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Paul L. Caron
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Tuesday, August 26, 2014

The IRS Scandal, Day 474

IRS Logo 2Judicial Watch, Statement on Discovery of Backups for “Missing” Lois Lerner IRS Emails:

Department of Justice attorneys for the Internal Revenue Service told Judicial Watch on Friday that Lois Lerner’s emails, indeed all government computer records, are backed up by the federal government in case of a government-wide catastrophe.  The Obama administration attorneys said that this back-up system would be too onerous to search.  The DOJ attorneys also acknowledged that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) is investigating this back-up system.

We obviously disagree that disclosing the emails as required would be onerous, and plan to raise this new development with Judge Sullivan.

This is a jaw-dropping revelation.  The Obama administration had been lying to the American people about Lois Lerner’s missing emails. There are no “missing” Lois Lerner emails – nor missing emails of any of the other top IRS or other government officials whose emails seem to be disappearing at increasingly alarming rate. All the focus on missing hard drives has been a diversion. The Obama administration has known all along where the email records could be – but dishonestly withheld this information. You can bet we are going to ask the court for immediate assistance in cutting through this massive obstruction of justice.

New York Observer:  IRS Shocker: Filing Reveals Lerner Blackberry Destroyed; The Device Was Wiped AFTER Congressional Inquiry Began:

The IRS filing in federal Judge Emmet Sullivan’s court reveals shocking new information. The IRS destroyed Lerner’s Blackberry AFTER it knew her computer had crashed and after a Congressional inquiry was well underway. As an IRS official declared under the penalty of perjury, the destroyed Blackberry would have contained the same emails (both sent and received) as Lois Lerner’s hard drive. ...

With incredible disregard for the law and the Congressional inquiry, the IRS admits that this Blackberry “was removed or wiped clean of any sensitive or proprietary information and removed as scrap for disposal in June 2012.” This is a year after her hard drive “crash” and months after the Congressional inquiry began.

The IRS did not even attempt to retrieve that data. It cavalierly recites: “There is no record of any attempt by any IRS IT employee to recover data from any Blackberry device assigned to Lois Lerner in response to the Congressional investigations or this investigation,” according to Stephen Manning, Deputy Chief Information Officer for Strategy & Modernization.

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform:  Justice Dept’s IRS Representation Conducted by Former IRS Attorney Involved in Targeting of Conservatives Himself:

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Regulatory Affairs Subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) today sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder reiterating bipartisan calls for the appointment of a special counsel for the Administration’s Justice Department investigation of Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) targeting of conservative groups after new documents obtained by the Committee showed additional conflicts of interest within the Justice Department. Among other examples, a current Justice Department attorney who represented the IRS in litigation relating to the IRS’s targeting of conservatives was in fact previously an IRS employee and was involved in the IRS’s scheme to target conservatives.

The Committee has learned that Andrew Strelka, currently an attorney at the Justice Department’s Tax Division, worked from 2008 to 2010 at the IRS in the Exempt Organizations (EO) Division, formerly headed by Lois Lerner. Emails show that Strelka was directly involved in the IRS targeting of conservative tax-exempt applicants. In March 2010, Strelka received an e-mail from IRS manager Ronald Shoemaker directing him to “[b]e on the lookout for a tea party case.” Shoemaker directed Strelka: “If you have received or do receive a case in the future involving an exemption for an organization having to do with tea party let me know.”  Strelka also received an e-mail in June 2011 about the crash of Lois Lerner’s hard drive.  Until recently, Strelka represented the IRS in civil litigation relating to the IRS targeting.

 

The order from U.S. District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan was certainly clear enough. In a landmark victory for Judicial Watch, the federal judge ordered the IRS to submit sworn declarations detailing what happened to Lois Lerner’s “lost” emails and what steps were being taken to find them. What was provided was a garbled explanation from no less than five IRS officials with more holes than a block of Swiss cheese. ...

These sworn declarations came from five IRS officials: Aaron G. Signor, John H. Minsek, Stephen L. Manning, Timothy P. Camus, and Thomas J. Kane.

We noted that the IRS and DOJ filings seem to treat as a joke Judge Sullivan’s order requiring the IRS to produce details about Lois Lerner’s “lost” emails and any efforts to retrieve and produce them to Judicial Watch as required under law.

This is the story we’re supposed to believe, according to these IRS officials: Lerner’s crashed drive was analyzed by two technicians who employed a variety of tech tactics to recover the data, to no avail. The drives – which, mind you, had no recoverable data according to these experts – were then “degaussed” (wiped clean) “to protect against any possible disclosure of… taxpayer information.” Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the IRS email scandal would have realized that these filings were a blatant continuation of the cover-up.

Well, if there’s one thing I know, it is that most federal courts don’t take kindly to being treated disrespectfully and expected to act like a somnolent member of Congress as administration officials mislead, omit, and play games.

Sure enough, in a stunning move, Judge Sullivan took the extraordinary step of launching an independent inquiry into the issue of Lerner’s missing emails. ...

Judicial Watch has filed hundreds of FOIA lawsuits. I have never seen this type of court action in all my 16 years at Judicial Watch.

Judge Sullivan has already authorized Judicial Watch to submit a request for limited discovery into the missing IRS records after September 10. So stay tuned for further details very soon.

Judge Sullivan took the additional step of appointing Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola to manage and assist in discussions between Judicial Watch and the IRS about how to obtain the missing records. Magistrate Facciola is an expert in e-discovery.

https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/08/the-irs-6.html

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Comments

Publius- That is not what the declaration says. The Declaration says that standard IRS configuration has the Blackberry store emails that are also stored in the users Microsoft Outlook email. I'd think, (and it'd be nice if the Declaration addressed) the hardrive crash meant no more synching, and therefore the Blackberry had all the emails that Congress was asking for.

What do you think the DOJ and IRS would say to a private company under investigation that pleaded this series of events? "No problem, we understand, it happens"?

Posted by: YoGabbaGabba | Aug 26, 2014 10:42:43 AM

Manning’s declaration says that IRS Blackberrys, including the ones issued to Lerner in 2009 and replaced in 2012, do NOT retain copies of emails sent or received, except in cases in which a draft was composed on the Blackberry, but not finalized and sent. In other words, with the rare possible exception of a draft message Lerner composed only on her Blackberry and did not finalize and send from her Blackberry, there was nothing saved on either of her Blackberrys. It follows that, if Lerner composed a draft message to the WH on her Blackberry, she either finalized and sent it or she didn’t. If the former, there would be a “received” copy on one or more other computers, which already have been checked, producing 24,000 emails from the relevant time frame (none of which was to or from the WH). If the draft was not finalized and sent, that means–there was no resulting email from the draft. Therefore, no email messages that actually were sent or received were wiped when Lerner’s 2009 machine was swapped out for a new one in 2012. The Aug. 22 declarations also state that Lerner did not have any other electronic communications devices, such as IPads or IPhones.

So what is all the noise about? Ah yes, the purported statements by DOJ lawyers to Judicial Watch lawyers. I'll believe it when I seen some evidence other than JW's ipse dixit.

Posted by: Publius Novus | Aug 26, 2014 8:48:40 AM