Cleta Mitchell is working very hard to prove the White House colluded with the IRS on the big scandal over conservative nonprofits, and failing miserably. On Fox News Sunday, she tried again, but Julian Epstein didn't let her slither away with accusations and no evidence.
This is because there is no evidence. In fact, the White House has completed a search of their records to try and find recipients for the time frame where there was lost email and came up completely empty.
The White House said Wednesday it has found no emails between any person in the executive office of the president and a top Internal Revenue Service official who has been connected to the improper scrutiny of political groups.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said the White House searched for all communications between the former IRS official, Lois Lerner, and executive office personnel. "We found zero emails," he said.
He said the search discovered three emails in which a third party emailed both Lerner and executive office staff. He said one was spam and two others were from a person seeking tax assistance. Carney said those emails have been provided to congressional investigators.
When pressed to provide evidence, all Mitchell could do was sputter and spit and say "But Obama! Speeches!"
Because there is no evidence. There never has been. It's a BS scandal from beginning to end, and the sooner the media clues into that fact, the better.
Oh, by the way, the real key employee is Nicole Flax, and her emails were NOT lost. If this were really a scandal (which it's not), they would have buried her emails, not Lerner's.
Here's the transcript, via Fox News:
WALLACE: OK, let me move on to another subject, and frankly, the bottom line subject. One of the groups pointed that you represent suing the IRS. It's a group called True the Vote, which saw tax exempt status back in 2010. The IRS finally favored and granted their application in 2013. Three years ...
MITCHELL: After we sued them.
WALLACE: Right.
MITCHELL: On the day they were to answer.
WALLACE: I understand your outrage, and I think a lot of people understand the outrage that it takes three years for that, but do you have any hard evidence that either the White House or the Obama campaign ordered the targeting of any conservative group? MITCHELL: Absolutely. All you have to do is look at the report. That the House Oversight Committee posted on its website, and they have a new website that has all of this information. And if you look at the timeline, and now I understand why the Democrats have been trying to shut ...
WALLACE: That's the point, do you have any hard evidence?
MITCHELL: That's because the president and members of Democratic senators and Democratic House members were beating on the IRS, demanding that the IRS do something to stop these conservative and Tea Party groups.
EPSTEIN: Who inside the White House, Cleta, and who inside treasury did this?
MITCHELL: The president of the United States went around the country giving speeches.
EPSTEIN: That is not hard evidence.
MITCHELL: Talking ...
EPSTEIN: I mean Chris is asking you a specific question and you're not answering the question.
MITCHELL: Well, let me ask you this.
EPSTEIN: No, answer the question.
MITCHELL: The pertinent time period that we would know whether there was such direct evidence has been conveniently lost.
EPSTEIN: Let me try to answer the question -- Can I respond to that?
WALLACE: Because I want to ask you about President Obama, who was as outraged initially as Cleta Mitchell was about the whole IRS scandal.
EPSTEIN: Appropriately so.
