Thu May 30, 2013 AT 11:14 AM EDT
Did the White House Illegally Pull the Taxes of Private Citizens?
The Weekly Standard reports on an odd occurrence this weekend. Remember Austin Goolsbee? He’s a past top economic advisor to President Obama. In 2010, Goolsbee told reporters in an off-the-record meeting that the Koch brothers’ companies don’t pay federal taxes. When they learned of it, the Koch brothers denied it and demanded to know where Goolsbee got his information – did he get it illegally from the IRS? No explanation was forthcoming. Fast forward to last Friday when Goolsbee took to Twitter to claim he got the information from a 2003 article on Florida taxes in the St. Petersburg Times. The problem this time? The article refers to a different Koch brother – and has the Koch brothers’ lawyer asking hard questions again. Then, after a reporter from Slate wrote about the tweet, Goolsbee quickly deleted it.
Republicans Express ‘Great Concern’ About Possible Holder Perjury
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday expressing “great concern” about the possibility that Holder lied under oath during his testimony earlier this month on the Justice Department’s seizing of journalists’ records, CBS News has learned. On May 15, Holder told the committee he wasn’t involved in “the potential prosecution” of a member of the press under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information. In a defense of Holder, Reuters reports White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters at a briefing on Wednesday, there was an “extremely large distinction” between describing a reporter as a co-conspirator and charging him with a crime. According to Politico and Breitbart, Holder is set to meet this week with Washington bureau chiefs at major media outlets to brief them on how the Justice Department deals with journalists who work with leakers. The meeting will be off the record.