Topic: IRS claims it has LOST two years' worth of emails from former official Lerner - page 8. (Read 22699 times)

New Emails Show Lois Lerner Called Some Conservatives ‘A**holes’

New emails uncovered by the House Ways and Means Committee indicate that former IRS employee Lois Lerner has a strong dislike of some conservatives, and at one point called them “assholes” in an email exchange.

The committee released an email Lerner received in November 2012 complaining about the “whacko wing of the GOP.” The person mocked conservatives for believing there are “too many foreigners sucking the teat” and that it is “time to hunker down, buy ammo and food, and prepare for the end.” The person added that the “right wing radio shows are scary to listen to.”

Lerner replied, “Great. Maybe we are through if there are that many assholes.”

The other person then wrote, “And I’m talking about the hosts of the shows. The callers are rabid.”

Lerner replied, “So we don’t need to worry about alien terrorists. It’s our own crazies that will take us down.”

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/07/30/new-emails-show-lois-lerner-called-conservatives-aholes/

Here’s what the IRS told a federal court about Lois Lerner’s hard drive



The IRS statements came from Stephen Manning, who is a top IT official for the IRS, and Todd Egaas, director of technology operations and investigative services for the agency. Here’s what they said:

* The hard-drive crash occurred with Lerner’s laptop. This may or may not be significant, as it leaves open the possibility that she may have stored e-mails on two hard drives — one from the laptop that crashed, and perhaps another from a desktop computer.

* Manning said Lerner’s laptop hard drive did not have a tracking code. He said the IRS does not place such codes on internal components. Nonetheless, the company that supplied the laptop recently provided the IRS with a serial number for the part. This is important because investigators could use the number to track down the device if it has not been destroyed.

* The IRS created an IT help-desk ticket to document the hard-drive crash on June 13, 2011. According to the ticket and the IT personnel involved, a mid-level specialist tried to recover the data from Lerner’s hard drive, but those efforts failed, Manning said.

* In July 2011, IT personnel sent the hard drive to an IRS forensics division, which made additional attempts to recover the hard drive’s data on July 22 , 2011 and Aug. 4, 2011, according to Egaas. “All of the analyst’s attempts were unsuccessful in recovering any data from the hard drive,” he said.

* The forensics division returned the device to IT personnel through an overnight delivery service, Egaas said. The hard drive was then “batched with other damaged or obsolete” devices, according to Manning. Without a tracking number, it was “impossible to specifically identify the hard drive through any Internal Revenue Service equipment inventory system” at that point, Manning said.

* The IRS erased the data from the hard drive through magnetic “degaussing” and then transferred the device to recycling contractor for destruction. Manning said the agency complied with “standard Internal Revenue Procedure disposal procedures for any equipment with data storage capability and to protect against any possible disclosure of [private] taxpayer information.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2014/07/24/heres-what-the-irs-told-a-federal-court-about-lois-lerners-hard-drive/

http://youtu.be/f1w5s0WwjFc

When the AG is completely unwilling to investigate what happened because he feels there was no impropriety there is no chance in hell anybody will be going to jail.  The statute of limitations will expire for a majority of these crimes and WHEN Hillary gets elected the favor of no reprisal will get passed on.

I laughed when watching Stars Wars at how simply evil the Sith Lord was portrayed as - sadly we're not that far off in this country.  No integrity at all from the DOJ.  How can people respect a cop if we can't respect the people at the top of the pyramid?

The last update sounds like their waiting for the IRS to produce those emails.  However it just gives them more time to destroy the emails they don't want to be seen and release the useless ones IMO.  Assuming a witness came forward claiming they heard so and so, it becomes x's word vs x's word.  That could ever so slightly increase the chance of jail time, though it seems those chances are slim to none atm.   Hopefully somebody can surface some emails!

It would be possible that someone goes to jail if there is a witness to any conversation that took place discussing the targeting of conservative groups. 

Good News: Lois Lerner's "Lost" Emails Might Not Be Lost

The IRS may be changing its tune a little bit when it comes to former head of tax exempt groups Lois Lerner's "lost" emails. IRS Deputy Associate Chief Counsel Thomas Kane testified yesterday on Capitol Hill that all of the emails may not have been destroyed and that IRS officials need more time to look into what emails they still have.

According to Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Darrell Issa, they're not sure yet what emails are still available for review and that further investigation is necessary. However, Issa said in an interview with Greta Van Susteren last night that there are more crashed hard drives at the IRS and that many questions surrounding Lerner's correspondence with other IRS officials and employees remain.

"They don't know what they should know because they haven't even looked and even today they're giving us ambiguous answers," Issa said.

Yesterday former advisor to President Bill Clinton, Lanny Davis, called for a special prosecutor to look into the IRS scandal.


http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/07/22/good-news-lois-lerners-lost-emails-might-not-be-lost-n1864567?utm_source=BreakingOnTownhallWidget_4&utm_medium=story&utm_campaign=BreakingOnTownhall

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"...former advisor to President Bill Clinton, Lanny Davis...". Translation: bill clinton: "Yo obama, you've bitch slapped my wife in 2008? Now it's my turn to bitch slap you!"

Lerner Hard Drive Was "Scratched"
IRS ignored advice to use outside experts to recover data

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 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.”


http://waysandmeans.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=388731

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"... Not even a smidgen bla bla bla blaaaa...."

No problem. I did not know the updates were going bad to worse than often...

If we we're audited do you think the "my hard drive crashed" would be a valid reason to get out of it?  The chance of anybody going to jail for this is sadly next to none.  The only possible charges I could see sticking at this point would be tampering with evidence though I doubt they would even hold them responsible for the "hard drive failures".  At this point it seems the best outcome would be for I.R.S record keeping to become heavily mandated but I think we have a better chance of recovering the first Malaysian airplane that was lost at sea.  Thanks for keeping this thread updated!

IRS seeks help destroying another 3,200 hard drives
Loss of Lois Lerner emails amid tea party targeting probe unresolved


Days after IRS officials said in a sworn statement that former top agency employee Lois G. Lerner’s computer memory had been wiped clean, the agency put out word to contractors Monday that it needs help to destroy at least another 3,200 hard drives.
The Internal Revenue Service solicitation for “media destruction” services reflects an otherwise routine job to protect sensitive taxpayer information, but it was made while the agency’s record destruction practices remain under a sharp congressional spotlight.

Congressional investigators of the IRS targeting of conservative groups have been hampered by the unexplained destruction of emails and other records of Ms. Lerner, the former head of the IRS tax-exempt division and a central figure in the scandal.
The loss of Ms. Lerner’s hard drive also raised broader questions about why the tax agency never reported the missing records to the National Archives and Records Administration, as required by the Federal Records Act.
While those questions remained unresolved, IRS officials signaled plans to destroy tens of thousands of additional electronic records.

“After all media are destroyed, they must not be capable of any reuse or information retrieval,” IRS officials stated in the contract papers.

Frederick Hill, a spokesman for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is investigating the IRS scandal, said the committee has broad concerns about the agency’s record-retention practices.
Dan Epstein, executive director of the watchdog group Cause of Action, said rules require the archivist to sign off on the destruction of federal records.

“This solicitation, combined with the failure of the IRS to consult the Archivist about Louis Lerner’s hard drive, should put hesitation into any assumption that consultation with the Archivist is happening and prompt a thorough assessment of record retention at the IRS,” Mr. Epstein said Monday.

IRS officials did not respond to emails and phone calls about the solicitation, including whether the agency’s nonprofit division ever used the computers being destroyed.

Officials also declined to discuss how the IRS preserves records on computers targeted for destruction.
The agency estimates the need to destroy at least 65,464 magnetic tapes, 3,225 hard drives, 5,856 floppy disks and 708 reels, according to procurement records.

About 500,000 pieces of electronic data — including cassette tapes, reels, CDs, hard drives and USB media — have been collected since 2008, according to the IRS solicitation.

“Due to system changes, a significant amount of electronic portable media containing [personally identifiable information] and potentially sensitive but unclassified data such as taxpayer return information is being collected at IRS facilities and locked in secure storage areas awaiting destruction,” officials wrote in a statement of work attached to the solicitation.
The IRS disclosed last week that it relies on contractors to recycle computer equipment. The revelation was made in an affidavit filed in a federal lawsuit in Washington by True the Vote, a conservative group that says it has been scrutinized by the IRS.

Stephen Manning, IRS deputy chief information officer, said in federal court in Washington that officials tried but failed to retrieve Ms. Lerner’s records. He said the agency’s internal computer “help desk” received word on June 13, 2011, that the hard drive on Ms. Lerner’s laptop wasn’t working properly and subsequent efforts to preserve data “were unsuccessful.”
The computer has been wiped clean and recycled, he said, and officials have lost track of it because they don’t keep track of hard drives by serial number.

Ms. Lerner’s computer isn’t the only crash of a hard drive that congressional investigators have encountered in their attempt to reconstruct record trails.

Last week, Republican senators sent a letter to Archivist of the United States David Ferriero after receiving reports that an Environmental Protection Agency official’s hard drive had crashed just as congressional investigators began looking into questions about the EPA’s review of an Alaska mining project.
Investigators sought computer records of a former EPA official, Phillip North, who later fled the country. More than a year after his retirement, senators said, EPA officials belatedly told the National Archives and Records Administration that they failed to preserve Mr. North’s computer records.

“First the IRS, and now the EPA — these hard-drive crashes seem to be a growing epidemic throughout the administration,” Sen. David Vitter, Louisiana Republican, said in a statement. “This ‘dog ate my homework’ excuse is getting ridiculous.”


http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/21/irs-seeks-help-destroying-another-3200-computer-ha/?page=2

I think this is basically the Obama administration saying that since they benefited from (and likely was behind) this scandal, they are not going to prosecute anyone at the IRS for their illegal activity.

I agree, this is crazy. Someone really should go to jail over this.

Remy: What are the Chances? (An IRS Love Song)

When I thought things could not get any more corrupted, more "smidgen of corruptions"... They are above the law even while all the cameras are pointed at them
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http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/21/now-irs-reports-even-more-computer-crashes-doesnt-know-if-emails-still-exist/

DOJ Says No Need For Special Prosecutor In IRS Scandal…



A top Justice Department official on Thursday brushed aside GOP requests for a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS’s treatment of Tea Party groups, saying the evidence didn’t warrant such a appointment.

“It is very, very rare to use a special prosecutor,” Deputy Attorney General James Cole told a House Oversight subcommittee, adding that he and Attorney General Eric Holder determined the IRS case “didn’t meet any sort of standard to warrant a special prosecutor.”

Cole tried to assure Republicans at a House hearing that his department was taking seriously a criminal investigation that a host of GOP lawmakers have accused of being shoddy.

Cole stressed that the department had made no final decisions about whether anyone — including former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner — would be charged with a crime as a result of their investigation. News reports have suggested that Justice and the FBI had already determined that no charges would be filed.

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/212559-justice-no-need-for-irs-special-prosecutor

We are supposed to keep out tax documents for years and they recycle backup tapes every 6 months, makes sense 

President Obama is from Chicago. Is this related? I think so

Read up on Chicago politics and corruption.  Then reflect that is what has been placed in Washington DC.

The very first thing they did was break the system that could punish them.

If a point is made to prosecute those who have broken the law then it would serve as a deterrent to others in the future.