MC Louis and her fresh beats
Posted on 07/22/2014 3:10:50 PM PDT by kristinn
Washington, DC – Despite early refusals to make available IT professionals who worked on Lois Lerner’s computer, Ways and Means Committee investigators have now learned from interviews that the hard drive of former IRS Exempt Organizations Director Lois Lerner was “scratched,” but data was recoverable. In fact, in-house professionals at the IRS recommended the Agency seek outside assistance in recovering the data. That information conflicts with a July 18, 2014 court filing by the Agency, which stated the data on the hard drive was unrecoverable – including multiple years’ worth of missing emails.
“It is unbelievable that we cannot get a simple, straight answer from the IRS about this hard drive,” said Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI). “The Committee was told no data was recoverable and the physical drive was recycled and potentially shredded. To now learn that the hard drive was only scratched, yet the IRS refused to utilize outside experts to recover the data, raises more questions about potential criminal wrong doing at the IRS.”
It is also unknown whether the scratch was accidental or deliberate, but former federal law enforcement and Department of Defense forensic experts consulted by the Committee say that most of the data on a scratched drive, such as Lerner’s, should have been recoverable. However, in a declaration filed last Friday by the IRS, the agency said it tried but failed to recover the data, but is not sure what happened to the hard drive afterwards other than saying they believe it was recycled, which, according to the court filing means “shredded.”
Further complicating the situation, the Committee’s investigation has revealed evidence that this declaration may not be accurate. A review of internal IRS IT tracking system documents revealed that Lerner’s computer was actually once described as “recovered.” In a transcribed interview on July 18, IRS IT employees were unable to confirm the accuracy of the documents or the meaning of the entry “recovered.”
“It is these constant delays and late revelations that have forced this investigation to go on so long,” Camp added. “If the IRS would just come clean and tell Congress and the American people what really happened, we could put an end to this. Our investigators will not stop until we find the full truth.”
Background:
After the Supreme Court released its January 2010 decision in Citizens United, the IRS spent three years responding to Democrat complaints and calls to stop activities of conservative groups. The IRS in Washington, DC took these complaints as marching orders to subject Americans to harassment for their beliefs by subjecting applicants to extraordinary delay and inappropriate questions, audits, and by making their confidential tax information public.
At a May 10, 2013 legal event, Lerner admitted that the IRS had targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny based on their names and policy positions. Initially, President Obama vowed to work with Congress to “get this thing fixed.” Likewise, upon assuming leadership of the agency, IRS Commissioner Koskinen said his goal was to “find problems quickly, fix them promptly, make sure they stay fixed, and be transparent about the entire process.” Unfortunately, the Administration’s professed eagerness to help Congress investigate the targeting quickly waned and it began obstructing the Committee’s investigation.
The most egregious recent example is the delay in notifying Congress of Lerner’s lost emails. On June 13, 2014, over 13 months into the investigation, and one month after the Committee was promised it would receive all Lerner emails without qualification, Congress learned that potentially thousands of Lerner emails were destroyed by the IRS. The IRS purportedly notified Congress in a letter sent to provide an update on the pace of production. Buried in the third attachment of the 27-page letter was the revelation that over two years’ worth of Lerner’s emails to and from individuals outside the IRS were lost due to an apparent computer crash that occurred in mid-2011. In later correspondence with the Committee, Treasury and the White House admitted learning of the lost emails in April 2014, two months before the IRS informed Congress.
The Committee immediately began investigating the matter. On the following Monday, the IRS’ Deputy CIO told staff that the agency was unable to retrieve information from Lerner’s malfunctioning hard drive, even after sending it to experts at the IRS’s Criminal Investigations unit. When pressed by investigators about any other computer issues, the IRS admitted that six other IRS employees involved in the political targeting also experienced computer crashes.
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Right now, they are playing musical chairs to see who gets to go to prison...
Okay. Well, FU and this stupid rabbit chasing a ding’d hard drive. Super easy to get the info off one of those.
However, the larger issue is where the information was contained for the purpose of disaster recovery and continuity.
Her work product would be stored on a raid or a bank of independent hard drives in at least two different modular units, in the same data center.
It also stands to reason given the size of the IRS, the complexity of their network and laws requiring back up and logical redundancy that her work product would be stored at other data centers as well.
My simple email from a rather large firm is available always at data centers on shore and off shore.
How is it the IRS can’t recall her work product or that of at least 6 other people at IRS?
Wouldn’t her ability to perform her job be impaired, as well, any documents germain to a legal proceeding?
No way her work product is gone-0-la...
Ha! Try calling their help line at tax time...everyone has a different answer.
Sounds like Congress is more interested in what was on Lerner’s hard drive than HER EMAILS ON THE SERVER!!!!!
MC Louis and her fresh beats
Meanwhile, Bob Woodward, award-winning “Journalist,” for uncovering all the impeachable offenses committed by President Nixon, sticks his “rapporter’s” head further up his own anus.
It was a laptop computer, which means she could have taken it home with her. That hard drive they removed from it might not be the same one it left with. If it was a "crashed" but recoverable drive somebody had laying around, recovering the data would have revealed the deception.
And that would explain the scratches.
Not all of them may be on the server. She apparently used her private laptop for a lot of these things, which I assume means that she took it home with her, etc. All of this carrying around of official business is highly illegal, of course, but that didn’t seem to bother anyone.
It’s not clear to me what computer they are looking at. But even leaving aside all other considerations, how in the world do you “scratch” a hard drive?
I will smile all the day when she dons her orange jumpsuit and gets the full cavity inspections that she deserves for her criminal behavior. I will smile all the more when all the willing associate accomplices get their designer suits also.
Criminal liars. Congress in its ineptitude are co-conspirators. These hobos should be in prison.
Force M.D.’s - Itchin’ For A Scratch (1985)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq9q4dqzhmM
I’m in the industry and let me spell it out for you. Server space is limited and most companies have a mailbox size limit. Once you hit that limit, you archive your mail to a local pst file. Then old mail is deleted. That pst file is stored on your local hard drive. There are tape backups of the mail store on the server but those get recycled every so often depend on how you have things set up. Typically backups get stored with a company like iron mountain and they go back 7 years.
The IRS is likely using old junk because, like just about everyone else, they fail to spend properly on technology while handing out inflated bonuses to those at the top. Gov is corrupt and their magic money pot is almost always spent on the wrong thing.
If the IRS was running out of room on their mail store and using too small of mailbox limits, something is wrong and should be fixed. They are not following data retention laws and not investing properly to maintain compliance. They should suffer just as a private business would if not worse.
It's par for the IRS course. Ask them five times about a simple question on your 1040 and you will get five different answers.
An indication that someone in the administration is trying to walk back the destroyed hard drive story and take their lumps. I gotta think that some lawyers want to be able to work in their profession after Obama. Any lawyer that participated in these events could lose their licenses and maybe go to jail when the other party gets into power. Perhaps they are sensing Obama and the Donks are going to lose big time. Rats leaving a sinking ship of state. The people have had it with this guy. Now Congress should act.
Rope-a-dope hoping everyone will get tired and just
go away...
If someone as important as the Director of the IRS has a hard disk failure, wouldn’t the expense (couple thousand dollars) of a data recovery operation be justified?
Why was this disk destroyed, when it likely contained sensitive and valuable information (not just emails) that wasn’t backed up to a server?
Compared to the politicians of the 60s to 80s they are third rate criminals.
The homework was eating my dog and then the police shot it.
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