Posted on 07/15/2014 7:04:09 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The lesson of Watergate has not gone unheeded in the federal bureaucracy even more than forty years later. At the time, many wondered why Richard Nixon didn’t burn the tapes as investigators circled the White House. These days, the trick is to burn the e-mails, and it’s not just happening at the IRS. A probe into Hatch Act violations at the Federal Election Commission ran aground when the electronic communications of the suspect — a former colleague of Lois Lerner — had her computer hard drive “recycled.”
Sound familiar?
The Federal Election Commission recycled the computer hard drive of April Sands — a former co-worker of Lois Lerner’s — hindering an investigation into Sands’ partisan political activities, according to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Sands resigned from the Federal Election Commission in April after she admitted to violating the Hatch Act, which bars executive branch employees from engaging in partisan political activities on federal time and at federal facilities.
The twist is that Sands also worked under Lois Lerner when the ex-IRS agent — who is currently embroiled in a scandal over the targeting of conservative political groups — worked at the FEC’s enforcement division.
The FEC has a far-reaching mandate into the operations of elections, which means that partisanship in that agency is particularly corrosive. The Hatch Act requires strict neutrality of all federal employees while on duty, and one would expect that to be particularly observed in the FEC. Instead, Sands tweeted partisan messages from her office in 2012; sent out fundraising pleas for Obama’s re-election campaign, called Republicans her “enemy,” and said they should shut up and “stand down.”
When the Inspector General came knocking, however, the evidence had vanished. The FEC “recycled” her hard drive, which meant that criminal charges could not be pursued. How exactly could this have happened? Sands was under suspicion of a crime under a statute which would be updated later that year, in a bill signed by Barack Obama himself. Shouldn’t the FEC have taken steps to secure evidence rather than destroy it?
House Oversight chair Darrell Issa also notes in his letter to FEC chair Lee Goodman that the destruction of evidence may have impacted his committee’s probe into the IRS, noting Lerner’s penchant for keeping in touch with former staffers such as Sands at the FEC, where Lerner worked before moving to the IRS. Given the political nature of Lerner’s work and Sands’ flagrant flaunting of the Hatch Act, there may at least have been the possibility of some coordination between Lerner and Sands, which thanks to the epidemic of hard-drive destruction in the Obama administration will now be lost.
Issa now wants Goodman to produce all of the data surrounding the destruction of evidence at the FEC, and wants it by July 28th. How many more hard drives will get “recycled” at the FEC between then and now? The sky’s the limit in the Obama administration.
This will go down as the most corrupt administration in history.
There was a time we killed our king
We tried to change the world to fast
Now we have got another king
He’s not better than the last
This will go down as the most corrupt administration in history.
***********
Perhaps. They’ve certainly established a low water mark. But the public’s tolerance for malfeasance and corruption seems to leave room for this particular nadir to be challenged in the future. I’m thinking someone like Elizabeth Warren could “test the lows”.
if a corporation destroy their hard drives to hide the evidence of wrongdoing, do you think he could get away from criminal prosecution?
absolutely.
In 2014 USA, anyone can get away with anything
IF their skin color matches Holder and Obama
OR if they have a Koran and are willing
to murder Americans.
‘This will go down as the most corrupt administration in history.’
No it won’t. Obama and his sidekicks will write the history.
I wouldn’t say the losing of hard drives is an epidemic.
I’d say it is a standard operating procedure. Too many to be coincidence. I’d say it is step 1 for any bureaucrat that get s a subpoena.
Issa should draft an Executive Order banning the recycling of hard drives and calling for their indefinite retention and then publicly present it to Øbama for his immediate signature.
The “public” tolerates this because the media in general has so demonized the group/s that these people are targeting.
Remember, the left in general goes by the principle that anything is allowable for their “elites” if it advances the agenda that achieves a universally beneficent state.
This is very wrong about the drives being destroyed....
1) The emails are NOT kept on the user’s Hard Drive. The emails are kept on the server/servers that should be off site.
2) If they are NOT using a Server system, and only using local hard drives to communicate, then WHAT THE HECK ARE THEY DOING WITH THE DATA PROCESSING MONEY?
He’s an enemy islamist. We ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Sure is a good thing Nobody in Congress is smart enough to Subpoena the SERVERS, Who knows what they would have to reveal to us peons.
The AA kids figger if that B$ works somewhere it will work everywhere.
Well, the practice is not at all unusual for governments. They all do it. However, important information is required to be kept ... somewhere.
Agree with both of your comments. The Left has managed to implant the meme that they alone are capable of taking us to a better place. Their perfect world/utopia is just around the corner if only the evil obstructionist conservatives will get out of their way.
They are good, we are bad. The simplicity of this message appeals to many. Everyone wants to live on Easy Street.
They got away with it with the emails. They might as well keep playing a winning hand.
“Their perfect world/utopia is just around the corner if only the evil obstructionist conservatives will get out of their way.”
And those silly rules, laws, and “constitutions” shouldn’t be worthy of obstructing so noble of a goal, either.
This will go down as the most corrupt administration in history.
No it won’t. History books will proclaim The One as the greatest president in history, by far. Wait and see.
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