Now they say they recycled the backup tapes.
Meanwhile, Cleta Mitchell has some serious questions. As she notes, the agency is in clear violation of several federal statutes.
And of course, we know what some Dems will say:
Seriously you guys we all had to recycle tape after six months because Republican sequester retroactively cut IT budgets for FY 2009-2011.
— HealthCare.Gov (@HealthDotGov) June 16, 2014
[Tuesday-morning update]
In an odd coincidence, the emails of other people involved in the “phony IRS scandal” have also disappeared.
Huh.
[Bumped]
[Update a while later]
“…the documents showed Lerner wanted to make an example out of someone with charges in order to chill all of the groups in the tea party movement.”
Sort of like this guy:
“It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean,” he said. “They’d go in to a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw, and they’d crucify them.
“And then, you know, that town was really easy to manage for the next few years,” he said.
Because, you know, free Americans should be “easy to manage.”
[Afternoon update]
Gee, why would the IRS lose all of these peoples’ emails? All they were trying to do was trump up charges against innocent people and throw them in jail.
At best, Lerner is facing spoliation of evidence, and with inference, she can be found to have destroyed evidence of her guilt, which added to her invocation of the fifth amendment protections means a crime was committed. That’s if we accept what we have been told at face value. It may be a lot worse as people work to reconcile the commissioners testimony, IRS IT policy, IT capability, and what the IRS is currently claiming.
The agency said that because of financial and computing constraints, some emails “that do not qualify as official records” had been stored only on individuals’ computers and not on servers, and that “backup tapes” from 2011 “no longer exist because they have been recycled.”
So, the IRS is claiming it couldn’t afford enough storage space for all of its email? Seriously?
How much “unofficial” email do IRS employees send from their work accounts, anyway? They’re supposed to be working, right? A few emails to the wife and kids are not going to rise above noise level.
So, the IRS is claiming it couldn’t afford enough storage space for all of its email? Seriously?
Whatever storage they have is presumably managed by Mordac, the Preventer of Information Services. Mordac loves email storage quotas.
Why invent some fictional evil cartoon character when we have real people who are to blame? This was a deliberate action to destroy evidence and it shows the entire agency is culpable for the persecution of political dissidents. This goes straight to the top of the IRS and has infected all levels if the IT guys are destroying evidence.
The IRS and the Obama administration have lied in congressional testimony and lied to the American public about what took place. It is far past time for our Democrat friends to hold their politicians accountable for these horrific abuses of power.
You worked for the campaign Jim, what are you guys doing to stop the rampant corruption of the Obama administration and the Democrat party?
This was a deliberate action to destroy evidence
You love to imagine all sorts of administration (or just civil service) wrongdoing, but aren’t very demanding when it comes to proof. A policy of rotating backup tapes — a policy that I’m guessing dates back at least to the previous administration — is not proof of criminal destruction of evidence.
The Bush administration failed to produce millions of emails demanded by Congress. Did you consider that proof that they were destroying evidence? Of course not.
“but aren’t very demanding when it comes to proof.”
Ya, let’s see those emails. Oh wait…
“is not proof of criminal destruction of evidence.”
So the IRS runs an IG audit and the IRS destroys the backups while the audit is taking place? That sounds pretty criminal to me. The time line is a little confusing though considering recent claims by Obama’s handpicked IRS officials claiming that all the emails were archived.
Since Lerner was also using private email, we should see if those third party email services also had their servers destroyed.
And because Tea Party groups were just one of the types of groups and individuals targeted, we need a full investigation into the persecution of pro-life; groups related to Israel; the donors, friends, family, and acquaintances of those targeted for persecution to see if they were also abused by the Obama administration as reports in the press suggest.
This is a wide reaching scandal that permeates every level of the IRS, the White House, the DOJ, and other government organizations. And lets not forget the DNC, they played an active role in advocating for the Obama administration to persecute its political opponents.
And Jim, you didn’t answer my question, “You worked for the campaign Jim, what are you guys doing to stop the rampant corruption of the Obama administration and the Democrat party?”
You guys need to take a hard look at how your party operates and make some changes. The Democrats need a reformation from the inside and toss out all of these tyrannical despots.
“The Bush administration failed to produce millions of emails demanded by Congress. Did you consider that proof that they were destroying evidence? ”
Oh, when Bush does something it is wrong but it is totally cool for Obama to do it. It is amazing how much you hate Bush but constantly say that because Bush did something it is ok for Obama to be worse.
My Agency has a Five Year minimum email retention policy.
And Jim, you didn’t answer my question, “You worked for the campaign Jim, what are you guys doing to stop the rampant corruption of the Obama administration and the Democrat party?”
You forgot to ask when I stopped beating my wife!
I think the Obama administration is the least corrupt in my lifetime (and the number of high-level criminal prosecutions bears that out). I’m proud of having volunteered for the campaign.
Oh, when Bush does something it is wrong but it is totally cool for Obama to do it.
I didn’t and don’t think it was “worse than Watergate” for Bush to lose White House emails (which, it should be noted, are subject to far stricter laws than IRS emails). The real mystery is why you think missing IRS emails — with no proven link to Obama or any political appointee — are proof of corruption worse than Watergate, but Bush missing emails are “totally cool”.
I think the Obama administration is the least corrupt in my lifetime (and the number of high-level criminal prosecutions bears that out).
You are delusional. The lack of high-level criminal prosecutions is due to the fact that the person responsible for allowing them to go forward (the Attorney General) is a high-level criminal.
Sorry to be late to this, but is it really so hard to believe that the IRS could have a lame data retention strategy that has made it hard or impossible to find some emails? I seem to recall that the Bush administration also told Congress on occasion that it couldn’t find requested emails (in one case millions of emails were found years later, after Bush left office). Was that obstruction of justice too?
Lerner is facing spoliation of evidence
Is the claim that she deliberately moved incriminating emails from the mail server to her computer, and then arranged to crash her computer in such a way as to make them unrecoverable, all two years before the IRS “scandal” became public knowledge (slyly counting on the IRS’s tape recycling policy to eventually wipe out the relevant server backups, and praying that the messages wouldn’t be retrieved from their recipients)? Now that sounds like a fairy tale.
Is it really hard to believe that Nixon accidentally had a magnet hanging around a tape recorder that erased 18 minutes?
“Is the claim that she deliberately moved incriminating emails from the mail server…etc”
No. The claim is that the IRS is lying to the American people and to Congress, that the emails actually exist and are not missing at all. The fact they are pulling such a bare-faced lie is indicative of contempt.
Jim is very good at straw men. He learned it from Obama.
The claim is that the IRS is lying to the American people and to Congress, that the emails actually exist and are not missing at all.
Hasn’t the IRS released emails from 2011 about Lerner’s computer crash, and the unsuccessful effort to recover the contents of her hard disk? Do you think those emails were forged?
No doubt some of the emails do exist on the computers of the people she was corresponding with. That let the IRS find thousands of Lerner’s messages that were to or from other IRS employees. But how would the IRS get Lerner emails back from correspondents outside the IRS?
Hasn’t the IRS released emails from 2011 about Lerner’s computer crash, and the unsuccessful effort to recover the contents of her hard disk?
No, why are you suggesting they have?
Because I remembered seeing them in an article online. You can read them here (the emails in question are at the end of the PDF).
The whole document is worth a read.
I’m sorry Jim, but that’s not what I consider emails related to the effort to recover her data. No where is there:
The communications between CI and the IRS technicians.
Logs of what happened to the physical hard drive once it was sent to the hard drive graveyard.
No email saying the emails were lost at the time.
Discussions of retrieving her emails from backups that then would have been only weeks old.
Discussion as to why her email was not retrieved from server backups.
Timelines explaining why IRS counsel learned of the failed hard drive in February but failed to notify Congress until now.
Any discussion on why civil litigants were never notified by the IRS of their failure to provide discovery.
So I’m back to my statement and question. No, they have not provided emails related to the crash and why do you think they have?
that’s not what I consider emails related to the effort to recover her data
They are contemporaneous emails related to the effort to recover her data, regardless of what you consider them to be.
Discussions of retrieving her emails from backups that then would have been only weeks old.
Yes, if it had been considered a high priority at the time they could have recovered some of the emails from server backups, i.e. the ones that had been removed from the server in the previous six months. At that point the emails in question hadn’t been requested by Congress or litigants, and I’m not surprised that no heroic measures were taken to recover them.
“At that point the emails in question hadn’t been requested by Congress or litigants, and I’m not surprised that no heroic measures were taken to recover them.”
No, at that point there was an IG investigation ramping up though.
The missing emails were referenced in the IG report so their destruction points to a deliberate effort to destroy evidence in a criminal matter.
The IG report that came out in 2013, nearly two years after Lerner’s hard disk crash?
“The IG report that came out in 2013, nearly two years after Lerner’s hard disk crash?”
Don’t you think the IG report would have referenced the missing emails as part of its investigation? That the person under investigation “lost” all of her emails and then the IRS destroyed the backups surely would have been referenced.
The original IG report was finished in 2012 but its release was delayed until after the election. Even though Lerner had just been investigated by the IG, she was colluding with the DOJ to create political prisoners as late as 2013. Are those emails also gone? Did the DOJ destroy their emails as well?
When exactly were the backups destroyed? The link doesn’t say but the timing is very close to when the IG report was initiated. This strongly implies the intentional destruction of evidence.
Right now, we don’t know when Lerner destroyed her emails and the IRS destroyed the backups. All we have to go on is the word of the Obama administration, so pretty much nothing reliable. The same Obama who said all this stopped in 2012 despite it going on well into 2014.
And it’s worth noting that we don’t actually have evidence that these emails were lost two years ago or that they are even lost today. If the Bush administration had tried this trick, I doubt Jim would so firmly believe that story.
Interesting that Lerner’s hard drive crashed 10 days after the IRS receives an inquiry from Congress on delayed 501c approvals. And if it is so understandable that her computer crashed destroying 2 years of data, how do we get to her computer crashing causing the loss of 6 other employee emails for that period? And if they were appropriately reviewing applicants picked out under a BOLO bulletin, then why would the IRS allow the loss of records related to potential criminal investigations?
“But how would the IRS get Lerner emails back from correspondents outside the IRS?”
Why was she working with people outside the IRS to persecute political dissidents on behalf of the Democrat party? I am sure the Democrat operatives already destroyed their records just like they did at the IRS.
Sorry to be late to this, but is it really so hard to believe that the IRS could have a lame data retention strategy that has made it hard or impossible to find some emails?
I guess you are addressing this to the commissioner who doesn’t seem to deny lame ability to find emails, but unlike you, he didn’t claim impossibility, and he did tell Congress that the IRS was complying to the subpoena to provide the emails.
Funny, your fairy tale might actually become TTV’s counsel’s adverse inference if IRS further fails to comply with discovery. As it stands now, TTV counsel is limited to inferring that the emails would have shown Lerner was indeed conspiring to unlawfully harass taxpayers and requesting a default judgment against Lerner.
“Sorry to be late to this, but is it really so hard to believe that the IRS could have a lame data retention strategy that has made it hard or impossible to find some emails? ”
Extremely hard to believe.
Lame is irrelevant. The question is whether or not their email retention policies and systems were legally compliant. Lame is not a defense against illegal behavior.
I take it then that Jim hasn’t clicked on Rand’s link to an attorney and party to a lawsuit with the IRS that the IRS along with IRS employees named in said lawsuit don’t have a duty beyond “our IT guys are a bunch of dummys” to take positive steps to preserve evidence and that if they don’t, courts, not just disgruntled wingnuts, but courts have ruled such to be taken that the lost evidence portrays those parties in a bad light? If Rand would indulge me to quote from his link:
“Federal courts have held, in the context of trial, that the bad faith destruction of evidence relevant to proof of an issue gives rise to an inference that production of the evidence would have been unfavorable to the party responsible for its destruction. See Aramburu v. The Boeing Co., 112 F.3d 1398, 1407 (10th Cir. 1997). The fact that the IRS is statutorily required to preserve these records yet nevertheless publicly claimed that they have been “lost” appears to evidence bad faith. 18 U.S.C. § 1505 makes it a federal crime to obstruct congressional proceedings and covers obstructive acts made during the course of a congressional investigation, even without official committee sanction. See, e.g., United States v. Mitchell, 877 F.2d 294, 300–01 (4th Cir. 1989); United States v. Tallant, 407 F. Supp. 878, 888 (D.N.D Ga. 1975).
Further, by letters dated September 17, 2013, TTV provided notice to counsel for the individual IRS Defendants in this litigation. The “Individual Defendants” are: Steven Grodnitzky, Lois Lerner, Steven Miller, Holly Paz, Michael Seto, Douglas Shulman, Cindy Thomas, William Wilkins, Susan Maloney, Ronald Bell, Janine L. Estes, and Faye Ng. TTV’s September 17, 2013 correspondence reminded you and your clients of the Individual Defendants’ obligation “not to destroy, conceal or alter any paper or electronic files, other data generated by and/or stored on your clients’ computer systems and storage media (e.g. hard disks, floppy disks, backup tapes) or any other electronic data, such as voicemail.” We identified the scope as encompassing both the personal and professional or business capacity of your clients and involving data “generated or created on or after July 15, 2010.” See Attached Letters to Ms. Benitez and Messrs. Lamken and Shur.
As the D.C. District Court has found, “[a] party has a duty ‘to preserve potentially relevant evidence . . . “once [that party] anticipates litigation.”’” Zhi Chen v. District of Columbia, 839 F. Supp. 2d 7, 12 (D.D.C. 2011) (internal citations omitted). In fact, “[t]hat obligation ‘runs first to counsel, who has a duty to advise his client of the type of information potentially relevant to the lawsuit and of the necessity of preventing its destruction[,]’” and “also extends to the managers of a corporate party, who ‘are responsible for conveying to their employees the requirements for preserving evidence.’” Id. (internal citations omitted).”
We are not talking about the “gummint is always incompetent”, which seems to be an unusual advocacy position from a person who defends an active role for government. We are talking about special circumstances about the need to take active steps to protect records when notified of pending litigations. So Jim has some different case law to offer on this point?
Jim just goes on whatever moveon.org talking points are today.
We are talking about special circumstances about the need to take active steps to protect records when notified of pending litigations.
“by letters dated September 17, 2013, TTV provided notice to counsel for the individual IRS Defendants in this litigation”. That was two years after Lerner’s copies of the emails in question had been lost.
No, the time frame of when the emails were made is not the same as when they were lost. Obama’s IRS chief just recently testified before congress they had the emails. Now, they claim they don’t. An agency that will destroy evidence shouldn’t be trusted on claims of when they destroyed the evidence.
Obama’s IRS chief just recently testified before congress they had the emails
They had all of Lerner’s emails on the server, and on her computer. Maybe he didn’t know that some of Lerner’s emails were lost back in 2011.
An agency that will destroy evidence shouldn’t be trusted on claims of when they destroyed the evidence.
You are a master of circular reasoning.
“Maybe he didn’t know that some of Lerner’s emails were lost back in 2011.”
Really? You think that would have popped up during the IG investigation…
“They had all of Lerner’s emails on the server, and on her computer. ”
Did they or didn’t they? Yesterday they did and today they didn’t but you want us to believe they did but didn’t at the same time.
“You are a master of circular reasoning.”
I have zero faith that the Obama administration is being honest about Lerner’s missing emails nor the other people involved suddenly losing their emails either. You keep getting lied to by Obama and you keep running out here to defend him. Each time you do we learn something new, like Lerner’s emails not being the only ones missing, which undercuts your previous defense.
But please carry on about how Lerner’s conversations with officials in the White House and other government agencies on how best to persecute political groups to benefit the Democrats isn’t “official” business and that records of these conversations need not be kept or made public.
I should also point out “spoliation of evidence” simply means it was destroyed. It doesn’t really matter if it was accidental or intentional.
But I have a question for Jim; do you really expect the average American to believe they must retain their tax records from 2 to 7 years while the IRS only retains backups of its servers for 6 months?
I’m not defending the IRS’s data retention policies, I’m just not at all surprised by what I’ve heard about them.
they must retain their tax records from 2 to 7 years while the IRS only retains backups of its servers for 6 months?
To be picky, that isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison. The backups are just backups, to let the IRS recover from a server disk failure; they aren’t permanent archival storage. The IRS requires that you keep your tax records for up to 7 years, but doesn’t tell you what sort of backup strategy you have to have for electronic records.
The problem here isn’t the fact that backups only go back six months, it’s that Lerner (and other employees) had to move some emails off the server to stay under a restrictive storage quota, and there was no provision for backing up data stored on individual computers. That sort of IT dysfunction is very common.
Except that sort of IT dysfunction is completely unbelievable, particularly considering IRS employees are required to make hard copies of all emails sent and received.
Ed, you need to read Rand’s link. It is not a question of whether IT dysfunction is to be believed or not believed. It is in the context of pending litigation and an “attorney’s letter” to IRS counsel that there was a special duty to take steps to preserve evidence, and relying on “IT as normal — totally disfunctional” is in active disregard of the law on this.
The other thing is there are disk crashes and then there are disk crashes. If you were advised to preserve the contents of your disk as evidence in a lawsuit and it crashed, don’t you think your attorney would instruct you to go to one of these disk recovery services (much cheaper than attorney billable hours) rather than just throw up your hands?
Lerner’s disk did go to a forensic lab, you can read all about it in the IRS’s letter to the House about the lost emails.
Lerner’s disk did go to a forensic lab
It went to the IRS forensic lab. Let me know if Gibson Guitar got to choose who took their computers and what forensic lab analyzed their data? After you do that, tell me why the IRS, particularly Lerner who is now in contempt, should be provided a criminal and civil defense not afforded to every other American?
I say again, it’s called spoliation of evidence. It doesn’t really matter if it is accidental and you have a note from a reputable doctor. Once it occurs, adverse inference is a reasonable and minor sanction.
IRS employees are required to make hard copies of all emails sent and received
That isn’t the case. It isn’t even true that the IRS keeps electronic copies of all emails sent and received; as it says in the IRS letter to House Ways and Means, “it would cost well over ten million dollars to upgrade the IRS information technology infrastructure in order to save and store all email ever sent or received by the approximately 90,000 current IRS employees.” Instead, the IRS only stores 500MB of email per employee on its centrally administered servers. Hard copies are only kept of emails considered to be “official records”.
Well, the Obama administration and Democrat party’s use of the IRS to persecute political dissidents is now part of the official record. I guess you can pat yourself on the back for emulating a third world dictatorship.
If there isn’t enough storage space on the server for more than 500 MB each for 90,000 employees, and it would cost tens of millions of dollars to upgrade from 45 TB of storage space to 90 TB or 180 TB (which I find hard to believe; storage space is cheap, even redundant storage), maybe the answer isn’t more storage but fewer employees?
And 500 MB of storage is actually rather generous, unless everyone is always sending attachments around. In an office such as the IRS, there should be document servers with direct scanning into those servers, rather than scan-to-email-and-then-upload-to-server methods.
Here’s a quick and easy solution to get 1 GB of storage for each IRS employee (which, let’s face it, is paltry): fire 45,000 of them. Total cost of “upgrade”? An annual savings of $2.25B, assuming an average compensation package of $50k/employee. Or, if one needs to spend $50M to upgrade the servers, just get rid of 1,000 IRS employees.
And if the IRS can’t get by on 89,000 employees instead of 90,000 employees, maybe the tax code needs an overhaul.
“That isn’t the case”
I refer you to the Internal Revenue Manual standards for using email
http://www.irs.gov/irm/part1/irm_01-010-003.html
In particular, note section 1.10.3.2.3.5 : “Please note that maintaining a copy of an email or its attachments within the IRS email MS Outlook application does not meet the requirements of maintaining an official record. Therefore, print and file email and its attachments if they are either permanent records or if they relate to a specific case. ”
I smell blood.
I like the cut of Johnny’s jib.
Hey Ed, I just read WaPo’s description of official records:
Those emails that constitute an official record are ones that are loosely defined under IRS policy as ones that were “[c]reated or received in the transaction of agency business,” “appropriate for preservation as evidence of the government’s function or activities,” or “valuable because of the information they contain”.
So Jim tells us, “Hard copies are only kept of emails considered to be “official records”. Well if Lerner was sending emails to other government agencies, and we know already know from some emails obtained that in 2010, the IRS sent over data to DoJ for a fishing expedition; if that fishing expedition was proper and official IRS agency business, wouldn’t those be official records? If Lerner was indeed acting alone, and there is no conspiracy, where are her official record hardcopy email correspondence to the DoJ? If she doesn’t have them and the IRS doesn’t have them, then did someone else correspond with the DoJ? Or was the taxpayer data sent in the blind to the FBI and DoJ without any heads up?
“if that fishing expedition was proper and official IRS agency business”
Jim says, “They were just doing their job in going after these law breaking Tea Party groups and none of the communications need to be saved because this wasn’t official business.”
“The problem here isn’t the fact that backups only go back six months, it’s that Lerner (and other employees) had to move some emails off the server to stay under a restrictive storage quota, and there was no provision for backing up data stored on individual computers. That sort of IT dysfunction is very common.”
But that is NOT what was said. What was said was that they were on a disk but a computer crash destroyed the disk and that the tape backups were overwritten (in violation of the law).
Pathetic straw men.
If you want to know “what was said,” go read the IRS letter.
As written earlier, incompetence does not mitigate criminal responsibility.
“If you want to know “what was said,”
I know what was said. What was said was what I said, was said.
Saying it and it being true are two entirely different things.
No one believes the computer crash excuse.
Any email sent to the DOJ (for instance) from Lerner is on a DOJ server and therefore is gettable.
No one believes that not only Lerner’s computer but 6 others suffered fatal crashhes as well.
No one trusts a forensic recovery attempt done by the very agency suspected of breaking the law.
No one believes moveon.org talking points except tinfoil hatted, besotted, bow tied Obama bumkissers.
And no one believes you.
“I’m just not at all surprised by what I’ve heard about them.”
Ya, I am not at all surprised that the Obama administration is destroying evidence. When someone claims to be the most transparent and least corrupt person to ever exist, you know they are full of sh** and are actually engaged in corruption as policy.
As is usual, Jim’s pathetic defense of His Dear Leader is shredded by the facts:
“A former IRS IT specialist is casting serious doubt on the IRS’ claim to have lost the Lerner emails.
This person worked at the IRS facility in New Carrollton, Maryland.
He worked on the agency’s Prime Systems Integration Services Contract, or “Prime,” a contract inked between the IRS and Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) in 1998 to modernize the IRS’ digital record-keeping system. CSC is the primary contractor, but other well-known companies including IBM, BearingPoint, Northrup Grumman, Unisys and Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) are secondary players on the same contract…..”
Hmmm no mention of “Mordac”….
“The former IRS IT contractor finds it difficult to believe that the IRS could really have lost two years’ worth of Lois Lerner’s emails.”
So do all sentient beings…..
“First, he points to the United States Code for government record retention. That code, 44 U.S.C. Chapter 33, governs what a government record is and requires that agencies must notify the Archivist of any records that are destroyed and the reasons for destroying them. The code was put into place after Iran-Contra to keep government workers and contractors from deleting records.”
People are asking when this notification was made…..
“Section § 3309 states that records “pertaining to claims and demands by or against the Government of the United States or to accounts in which the Government of the United States is concerned, either as debtor or creditor, may not be disposed of by the head of an agency under authorization granted under this chapter, until the claims, demands, and accounts have been settled and adjusted in the General Accounting Office, except upon the written approval of the Comptroller General of the United States.”
“These environments were required by Federal regulations to be redundant and recoverable,” the former IRS IT worker says. “The recoverability requirements were put into place for exactly the reasons we see today.” Disposal of records outside the statutory standards requires permission in writing.”
Permission to destroy the back up tapes must therefore be readily to hand…..
“He says that the IRS uses Microsoft Outlook/Exchange systems, which are backed up using Symantec NetBackup.”
As is usual, nothing Jim says is true.
Jim’s pathetic defense of His Dear Leader
Obama has virtually nothing to do with IRS IT policies, policies that no doubt predate his administration.
Hmmm no mention of “Mordac”….
I’m pretty sure Mordac works for all those companies.
“The former IRS IT contractor finds it difficult to believe that the IRS could really have lost two years’ worth of Lois Lerner’s emails.”
The always persuasive argument from personal incredulity.
That code, 44 U.S.C. Chapter 33, governs what a government record is and requires that agencies must notify the Archivist of any records that are destroyed and the reasons for destroying them.
The emails in question were not considered government records (otherwise they would have been printed out and filed in hard copy).
“He says that the IRS uses Microsoft Outlook/Exchange systems, which are backed up using Symantec NetBackup.”
That’s what the IRS says as well. The servers are backed up, but the emails in question weren’t on the servers, they were on Lerner’s desktop — until its hard disk crashed.
“That’s what the IRS says as well. The servers are backed up, but the emails in question weren’t on the servers, they were on Lerner’s desktop — until its hard disk crashed.”
I don’t believe that..not 2 years worth.
Nor does anyone else believe that.
The emails in question were not considered government records (otherwise they would have been printed out and filed in hard copy).
The emails in question where from her IRS email account, thus they are considered government records.
Jim may think that BS letter from the IRS makes more sense, but as former government contractor that had a .gov email address, I find it laughably absurd. No contractor would be allowed to have been so careless with government data. Our tape backups were routinely picked up and shipped hundreds of miles away so that no singular natural event could wipe them out. Sure, incremental tape backups where reused, but not the full backups. The full backups should include the transaction logs for the exchange server. Those logs should have her emails.
What Jim and the IRS want us to believe is that the IRS is careless with taxpayer data, negligent in following common Microsoft certified practices for data storage and recovery, negligent in following government requirement for data storage and recovery, slow to respond to Congressional oversight, and yet should be trusted to have handles taxpayer documents lawfully. Documents that we already know were sent to the DoJ, except the evidence that this was a responsible thing to now destroyed.
The emails in question where from her IRS email account, thus they are considered government records.
Considered by whom? They aren’t all considered official records by the IRS. Hence the bit from the Internal Revenue manual quoted by Ed Minchau, above: “Therefore, print and file email and its attachments if they are either permanent records or if they relate to a specific case”. That instruction makes no sense if every mail from an IRS email account is considered an official government record.
So because what she was doing was illegal, if wasn’t official IRS business, so it was OK to destroy the evidence?
Hokay.
“Considered by whom? They aren’t all considered official records by the IRS. ”
Colluding with administration officials in multiple agencies to put people in jail based on their political affiliation sounds like some serious official business. I can see why they destroyed the evidence but the destruction is an admission that the illegal activity took place.
“That instruction makes no sense if every mail from an IRS email account is considered an official government record.”
The emails in question were related to specific cases (thousands of individual cases), so wouldn’t that fall under the rule? You couldn’t possibly be trying to claim that because the persecution of the Tea Party involved more than one “specific” case that the rules did not apply to not destroying evidence…
Jim starts with the assumption that Lerner’s email was stored on her local computer. That isn’t how Outlook Server works unless especially configured to do so, but that isn’t in compliance with federal law regarding retention of email records. It’s also why federal officials are prohibited by law from using private email accounts to conduct official business.
It isn’t an assumption, it’s what the IRS reported to House Ways and Means. Go read what they wrote.
Please explain why, at this point, we should believe anything the IRS says.
Because it makes more sense than believing that IRS officials who want to keep their jobs and avoid prosecution made up a story about their organization’s email practices, a story that is trivially easy for Congress to check.
If they wanted to avoid prosecution, why would they destroy Lerner’s emails after she was the subject of an IG report? Ohhhhh….
why would they destroy Lerner’s emails after she was the subject of an IG report?
You might want to review the meaning of the word “after”.
“You might want to review the meaning of the word “after”.”
So you are saying the IRS thought it was ok to destroy back ups after the investigation when there was going to be lawsuits being filed? That is clearly illegal.
Or are you saying they destroyed the emails while the IG investigation was taking place? That is also illegal.
I am not certain what you hope to accomplish with grammar rules in this case.
The IG report came out in May, 2013. The IRS stopped recycling backup tapes in May, 2013. The IRS did not “destroy Lerner’s emails after she was the subject of an IG report.”
In fact, the IRS did not destroy Lerner’s emails at all; every email she left on the server was handed over to the House. Emails that aren’t on the server were either deleted by Lerner personally, or moved by her to her desktop computer. If they were moved to her desktop computer and not subsequently deleted by her they were there when her computer was seized, or else lost to that 2011 hard disk crash. There’s no evidence that the IRS itself ever deleted any emails. They did not try to keep a central archive of every email, and they left it up to employees to manage the emails they wanted to keep.
The House wants every email Lerner sent or received since 2009, but the IRS has never run its email system in a way that makes it possible to satisfy that request. Congress is welcome to pass legislation to require that the IRS, or indeed every federal department, keep an archive of every email in such a way that future requests of this sort can be easily satisfied, and it’s welcome to provide the funding to pay for such archiving. But it’s more than five years too late to complain about the impossibility of retrieving every IRS email from 2009 now.
But it’s more than five years too late to complain about the impossibility of retrieving every IRS email from 2009 now.
So the IRS Commissioner lied to Congress when he said Lerner’s emails were on the servers. Well then, I guess Holder will be appointing a prosecutor for the obstruction of justice.
You might want to review the meaning of the word “after”.
A big part of the problem is that certain IRS personnel could lost those emails and came up with a fake story after Congress started to act on this. That is destruction of evidence.
Then by their own admission the IRS is guilty of violating federal law and regulations regarding the retention of email. Congress should call the appropriate IRS IT staffers to testify under oath as to what happened. They’d either have to admit they broke the law by not following the email retention standards or that the IRS is lying about losing those email messages. Hell, I’d be willing to grant them immunity to criminal prosecution to get to the truth.
Then by their own admission the IRS is guilty of violating federal law and regulations regarding the retention of email.
The law does not require retention of every email. Do you think the IRS kept every email under Bush? Do you think every federal agency keeps every email?
“o you think the IRS kept every email under Bush?”
They should keep every email of people under IG investigation.
They should keep every email of people under IG investigation.
They stopped recycling backup tapes in May, 2013, when the IG report came out.
“They stopped recycling backup tapes in May, 2013, when the IG report came out.”
So during the IG investigation and the period when if was finished and not released, they were destroying evidence. The IG report was finished in November of 2012 and the investigation took place several months prior. It wasn’t a surprise investigation either. There were several months where Lerner knew it was coming.
And you are saying they didn’t stop destroying tapes until after the report was released in 2013.
I think that Atkinsson’s questions ought to be added to Mitchell’s questions.
“Believe in fairy tales, loyal serfs! Dear Leader could fly on a unicorn and have it drop thousand dollar bills out of its rectum, if only you believe!”–Baghdad Jim.
Yeah, our government that just “lost” two years of e-mail wants to manage my healthcare.
I suggest no one try that “I lost my records” at a tax audit. That sort of thing only works in one direction.
You’re required to keep your tax records. The IRS is not required to keep all emails.
Except that they are required by their own rules to maintain hard copies of all official records. Any communication between the IRS and other government agencies are official records and must be printed out in hard copy.
Because it makes more sense than believing that IRS officials who want to keep their jobs and avoid prosecution
They just plead the 5th.
Fairy tale grows. Apparently Lois Lerner’s hard drive crash has resulted in the IRS being unable to find lost emails of 6 other employees.
Jim slumps into his chair rubbing his eyeballs with the heels of his hands.
“WTF Obama. Seriously WTF? I just spent two days arguing that the missing emails could be explained by an ordinary HD crash and that this wasn’t a sign of any deeper corruption or cover up and now…”
He reaches up to the Obama bobble head doll next to his monitor and caresses its belly. “How could you do this to me… again. I thought we had something good going on. I named my dog Barack because puns are cool and my dog controls my life. I still tell people Benghazi was caused by a youtube video. I told people they could keep their insurance and that their cancelled plans were just fraudulent products. I thought that would be the last time I had to defend one of your lies about a lie pretending to be the truth about a misconception of a lie.”
Jim opens his drawer and reaches for a fifth of whiskey but it is gone, “Dammit Obama, I forgot to buy more after the last time this happened earlier this week. I’m spending more on whiskey lately than the IRS is on data storage.”
Lost and adrift, Jim looks toward his moral compass but it is spinning in circles. There is no way to justify what is going on.
“Obama! Why have you forsaken me, your loyal servant!?” Wracked with sobs Jim collapses on his keyboard. “What am I going to say now?” On cue, as if Obama is really listening to his pleas via the microphone in his computer, Jim hears the glorious sound of an email alert.
Urgent from the offices of the OFA: We have learned those lawless Tea Party groups are saying that the destruction of Lois Lerner’s emails can’t be a fluke if six other administration officials also have lost their emails. According to our technical experts, HD crashes are very common and it shouldn’t be surprising that more than one person connected to this non-scandal has lost their emails and that they were not backed up. Please remember that OFA is a tax exempt organization and donations to us can be used as a tax write off on your next return. We can’t fight off these lawless Baggers trying to abuse tax exempt status without your donations.
The sniffles stop. Jim checks his other drawer for whiskey and finds some but decides he might need it later more than now. “You do love me Obama. I am sorry to have doubted you. I am not sure why I was so worried in the first place. The IRS was just doing its job and the law is the law. The emails would show this fundamental truth. Too bad they got disappeared by those sloppy IT guys.”
“Barry, I wish I knew how to quit you, man.”
LOL.
The fact that Lerner wasn’t the only one to lose emails to a computer crash substantiates her story. If she was the only one to encounter that problem it’d be more suspicious. Now you’re looking at either a relatively common occurrence, or else a vast (and very odd) conspiracy.
If you asked 100 employees at a randomly selected large company to produce every email they’d sent or received in the last five years, you’d find that many of those emails could not be produced, particularly if the company had the sort of email storage quotas being enforced at the IRS. There’s no proof that anything was destroyed deliberately, or that the policies violated the law — the House is just asking for things that don’t exist, and throwing a tantrum because it can’t get its way.
As usual Jim, you provide a fallacy. An employee might not be able to produce their emails. That’s why companies have ESI retention policies, most required by laws and regulations, that allow them to recover those emails from the servers, as those servers were designed to allow. Your argument that the IRS is incompetent makes a compelling argument for their disbandment. The IRS spent $50 million on employee conference, that would by a whole lot of storage and backup tapes. Apparently they are misappropriating their budget.
The IRS obviously doesn’t have a policy of centrally retaining all emails, and wasn’t legally required to. I assume that was the case under previous administrations as well. Such a policy is only obviously incompetent now that the House desperately wants to read all those emails. The House is free to direct the IRS to change its policies, and pay the costs involved, but it can’t go back in time and change them retroactively.
Given the obvious collusion involving the US attorney general, is there any chance of prosecution by state attorneys general?
So they’ve lost not only Learner’s e-mails, but those of a bunch of other people who are being investigated? How astoundingly convenient.
I doubt they’ll stick with the “computer crash” excuse, it’s just too implausible.
However, remember Obama trying to weasel out of “If you like your plan, you can keep it. Period!” by floating the claim that he never said it? (this, in the face of video of him doing so on at least 37 separate occasions). That, of course, was implausible, so he shifted to other excuses.
Therefor, I predict that the IRS and Obama admin will drop the “Computer crash” excuse, and shift to something much more believable. “The President’s dog ate the e-mails, computers, and backup tapes.”
While all hard drives fail eventually, what are the odds that the hard drives of seven people under investigation crashed within the same timeframe? As Carl Sagan would’ve said, “Billions and billions.”
However, remember Obama trying to weasel out of “If you like your plan, you can keep it. Period!” by floating the claim that he never said it? (this, in the face of video of him doing so on at least 37 separate occasions).
Obama is trying to use a gag from a Richard Pryor routine. Richard’s wife caught him in bed with another woman. He yelled, “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”
While all hard drives fail eventually, what are the odds that the hard drives of seven people under investigation crashed within the same timeframe?
Seven people out of how many? And we’re talking about a timeframe of five years.
If the claim is that Lerner and the others faked their hard disk crashes, why did Lerner do it in 2011?
Gee, why would she destroy evidence that would incriminate her? That is indeed a puzzler.
No one believes the computer crash excuse.
Any email sent to the DOJ (for instance) from Lerner is on a DOJ server and therefore is gettable.
No one believes that not only Lerner’s computer but 6 others suffered fatal crashes as well.
No one trusts a forensic recovery attempt done by the very agency suspected of breaking the law.
No one believes moveon.org talking points except tinfoil hatted, besotted, bow tied, Obama bumkissers.
No one believes the computer crash excuse.
No one has a more plausible explanation.
Any email sent to the DOJ (for instance) from Lerner is on a DOJ server and therefore is gettable.
Only if you search the DOJ servers, which I don’t believe the House has subpoenaed. And you still won’t find any emails that have been deleted from the DOJ servers, unless the DOJ (unlike the IRS) keeps an archive of every message received going back at least five years.
No one believes that not only Lerner’s computer but 6 others suffered fatal crashes as well.
No one has evidence that it was anything but routine computer crashes.
No one trusts a forensic recovery attempt done by the very agency suspected of breaking the law.
No one has evidence of a conspiracy that includes the IRS data forensics team.
Please stay away from law enforcement. You’d make a lousy detective.
No one has a more plausible explanation.
They’re lying and covering up is a much more plausible explanation.
No one has evidence of a conspiracy that includes the IRS data forensics team.
How would you know?
They’re lying
Lying how? Lying that it was IRS policy for employees to keep email on desktop machines that aren’t automatically backed up? Lying that some of those employees’ computers lost data to hard disk crashes in the last five years? Those seem like pretty easy things to check.
How would you know?
No one has released any such evidence. You can, of course, dismiss any exculpatory testimony by saying that the people in question (in this case the data recovery techs) were in on the conspiracy. But pretty soon you’re talking about a pretty big conspiracy, and there’s no reason to believe that such a large, disparate group would have the motive to attempt such a thing, or the discipline to keep it a secret. The notion that Lerner and the forensics people conspired in 2011 to destroy evidence in order to hide it from an inquiry that did not occur until two years later is firmly in tinfoil hat territory. And it violates Occam’s razor; if Lerner wanted to get rid of an incriminating email or a hundred incriminating emails she could just have deleted them — there was no need to fake a hard disk crash.
“Lying that it was IRS policy for employees to keep email on desktop machines that aren’t automatically backed up? ”
Oh, yes. This is such a blatant lie that nobody with any computer knowledge, and certainly nobody who has had to comply with the government’s rules for record keeping, believes it for even a moment. And once again, I refer you to the Internal Revenue manual, section 1.10.3.2.3.5, which states that all official records must be printed out on hard copy.
Also, lying that this was the work of a few rogue agents in the Cincinnati office, none of whom has been prosecuted. Lying that the President didn’t know about it. lying about everything to cover their asses. The cover lie is so unbelievable, it calls into question their honesty on everything.
No one has released any such evidence.
Of course not. Funny thing, that’s what happens in a cover up. It doesn’t mean that no one has it, or that it doesn’t exist.
I am an I.T. student / worker, and the standardized recycling of digital tape (or similar backup filing sys’) is a PRACTICE and a routine part of large data systems. By large, I mean everything from the small office up.
This is probable although unlikely, the federal gov has so much money at all times, it’s hard to ‘stomach’ that the budget was so constrained they had to erase precious data from a limited ‘supply’ of tapes; IT IS POSSIBLE HOWEVER. Don’t discount it’s/their explanation out of hand. Just saying, first hand experience.