t would be the dumbest political effort of all time. didn t suggest it was driven by the white house. you think people in the cincinnati office decided i think people sitting in cincinnati, la gun that anything gel, washington, d.c. listen to people like senator max baucus, senator chuck schumer, president obama goes out in 2008, 2010 and calls these groups, quote a threat to democracy he is blowing the dog whistle and people heard it.
story. i want to start with a quote from one of these employees and this is what they said when asked about where this generated. it s impossible as an agent, we are controlled by many, many, people. we have to submit, many, many reports. so the chance of two agents being rogue and doing things like that could never happen. , what s your reaction to that? i think that s exactly correct. i began my legal career over 30 years ago in the office of chief counsel in the internal revenue service. i was a trial lawyer for treasury, irs. tax-exempt was one of our clients. they have an internal revenue code manual, irm they don t get to freelance these kinds of questions or this kind of targeting. there is no way this could have generated in cincinnati. number two, i have letters from two offices in california and also from a tax law specialist who is handling a case out of albuquerque in washington, d.c. as well as cincinnati. we were involved with four offices in the 27 cases
senator frank lautenberg of new jersey has passed away at 89 years old, from complications having to do with viral pneumonia. he was the oldest member of the united states senate. he has struggled with health problems since last year. he missed several weeks of votes due to some of the complications of these illnesses. he was, as i said, a democrat. longest serving senator in new jersey history. creates a vacancy that will have to be filled by governor chris christie. been a lot of discussion about who might run for that seat, including mayor cory booker of newark is on the list of people who is said to be possibilities for that. it should also be mentioned he returned to washington in february and announced he would not seek re-election in 2014. it did open up that spot at that point. hoped to create a series of accomplishments before the end of his term. news just crossing moments ago, long, long, term serving senator, frank lautenberg dead at age 89. bill: 19 minutes before the
set a certain tone and we know that these guys have now told the cincinnati operatives, or agents have told darrell issa s group they thought the, orders were coming from above. so we know it came from washington. the question is, whether it went to the white house. we truly don t know that. martha: really interesting to me, david axelrod, took the same line of argument with this, david plouffe. we re way too smart for this. this is not a political thing that came from us. we would never be this stupid as to instruct irs folks to go after tea party people because that would be too dumb. we re smarter than that. yeah. i like that too. sort of reminds me of ghostbusters says, back off, man, we re scientists. back off, man, we re really smart liberal guys. so we couldn t have done something so stupid. that is one of the problems obama found himself in with all these scandals, their best defense, whether the irs or eric holder or benghazi, their best defense is undermined the entire