Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, called White House press secretary Jay Carney a “paid liar,” who is not being truthful about the IRS snooping scandal, Politico reports. Fancy Darrell Issa calling anyone a liar, considering he was accused of criminal behavior in the past. These Republicans have a lot of nerve.
Darrell Issa “blasting” Jay Carney: “Their paid liar, their spokesperson… he’s still making up things about what happened and calling this a local rogue.”
Darrell Issa has a very troubling past and he should probably be the last person to call someone a liar, but of course, that’s typical Republican hubris. Martin Bashir recently pointed out that Issa had been indicted for car theft and arrested for carrying concealed weapons. There’s more. Ryan Lizza raised some troubling questions about Darrell Issa in an article that appeared in New York Magazine:
A member of Issa’s Army unit, Jay Bergey, told Williams that his most vivid recollection of the young Issa was that in December, 1971, Issa stole his car, a yellow Dodge Charger. “I confronted Issa,” Bergey said in 1998. “I got in his face and threatened to kill him, and magically my car reappeared the next day, abandoned on the turnpike.”
…On March 15, 1972, three months after Issa allegedly stole Jay Bergey’s car and one month after he left the Army for the first time, Ohio police arrested Issa and his older brother, William, and charged them with stealing a red Maserati from a Cleveland showroom. The judge eventually dismissed the case…
While the Maserati case was pending, Issa went to college. Just before 11 p.m. on Friday, December 1, 1972, two police officers on patrol in the small town of Adrian noticed Issa driving a yellow Volkswagen the wrong way down a one-way street. The police pulled him over, and, as Issa retrieved the car registration, an officer saw something peculiar in the glove compartment. He searched it, and, according to the police report, found a .25-calibre Colt automatic inside a box of ammunition, along with a “military pouch” that contained “44 rounds of ammo and a tear gas gun and two rounds of ammo for it.” Issa was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon.
Of course, judging by some of the comments on Politico about Issa calling Carney a “paid lair,” the right wingnuts are only too happy to veer off into birtherism, calling President Obama the “greasy Kenyan” and claiming his administration is the “most corrupt.” Um, how quickly they forget what happened under the previous Republican administration. I have to conclude by asking, shouldn’t the DCCC be going after Darrell Issa ahead of the 2014 elections?
This was cross-posted from the Hinterland Gazette.