This really is much worse than Watergate now:
One doesn’t need reams of reports or public-opinion polls to understand the gut plausibility of an IRS scandal in full flower. Yet the Obama administration seems not to have imagined that this burgeoning problem might require more attention than anything else Republicans are screaming about. Rather than a president in over his head, Obama is behaving like a president who doesn’t believe the onus should be on him to head off an appearance of impropriety at the pass.
No matter how old-school the IRS scandal feels, that naïve arrogance feels rather new on the scene—the sort of attitude given off by people who believe deep down that if you have the correct stance on policy, you ought to be immune to political attack.
One of the (many) ways in which it’s worse is that Watergate was purely a White House scandal, whereas many Democrats in Congress are complicit in this one. And sadly, there is no Democrat equivalent of a Howard Baker to go to the White House and tell the president that it’s over.
It’s just like every other situation (Crimean, Syria, Libya/ghadaffi, Benghazi, Iraq, etc.) – Putz-POTUS cannot be bothered with details. That’s handled by someone else. A speech, a declaration that there’s not a smidgen of corruption, an accusation of Republican insanity…and it’s off to the golf links.
There’s one good thing about Obama playing golf – he does less damage to the country when he’s playing golf than when he’s playing president. If anything, he should play more golf.
The “lost” e-mail story is so obviously a fake that what remains of the “Fourth Estate” knows, once and for all, that there is something being covered up. This news will trigger some major investigations by the media, and now the opposition has the meat it needs to dedicate time and resources to a full-scale investigation of its own.
If the rest of the administration (and some members of Congress) were totally innocent and this was all about rogue IRS administrators, we’d see servers and documents being seized right now by the FBI/DOJ. The silence is deafening.
There’s little question that we have Watergate+ on our hands. The only question is whether the president can plausibly distance himself from the scandal. The e-mail deletions almost certainly happened to protect him and/or other senior officials.
Indeed, the big yawn in investigating “a few misguided employees” at the beginning was telling. Obama went from “we gather all the facts, that we hold accountable those who have taken outrageous action” to “not a smidgen of corruption” and a “phony scandal”. Now he just plays golf while the IRS tells everyone that its internal practiced ESI standards are decades old and fall far short of what it and other government agencies require of businesses to operate in compliance of the law.
I think you are far too optimistic. Nothing is going to be investigated by the press (except Fox News) unless it’s pushed by HRC as an attempt to distance herself from the incumbent.
That Fox News interview of HRC was a complete waste of time. They threw more softballs than Dianne Sawyer and Terry Gross. I expected a LOT more from them.
“we’d see servers and documents being seized right now by the FBI/DOJ. The silence is deafening. ”
Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”[2]
The “lost” e-mail story is so obviously a fake
It’s as obviously fake as Obama’s Hawaii birth certificate. Or the October, 2012 BLS report. Or the 2012 polls. Or the 8 million Obamacare signups. Or the administration’s pursuit of Ahmed Abu Khatallah. All of it must be fake.
Jim, you dummy, how many of those 8 million signups actually paid their first month’s premium? Of those, how many are actually newly-insured, and not people who are replacing plans Obama and the rest of the Democrats callously cancelled?
Of course you’re right. And the Gallup survey showing the percentage of uninsured dropping from 18% in late 2013 to 13.4% in April 2014 must also be fake. Any fact that contradicts the GOP narrative is “obviously fake”.
It was supposed to be 0% making this just another lie. And Obama campaigned on 30% being uninsured, so another lie.
Providing insurance for so few people is such a terrible trade off for inviting government minders into the exam room and the government taking over the health insurance and the health provider industries.
I am sure you have some other lies ready to go because it is impossible for Democrats to be honest when it comes to Obama’s policies.
It was supposed to be 0% making this just another lie.
Do you know what a lie is?
“Do you know what a lie is?”
Yes, when you say Obamacare is intended to provide insurance to everyone reducing the uninsured to 0% while knowing that it will do no such thing.
I like how you guys keep changing the goal posts and re-imagining what Obama and the Democrats intended to accomplish with the law. What are you going to say next, that it was never intended for Obamacare to reduce costs?
Yes, when you say Obamacare is intended to provide insurance to everyone reducing the uninsured to 0% while knowing that it will do no such thing.
Show me where I said that Obamacare would reduce the uninsured to 0%. You’re just making things up.
The ACA was forecast to cut the number of uninsured by 20-30 million (out of 50 million) by 2023. It’s off to a solid start, but has a long way to go. It would help if more states signed on to Medicaid expansion.
You know, Jim, a reputation for honesty is a lot like virginity. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.
Corruption has firmly established itself as the status quo. Everybody is to blame. They don’t even bother to hide it.
As a newly-minted far-Left Progressive, let me explain. Shut up.
Let me see if I understand this.
The Cleta Mitchell attorney letter to the IRS warning them about the need to retain records was sent long after the Lerner hard drive went Tango Uniform, but we only learned about the hard drive situation just now, although the IRS was called to task on the investigating-of-groups for, say, a year and a half now?
And from the document dump of letters from the IRS to Congress, complying with government oversight and an “audit” of your activities is just . . . so . . . hard because it involves the work of numerous staff member, and Congress asking them all of these questions has cost the IRS “ten . . . millyun . . . dohlars!”
Of course there is no irony in the IRS complaining about the burden of compliance with government oversight because that agency is severely underfunded owing to Bush’s fault?
Funny how it wasn’t worse than Watergate when Bush couldn’t find White House emails.
The IRS was under no legal obligations to archive every email sent or received by its employees. The fact that it didn’t isn’t a scandal or a mystery, it’s exactly what you’d expect.
Ahhh, the old I hate Bush and everything about him but am totally cool with Obama doing all the things I complained Bush did defense. Maybe you are over estimating people’s love of Bush if you think saying because Bush did something, it is ok for Obama to do it.
“Funny how it wasn’t worse than Watergate when Bush couldn’t find White House emails.”
Don’t change the subject.
Jim, you do realize the allegation of missing White House emails was made by CREW. CREW is a 501c3 organization that refers to themselves as “progressives”. The CREW allegations, from their own report, was based on two unnamed “confidential sources”, and the missing emails were from an RNC account. So the equivalent to the IRS would be not having Lois Lerner’s personal email account records. You might go with your progressive friends at CREW and claim the RNC accounts were a violation of the Hatch Act (because they don’t seem to understand the 1993 Hatch Reform Act), but if so, then it seems your definition of “official records” are any emails sent or received from any email account while on the job. Is that where you want to go today, Jim?
I admit, I am curious how CREW isn’t engaging in political activity, while lobbying against various Congressional candidates (GOP bias against of 2 to 1, every year since its founding) and lobbying against various bills; but TEA Party don’t dare obtain 501c4 status lest they start talking about the lowering of taxes to improve the economy. Tell us again how Bush blocked progressive groups from gaining 501c status?
The founding and current CREW director was a former Congressional aide to John Conyers, Chuck Schumer, and Joe Biden. Also interesting how CREW doesn’t disclose their donor’s list; which is odd considering the IRS demanded that TEA Party organizations disclose their donors. Particularly considering the IRS then audited 10% of the donors from those lists, but that’s just random, right? Except the odds of any return being audited is just 1.1%. Interesting the CREW is suing the IRS for not being tough enough on granting 501c status to organizations potentially involved with political activity. That suit was brought by CREW in partnership with Democratic Congressional Candidate David Gill. Do you find such partisanship by a non-profit outrageous, Jim?
“The IRS was under no legal obligations to archive every email sent or received by its employees. ”
Only the ones pertinent to government business. (i.e. personal emails needn’t be archived).
That kind of lawyerism is also pathetic.
Only the ones pertinent to government business (i.e. personal emails needn’t be archived).
No, only ones that qualified as official records (does anyone have the specific legal definition of an official record?). And they weren’t to be retained electronically, they were to be printed and filed in hard copy. If the lost emails were considered official records there would be hard copies in IRS files.
“only ones that qualified as official records”
Any communication between Lerner and other government agencies, Democrat activist groups, or politicians is an official record. Lerner was also conducting business with fake email addresses in efforts to circumvent the law. It isn’t any wonder she destroyed her files.
Any communication between Lerner and other government agencies, Democrat activist groups, or politicians is an official record
What is the statutory definition of “official record”?
Are we now to “that depends on what ‘is’ is”?
Jim, I gotta hand it to ya, you’ve stuck by this stinker of an excuse like a trooper. Chris Gerrib hasn’t touched it with a ten foot pole. Even dn-guy fell out of character and called it suspicious.
Want the relevant statute? Here ya go, fill yer boots.
Want the relevant statute? Here ya go, fill yer boots.
Very funny (for the lazy: the link goes to the RICO statute). But I was serious — where’s the statute that defines which IRS documents (including emails) are required to be archived as official records?
Federal Records Act, 44 USC 31. E-mail is officially a federal record, and every single agency is required to retain any that pertain to a policy or action of that agency. Unlawful removal is specifically addressed, as well. There’s no fuzz on this one.
There’s no fuzz on this one.
There’s a lot of fuzz. The text:
There’s a lot of discretion in “adequate and proper”, “essential”, and “necessary”. Which is why the IRS — under Obama and under Bush — doesn’t even try to archive every email, and instead has each employee decide on an email-by-email basis which ones need to be archived in hard copy.
Unlawful removal is specifically addressed, as well.
The official record is the hard copy, and no one has been accused of destroying hard copy records.
“There’s a lot of discretion in “adequate and proper”, “essential”, and “necessary”.”
To which Jim says, “Lerner talking to people at the DOJ about throwing Tea Party groups in jails isn’t official business. Therefore, Lerner and the IRS were required by law to destroy the emails. And because it wasn’t official IRS business we know Obama had nothing to do with it because his involvement would make it official business and we already know by the destruction of the emails that it wasn’t official business.”
“Very funny (for the lazy: the link goes to the RICO statute). ”
You think I’m kidding? This is exactly the sort of thing RICO was designed to address.
No, only ones that qualified as official records (does anyone have the specific legal definition of an official record?). And they weren’t to be retained electronically, they were to be printed and filed in hard copy
If you say so Jim, ok. Tell us again what the official reason was for not granting 501c status to the applicants in a timely fashion?
The IRS shipped thousands of IRS applicants records to the FBI, so that was not official IRS business?
Please Jim, tell us more about these non official things done at the IRS. I like your line of thinking here.
“Tell us again what the official reason was for not granting 501c status to the applicants in a timely fashion?”
Because you can tell just by their political affiliation that those baggers are un-American law breakers and terrorists.
If Lois Lerner wasn’t conducting official IRS business for two years, why the hell were the American people paying her a salary?
Not all emails concerning official IRS business are “official records” subject to archiving. “Official record” has a specific, statutory definition.
Once again, I refer you to the Internal Revenue Manual, section 1.10.3.2.3.5. Any interagency emails would be official records. Any emails regarding specific cases would be official records. And under that rule, those emails and any attachments needed to be printed out in hardcopy. So where are the hardcopies?
Any interagency emails would be official records
Cite? Your link says how employees are supposed to treat official records, but it doesn’t give the criteria for deciding when an email is or isn’t an official record.
So where are the hardcopies?
That’s an excellent question. From a legal point of view the IRS wasn’t required to keep any emails in electronic form. It was only required to keep emails that were official records, and those were only required to be kept in paper form. If the IRS broke the records law it wasn’t by failing to keep email backups, it was by failing to print out emails that should have been treated as official records.
So, did the IRS break the records law? One way to find out would be to go through the tens of thousands of emails that the IRS has handed over, and pull out the subset that should have been treated as official records, according to the wording of the records statute. Then compare that subset to the IRS’s hard copy archive of official records. Are there any emails that should have been treated as official records, but don’t appear in the archive? If so, how many, who failed to archive them, and what is their explanation?
But no, that sounds like a lot of work, and it’s superfluous (and possibly detrimental) to the real goal: generating anti-IRS and anti-Obama outrage in the GOP base, and keeping the IRS story alive going into the fall election. Flinging unsupported charges and innuendo makes a lot more sense.
“If the IRS broke the records law it wasn’t by failing to keep email backups”
It was by the intentional destruction of emails written by Lerner and other Obama administration officials. Then destroying the back ups.
“Flinging unsupported charges and innuendo makes a lot more sense.”
You are a parody of a joke at this point Jim.
It was by the intentional destruction of emails written by Lerner and other Obama administration officials. Then destroying the back ups.
Destroying those emails is only a crime if they were official records. If they were official records, the crime was failing to archive them in hard copy. The handling of the electronic versions is irrelevant.
Nixon was an amateur compared to this crowd. And what do we hear? *crickets*
Well, Jim is in full blowhard mode. It’ll be interesting to see how his opinions morph once his ideological beliefs and/or obsessions no longer require him to defend Obama.
Anyone here remember the Martin Short character “Nathan Thurm”, the chain-smoking corporate spokesman who would deny everything while burning a cigarette down to a stick of ash? “You said that, I didn’t say that! Why would I say that!”
And now I see that a forensic investigation of Lois Lerner’s personal hard drive is impossible because it was thrown away.
How convenient.
Good thing there are email servers, RAIDs, redundant off-site backups, and a paper trail. If that’s gone too, then this is an organized crime.
Darryl Issa should be hauling IRS IT guys before Congress under oath. Let’s see how many take the 5th.
Now that takes the cake. It certainly makes perfect sense that after painstakingly recovering data off the drive and spending who knows how many man hours with it they’d just throw it away, right? This is the most transparent group of crooks and liars in ages, and yet the media can’t be bothered.
Do you think people routinely save broken hard drives after the data on them has been declared unrecoverable? Why would they?
Let’s see how many take the 5th.
It would be easy to scare the IT guys into taking the 5th, regardless of whether they’d done anything wrong. It wouldn’t prove anything, but it’d keep the story alive, which I suppose is the whole point.
“Why would they?” Why would they comply with congressional subpoenas? Why indeed.
When they are the subject of an IG investigation, yes.
The hard disk was tossed in 2011, long before the IG investigation.
Ya, destroying all of the emails and the back ups then everyone involved taking the fifth, doesn’t prove anything… except blatant corruption at the white house the likes of which we only see in places like Venezuela and the old USSR.
And yet, when the Bush administration lost emails for some reason it didn’t prove “blatant corruption the likes of which we only see in places like Venezuela and the old USSR.” Why the double standard?
The IRS failing to preserve emails — emails that they were under no legal obligation to preserve — doesn’t prove anything at all.
Why would they comply with congressional subpoenas? Why indeed.
The crash was in 2011. The subpoenas came in 2013. You’re demanding time travel.
Remind me again, when were the backup tapes destroyed? six months ago? Obviously nothing to see here.
That’s the point. The crash suddenly appeared after the records were necessary.
“Do you think people routinely save broken hard drives after the data on them has been declared unrecoverable?”
When they are the subject of an IG investigation, yes.
“Why would they?”
Because the person is the subject of an IG investigation.
“It would be easy to scare the IT guys into taking the 5th, regardless of whether they’d done anything wrong. ”
Yes, I am sure the Obama administration has many ways to scare them into silence.
“t wouldn’t prove anything,”
Ya, destroying all of the emails and the back ups then everyone involved taking the fifth, doesn’t prove anything… except blatant corruption at the white house the likes of which we only see in places like Venezuela and the old USSR.
“What is the statutory definition of “official record”? ”
You don’t know do you. And yet you argue on anyway.
You were given the relevant statute – twice.
I apologize, these threads get long and I may have missed it, but I don’t recall anyone linking to the statute that defines what official records have to be kept by the IRS. Ed Minchau has twice linked to the IRS manual section on email, which says: “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.” But it doesn’t define “official record” — that definition is found in the statute.
So no, I don’t know what the definition is. And I’m not a lawyer, so I wouldn’t trust my reading of it very far. But I think it’s very odd that a bunch of people who also aren’t lawyers, and also haven’t read the statue, are so very sure that Lerner was violating that law. If she was, it should be easy to prove — the House has most of her emails, and can subpoena the hard copy archive, so if she was routinely failing to make hard copies of official record emails the evidence will be there. But I haven’t heard one word from the House about actually trying to produce that evidence, which makes me think that either 1) they don’t think they’ll actually find anything, or 2) they don’t care about actually establishing facts and proving a criminal charge, they just care about revving up their base for the election.
“But I haven’t heard one word from the House about actually trying to produce that evidence”
Ya, the House hasn’t been seeking emails from Lerner at all.
Keep trying Jim (and his coterie of Obama drones), there’s no way to polish this lump of excrement.
How much do they pay you for all of this propaganda work?
They’re not paying him, Jon. He’s a True Believer.