During New Day's regular "Inside Politics" segment on Monday, CNN's John King declared that it "makes me suspicious" as he informed viewers of revelations that some of former IRS official Lois Lerner's emails not only went missing, but that it took over a year for the White House to inform Congress.
After beginning the segment by rhetorically asking, "Do you believe in the Easter Bunny? Do you believe in Santa Claus? Do you believe that Lois Lerner's emails just suddenly went poof?" King recalled the details, including a quote from House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp complaining about it taking so long for the White House to inform him of the emails. King then commented:
You're either a conspiracy theorist, you think something nefarious happened here, or let's assume a horrible accident happened. Waiting a year to tell the Congress makes me suspicious.
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Monday, June 16, New Day on CNN:
JOHN KING: Here's another one, sorry, I'm going to be a little flippant here, and I don't, well, maybe I do mean to be. Do you believe in the Easter Bunny? Do you believe in Santa Claus? Do you believe that Lois Lerner's emails just suddenly went poof?
Lois Lerner, if you recall the IRS story, she is the key official at the Treasury Department, the IRS, that the Republicans want to know if she was unfairly targeting Tea Party groups, challenging their tax-exempt status and the like.
Well, the investigation has been going on for some long -- you see the graphic there. Her emails from January 2009 to 2011 have gone poof, disappeared. The administration saying she put them on a hard drive. That hard drive has crashed. They have recovered some of them by searching the computer for the people she sent those emails to.
But Republicans are very skeptical because they want to know if outside people, people outside the government were influencing her to go after the Tea Party. Here's the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Dave Camp. He says this, and it's hard to argue with: "The fact that I am just hearing about this, over a year into the investigation, is completely unacceptable."
You're either a conspiracy theorist, you think something nefarious happened here, or let's assume a horrible accident happened. Waiting a year to tell the Congress makes me suspicious.
