Fox host Bill Hemmer and his guest Stephen Hayes can't admit that Darrell Issa's IRS scandal mongering has been nothing but a witch hunt, so they decide to take Rep. Elijah Cummings out of context instead.
June 10, 2013

As we already discussed here, House Oversight Committee ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings appeared on CNN this weekend, and told host Candy Crowley that if Chairman Darrell Issa did not release all of the testimony from the IRS employees that their committee interviewed, he was going to do it -- and that the testimony given clearly shows that the White House was not involved in directing the IRS to target any tea party groups.

Of course, that doesn't fit the narrative they're still trying to push at Fox, so how do they handle it? By taking Rep. Cummings out of context and pretending not to know that the employee who directed his employees to look at these groups is 21-year veteran of the IRS and a self-described conservative Republican.

This interview on America's Newsroom was pathetic by even Fox's "standards" in that the lies are so bad you can tell host Bill Hemmer and his guest Stephen Hayesa are so full of it, they're having trouble pretending they believe the garbage they're shoveling here.

And as Media Matters noted, it's not the only segment like this one they aired this Monday: Fox Ignores Details To Dismiss Congressman's Claim That IRS Targeting Mystery Is Solved:

Fox News dishonestly dismissed a Democratic congressman's statement that the mystery of who began the IRS' inappropriate targeting of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status has been solved.

Congressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, appeared on CNN's State of the Union on June 9 where he explained that a Cincinnati-based IRS manager told congressional interviewers that a screener under his supervision brought a tea party group's application for tax-exempt status to his attention, and that he then sent the case to a Washington office for assistance. In a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the committee, Cummings further explained that the IRS manager "said he then instructed his team of screeners to identify similar cases" and that the manager told interviewers that "he took this action on his own." The screener under this manager's supervision was also interviewed, and he "acknowledged developing search terms" that that Inspector General's office called "inappropriate" in its report. This is consistent with the Inspector General's finding that the IRS Determinations United in Cincinnati "developed and used inappropriate criteria to identify applications from organizations with the words Tea Party in their names."

But Fox's coverage of Cummings' statement withheld all of this information from the network's viewers. Fox & Friends merely aired Cummings' conclusion on CNN that "the case is solved" before giving Virginia Attorney General and Republican candidate for governor Ken Cuccinelli a platform to air his grievances against the IRS. America's Newsroom similarly aired only Cummings' conclusion and brought on Fox contributor Stephen Hayes to comment, with Hayes also refraining from detailing what the IRS manager told interviewers while questioning why Cummings is putting so much emphasis on the manager's answers.

Faux "News" -- we lie, you decide. Here's more on the propaganda network and this interview from PoliticusUsa: Fox News Won’t Tell Their Viewers That A Republican Was Behind IRS Targeting:

Hemmer brought in Stephen Hayes from the Weekly Standard, so that they could engage in three minutes of IRS scandal mongering. Hayes tried to invalidate the evidence that a Republican started the review of conservative groups. Hayes said, “This one person that Congressman Cummings suggests as somebody who tells a little bit of a different story. Now, that person’s story is interesting too. I mean it’s worth hearing all of these things, but to take that one account that suggests that this is not that big of a deal, and declare the entire episode over is somebody who’s looking first to solve the political problems, and not interested in the substantive questions…What Cummings is doing is trying to take one answer from one individual, and declare the whole thing over.”

Hayes then predicted that Rep. Cummings’ remarks will look like a pathetic attempt to deflect political concerns.

What is really pathetic is the obvious spin that Fox News is trying to put on this. Fox News has played the edited Cummings clip repeatedly, but they won’t tell their audience that the person who made this statements that Rep. Cummings is referring to is a Republican. That little piece of information is critical to the story.

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