…who also has missing emails, sure visited the White House a lot.
[Update a while later]
The missing emails point to abuse of power and a cover up:
Two different House committees wanted to know more about what instructions Lerner issued in conducting the targeting, and more to the point, who may have instructed Lerner to target conservative groups in the first place. Lerner refused to testify when subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee, but the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee both demanded all of her communications from the IRS. Those records could help establish whether this was a “phony scandal,” as the White House has insisted last year, or whether the abuse of power was a coordinated political strategy.
The House Ways and Means Committee pressed the matter for months, while the IRS dragged its feet. In March, new IRS Commissioner John Koskinen reassured chair Dave Camp that the IRS kept solid records of their communications and that collation of the material would only be a matter of time. However, time apparently ran out last Friday afternoon, when Koskinen told Camp that the IRS had lost two years of Lerner’s email data due to a hard-drive failure – and that the IRS only keeps six months’ server data on backup while requiring businesses to store far more.
A few days later, the IRS announced that they had similar two-year gaps for six more IRS officials connected to the targeting effort. While the IRS has been able to piece together the internal-only emails from Lerner and the other six officials, they claim that any emails between these seven IRS officials and outside agencies has been forever lost. Coincidentally, that’s exactly what the House panel wants to see.
Isn’t that rather … convenient? It certainly moves this from “phony scandal” to potential minefield for Barack Obama – or at least it should, if anyone pays attention. The hypocrisy alone is breathtaking: the government’s biggest stickler for accurate records and lengthy archival requirements claiming to have little regard itself for such measures.
Record keeping, like laws, is for the little people.
sure visited the White House a lot.
It’s as if she had a high-level federal job!
Isn’t that rather … convenient?
No, it isn’t. If Lerner & co were the conspirators of these tinfoil hat fantasies they would have just deleted any incriminating emails. Hard disk crashes wiping out years of messages attract attention.
The hypocrisy alone is breathtaking: the government’s biggest stickler for accurate records and lengthy archival requirements claiming to have little regard itself for such measures.
What hypocrisy? The IRS doesn’t require that taxpayers keep all their emails going back for years, and the law doesn’t require that the IRS do so. No one has yet pointed to a single missing document that the IRS was legally required to archive.
“No, it isn’t. If Lerner & co were the conspirators of these tinfoil hat fantasies they would have just deleted any incriminating emails. ”
They did…
“he IRS doesn’t require that taxpayers keep all their emails going back for years”
They did for Tea Party groups.
“and the law doesn’t require that the IRS do so”
Yes, it does.
“No one has yet pointed to a single missing document that the IRS was legally required to archive.”
Because they were destroyed.
They did…
How would you know? And why then report the hard disk crash?
Because they were destroyed.
The IRS gave the House Ways and Means committee investigators thousands of Lerner’s “lost” emails from the server mailboxes or hard disks of the IRS employees who sent or received those messages. The GOP has not indicated that any of those emails were official records that should have been archived in hard copy, but weren’t.
“How would you know? And why then report the hard disk crash?”
For one thing, the Obama administration claims the emails no longer exist in any form. They were literally destroyed. Then you say if there was any wrong doing there would be emails to prove it.
“The IRS gave the House Ways and Means committee investigators thousands of Lerner’s “lost” emails from the server mailboxes or hard disks of the IRS employees who sent or received those messages. ”
So? They didn’t give the ones between Lerner and other government organizations, Democrat activist groups, Democrat politicians, and the White House. Who cares if they saved the emails with all of her cat pictures.
“The GOP has not indicated that any of those emails were official records that should have been archived in hard copy, ”
To which you will say that communications between Lerner and the DOJ to put people in jail based on political affiliation isn’t the official business of the IRS and therefore were required by law to destroy.
How is your whiskey stock holding up?
And why then report the hard disk crash?
Cover up the deletion. Interesting that crash happened 10 days after Congressmen stated calling Lerner’s unit inquiring about constituents applications not getting a response.
“The GOP has not indicated that any of those emails were official records that should have been archived in hard copy, but weren’t.”
And this proves ….. what?
And this proves ….. what?
Yeah, he keeps repeating that talking point, over and over, as if he thinks the original question was not “why was the IRS taking longer than was required to process tax exempt applications?” If we take Jim’s talking points at face value, the answer is that Lerner’s Tax Exempt Organization was not doing the official business of the IRS, yet she was promoted by Obama to head up Obamacare tax enforcement. Why would Obama promote a manager that was not doing her job? Oh. Oh….
Republican Jim, circa 1974: “Nixon did nothing wrong! Those eighteen erased minutes are perfectly explainable. This is just a conspiracy by Democrats to hurt the president!”
If the 18 minute gap were all we had to go on, Nixon would have served out his term. The gap is mysterious, and prompted all sorts of speculation, but it didn’t prove anything.
And this proves ….. what?
If Lerner was violating laws that mandate archiving of official records by failing to print out and file emails, you could tell by comparing the tens of thousands of Lerner emails that have been turned over to the House investigators with the IRS’s hard copy archives. The focus on computers and servers is a red herring — official records are supposed to be archived in hard copy. If the only copies of official records were lost when the hard disk crashed, or when backup tapes were recycled, the crime is that they weren’t property printed out and filed.
It’s as if she had a high-level federal job!
Yes, taxation would be a high priority in a dems point of view.
In the real world, economic growth would be more of a priority!!!
Jim, I can tell you’re getting help. Your style changes for different comments.
Yes, taxation would be a high priority in a dems point of view.
The IRS was and is involved in the implementation of Obamacare (e.g. confirming eligibility for subsidies, assessing penalties, etc.). It isn’t news that there were a lot of meetings between IRS officials and the people rolling out Obamacare.
Your style changes for different comments.
Just trying to keep it interesting, no need to jump to conspiracy. Though that does seem to be the tendency here.
Yup, we all know the IRS is involved in Obamacare. That’s what scares us. Any sane person should be afraid.
By the way, what part of medical records under scrutiny of a taxing agency doesn’t scare you?
Given all the lies we’ve heard since 2008, you bet there’s a bit of conspiracy talk going on. Here’s a major lie: If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.
Please send me $900.00 for my premium increase as of Jan 2014. I’ll take check or money order.
The IRS doesn’t need your medical records, just whether you have health insurance. One of the nice things about getting insurance from the exchange, as opposed to getting individual coverage before the ACA, is that you don’t have to give the insurer your medical history, since they can’t discriminate on that basis.
Here’s a major lie: If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.
You’re right, Obama shouldn’t have said that without including the fine print (i.e. your insurer has to keep offering the plan, without significant changes, so that it qualifies for grandfathered status).
“without significant changes,”
There were no significant changes to my plan and it was cancelled. Went without care for my pre-existing condition for several months this year after I lost my doctor due to Obamacare. Thanks Jim.
The IRS doesn’t need your medical records
The IRS didn’t need a lot of information that it requested from TTV and other organizations. Sure would be nice if the IRS had an official account of their investigation, so we don’t have to be concerned about bureaucratic over-reach and color of law abuses.
Michelle Obama: Help lift us up, help us fight this fight to change — transform — this country in a fundamental way.
Her own words. It’s not a conspiracy.
What’s wrong with her words? She’s being hyperbolic and naive about the power of the presidency, but every political campaign exaggerates the good the candidate will be able to do.
“he’s being hyperbolic and naive about the power of the presidency, ”
Are you talking about Obama or his wife?
Can you provide, oh, say 10 other examples of folks with a similar “high-level government job” position as Flax who visited the White House as often? Assuming that your argument is that such behavior is not only normal but expected, so there should be plenty of examples.
Thanks.
The IRS doesn’t require that taxpayers keep all their emails going back for years, and the law doesn’t require that the IRS do so.
You keep repeating a lie. According to The IRS itself (emphasis added):
1.10.3.2.3 (07-08-2011) Emails as Possible Federal Records
1. All federal employees and federal contractors are required by law to preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency. Records must be properly stored and preserved, available for retrieval and subject to appropriate approved disposition schedules.
2.The Federal Records Act applies to email records just as it does to records you create using other media. Emails are records when they are:
• Created or received in the transaction of agency business
• Appropriate for preservation as evidence of the government’s function and activities, or
• Valuable because of the information they contain
3. If you create or receive email messages during the course of your daily work, you are responsible for ensuring that you manage them properly. The Treasury Department’s current email policy requires emails and attachments that meet the definition of a federal record be added to the organization’s files by printing them (including the essential transmission data) and filing them with related paper records. If transmission and receipt data are not printed by the email system, annotate the paper copy. More information on IRS records management requirements is available at http://erc.web.irs.gov/Displayanswers/Question.asp?FolderID=4&CategoryID=5 or see the Records Management Handbook, IRM 1.15.1 http://publish.no.irs.gov/IRM/P01/PDF/31421A03.PDF).
4. An email determined to be a federal record may eventually be considered as having historical value by the National Archivist prior to disposal. Therefore, ensure that all your communications are professional in tone.
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.
Yeah, I keep pointing that out to Jim, especially part 5 where it requires those records to be printed out and filed. It is those printouts that the IRS would have delivered to Congress if they were being honest.
$20 says Jim will ask in the next thread what an official record is.
The odds of 6 people (the 6 whose emails we want) plus Lerner all having disk crashes; all crashes destroying the same 2 years of email data are pretty low.
Very low……
Extremely low…….
The IRS wrote a letter to Ways and Means about Lerner’s hard disk crash; we don’t know much about the others. We don’t know when the crashes happened, how much mail was lost, who the employees were, or how many employees subject to the House investigation had computers whose hard disks didn’t crash. In other words, we don’t know enough to know how unlikely this was.
And even if it was unlikely, that doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. The government buying a bad batch of hard drives could still be more plausible than a conspiracy where a half-dozen employees fake hard disk crashes years in advance of an investigation, rather than just deleting the email messages they don’t want found.
So would you admit Nixon might have accidentally erased 18 minutes?
“And even if it was unlikely, that doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.”
Ya, we know it happened. The emails and backups are gone in contravention of the law.
“The government buying a bad batch of hard drives could still be more plausible than a conspiracy where a half-dozen employees fake hard disk crashes years in advance of an investigation”
You can’t accuse people of believing in conspiracy theories then drop that load of crap. You want us to believe that all of the people who’s hard drives crashed and who’s back up are missing all had computers bought at the same time as a batch purchase and that they all crashed at the same time.
Jim says, “This is all a conspiracy theory and I will disprove it with a conspiracy theory. You guys are nuts to think there was a conspiracy.”
“No one has yet pointed to a single missing document that the IRS was legally required to archive.”
This is true only in your Obama-besotted mind.
Ok, point to a document.
You mean the ones destroyed by the Obama administration? Ya, let’s take a look at those…
Wodun,
Jim thinks he’s scored major debate points by demonstrating that you cannot prove a lost email is an official record since you can’t show it to him…..
….because it’s lost.
As Jim pointed out in the thread the other day, the IRS didn’t stop destroying emails and back ups until after the IG report was made public in May of 2013. So the entire time the IG investigation was taking place, the IRS was destroying emails of the people under investigation. During the time between when the IG report was finished in mid 2012 and when it was released in May of 2013, the IRS continued destroying email back ups.
While we were told all of the illegal activities stopped before the IG even did an investigation, Lerner was colluding with the DOJ to throw people in prison based on political affiliation as late as 2013. Even now in 2014, many of these Tea Party, other non-Democrat groups, and individuals are still being persecuted by Obama’s IRS and DOJ.
So the entire time the IG investigation was taking place, the IRS was destroying emails of the people under investigation.
It was recycling six month old backup tapes, the same way it’d been doing for years. I’m guessing the IRS custodians were also emptying the trash cans in IRS offices, and wiping fingerprints off doorknobs. Who knows how many vital clues were lost!
Feel free to complain that the IG should have ordered a different data retention policy when he started his investigation (and you’d want it to do more than just preserve server backup tapes, you’d want to also archive emails and other documents found on desktops). But the fact is that he didn’t, so it’s hardly surprising or suspicious that the policy didn’t change.
“It was recycling six month old backup tapes”
Yes, of people who were going to be involved in litigation and were already subjects of an IG investigation due to illegal activities.
“the same way it’d been doing for years.”
SOP for the IRS to destroy evidence? Show me the statute.
“’m guessing the IRS custodians were also emptying the trash cans ”
Lets see those hard copies or were they shredded and thrown out in order to save the planet?
“Feel free to complain that the IG should have ordered a different data retention policy ”
He shouldn’t have needed to. There are regulations in place to preserve evidence but it relies on good faith efforts by the administration who has an interest in seeing that the emails in question never see the light of day.
“But the fact is that he didn’t, ”
You are blaming the IG for the Obama administration destroying evidence? Is there anyone you wont blame other than Obama?
“a different data retention policy”.
Yes. Exactly. I’ll bet a huge percentage of the readership of this site have been employees (like me) at a tech company which was sued for e.g. patent infringement. What’s the first thing that happens when your company gets hit with such a suit? You all get a memo from legal stating, in very clear language, what you must retain – this usually parses out to be EVERYTHING. Everything currently existing, and everything generated as time passes.
But, of course, I worked for legitimate companies. I suspect there are organization which react to an investigation by buying more shredders.
One other issue that I would love to see addressed is this: Did any employees at a similar level to those in this scandal that are in other offices have their e-mails ‘recycled’?
Were any of the other offices weaponized?
So, if I get audited next year, I should be able to claim that my hard drive crashed and I lost all my records, right? How could they fine me if my records are lost?
You’re required to keep those records; the IRS is not required to keep all emails. IRS policy is to archive all legally-required records as hard copy, so hard disk crashes are neither here nor there.
“the IRS is not required to keep all emails.”
Jim’s defense, “The IRS is not required to keep records that show they were breaking the law. On the contrary they are required by law to destroy the evidence that they were breaking the law in order to be in compliance with the law.”
Oh come now wodun; Jim’s defense is that the IRS didn’t need to keep official records on investigations that they believe suggested illegal activity that needed referral to the FBI. Once the IRS decides to dumb taxpayer data on the FBI, the IRS no longer cares if they retain any explanation as to why they dumped the data on the FBI. They don’t care even if the IRS recognizes later that the information dumped was protected (4th and 5th Amendments can be ignored when political activity is suspected) information and unlawfully sent. Cause you see wodun, if it was sent unlawfully, why would they keep official records?
Remember when the IRS said it couldn’t disclose who was persecuting non-Democrat non profit groups because the privacy policy put in place to protect the citizen’s had to be applied to the perpetrators who violated those policies? I bet Jim came up with that one while he was working on the campaign.
I’m flattered. In reality I did things like holding signs at rallies, door-to-door canvassing and phone banking. I also helped train data entry volunteers. Pretty heady stuff.
Only a Democrat would take being called corrupt as a compliment.
The IRS doesn’t need your medical records, just whether you have health insurance.
So you trust our government to handle data properly?
One of the nice things about getting insurance from the exchange, as opposed to getting individual coverage before the ACA, is that you don’t have to give the insurer your medical history, since they can’t discriminate on that basis.
Now they can discriminate in other ways:
http://www.lifenews.com/2013/12/05/obamacare-is-already-rationing-health-care-but-the-worst-is-yet-to-come/
IPAB is given sweeping powers to recommend to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) whether and how whole categories of treatments are to be reimbursed – and is required to use these powers to prevent overall health care spending from being allowed even to keep up with medical inflation. Thus, they can (in fact, it is their job to) limit reimbursement and ration care from thousands or millions of people at a time.
For example, IPAB might decide that a new, promising treatment for breast cancer is not “cost-effective,” given the board’s calculation of the number of lives it might save versus the cost to offer the treatment. HHS might then issue a “quality measure” binding on health care providers that does not authorize use of the treatment.
In other words, “Death Panels” are for real.
Interesting tidbit: the IRS uses Documentum to back up their emails according to this.
Documentum software is the IRS standard document management software suite and provides the IRS with Enterprise content management re to create, capture, manage, and archive the vast amount of digital content that exists across the enterprise. Content or unstructured information includes text documents, email, reports, XML, pictures/images, audio and video files, and transactional data.
What lies in the Documentum archive, or are we to believe Lerner’s dog ate those emails, too?
John Hinderacker provides the dalient legal definitions of what “record” is:
1.15.2.2 (08-30-2013)
Definition of Records
According to 44 United States Code (USC) Section 3301, the term “record” includes all books, papers, maps, photographs, machine readable materials, or other documentary materials, regardless of physical form or characteristics, made or received by an agency of the U.S. Government under Federal law or in connection with the transaction of public business and preserved or appropriate for preservation by that agency or its legitimate successor as evidence of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities of the government or because of the informational value of data in them.
the Manual specifically addresses the question of when an email constitutes a “record:”
Exhibit 1.15.6-1
Common Questions about E-Mail
When are e-mail messages records?
An e-mail message is a record if:
a. it documents the IRS mission or provides evidence of an IRS business transaction,
b. it can be retrieved if you, or anyone else, need to find out what had been done, or
c. it can be used in other official actions.
Treat e-mail messages the same way you would treat paper correspondence.
***
What if the message does not qualify as a record?
Delete e-mail that is not a record when no longer of use.
Example:
An e-mail message advising section employees of a staff meeting or a training opportunity can be destroyed after it has been read, or the meeting/training period has passed.
Note, in particular, point b. If emails “can be retrieved if you, or anyone else, need to find out what had been done,” they are “records.” In this case, it is undeniable, as we are seeing in the current controversy, that Lerner’s emails were materials that could be retrieved if anyone–say, a Congressional committee–needed “to find out what had been done.”
So, if in those “lost” emails, there are emails regarding the business of the IRS which is something we would “… need to find out what had been done,..”
In a two year time span – almost certainly there are “records” among those emails.
Therefore the IRS clearly broke the law.
Therefore the IRS clearly broke the law.
When, exactly? When they instructed employees to move excess mail to personal computers, without providing a mechanism to back up those machines? When they failed to set up an archiving system to permanently store every message that was sent or received by their servers? Whey they decided to recycle backup tapes, rather than retaining them as a pseudo-archive?
In what years were those decisions made?
Did they not have printers to make hard copies of emails as they are required by law?
This isn’t a problem of poor regulations that requires more regulations to fix, as Obama claims with every scandal. This is a problem of career government workers colluding with elected officials and other government agencies to prevent American citizens from exercising the rights every American has to speak freely and to associate with whom they choose.
Democrats always complain about alleged disenfranchisement but here is actual disenfranchisement caused by Democrats and you make excuses. Republicans and other groups have every right to have have tax exempt groups just like Democrats do. I know Democrats are conditioned to think some groups deserve special treatment and others need special punishment but that isn’t how our country is supposed to operate.
The disgusting thing is that you guys explain away your hatred of Tea Party groups based on racial attacks. Because they are predominantly white, just like the country, you guys scapegoat them as being responsible for slavery, the KKK, segregation, poverty, what happened to Native Americans, Vietnam, the economy, and every negative thing in human history.
Those racist attacks are not true and your bs stereotypes don’t justify the actions of the Obama administration to persecute people because they think he is a terrible President.
You didn’t answer my questions. When did the IRS break the official records law?
The IRS director testified on Friday that until 2008 IRS policy was to recycle email backup tapes after 3 months. If recycling backup tapes constitutes illegal destruction of official records, things were even worse under the previous administration.
When political activists and IRS officials both have the same talking points about what an official document its, it points to a coordinated political effort by the white house. Just like inter-agency efforts to target political dissidents points to people with inter-agency power in the white house calling the shots. Just like IRS officials meeting with the white house days before the targeting began points to the white house calling the shots.
If a White House official and IRS official both wore blue suits you’d say it points to a coordinated sartorial effort.
Honestly, Jim, you’re acting like this was all made up, like we’re pretending that Lerner took the 5th, as if we are fantasizing about the IRS blatantly destroying duly subpoenaed evidence, as if we’re hallucinating that the IRS singled out groups with names including “patriot” and “tea party” for long enough to prevent them from participating in the 2012 election.
In the real world, the Democrats are playing a very dangerous game indeed. I will remind you that the Right is the group with the military veterans and the guns. If you want to start a civil war, keep right on the path you’ve chosen.
Ed, don’t be surprised. Jim is using the new democrat tactic of calling the right conspiracy mongers. That’s all they have left in their arsenal (other than calling us racists.)
You have to admit that you guys love a conspiracy. For example, this thread starts with a statement that Nicole Flax lost emails. But the IRS director testified to Congress on Friday that “there is no indication that a single Nicole Flax e-mail has been lost.” She had two computers, and only her laptop had a hard disk crash. The idea that her emails had been lost came from GOP House members.
But the IRS director testified to Congress on Friday that “there is no indication that a single Nicole Flax e-mail has been lost.”
Then where are these emails?
Then where are these emails?
On the IRS servers and Flax’s computers, which is where they were all along.
as if we are fantasizing about the IRS blatantly destroying duly subpoenaed evidence,
Yes, you are. The emails in question were lost in 2011, long before any subpoenas were issued.
to prevent them from participating in the 2012 election.
The groups in question were applying for tax-free status in order to exclusively engage in social welfare activities. Why would the timing of elections matter to a social welfare group?
Don’t pretend not to understand that preventing the United States from drowning in a sea of debt and preventing taxpayers from being bled dry has nothing to do with social welfare.
The emails in question were lost in 2011
No, the emails were claimed to be lost in 2011.
No, the emails were claimed to be lost in 2011.
Yeah, and they claim that Armstrong walked on the moon. The tinfoil hats are getting tight….
Insulting someone’s intelligence isn’t very persuasive.
Don’t pretend not to understand that preventing the United States from drowning in a sea of debt and preventing taxpayers from being bled dry has nothing to do with social welfare.
Be serious. By that standard it’s a social welfare issue to elect Democrats who will defend food stamp spending, so 501c4 political activity rules shouldn’t apply to Dems.
If you want to influence elections, set up a PAC. If you want to do social welfare work, set up a 501c4. Don’t confuse the two.
Jim, you dems have lied so much we don’t believe anything you say.
Is it a conspiracy to say that you lied about health care costs? Is it a conspiracy that you are forcing nuns to put contraceptive care in their insurance plans? Of course not.
You want power, not to help other people. And with that knowledge firmly in hand, we know everything you throw our way is pure bull crap.
Is it a conspiracy that you are forcing nuns to put contraceptive care in their insurance plans?
A great example of a false conspiracy theory. Nobody is forcing nuns to put contraceptive care in their insurance plans. Nuns are exempt from that requirement, they just have to claim the exemption.
First, you did not reply to the lies about the cost. I’ll never get a response to that. Those lies are enough for anyone to never trust the democrats.
Second, you do realize the contraception issue was only a temporary decision. You will try to weasel out admitting the dems want mandatory contraception in Christians’ insurance plans but it won’t work. Anyone with a brain knows you want dems want to shove your ideology down the throat of Christians.
What lie about costs? The Kaiser Family Foundation just released a study showing that most people who had individual insurance in 2013 are paying lower (46%) or the same (15%) premium for their new Obamacare policy.
The provision that lets religious organizations opt out of providing contraception coverage is not temporary. It’s the injunction to block that provision until it’s reviewed by the Supreme Court that’s temporary.