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Yesterday on FOX News Sunday Chris Wallace invited Washington superlawyer Cleta Mitchell and reptilian Democratic hack Julian Epstein to discuss the IRS scandals in the context of the “lost” IRS emails. More than one scandal inheres in the events, including Obama’s declaration of innocence regarding those involved; I therefore refer to the IRS scandals. The video of the FOX News Sunday segment is below and is worth a look if you haven’t seen it. At 2:30 in the segment Wallace displays a Missing Emails Timeline depicting a point made by Kim Strassel in her Wall Street Journal column of this...

Then a giant dog stuck its head through the window and ate all the servers.You expect this kind of thing from Enron. You don’t expect it from the IRS. But as it turns out, there isn’t much difference. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) cancelled its longtime relationship with an email-storage contractor just weeks after ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s computer crashed and shortly before other IRS officials’ computers allegedly crashed.Lois Lerner’s computer allegedly crashed in June 2011, just ten days after House Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Dave Camp first wrote a letter asking if the IRS was engaging in...

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) told America’s Newsroom Monday that IRS Chief John Koskinen was not honest with Congress about the lost Lois Lerner emails. Issa also said Lois Lerner was acting on President Obama’s behalf when she targeted conservative groups. “You came before us. You said you’d tell the whole truth but the truth under oath. Do you believe you told the whole truth? And, of course, the answer would be he did not tell the whole truth… I believe Lois Lerner is hiding something. I believe the Justice Department, the IRS and the...

(The following is not the exact text from Issa, but rather our own summary of the questions): 1. Explain, in detail, Lois Lerner’s 2011 hard drive failure, including the date it happened, and give the names of all employees who worked on retrieving data from it. 2. When did you learn that the hard drive failure affected the Oversight Committee’s subpoena into the IRS targeting scandal, and which IRS staffers realized that the subpoena could not be fulfilled? 3. Explain all the steps the IRS took to retrieve data from Lerner’s hard drive 4. Name all IRS employees that worked...

This is the IRS set of rules for itself. How many of them did it break? Who is going to jail? 1.15  Records and Information Management 1.15.1  The Records and Information Management Program1.15.2  Types of Records and Their Life Cycles1.15.3  Disposing of Records1.15.4  Retiring and Requesting Records1.15.5  Relocating/Removing Records1.15.6  Managing Electronic Records1.15.7  Files Management1.15.24  Records Control Schedule for Tax Exempt and Government Entities 1.15.25  Records Control Schedule for Statistics Division1.15.27  Records Control Schedule for Compliance Research1.15.32  Records Control Schedule for Electronic Tax Administration1.15.35  Records Control Schedule for Tax Administration Systems (Electronic) 1.15.36  Records Control Schedule for Permanent Records1.15.37  Records Control...

BLUE BELL, Pa., July 26, 2012 – Unisys (NYSE: UIS) announced today that it has been awarded the Enterprise Storage Acquisition task order from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to provide private cloud-based storage for the agency’s information records. This task order, awarded against GSA’s Alliant Government-wide Acquisition Contract, has a one-year base period and nine one-year options and is potentially worth up to $139 million over 10 years, if all options are exercised. It includes pricing for each year based on the IRS’s estimate of its storage requirements. Under the task order, Unisys will initially acquire storage assets now...

Is that a smoking gun  I smell?  It turns out the IRS contracted with a company that provides email backup services starting in 2005.  This first came to light in the Twitter feed of moregenr, who noticed that the IRS appears on the client list of email  archiving service provider Sonasoft. The IRS is listed as a customer of Sonasoft software - "Email Archiving Done Right" http://t.co/DoRYpk6n2R— Morgen (@morgenr) June 20, 2014 This was was picked up by Peter Suderman of Reason, who writes: The IRS had a contract with email backup service vendor Sonasoft starting in 2005,according to FedSpending.org,...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) cancelled its longtime relationship with an email-storage contractor just weeks after ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s computer crashed and shortly before other IRS officials’ computers allegedly crashed. The IRS signed a contract with Sonasoft, an email-archiving company based in San Jose, California, each year from 2005 to 2010. The company, which partners with Microsoft and counts The New York Times among its clients, claims in its company slogans that it provides “Email Archiving Done Right” and “Point-Click Recovery.” Sonasoft in 2009 tweeted, “If the IRS uses Sonasoft products to backup their servers why wouldn’t you choose...

If the IRS uses Sonasoft products to backup their servers why wouldn't you choose them to protect your severs? http://www.sonasoft.com — Sonasoft.com (@Sonasoft) October 09, 2009

Sonasoft Software Licenses and Software Maintenance Support Solicitation Number: Y8Y184TSA62-000 Agency: Department of the TreasuryOffice: Internal Revenue Service (IRS)Location: National Office Procurement (OS:A:P) Opportunity History Original SynopsisSep 12, 2008 1:01 pm Solicitation Number: Y8Y184TSA62-000 Notice Type: Sources Sought Synopsis: Added: Sep 12, 2008 1:01 pm The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) intends to award a sole source purchase order to Sonasoft Corporation, for the purchase of the software licenses related to Exchange Disaster Recovery capabilities. These items and services have been determined to meet the definition of commercial items in accordance with Part 2.101 of the Federal Acquisition Regulation. The IRS...

On Friday, Mac Slavo reported on Congressman Darrell Issa's (R-CA) statement in which he called the Internal Revenue Service's claim that Lois Lerner's hard drive crash resulted in a loss of emails "ridiculous." Most of us know that information from crashed hard drives can be recovered, though it costs a lot of money. However, as Mac pointed out, we could simply obtain a copy from the National Security Agency since they are collecting this kind of information. But something more telling has come to light: The IRS uses as an email archiving company to back up its emails. That's right,...

Customers Our list of customers spans many industries.The world’s leading companies rely on Sonasoft products to secure their operational data. Sonasoft’s award winning disaster recovery software for Microsoft Servers: SonaVault, SonaExchange, and SonaSQL is known for ease of use and reliability for email archiving, backup, recovery, replication and migration needs. ASP / MSP EvocativeMarsysProximitumPlanet MagpieStorage MonkeyTellurian NetworksConsultingAlaCourt.comCaliper CorporationCGIiProspectLeadMasterLegacy Marketing GroupSpencerStuartEducational InstitutionsArvin Unified School DistrictAnderson Unified School DistrictBoston BalletBrea Olinda Unified School DistrictDinuba Unified School DistrictDesert Sands Charter High SchoolDoheney Eye InstituteHenderson State UniversityLaPorte Independent School DistrictLemoore Union High School DistrictLoma Linda AcademyNapa County Office of EducationRevere Public Schools / Garfield...

The timing is not merely suspicious, it is damning. [T]he alleged disappearance of Ms. Lerner's hard drive—and the fact that the missing conversations are those the former IRS director had with people outside the IRS—has suddenly resurrected, with force, the explosive possibility that she was chatting with Democrats who mattered. There's plenty of reason to believe she was. Just last week Congress discovered (via a subpoena to the Justice Department) emails showing that Ms. Lerner had conversations with Justice prosecutors about investigating conservative nonprofits. Who else in the Obama administration was Ms. Lerner talking to? I'm omitting all of the...

We have been told Lois Lerner lost 2 years worth of emails due to a crash of her hard drive. We were told the disc had bad sectors and the data could not be recovered.  According to documents provided by the IRS, Lerner was archiving her e-mails on her local hard drive, which developed fatal problems (bad sectors) in the middle of June 2011. The data proved unrecoverable despite heroic efforts on the part of the IT staff.  Let's delve into this a little deeper. Exactly what is a hard disc sector? In computer disk storage, a sector is a subdivision of...

BILL HENCK: INSIDE THE IRS, PART 4 William Henck has worked inside the IRS Office of the Chief Counsel as an attorney for over 26 years. We posted his personal account, including his testimony to a retaliatory audit conducted by the IRS against him, this past February in “Inside the IRS.” We followed up with part 2 in May and part 3 earlier this month. When we posted the second of Bill’s two items in May, I called and wrote IRS public affairs to ask for any comment the agency might have. None was forthcoming; the agency declined to respond....

A Congressional inquiry into the targeting of Tea Party and Conservative organizations by the IRS has revealed that thousands of emails from IRS head Lois Lerner and at least six of her subordinates have been lost to history after the hard drive which stored them was reportedly thrown away. The loss of the emails makes it nearly impossible to track down and verify what actually took place and whether or not the Obama administration was directly involved in the harassment of independent groups that didn’t agree with the President’s political platform.Without the emails their is no accountability, despite the fact...

Only one problem: the Office of Management and Budget issued a memo August 24, 2012 reminding federal employees that President Obama signed a directive on November 18, 2011 that offered specific guidelines as to the handling of records (see memo page 3 below).

Friday at the daily briefing, White House press secretary Josh Earnest repeatedly dismissed concerns over Internal Revenue Service claims that two years of Lois Lerner's emails are lost forever as "conspiracy theories." "Turns out that there have been 13 months of multiple congressional investigations, including 14 congressional hearings, 30 interviews with IRS employees, 50 written congressional requests, and 750,000 pages of documents, and all of that has done nothing to substantiate false Republican claims of a broader political conspiracy," Earnest said.

Scandal: One of the seven people, including Lois Lerner who lost emails from the period of Tea Party targeting by the IRS, served as chief of staff to former IRS head Steven Miller. She also made 35 visits to the White House. The funny thing about emails is that they are never orphans. When you send one, there's always a recipient who has his or her own copy. The "lost" Lois Lerner emails had recipients. How about subpoenas to all of them during the Tea Party targeting period? That should help find what we need to know — or maybe...

The Internal Revenue Service commissioner said Friday THE AGENCY WILL NOT SHARE WITH CONGRESS ADDITIONAL DETAILS ABOUT ITS LOST EMAILS related to the ongoing tea party investigation until its own review is finished because he said Republicans are releasing inaccurate, interim information.