Darrell Issa doesn't seem to know if he's coming or going these days, and now he's confused about whether or not his refusal to investigate the billion dollar NewsCorp scandal is influenced by knowing Rupert Murdoch personally.

 

Back in February 2010, Issa was interviewed by Lee Fang of ThinkProgress, and told Fang, in part, "Well, I know Rupert Murdoch." But as TP notes, this morning Issa had exactly the opposite story, defending himself against criticism for playing favorites with Murdoch by assuring us that "I don’t believe I said that. I don’t know Rupert Murdoch." ThinkProgress has the video, so he's going to need a better explanation.

 

Issa started by calling the repeated calls for investigation as "whiny" and later as "picking on media." Now, Issa Enterprises have been quite open about playing personal favorites and carrying grudges with members of the media, but it's even more fascinating to begin with since the allegations are only tangentially related to the media practices of the giant NewsCorp. Instead, the allegations have dramatically expanded to include ripping off shareholders to steer $250 million in profits to the Murdoch family and a nearly a billion dollars in anti-competitive actions that damages the broader market.

 

Issa himself has been accused of freezing out the small investors of his namesake company to increase his personal profits when he orchestrated a buyout, so maybe he doesn't think the possibility of Rupert Murdoch steering a quarter of a billion dollars to his daughter is just standard operating procedure for the super-rich. And while Issa's behavior in selling off his company could prompt an SEC investigation, we get right on cue tomorrow a subcommittee hearing on possible conflicts of interests at the SEC. But not nepotism worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

 

And it's hard to believe that he's opposed to playing economic favorites, even with his hyperbolic pursuit of Solyndra. Not only has he been transparently playing favorites with his agenda, handing out one-sided hearings to campaign donors and personal friends, and benefiting personally from his work as a legislator over and over again. So maybe he's not all that concerned if his friend(?) Rupert Murdoch is using a position of power for personal benefit.

 

His final excuse, that he won't investigate since the Justice Department has launched a probe is also absurd stacked against Issa's track record. He's continued to press on the Fast & Furious issue during an ongoing federal criminal case, even disclosing sealed documents from the investigation, violating a court order. And in his ongoing attempts to undermine the NLRB/Boeing case, he's repeatedly sought to make documents public that a judge had ruled should not be disclosed to Boeing. Heck, he's continuing to chase after Solyndra even though the House Energy Committee is already investigating. So we know Issa has no qualms about mounting his own investigations if they're redundant or even outright dangerous to other official probes -- he does it all the time.

 

If he doesn't investigate NewsCorp, it's only because Darrell Issa just doesn't want to. Just like all the rest.