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-Land of the Free
IRS Claims to Have Lost Over 2 Years of Lerner Emails
2014-06-14
[WAYSANDMEANS.HOUSE.GOV] Today, Boodle Central Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) issued the following statement regarding the Internal Revenue Service informing the Committee that they have lost Lois Lerner emails from a period of January 2009 -- April 2011. Due to a supposed computer crash, the agency only has Lerner emails to and from other IRS employees during this time frame. The IRS claims it cannot produce emails written only to or from Lerner and outside agencies or groups, such as the White House, Treasury, Department of Justice, FEC, or Democrat offices.
What this means, of course, is that the emails were supremely damning...
"The fact that I am just learning about this, over a year into the investigation, is completely unacceptable and now calls into question the credibility of the IRS's response to Congressional inquiries. There needs to be an immediate investigation and forensic audit by Department of Justice as well as the Inspector General.

"Just a short time ago, Commissioner Koskinen promised to produce all Lerner documents. It appears now that was an empty promise. Frankly, these are the critical years of the targeting of conservative groups that could explain who knew what when, and what, if any, coordination there was between agencies. Instead, because of this loss of documents, we are conveniently left to believe that Lois Lerner acted alone. This failure of the IRS requires the White House, which promised to get to the bottom of this, to do an Administration-wide search and production of any emails to or from Lois Lerner. The Administration has repeatedly referred us back to the IRS for production of materials. It is clear that is wholly insufficient when it comes to determining the full scope of the violation of taxpayer rights."

Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Charles Boustany Jr., M.D. (R-LA) added, "In the course of the Committee's investigation, the Administration repeatedly claimed we were getting access to all relevant IRS documents. Only now - thirteen months into the investigation - the IRS reveals that key emails from the time of the targeting have been lost. And they bury that fact deep in an unrelated letter on a Friday afternoon. In that same letter, they urge Congress to end the investigations into IRS wrongdoing. This is not the transparency promised to the American people. If there is no smidgeon of corruption what is the Administration hiding?"
Posted by:Fred

#36  Reporter Sharyl Attkisson Raises Good Questions IRS Should Answer On “Lost” Lerner Emails
Posted by: Uncle Phester   2014-06-14 19:41  

#35  Reporter Sharyl Attkisson Raises Good Questions IRS Should Answer On “Lost” Lerner Emails
Posted by: Uncle Phester   2014-06-14 19:36  

#34  This is total bullshit, of course. The first rule your told in any competent IT organization is "Protect the Data". I've worked for banks, financials, biomedicals and it's redundancy upon redundancy. EVERYTHING is backed up, with email as a priority. That's not backed up locally, that's on your network. The backups to the backups are stored off site in case your primary back up site is taken out.
Those emails are someplace. I'd subpoena the IRS IT guys and put the fear of God into them.
Posted by: tu3031   2014-06-14 18:58  

#33  Nero only fiddled. O and company are going around with flamethrowers.
Posted by: CrazyFool   2014-06-14 18:19  

#32  This is amateur hour in DC. The loss was fabricated for the next part of their excuse. "See its been so long the emails are already gone. This is such old news." I always wondered what everyday Romans were doing while Nero fiddled.
Posted by: 49 Pan   2014-06-14 18:10  

#31  Besoeker, the problem is, it's entirely believable. You got me!
Posted by: KBK   2014-06-14 16:53  

#30  Anybody else's email lost, or just Lerner's?
Posted by: Squinty   2014-06-14 16:42  

#29  As an IT professional that has worked with government agencies.... I call bullshit.

For all the reasons explained earlier by other posters.

About time to storm the Washington DC buildings and run the bastards out of town.
Posted by: DarthVader   2014-06-14 14:22  

#28  #25 What gets me about these people is, they know, we know they are lying and they don't care

There is the heart of the matter. Rule of Law => What can we get away with? => Who is going to stop us?
Posted by: SteveS   2014-06-14 14:04  

#27  What brought Nixon down was obstruction of justice. Lying to avoid a subpoena is obstruction of justice. I will love watching WaPo and NYT dance around this as the knife keeps twisting.

Hosted on their own petard.
Posted by: Squinty   2014-06-14 13:55  

#26  The hubris of the morons in this administration is astounding. That we put up with them this long must be a wonder to the rest of the world.
Posted by: JohnQC   2014-06-14 13:24  

#25  What gets me about these people is, they know, we know they are lying and they don't care
Posted by: Beavis   2014-06-14 13:10  

#24  This is simply not believable. In the facility we had, we backed up every day (before starting the nightly processing). The backup was kept on CD/DVD/cartridge in a separate room from the servers. After a year, the physical media was sent off-site.

Simply stated, a computer crash could not have created this problem. The inbox/"personal folders" of Ms. Lerner are preserved on multiple disks in several locations. They might have to dig for them, but they could be found.

Even if the was a crash, explosion or fire they can be retrieved.

Al
Posted by: frozen al   2014-06-14 12:39  

#23  My apologies KBK, #13 was a meaningless, vengeful, snark. Forgive me.

.....I just thought it would be fitting to pull their frigging retirement annuities in response to the Lois Lerner e-mail vaporizations.
Posted by: Besoeker   2014-06-14 11:20  

#22  Veteran IT Professional Gives Six Reasons Why the IRSÂ’ Claim That It ‘LostÂ’ Two Years of Lois LernerÂ’s Emails Is ‘Simply Not Feasible'
Posted by: Frank G   2014-06-14 11:20  

#21  Besoeker, do you have a link to that FERS failure? I can't google it.

The IRS has a long history of incompetence when it comes to computer systems. That's why it's a travesty that they are involved in the processing and enforcement of Obamacare. It's surprising any of that inter-agency communications worked at all. If it did.
Posted by: KBK   2014-06-14 10:24  

#20  No mention of this at NPR's website..

Not a word.
Posted by: no mo uro   2014-06-14 09:28  

#19  Like Al Capone, you don't get him for bootlegging, you got him for income tax evasion. Get them for stuff like this.

Ooooooohhhhh. My inner cat just sharpened her claws, Procopius2k. Git 'er done.

(Please excuse me, I must lie down for a moment. I just discovered I am eating my oatmeal with a sugar spoon, which simply is not done. My inner cat will have to wait until I recover.)
Posted by: trailing wife   2014-06-14 09:00  

#18  For sure Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks org has a copy. It is believed his organization intercepted practically every government correspondence through 2012. His ticket out of his embassy hideout and if Congress ever gets serious about investigating the IRS by any means necessary.
Posted by: Bubba Graiting8281   2014-06-14 08:52  

#17  bet the NSA does
Posted by: Frank G   2014-06-14 08:48  

#16  Snowden has a copy?
Posted by: Bubba Graiting8281   2014-06-14 08:40  

#15  per law they need to be kept 5 years

Like Al Capone, you don't get him for bootlegging, you got him for income tax evasion. Get them for stuff like this. They had money for bonuses and convention/meetings, they had money to comply with the law. That lies with those in the upper echelons, the very place you want to bring pain. The interesting things about coverups is that they become dirtier and messier expanding to even more people and more opportunities for someone to eventually roll over.

Mark Twain - If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2014-06-14 08:38  

#14  Should any of us little people try that shit, we would be jugged.

Instead of working down the line from higher-ups to those next in line to produce the emails, I think they should start working their way up towards the Whitehouse. That is where King Rat and minions are. Subpoena those SOBs. They have gotten a pass for far too long. I'll get excited when I read that impeachment is proceeding for these Chicago thugs.
Posted by: JohnQC   2014-06-14 07:01  

#13  The IRS and FERS are siting obsolete systems, manpower and funding shortfalls as reasons for the data losses.

To be fair, those things are true, for the IRS, at least. I feel fortunate in having had no connection whatsoever to the other thus far, so I can't speak to it. On the other hand, the IRS has spent an awful lot of money trying --but not succeeding -- in updating their system over the past decade or more, The shock is that they are able to function in connection with the modern world at all, or so it seems to me in my ignorance.
Posted by: trailing wife   2014-06-14 06:18  

#12  In other news:

Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) reports IRS Employee pension and savings information missing from FERS computer systems. The retirement and benefit data is reportedly "unrecoverable." FERS advises current and former IRS employees to provide last 5 years of hard copy records to the Veteran's Administration in order that system data can be re-entered manually.

The IRS and FERS are siting obsolete systems, manpower and funding shortfalls as reasons for the data losses.




Posted by: Besoeker   2014-06-14 03:37  

#11  OS is is correct, but in addition, email headers are always logged separately. That would include the from, to, subject line and the name of any attachments. Very useful in scoping FOI requests and other investigations.
Posted by: Bunyip   2014-06-14 03:29  

#10  What OS said, there are certain to be multiple copies of these files somewhere.
Posted by: Shipman   2014-06-14 02:40  

#9  The IRS official(s) who signed that memo and Commissioner Koskinen should be immediately fired and jailed for obstruction and the next fellow in the IRS chain of command told to produce the memos within 24 hours. If he or she fails, then he or she should be jailed.... and on to the next IRS official until the BULLSHIT stops.

Lawless bastards! OS is correct. Server farms provide back-up, not the individual laptops and desktops. Back-up systems DO NOT decide to keep internal communications, then elect to lose other external communications.
Posted by: Besoeker   2014-06-14 01:58  

#8  Sack the entire IT team.
Posted by: bright pebbles   2014-06-14 01:10  

#7  Uhhh, document retention policy? If losing one PC means you lost something, your procedures suck.

Unless this was something Lois was running on her own...

Either way, someone gots some 'splaining to do. Eh, Lucy Lois?
Posted by: SteveS   2014-06-14 01:09  

#6  Agree this is bullshit. This is the IRS... They don't just loose backups. Try using that excuse during your audit and see how far you get!
But it gives just enough cover for the RINOs and MSM to run with it which is all they need.
Posted by: CrazyFool   2014-06-14 01:08  

#5  Email is stored on servers. Servers get 3 stage backup (as your sysadmin). Backups are eventually stored off site - per law they need to be kept 5 years in most cases. This is horse shit. Who is running their backup program, the son of the secretary who put that gap in the Nixon Watergate tape?
Posted by: OldSpook   2014-06-14 01:01  

#4  role over --> roll over. Sometimes my fingers fight my brains and my fingers win. I would still be furious if the so-called Republican Congressional leadership does nothing.
Posted by: Squinty   2014-06-14 00:26  

#3  If the Republicans simply role over and accept this I will never donate or vote for them again.
Posted by: Squinty   2014-06-14 00:14  

#2  thirteen months into the investigation

Congress. You sit on your ass 13 months waiting for crooks and jackals to cough up evidence? YOU deserve to never see it. Get off your do nothing butts and make something happen!(?) Yeah, right...
Posted by: Bubba Graiting8281   2014-06-14 00:09  

#1  Bart Simpson defense, eh? Sadly, far too many will believe it.
Posted by: Uncle Phester   2014-06-14 00:02  

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