Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The IRS’s Illegal Destruction Of Evidence

12 Comments

It’s looking worse and worse:

Any private company that conducted itself in this way would be crucified. It happens from time to time, but rather rarely nowadays, as the duty to preserve evidence is well known in the business world. The IRS’s account of its own behavior is, frankly, shocking. I can hardly imagine what a federal judge would do to a party that took no steps to preserve documents, erased backup tapes, allowed employees to delete relevant emails and memos, and “recycled” the crashed hard drive of its principal witness, all while the lawsuit was pending.

I guess we may find out soon, as True the Vote’s motion is scheduled to be heard on July 11.

Let’s hope. Who will be the equivalent of Judge Sirica in this case?

[Update a while later]

Lois Lerner, Colonel Mustard, and the Blue Screen of Death.

I hope that Megan is feigning credulity to maintain her own credibility when she finally comes down on these serial liars like a hammer.

[Update a while later]

Issa to Koskinen: Want to revise your testimony?

12 thoughts on “The IRS’s Illegal Destruction Of Evidence”

  1. That’s the thing, whatever this scandal may have been before, the loss of this data is bad. Koskinen can say nothing illegal happened (although he has no idea if his statement is true since he also admitted complete ignorance of the law), but corporate defendants plead such things all the time and held to account. For this reason, the business world has built guidelines for data retention. Whole industries have developed to support the business world in data. The IRS even tapped into this industry.

    Now we are supposed to believe that just as the IRS began a campaign to “be on look out” for organizations violating tax law and seeking 501c status while conducting political activities; the IRS decided it could slack off on data retention, fire their backup provider, cut its budget for tape storage and reuse those tapes, and just happened to order a bad batch of hard drives? How did they plan to do anything if they actually found illegal activity? They destroyed their own evidence. This becomes silly and begs the question, why did they need to do this BOLO effort at all? There is no question that the leadership of the IRS is incompetent.

    1. the IRS decided it could slack off on data retention

      Slack off how?

      fire their backup provider

      They weren’t fired, their service was rendered obsolete by an upgrade to Outlook 2010. And Sonasoft’s contract was with the Chief Counsel’s office only; they had nothing to do with Lerner’s tax-exempt organizations department.

      cut its budget for tape storage and reuse those tapes

      What? They doubled tape retention from the pre-2008 policy (3 months to 6 months).

      and just happened to order a bad batch of hard drives?

      That’s a nice paranoid touch. I wonder where one goes to buy hard drives that will work long enough to be used in criminal conspiracies, but reliably lose all incriminating data when the time is right….

      There is no question that the leadership of the IRS is incompetent

      But competent enough to organize a massive criminal conspiracy, and even bigger data-destroying cover-up operation?

      1. “That’s a nice paranoid touch. I wonder where one goes to buy hard drives that will work long enough to be used in criminal conspiracies, but reliably lose all incriminating data when the time is right….”

        So, now you admit it was a criminal conspiracy and the data is incriminating. It’s a long slow trek to regain a portion of your integrity, but you’ve taken the first baby step.

      2. Slack off how?

        So when Rep Levin suggested that the IRS was recycling tapes for cost efficiencies due to budget cuts, he was lying? If it takes one to know one, I guess you are the right guy, Jim.

        But competent enough to organize a massive criminal conspiracy, and even bigger data-destroying cover-up operation?

        I see no competency in pulling off the criminal conspiracy or covering it up. Most criminals are incompetent, that’s how they get caught.

      3. “I wonder where one goes to buy hard drives that will work long enough to be used in criminal conspiracies, but reliably lose all incriminating data when the time is right….”

        You go to newegg or bestbuy or just about anywhere else and buy a regular hard drive. Then when you get sued or pesky congressmen ask inconvenient questions, you destroy the hard drive and claim it was a bad apple. They didn’t buy special hard drives designed to self destruct…

        It is funny because Leland just (mockingly) repeats the IRS and their defenders claim that there was a bad batch of hard drives and Jim responds by saying what a kooky conspiracy theory it is, even though that is what Jim was saying last week, and it is ridiculous to suggest that hard drives just go bad right when you need them to.

        2. The bad batch of hard drives excuse is completely laughable. I routinely deploy new systems right of the box to my customers and I can have 6 computers sitting on my desk and each one of them will have a different hard drive in them despite them all being the exact same make and model of computer. They will have a mix of hard drives from a variety of major drive producers; some will have Western Digital, others Hitachi, or perhaps a Seagate. The newer laptops are coming with solid state drives that are either from LiteOn, Toshiba, or Samsung for the most part. But OEM computer manufacturers procure drives from a variety of drive providers and when they build a system they just use whatever is on hand in the supply chain. So, the idea that the 6 people involved with this case all having drive failures as a result of a “bad batch of hard drives” is absurd. You’d have to coincidentally have a major defect present across drives of different manufacturing providers.

      4. “Slack off how?”

        They failed to comply with the regulations:

        1.10.3.2.3 (07-08-2011)
        Emails as Possible Federal Records

        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.

        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

        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).

        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.

        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.

  2. “There is no illegal destruction of evidence! If Dear Leader and his minions do something, it IS legal! Especially when it’s for your own good, peasants!”–Baghdad Jim

  3. Why isn’t the DoJ investigating who released National Organization of Marriage’s IRS records to the Human Rights Campaign? The IRS settled and paid, because obviously this was a violation of NOMs civil rights, but the act is also criminal, so why no investigation into the crime? Hell, the person who broke the law has even been identified internally within the IRS and works for the Tax Exempt Organizations Division. All the DoJ has to do is seek an indictment, but it has not.

  4. This may be of interest; an explanation by someone who worked for the EPA on the briefings he received on using government email accounts.

    One bit:

    I was specifically advised (warned) that emails were valuable means to determine what I had discussed with anyone. That included even my personal emails on my personal computer at home, if the subject matter had any connection whatsoever with my work as an employee of the United States.

    A candid summary cautioned that I should apply two questions before I hit the send button: First, would I have any concerns if my email showed up in the Washington Post, or would anything I wrote in any way embarrass the president?

    Read the whole thing.

  5. I do computer support for a large corporate enterprise and work directly with people in legal, corporate governance, tax services, and HR. Every time one of their hard drives crash they always remind, in quite panicked a fashion, the dire need to recover their data and stress they have a responsibility to retain important information for up to 10 years. To hear that IRS personnel are losing data from just a couple of years ago and flippantly shrugging their shoulders as if it’s no big deal is shocking to say the least.

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