Judge gives IRS week to explain missing emails

Politico ^ | 11 Jul 2014 | RACHAEL BADE

[mandaladon]

A federal judge Friday gave the IRS one week to hand over details on Lois Lerner’s crashed hard drive and how to track it, the second federal judge in as many days to seek more information about the elusive emails.

Judge Reggie Walton of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia ordered the the tax agency to find out by July 18 what happened to the crashed hard drive responsible for erasing two years worth of the former IRS official’s emails, including whether it’s traceable through a serial number.

If such information is gone, the judge wants an affidavit written under penalty of perjury by an IRS IT professional with “firsthand knowledge” of the situation.

News that two years worth of Lerner’s emails are gone has revitalized the waning controversy, which began in May 2013 when Lerner first revealed that her division was inappropriately targeting tea party groups seeking tax breaks.

The order could force the IRS to tell the court and the public information currently under wraps because of an ongoing watchdog investigation on the lost Lerner emails. The IRS says it cannot answer many congressional inquiries about the emails until after the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) has completed its probe.

The IRS’s attorney, Justice Department lawyer Joseph Sergi, did not know when or how Lerner’s hard drive was recycled, prompting more questions from the judge.

[WILLIALAL]

-— If such information is gone, the judge wants an affidavit written under penalty of perjury by an IRS IT professional with “firsthand knowledge” of the situation. -—

Put pressure on the small fries, to explain just who told who to do what and when.
We’ll see where this leads.

[The Toll]

How many IT guys want to go to jail for Obama?

[WILLIALAL]

How many IT guys want to go to jail for Obama?....

I wouldn’t think too many GS-9/11/13s will. But that is the level of IT tech it which would be doing the technical operational work on that level, working on a crashed computer.
It will be interesting to see who gave the order to destroy the hard drive.
Still unanswered is how were the rest of her files recovered? She had to have had 10’s of folders filled with years of data necessary to do her day to day work.
If her computer really did crash, then they had to have been able to retrieve this data from somewhere. If they did then they also would have been able to retrieve her emails as that would be standard procedure in computer data recovery.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

I want to know why an injunction wasn’t immediately issued to IRS the day Congress learned about the alleged Lerner computer crash. Issa could have ordered the injunction to preserve evidence. They could have sent teams in to remove and confiscate the mail servers and backup machines. They’ve had MONTHS to continue to destroy evidence.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

-— Screw the hard drive. Subpoena the mail server backups -—

Yup.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

-— How many IT guys want to go to jail for Obama? -—

OTOH, they’ve had two years to terrorize the IT guys.

[S.O.S121.500]

Explain hell, produce them.....

[Intolerant in NJ]

If such information is gone, the judge wants an affidavit written under penalty of perjury by an IRS IT professional with “firsthand knowledge” of the situation...and then hopefully holds someone responsible for obstruction of justice in the disappearance of the emails which the IRS knew were being sought at the tme Lerner's harddrive "crashed".....