among the very first. there s been zero evidence of this involvement of the white house, and let me also say there was an alternative when mr. camp and the republicans in the house wanted to send the information that was in this booklet to the attorney general, they didn t have to have a secret session and then make it public violating the public s right to confidentiality. all the chairman had to do was to call up the attorney general and say i want to give you this information. i think you ve made that point. i want to ask you about this, though. the fact is that the irs was urchd heavy pressure at particularly this time to go over to go after conservative groups that were seeking tax exempt status. they were under heavy pressure from top democrats, including david axelrod who was then as an atdz viesor to the president, dick durbin, charles schumer, and a fellow named carl levin, the senator from michigan who just happens to be your brother. you really don t think that that pres
house republicans on capitol hill. he clearly implied it s about race. do you think he is right rite? it s false that no attorney general or president had been subjected this kind of treatment. after all, bill clinton was impeached. think about that for a moment. john mitchell went to jail. i mean, the list is long of attorneys general and other officials who have been subjected to some very rough treatment on capitol hill and elsewhere, and this strikes me as kind of cry baby stuff from holder. my sense about this is that both eric holder and barack obama have benefitted politically enormously from the fact that they are african-american and the first to hold the jobs that they hold. gron he specifically meant race or not. i suspect perhaps he did. to those two men race has been both a shield and a sword that
10-3, it was 100% of the conservative groups and 30% of the liberal groups. how do you explain that? look, this is what the attorney general is looking into. he has been looking into it for a year, sir. the president the president called for an examination by the attorney general. they are looking into that. we should not disrupt that by essentially having a secret session and having the materials given to us. you think there was not a smidgeon of corruption. was that right for the president to say? here s what he was talking about. the first hearing that we hilary clinton the chairman of the committee said there was a culture of corruption and administration interference. there s been zero, zero evidence that the white house had anything to do with what happened. the question had nothing to do with the white house. it had to do the question had to do with whether there was any corruption, and he basically gave the irs a clean bill of
the issue that was at the center of this at the very beginning, whether there was white house involvement has not been proven true, and they think that is the most important point. doesn t it make it a little bit hard if you are going to have this open, thorough, ongoing investigation by the justice department when you have the president saying basically case closed? i don t know that he said the case is closed. not a smidgeon of corruption? i think that s a tricky thing for a president to say when you do have an ongoing investigation, that you use as the thing that you point to to say that the administration is taking this seriously. i was struck on our sister broadcast, special report, when you said there had been three great scandals over the last 40 years here in washington. watergate, iran-contra, and irs. a couple of questions. one, where do you think this rises to that level, and why do you think the investigation has stalled? the investigation to take the last first
it s put a line between him in some of his advocates on and you do walk the corridors of the west wing or the white house or the administration really saying that he or other people say a lot of these things. eric holder. this is not the first time he s, in effect, said we re treated differently because we re black. he didn t say that, though. unfortunately there are facts. what happens is a reporter asked john boehner, the speaker, about this and the reporter s interpretation was that what holder said was about race. he didn t mention race. wait a minute. he goes to the national action network, al sharpton s group overwhelmingly african-american crowd and said when is the last time an attorney general was treated that way. and president and when when is the last time a president was treated this way, what do you think he was talking about.