Jay Carney: It’s ‘self-evident’ that lying liar Holder’s lie is totally true

It takes a special kind of skill to do Jay Carney's job, at least the way Jay Carney does it. The rule of modern-day politics is that you never concede anything the other side says, no matter how absurd the claim you have to make. That means you've got to twist yourself into some pretty contorted pretzels sometimes, but that's the rule and you have to follow the rule.

One staple of the rule, of course, is that you can never - under any circumstances - admit that someone on your team lied, especially when it's about something serious like taking a buzz saw to freedom of the press. So when someone on your side actually does lie, you've sometimes got to go through some pretty wild machinations to make the case that he didn't. Not easy, but hey, lying craftily is why they pay Jay Carney the big bucks. What do you do, though, when faced with a lie like Eric Holder's lie - the one where he never knew anything about possibly prosecuting a member of the press for disclosure of information, even though he himself signed a warrant against a member of the press and used the possible prosecution of the reporter as justification for doing so. That's not just an arguable lie. That's a lie. That's an I-didn't-take-any-cookies-oh-you've-got-video-of-me-taking-cookies-OK-you-got-me lie. That's what that is. How do you claim that's not a lie? You can't use logic. You can't say, "Oh look, a squirrel!" You have to be completely absurd. So if that's what you have to do, you might as well embrace it for all its worth. You don't just claim the lie isn't a lie. You claim it is self-evidently not a lie. Hey. Might as well. If you have to go over the cliff, you might as well run fast.

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The Hill reports:

“It seems self-evident that that charge is inaccurate,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters. “Based on the published reports that I have seen, I have seen no conflict between what the attorney general said and published reports.”

The "published reports" refers to NBC's report that it was Holder who signed off on the warrant against Rosen. How can that not be a lie? It can't. It's a simple, straightforward impossibility. So Carney tells another lie to cover it up:

“Clearly what the attorney general said is accurate,” he said. Carney said that media reports indicate that no prosecution of Rosen is being contemplated, and that therefore Holder’s statement regarding potential prosecution is correct. “I think based on what you said, he testified truthfully,” Carney said after the Holder quote was read aloud by a reporter. “You guys are conflating the subpoena with prosecution.”

Now granted, Carney's lie is a lie of implication, but that doesn't make it any less dishonest. By emphasizing that no prosecution of Rosen is under current consideration, Carney tries to change the story to be about the here and now. But it's not about the here and now. The warrant was issued in 2009, based on the administration's claim at that time that Rosen might be a criminal co-conspirator in a leak case. That means that the potential for prosecution was either a) real; or b) presented to the judge as real as justification for the warrant, if it there really was no such consideration, then that's another lie. Whatever is being considered or not considered now is completely irrelevant. Holder lied when he said he knew nothing about potential prosecution of a journalist for disclosure of information. Carney lied to try to cover up Holder's lie. This whole administration is nothing but a bunch of liars.