Posted on 06/19/2014 5:26:29 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross
According to a report published late last night in POLITICO, the hard drive belonging to Lois Lerner where the IRS claims her emails to outside agencies and groups like the White House, Department of Justice, FEC, Democrat members of Congress, etc. were stored has been...destroyed.
Ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s crashed hard drive has been recycled, making it likely the lost emails of the lightening rod in the tea party targeting controversy will never be found, according to multiple sources.
“We’ve been informed that the hard drive has been thrown away,” Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, said in a brief hallway interview.
So now the IRS wants us to believe Lerner's emails were only stored on her personal hard drive? And not on a backup server somewhere? Come on. Further, why is it that Lerner has emails to employees in the IRS, but her hard drive just happened to "crash" between January 2009-April 2011 and only on the emails to outside sources?
Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Darrell Issa didn't buy the excuse when the "lost" emails were announced late last week. Now he's implying the emails were deliberately made to disappear, which is a violation of federal law.
"If the IRS truly got rid of evidence in a way that violated the Federal Records Act and ensured the FBI never got a crack at recovering files from an official claiming a Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, this is proof their whole line about 'losing' e-mails in the targeting scandal was just one more attempted deception," Issa said in a statement to Fox News. "Official records, like the e-mails of a prominent official, don't just disappear without a trace unless that was the intention."
Things just got a lot more criminal.
The latest news suggests such professionals may never get the chance to try again — and the IRS has even said its criminal investigators who specialize in rebuilding hard drives to recover hidden information from criminals were unable to restore the data back in 2011.
Complete BS.
You win.
Perfect analogy.
No doubt they removed all the emails. Why not? If they turn them over the whole administration crashes down and maybe even an impeachment. If they delete them (or hide them) then it becomes a matter of “will” on the part of the repubs. They probably made the correct choice.
Where’s Congress on this? It seems they are so busy sucking at the trough, they think this is a distraction.
Given the current regimes tendancey to use “the best technology” (see HHS website), they have probably institued a “private cloud” which would make it even easier for someone with 1/4 of a brain to find the email threads.
I manage Exchange servers. As soon as we’re notified that a person’s email is being subpoenaed for legal discover, that mailbox is placed on “legal hold”, and nothing in it can be deleted until the hold is removed.
Nope, no conflict of interest here.
The data is still available on any one of several servers.
Industry and government IT experts have already made this clear.
I could not find a single comment defending the Administration or the IRS on this issue.
Usually I have to look hard to find a single comment critical of the Obama Administration on that site.
There are no liberal talking points on this issue. There is no doubt that the IRS is engaged in a Criminal Conspiracy to obstruct justice in a way that makes Watergate look like child's play.
The tide may be turning on this one.
Just for fun, we should search the car trunks at any junkyard that recently had a tornado pass over.
This is from an imperfectly recollected memory of one of Clinton’s scandals, just proving that God has a sense of humor.
This episode is sounding more and more like Nixon’s infamous 18 and a half minute gap in the recording tape. Of course the media went ballistic over that.
Sandy Burglar destroyed paper evidence in the national archives, a serious crime.
One has to conclude that the information in the papers he destroyed was worse than the consequences for the crime of stealing and destroying them.
But, where’s Sandy now? In prison? NOPE.
““deleted” emails from one Lt. Col. involved in the IRAN-CONTRA stuff.”
When did Algore invent the internet?
I remember hearing about Compuserve in the late ‘80’s.
every piece of federal junk sold or sent for scrap generates a paper trail
Only when a Republican does it... Dims always skate.
I manage Exchange servers.....
So you would know that it is no picnic but you could:
1. Spin up small VM
2. Restore mailstore until you get about where you need to be data wise
3. start trying to recover emails
This could be done since most Gub agencies require a pretty standard grandfather, father, son retention all a backups for DR purposes. In other words they would have 3 genenerations of backups for daily, weekly, monthly, anual, and DR sets.
Government is the GUN, raw power willingly granted by the people to provide for their safety and the Rule of Law. The Founders understood this.
Later, Progressives gave us an ability to extract as much money as they wished to this same government. This was thought a good idea.
Now, the man with the gun has the legal right to take your money on a whim and do with it as he wishes.
The private sector calls this robbery - we call it politics.
The productive are the slaves of the moochers.
0bamarx promised he would have the most transparent administration in history.
It is.
Just not the way everybody thought he meant it.
No doubt they removed all the emails. Why not? If they turn them over the whole administration crashes down and maybe even an impeachment.
***********
I believe you nailed it precisely. Given that disclosure of such politically damaging information would likely bring them all down, its far better to seen as “merely incompetent” and feign regret. That said, the incompetence thing may still come back to bite them as those email are almost certainly retrievable; it just takes more work but it can be done.
The question is: are the Republicans even less competent than the Democrats? Do they realize that emails are also saved on the receiving side and are they smart and persistent enough to get them? I’m not optimistic about they. The Pubbies are normally all talk and no action.
It’s time to push for the end of the IRS...
Yep, I thought it was real sad durring the last “shutdown” that no one realy caught on to the fact this countries largest employeer had shut down and with of crying 1 (ONE)
person was layed off.
Would you hate to be the guy that has to say “I was the only non-essential employee in the federal gubment”.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.