Posted on 06/29/2014 9:49:08 PM PDT by Cheerio
Former IRS official Lois Lerner had 30 years of experience and knew under the Federal Records Act that she had an obligation to preserve her copies of her emails, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa says, and "she broke some laws."
Investigators will never know if Lerner crashed her own computer, the California Republican told CNN's Candy Crowley on "State of the Union" Sunday, but the fact remains that the computer's hard drive has been destroyed and years worth of emails are gone and there is no documentation to prove they exist.
So far, around 20,000 of the emails have been retrieved through people she sent them out to and Issa said that investigators know from the discovery they got from those emails that Lerner broke regulations.
Lerner, said Issa, sent "1.1 million tax records over to the Department of Justice" many "including inappropriate or actually illegal disclosures, on behalf of conservative groups."
But Issa said nobody on his committee said Lerner deliberately crashed her own computer. Still, she knew the documents needed to be preserve.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
Might work, surely worth a try!
Should look at the latest decisions... Sure does not look like a conservative court to me but does look like a court subjected to influence by those in power. Maybe you are looking a the few decisions that seem plausible rather than those that are unconstitutional.
They doubtless were. But six of them suffered "hard drive crashes" a week after Lerner suffered hers.
Yeah, I know. Amazing coincidence...
Still has nothing to do with loss of emails!
It means, “My cow died, so I won’t be needing your bull.”
Do you comprehend my meaning now, Kansas?
Every word in that post was TRUE! If you disagree, please share your “wisdom” with the rest of us, ok?
“Watch the Civil Court cases. I think one comes up 10 July.
The IRS was duty bound to tell the Courts, in all of the various lawsuits out there, that they had “lost” these emails which were subject to FOIA requests and also subject to “discovery” subpoena.
A special prosecutor MIGHT be appointed by a judge”
Uh oh
Is he going to threaten to write a letter?
It’s so very difficult to explain to the young people around her who know a hard drive can’t erase emails that Issa isn’t in on thus scam. ESP with the display of hatred his cohorts in the GOP have gone after conservatives is a worse way that BO and his irs
Deagle you seem to be stuck up a blind ally.
I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT THE SUPREME COURT!
Any Federal Judge has the power to appoint a SPECIAL PROSECUTOR with out the cooperation of the Supreme Court at all. Get it?
And that is exactly what happened with that Alaska Senator who was harassed to death by a rogue political hack prosecutor. The Special Prosecutor shut that political attack down.
Clarice Feldman had a good article on American Thinker that mentioned that as to where this battle will be won.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/06/shifting_sands.html
Love your consistent effort to assume that the IRS will do the right thing (even if they are the abuser). You are a righteous person I’d guess. Unfortunately, the IRS is a self serving unit and will not be cooperating in any meaningful manner. That is to be expected when they are under investigation...
Love you DUTY BOUND statement though - as if that has any meaning...heh.
Oh I would think you’d have to match what lerners getting 10 m is what she gets just to saunter into the chambers and slam her paperwork down and point to where her eunuch is to sit
Come on
Kabuki theatre.
Heh, maybe only to those who care less...
“2. The Spoilation of Evidence and Failure to Comply with Discovery Rules
It may well be, however, that the case will explode as a result of private litigation, not Congressional hearings. As American Thinker’s Thomas Lifson noted, the case brought by Z Street, a pro-Israel interest group, denied tax exempt status by Lois Lerner, may be the trigger.
The involves a case filed in August 2010. The Wall Street Journal noted of it:
Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and legal precedent, once the suit was filed the IRS was required to preserve all evidence relevant to the viewpoint-discrimination charge. That means that no matter what dog ate Lois Lerner’s hard drive or what the IRS habit was of recycling the tapes used to back up its email records of taxpayer information, it had a legal duty not to destroy the evidence in ongoing litigation.
In private white-collar cases, companies facing a lawsuit routinely operate under what is known as a “litigation hold,” instructing employees to affirmatively retain all documents related to the potential litigation. A failure to do that and any resulting document loss amounts to what is called “willful spoliation,” or deliberate destruction of evidence if any of the destroyed documents were potentially relevant to the litigation.
At the IRS, that requirement applied to all correspondence regarding Z Street, as well as to information related to the vetting of conservative groups whose applications for tax-exempt status were delayed during an election season. Instead, and incredibly, the IRS cancelled its contract with email-archiving firm Sonasoft shortly after Ms. Lerner’s computer “crash” in June 2011.
In the federal District of Columbia circuit where Z Street’s case is now pending, the operating legal obligation is that “negligent or reckless spoliation of evidence is an independent and actionable tort.” In a 2011 case a D.C. district court also noted that “Once a party reasonably anticipates litigation, it must suspend its routine document retention/destruction policy and put in place a ‘litigation hold’ to ensure the preservation of relevant documents.”
The government’s duty is equally pressing. “When the United States comes into court as a party in a civil suit, it is subject to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as any other litigant,” the Court of Federal Claims ruled in 2007. The responsibility to preserve evidence should have been a topic of conversation between the IRS chief counsel’s office and the Justice Department lawyers assigned to handle the Z Street case.
The case opens the door into the IRS destruction of evidence, setting up separate tort claims against those responsible.
And the Z Street case is not the only one where the government is on the hotseat respecting the IRS documents.
Internal Revenue Service officials will have to explain to a federal judge July 10 why the tax agency didn’t inform the court that Lois Lerner’s emails had been lost.
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Emmett G. Sullivan quickly granted a motion filed earlier today by attorneys for Judicial Watch seeking a courtroom status conference “as soon as possible to discuss the IRS’s failure to fulfill its duties to this court under the law, as well as other ramifications of this lawsuit.”
In its motion, the non-profit watchdog noted that the IRS publicly acknowledged loss of Lerner emails to and from individuals outside of the agency early in February 2014.
Then on Feb. 26, the tax agency provided its first production of documents in response to a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in October 2013.
No mention was made in that production of the lost Lerner emails, even though the original Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit filed in May 2013 specifically sought them.
Judicial Watch further noted that “although IRS had knowledge of the missing Lois Lerner emails and of the other IRS officials, it materially omitted any mention of the missing records” in an April 30 status update on its document production. [snip] The tax agency could also face court sanctions or even criminal proceedings if Sullivan is not satisfied with the government’s explanation.
Judge Sullivan presided over the Department of Justice’s horrible prosecution of former Senator Ted Stevens (since reversed ) and should by that experience hold no presumptions about the integrity of the government lawyers before him. He has seen the low ethical and professional caliber of those who handled that case, the worst example of prosecutorial misconduct outside of the Duke Lacrosse case in my memory.”
(From the American Thinker)
How many people has Rep. Issa prosecuted so far?
Sounds like this case has nothing to do with the current case except through comparison maybe...
What are you inferring?
None. Congressmen don't have prosecutorial powers.
Lets be glad people are fighting. Why must we condemn the way they fight?
T’would appear that way.
Kinda suprised it wasn’t posted here on FR, but a quick search showed up nothing
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