I saw a meme recently mocking the Trump team for lawyering up. There’s a reason Obama and his team never needed to lawyer up. They had Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch as the attorney generals. Neither of them had any interest in looking at wrongdoing by the Obama administration. Even the thought of Obama hiring a special prosecutor to investigate himself is hilarious.
Here are five times Obama should have appointed a special prosecutor but didn’t:
1. Fast and furious – the gun running scandal where the US sold weapons to Mexican drug lords that were then lost and later used to kill US border agents. The murder of the border agents was initially used by the administration to call for greater gun control, until it was discovered where those guns came from.
2. The IRS targeting scandal – the IRS targeted right-leaning political groups by denying their applications and subjecting them to unreasonable questioning. Congress investigated, but no charges were ever filed by the Obama DOJ and the administration did not appoint a special prosecutor. The person responsible, Lois Lerner, never faced legal consequences. Multiple calls for a special prosecutor were ignored by the Obama DOJ.
3. Benghazi – not only did the administration lie to the public, but Hillary Clinton violated the law when she distributed classified information about the Benghazi incident and destroyed classified information regarding the incident.
4. Hillary Clinton’s email server – despite the destruction of evidence, and Loretta Lynch completely invalidating the investigation by meeting with Bill Clinton on his private jet, a special prosecutor was not appointed. This is despite evidence that Obama knew about her server and that the Obama DOJ made unethical deals with Clinton attorneys to help destroy and hide evidence in the case.
5. The Iran Nuclear Deal payment – This was when Obama negotiated a poorly structured nuclear deal with Iran, and then sealed it with a huge cash payment delivered in the middle of the night. After the payment was discovered, the Obama administration claimed it was an old debt from a couple Iranian governments ago when we cancelled an arms shipment to them during their revolution.
Any of these were more salacious than the idea that Trump associates may have sought opposition research from the Russians. But none were investigated by any body with actual authority. None resulted in special counsels.
This also doesn’t include the smaller things, like the raid on the Gibson Guitar factory, Solyndra, or NSA spying on reporters. And it doesn’t include the bigger things that came to light more recently such as Obama spying on Trump associates and unmasking them. I haven’t even touched on the leaks.
Trump fired James Comey. Obama’s first year in office was a blood bath for Bush administration attorneys and officials. The difference so far between Trump and Obama is that Obama had more scandals and fewer people in his government that had any interest in noticing.
Political Brief 