What both the IRS scandal and the ongoing immigration crisis show is an executive branch gone wild.

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With the IRS scandal and immigration crisis revealing new depths of duplicity in the highest levels of the Obama administration, a pattern of deception is emerging that is lethal to the credibility of government leaders.

Earlier this week, investigators working for the House of Representatives publicized interviews with IRS IT experts that directly contradict the agency’s official line that potentially incriminating emails sent by former manager Lois Lerner were unrecoverable.

Since May 2013, when she admitted directing IRS staff to use search times like “tea party” to target applications for non-profit status, Lerner – then the head of the agency’s tax-exempt group – has been the focal point of interest into whether the IRS illegally discriminated against conservative advocacy groups.

The current issue is whether thousands of emails from Lerner’s government email account can be accessed.  Investigators believe they are likely to find incriminating messages that show a coordinated effort to harass the activities of groups ideologically opposed to President Barack Obama’s agenda.

In the latest round of oversight hearings, new IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has said that a hard drive crash made recovering Lerner’s emails impossible.

However, that story is being disputed by IT experts inside and outside the IRS.

“But now, investigators have had a chance to talk to the technical experts inside the IRS who actually examined Lerner’s computer, and the experts say the hard drive in question was actually just ‘scratched,’ and that most of the data on it was recoverable,” writes Byron York.

“The IRS computer experts also told the committee that they had recommended seeking outside help in recovering the data from Lerner’s computer – something IRS management declined to do.”

IT industry leaders are also criticizing the IRS’ handling of the situation.

“There is a certificate of destruction any time a piece of equipment is sent to a disposal company… Where is that?” asked Barbara Rembiesa, the chief of the International Association of Information Technology Asset Managers, in an interview with Politico. “Where is the paper trail?”

With the IRS’ credibility on this issue eroding by the day, a federal judge is deciding whether to appoint an independent IT forensic expert to look into what happened.

Then there’s the crisis on the southern border.

Though it didn’t get the attention it deserved, a recent Washington Post investigative piece quoted White House advisors and Democratic members of Congress openly admitting they put the liberal political goal of comprehensive immigration reform ahead of addressing the expected surge in illegally migrating children.

As early as 2012 – the year Obama implemented “deferred action” on deportations and the year after he instructed federal agents to use prosecutorial discretion in a way that privileged minors crossing illegally – immigration officials were “sounding alarm bells” about the rapidly growing number of unaccompanied children.

Indeed, “[t]he number of minors arriving illegally from Central America shot from 3,933 in 2011 to 20,805 in 2013,” reports the Post. In 2014 so far, the number has ballooned to an estimated 57,000.

Despite these early warnings, liberals sacrificed national security to play politics. 

The Post quotes Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) as saying that Democrats in Congress were aware of the problem, but chose to remain silent in order to help Obama pass his version of immigration reform that would make it easier to grant eventual citizenship to illegal immigrants.

“That was always a concern of mine: How to address the issue in a way that did not detract from the need for comprehensive immigration reform,” Roybal-Allard told the paper.

The political calculation amounted to a bait-and-switch: Ignore increasing waves of illegal immigrants, and pass a bill that would turn around and absorb them once implemented.

Obama’s top advisors were in on the fix too.

Members of the president’s national security team were routinely overruled by more powerful White House domestic policy staff. “Was there a lack of interest and a focus on the legislation? Yes, that’s where the focus was,” said a source involved in the deliberations.

What both the IRS scandal and the ongoing immigration crisis show is an executive branch gone wild. Untethered from a sense of duty to the citizens they serve, bureaucrats and politicians are being caught consistently abusing their power to advance their ideology. The rule of law is being sacrificed on the altar of the liberal agenda. 

The cost to society is material and cultural. Every time a government official is caught deceiving the public, oceans of money are channeled toward figuring out the truth. Partisan suspicions are confirmed and the common good gets obscured. Repeated violations of the public’s trust also damage the credibility and legitimacy of all public officials, and leads to cynicism about politics that makes even routine matters of governing difficult to achieve.

The depth of deception in the Obama administration is breathtaking, and the toll it is taking on health of our political culture could be lethal.