Finally, a criminal investigation is taking place.
But remember, there’s not a “smidgen” of corruption.
[Afternoon update]
Here’s the story from the Washington Post:
According to Camus, the IRS’s technology specialists told investigators that no one from the agency asked for the tapes. His comments raised doubts about whether the IRS did its due diligence in trying to locate Lerner’s emails, or possibly greater troubles.
You don’t say.
“There is potential criminal activity,” Camus said.
…Koskinen acknowledged last year that the inspector general’s office was reviewing the circumstances surrounding Lerner’s hard-drive crash and the missing emails, but Thursday marked the first time that the office said it was specifically conducting a criminal probe.
American Thinker:
IRS chiefs don’t just lie to congress on their own, especially one brought in as a turnaround expert, or whatever BS they said he was.
I am surprised that there have not been whistle blowers coming forward from the IRS. Someone tipped off the IG to the existence of these tapes but IRS workers have been silent. To me, this points to an agency wide problem, where the worker bees feel invested in keeping things secret because they are culpable. Or maybe they have been threatened by the administration.
The IRS testified to the existence of backup tapes from the beginning. The question then was: can the contents of Lerner’s mailbox, as of the date of her hard disk crash, be recovered from those backup tapes? The answer was: no, because the tapes that held the backups from 2011 had long since been recycled.
Since then the question morphed into: can any of Lerner’s emails, from any time, be recovered from backup tapes? The answer is: yes, of course, because emails to or from Lerner were sitting in lots of IRS employee’s mailboxes during the period when the available backup tapes were made. So finding Lerner emails on backup tapes is no surprise — I predicted it months ago, when TIGTA first said they were going to look. I expect, as I wrote then, that they will find some emails that they haven’t seen before. But they probably won’t find every email that was on her hard disk when it crashed, and there’s no particular reason to expect any newly found emails will be any more damning than the tens of thousands that were handed over before.
“The IRS testified to the existence of backup tapes from the beginning. ”
Yes, they testified they were destroyed. How many times did you claim the back ups were recycled? Sucks that Obama always betrays you. He feeds you lies and you parrot them.
“there’s no particular reason to expect any newly found emails will be any more damning than the tens of thousands that were handed over before.”
That is certainly true, the Obama admin has had plenty of time to scrub them. An administration that flat out lies to congress and obstructs investigations will have no moral issues with altering or destroying evidence.
Yes, they testified they were destroyed.
No, that they were recycled (i.e. that they re-used the tapes, overwriting old backups with new backups). And nothing about this latest report indicates that they weren’t, in fact, recycled.
No, that they were recycled (i.e. that they re-used the tapes, overwriting old backups with new backups). And nothing about this latest report indicates that they weren’t, in fact, recycled.
Except the fact that they recovered emails from periods that the IRS claimed no longer existed on tape due to the alleged tape recycling.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration testified at congressional hearing on Thursday that it tracked down emails from the ex-IRS official’s account dating back to 2001, which is about 10 years beyond what the IRS has said it could access for investigators.
Except the fact that they recovered emails from periods that the IRS claimed no longer existed on tape due to the alleged tape recycling.
The IRS claimed that the backup tapes made in 2011 have been recycled, and nothing has come out to contradict that.
They have recovered email messages, and some of them may be from 2009-2011, but there’s no indications that they are from Lerner’s mailbox. They could be old messages to/from Lerner that were in other employees’ mailboxes at least until late 2012, and were thus backed up on tapes that haven’t been recycled.
it tracked down emails from the ex-IRS official’s account dating back to 2001
That isn’t surprising — IRS employees could have kept messages from 2001 in their mailboxes until 2012 or 2013, in which case they’d be on the most recent set of un-recycled backup tapes.
Looks like we, the people, could have put this all behind us had the IRS made these emails available earlier.
Actually having some of the evidence does speed up resolution of the issue. I hope we have enough. If not we should demand more.
That’s perfect: if the evidence isn’t enough to prove a crime, just demand more evidence!
Once again you display for all to see your huge reading comprehension problem. Plus I set a trap for you:
I said, “…speed up resolution of the issue.” Note that that is entirely neutral as regards the outcome. YOU on the other hand, make the stupid assumption that I want a particular outcome and you act on that stupid assumption – as I full well knew you would.
You reveal yourself – once again and for the thousandth time – that you don’t think; are easily led by the nose, and know only to parrot groupthink.
You are laughable.
As if there was an amount of evidence that would lead you to accept a resolution of the issue that did not involve anyone facing charges. There was enough evidence to resolve the issue long ago. It shambles on as a GOP political project.
Why do you ignore the testimonies of Tea Party groups. Is it because you don’t think it’s real evidence?
It’s evidence, but none of it presented to date proves that they were targeted for political reasons, much less by anyone connected to the administration.
It’s evidence, but none of it presented to date proves that they were targeted for political reasons, much less by anyone connected to the administration.
We know there was targeting based on a few politically loaded keywords like “tea party”. And we know that groups with these certain keywords in their name, suddenly could not get approved or rejected for a period of two years. That is evidence of targeting for political reasons.
That is evidence of targeting for political reasons.
Only if political gain is the only possible motive for the decision, which it isn’t. As it happens one of the IRS employees involved is a Republican, and told investigators that there was no political motive involved.
This sucks for Jim who bought the line that everything was destroyed.
Good news for Obama is that he is running out the clock and will likely be out of office by the time his malfeasance is revealed. Sort of like he is running down the clock with Iran ensuring that they get their nuke just after Obama is out of office. They say Obama is nothing like Bill Clinton but Obama has one upped him in can kicking serious problems to the next President.
“They say Obama is nothing like Bill Clinton but Obama has one upped him in can kicking serious problems to the next President.”
Slight disagreement, Wodun:
Obama is not kicking the can to the next president. What he’s doing is presenting the next president with a fait accompli that would be as difficult to change as Obama can make it.
Well, I don’t necessarily disagree. It really depends on Obama’s intentions.
“To date we have found 32,744 unique emails that were backed up from Lois Lerner’s email box. We are in the process of comparing these emails to what the IRS has already produced to Congress to determine if we did in fact recover any new emails,” Mr. Camus said.
So they don’t know whether they’ve found any new emails, much less whether they’ve found emails that are evidence of illegal acts. Some bombshell.
They have evidence that the IRS was trying to withhold whatever the evidence was. That’s why it’s a criminal investigation. It is now officially a cover up.
So what’s new? It’s been a TITGA investigation of a possible criminal cover-up since the IRS reported that Lerner’s hard drive crashed. And the latest is that “TIGTA stressed that its investigation is ongoing and cautioned against jumping to conclusions.” So of course you jump to conclusions.
It’s funny to watch you flip between accusing TIGTA of carrying out a cover-up (see your last IRS-related post, about TIGTA denying FOIA requests) and getting excited because TIGTA is (still) investigating a possible cover-up. You retain your undying confidence that somehow, somewhere, someone is going to catch a part of the executive branch breaking the law — and for your purposes it obviously doesn’t much matter whether TIGTA is the crook or the cop that catches the crook!
“So what’s new?”
That back up tapes exist and were never asked for. This is contrary to testimony of the head of the IRS.
You should just save us all the time and move onto your final argument that non-Democrats deserved what happened to them.
That back up tapes exist and were never asked for. This is contrary to testimony of the head of the IRS.
Hardly! Go back and read his testimony: he testified about the backup tapes last April.
Sorry, the testimony I was thinking of was last June.
What you cravenly ignore is the fact that those emails – whether copies or not – were deemed by Kostkinen and YOU as to NOT EXIST.
He lied and you swallowed.
No, see my reply to Wodun above.
And see my comment at the top.
When did Kostkinen ever say that backup tapes did not exist? His testimony is online, if he said that it shouldn’t be hard to find.
It isn’t a lie just because reality doesn’t match your misunderstanding or misremembering of someone’s statement.
Look it up, if it isn’t hard to find. Don’t play this lame game.
Here is Koskinen testifying last year about the backup tapes.
Ya, you were wrong in that comment.
So, any news from Judicial Watch on the secret backup system that archives all federal emails? Shouldn’t we have heard more about that by now?
You’re probably right about that.
HAH! I can admit mistakes. You can’t.
I can admit mistakes (see above, where I got the date of the IRS director’s testimony wrong).
Will Judicial Watch ever admit its mistake/fantasy/lie/whatever-it-was?
You once admitted to a historical mistake, years ago. However, you’ve been pinned in lies and you weasel out of them by mincing words.
Getting a minor detail wrong isn’t the mistake I’m talking about. See how you weasel around things?