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IRS Lost Emails of 6 More Employees Under Investigation
phrackthat writes with an update to Friday's news that the IRS cannot locate two years worth of email from Lois Lerner, a central figure in the controversy surrounding the IRS's apparent targeting of Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny. Now, the IRS says there are another six workers for whom the agency cannot locate emails. As with Lerner, they attribute the unrecoverable emails to computer crashes.
Among them was Nikole Flax, who was chief of staff to Lerner’s boss, then-deputy commissioner Steven Miller. Miller later became acting IRS commissioner, but was forced to resign last year after the agency acknowledged that agents had improperly scrutinized tea party and other conservative groups when they applied for tax-exempt status. Documents have shown some liberal groups were also flagged. ... Lerner’s computer crashed in the summer of 2011, depriving investigators of many of her prior emails. Flax’s computer crashed in December 2011, Camp and Boustany said. The IRS said Friday that technicians went to great lengths trying to recover data from Lerner’s computer in 2011. In emails provided by the IRS, technicians said they sent the computer to a forensic lab run by the agency’s criminal investigations unit. But to no avail.
If it's not corrupt, then at least massively inept.
...and just see what happens when YOU tell the IRS you've "lost" your financial records. Better get that ass high up in the air so you can fully enjoy the insertion of the jumbo-sized pineapple decked out in razor blades.
But the IRS will get completely away with this. It's all theater at that level.
Any suffieciently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
. . . unfortunately, the receivers' disk have also crashed.
It should be pretty obvious to everyone now. The IRS is not going help the investigation. If fact, they are obstructing it.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Sorry to repeat myself, but this was a late post to the first incarnation of this story.
Sharyl Attkisson (investigative reporter formerly with CBS) has posted some questions that should be asked:
clever and funny but i'm afraid that type thinking creates a smokescreen for malice to hide behind. we don't want that.
i think when it comes to government there's very constructive and healthy benefit to treating stupidity same as malice.
Yes it did. Those groups missed out on millions in donations during the 2012 election because they were not given their tax exempt status (Donors were waiting for that before giving because it is to take no more than 90 days according to IRS rules). That was the intention.
Whats in the emails is member lists of those that did donate being handed to liberal groups, like MoveOn, so they could harrass those individuals, which they have done. The IRS had no legal authroity to collect those lists, and they also had no authority to give thoses lists out to private groups.
In addition, 10% of people on those lists have been audited by the IRS. Currently the IRS is auditing less than 1% of income tax filiers.
So to sum up, it restricted freedom of speech, encouraged harrassment based on political views, and used the IRS auditing wing as an attack arm of the adminitration. But since it is people you don't like, its as you say inconseqential political bullshit that doesn't matter.
Some companies have taken this in a different direction. They have a "delete all email after 30 days" policy, with no exceptions, except for legal holds required for gathering evidence in specific legal situations.
Having and following a policy are the only requirement. It doesn't have to be a rational policy, it just has to be a policy. A policy of timed destruction, even if it's only a month, fits the requirement, and it helps avoid deep legal fishing.
John
You should read what the IRS Inspector General said. It was overwhelmingly conservative/tea party groups that were affected, many delayed for so long they withdrew their application (closed down). It was quite secret (internal BOLO requests), it was unlawful (illegal information required before any action could be taken), and it was harmful (many groups folded because of the delay).
At least, that's what the Inspector General said. But I'm sure they are biased against their bosses and shouldn't be trusted...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I guess you stopped paying attention to this story quite a while ago, which is understandable. They only made that argument for a week or two. They have since admitted wrong-doing, first blaming it on a field office, but later documents showed to orders came from Washington. I don't recall the EXACT numbers offhand, but something like 342 conservative groups were targeted and 4 liberal groups ended up being sent over in the stack. It has now been shown conclusively that the order was to target conservative and libertarian groups. The question now is who gave the order. Nobody active in politics on the left brings up the few liberal groups who got mixed in the the conservatives and libertarians anymore - they know that's not just a losing argument, but one that makes them look like liars when the numbers are mentioned.
It's quite a coincidence that all seven of the computers storing information that Congress is requesting all "crashed" and the emails were lost to seven computer "glitches". Just think of the odds. What an uncanny streak of misfortune. The emails just vanished and the investigation can't continue. Oh well.
Just ignore the fact that the words "crashed" and "glitch" are not technical terms an IT professional would use and only serve to obfuscate rather than clarify how those emails might be retrieved. Those boxes with the blinky lights are just subject to the whims of fate, I reckon.
I can't really fault the IRS for not handing over evidence that would at a minimum would put them out of their jobs and/or ideally behind prison bars. What surprises me is what bad liars they are.
You've missed what the scandal was.
no Tea Party groups were denied their application from what i remember, but at least one progressive group was.
That was exactly the point. The IRS was making demands for data so onerous as to be literally impossible to comply with. They never denied Tea Party groups - but they just never allowed them, either, leaving them in a legal limbo. They instead demanded an impossible amount of documentation from them to "prove" their legality.
The fact that a progressive group was able to submit an application and be denied actually proves the IRS's malfeasance: they were capable of submitting an application at all, while Tea Party groups simply could not possibly meet the IRS's impossible demands for their applications.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
It wasn't unlawful, since no "illegal information" was required or used. If you think it was, cite the law that was broken. My wager is that you can't.
Information leaked by the IRS - information that was illegal to do so. Donor lists are private and are NOT required for 501c(x) filings; yet the IRS demanded them, and in this case when they were provided, they were leaked. That's a felony.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!