12 Actual Scandals of the 'Scandal-Free' Obama Administration

During an interview with CNN which aired on Sunday, President Obama's top aide and close confidante, Valerie Jarrett, claimed that as Obama leaves his presidency, he is proud of himself — because his administration has been scandal-free.

After we regained our breath, we decided to put Valerie's claim to the test. The folks at “Fox & Friends” did, as well, having a little fun with this graphic:

Let's take a trip down “scandal-free” memory lane:

1. Operation “Fast and Furious” gunwalking program

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — in cooperation with legal gun dealers — traced weapons of low-level buyers, who they believed were acquiring them illegally for Mexican drug cartels.

Nearly 2,000 firearms from the program went missing, some turning up at killing scenes in Mexico — and at the site of a December 2010 gun battle in Arizona that left U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian A. Terry dead.

A report by the Justice Department's inspector general focused blame on ATF headquarters, the agency's Phoenix, Arizona, field office, and the U.S. attorney's office in Arizona.

The report cited “a series of misguided strategies, tactics, errors in judgment, and management failures that permeated ATF headquarters and the Phoenix Field Division, as well as the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Arizona.”

2. Benghazi terrorist attack and cover-up

On September 11, 2012, Islamist militants attacked a US diplomatic compound in Benghazi, leaving U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead.

White House officials initially, and inaccurately, described the assault not as a coordinated terrorist attack, but as a spontaneous act of violence born out of a protest over an anti-Islamic video.

It later emerged that the State Department, led at the time by Hillary Clinton, had rejected appeals for additional security at the consulate where the attack took place.

3. IRS targeting of conservative entities

In May 2013, it was learned that from April 2010 to April 2012, the Internal Revenue Service had placed on hold the processing of applications for tax-exempt status that it had received from hundreds of organizations with such presumably conservative indicators as “Tea Party,” “Patriots,” or “9/12” in their names.

During that period, the IRS approved only four applications from conservative groups while green-lighting applications from several dozen organizations whose names included the likely left-leaning terms “Progressive,” “Progress,” “Liberal,” or “Equality.”

In February 2014, it was further learned that of the already-existing nonprofits that were flagged for IRS surveillance (including monitoring of the groups’ activities, websites, and any other publicly available information), 83% were conservative.

Of the groups that the IRS selected for audit, 100% were conservative.

4. Department of Justice seizing records of journalists

In a sweeping and unusual move, the Justice Department in 2013 secretly obtained two months’ worth of telephone records of journalists working for the Associated Press as part of a year-long investigation into the disclosure of classified information about a failed al-Qaeda plot last year.

Justice Department guidelines require that subpoenas of records from news organizations must be approved personally by the Attorney General.

5. NSA surveillance of ordinary Americans

According to U.S. National Security Agency (NSA documents), the NSA collected every form of electronic communication conceivable directly from Microsoft (2007), Yahoo! (2008), PalTalk (2009), Google (2009), Facebook (2009), YouTube (2010), Skype (2011), AOL (2011), and Apple (2012).

The documents indicate that the data is collected in a bulk manner, and it includes the content of Internet phone calls, chat, photos, emails, stored data, video conferencing, and text messages of everyday Americans.

The NSA ended the program in November, 2015.

6. Ransom payments to Iran for release of hostages

Obama arranged to ship the to Iran piles of cash, worth $400 million and converted into foreign denominations, reportedly in an unmarked cargo plane.

The hotly debated question was whether the payment, which the administration attributes to a 37-year-old arms deal, was actually a ransom paid for the release of American hostages Tehran had abducted.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice Department strongly objected to the cash payment to Iran.

Read the full story on IJR.com

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