Posted on 06/16/2014 2:18:47 PM PDT by smoothsailing
June 16, 2014
by BRYAN PRESTON
Late in the day last Friday (the 13th, with a full moon), the Internal Revenue Service told congressional investigators that it had “lost” two years of Lois Lerner’s emails. Lerner is the IRS official at the center of the agency’s massive political targeting scandal. Lerner disclosed the scandal dishonestly, with a planted question in a conference call just ahead of an inspector general’s report that was imminent. Lerner then blamed the scandal on “rogue” agents in the IRS Cincinnati office. The scandal went all the way up to Washington, as Lerner knew at the time.
Lerner has since pleaded the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. In May, the House voted to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress. But she is not in jail, and was allowed to retire from the IRS with her pension intact. The House’s contempt charge has been referred to the Justice Department, but if the Obama administration was involved in the targeting, its Justice Department will not conduct a thorough investigation.
The “loss” of Lerner’s emails covers the period from January 2009 to April 2011 — the exact period when the IRS was targeting Tea Party and conservative groups opposed to President Barack Obama’s political agenda. The “lost” emails are emails between Lerner and agencies and people outside the IRS. They could provide evidence that she may have been working with other government entities and even the Obama White House. Obama’s own White House counsel, Robert Bauer, had called for the IRS to investigate Tea Party groups prior to joining the Obama administration officially. Several Democrats in Congress had also called for such investigations. If Lerner was working with them or communicating with them in any way, there were probably emails. But now, according to the IRS, a computer glitch has erased them from the face of the earth.
This isn’t likely, by the way. Government agencies use redundant systems to prevent crashes and to prevent data losses. Government agencies such as the FBI and military offices of special investigations have forensic computer experts who are capable of retrieving data thought to be deleted or lost. The NSA also likely has the capability of retrieving the “lost” Lerner emails. The IRS itself is an investigative agency with forensic computer experts. Were any of these experts or agencies called in to help the IRS with its “glitch”?
Reporter Sharyl Attkisson has some questions for the IRS along those lines…
More at the link.
Update: Commenter Raymond in DC says he used to work in IT for the IRS. And he isn’t buying the “crash” excuse.
The notion that these emails were lost because “her computer crashed” is ludicrous. I know. I used to do computer support at the IRS.
The fact is that mail isn’t stored on user computers but on central mail servers. When I left a few years ago they were using Outlook to access Exchange servers sited at New Carrolton, just outside DC. And those servers were regularly backed up. Even if Lerner’s computer was put through a crusher she could go to another PC, login, and get access to her mail.
if HER computer crashed it would not mean the servers (that do the email) did not them.
They are so stupid and incompetent they don’t even know this
Next we’ll learn about a mysterious power surge that fried all government servers. No back-ups! Too bad!
This administration is certainly transparent...transparent in its lies!
What if it is her private computer at home?
It couldn't be more obvious if they spit in our face.
There is NO WAY the emails were lost in a crash.
They are liars - they lie. It's their nature. They do it all the time.
Well .. I have a theory.
When the IRS started going through Lerner’s emails, I wonder if they discovered the incriminating evidence as to who Lerner was sending and receiving emails from at the WH ..??
If they did discover a WH name (and I’m guessing it was Valerie Jarrett’s name that came up) .. certainly they could not allow that info to get out.
But .. all the computer techs are saying that the emails are still available.
And .. we learned over the weekend that according to IRS rules, all IRS emails are supposed to be made into a HARD COPY (printed out), before deleting the file .. even though that file may still be available somewhere else.
The latest speculation was that perhaps Lerner was using a home computer for all this IRS criminal activity .. but that does not excuse Lerner from having to comply by printing out a copy of those emails too.
I loved the excuse that it would take an unknown amount of time to print out these documents, “because we don’t know what we’re going to find” .. Oh .. I get it .. we can have the emails .. but you can’t know what’s in them - so we have to redact them before we can give them to you.
Yes, they do think we’re stupid.
There are 2 copies when you send an email...the one on YOUR computer(the ones she lost) and one in the computer to whom the email was sent. Now get a special prosecutor and go find those damned emails. I can’t believe they haven’t thought of this. Do they really think we are that stupid?
They don't care if people know they are lying or not. They know that those with oversight responsibilities, that's CONgress, aren't going to do a damn thing about.
Exactly right.
Even if she were using a private DSL Dial-Up ISP from home?
The tree of liberty is parched.
It was a targeted virus, yeah, that’s the ticket.
This is such a bunch of crap. The gvt has backups of the backups of the backups. They have to. For liability protection if nothing else.
Stall, delay, obstruct, stonewall, procrastinate, stall for time, block, foot-dragging. I reckon y’all get the idea.
I just wrote my congressman, saying that it is past time for action.
Emails do not go computer to computer. If not using a governmental email service, then the email service that LL was using from home was based on a commercial server somewhere. She was not an IT geek so she was not using some esoteric email program that could go undetected.
She probably was using gmail under an assumed name.
She deserves to be hung along with her co-conspirators for this...
well they got away with the fake birth certificate so why should they not continue to tell whoppers?
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