That “phony scandal” and “wacky conspiracy theory”, an issue that happened because of some “rogue agents” and set of coincidences, sure seems to be getting more legit every day. Here’s the latest
(Politico) Ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s crashed hard drive has been recycled, making it likely the lost emails of the lightening rod in the tea party targeting controversy will never be found, according to multiple sources.
“We’ve been informed that the hard drive has been thrown away,†Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, said in a brief hallway interview.
Two additional sources told POLITICO the same late Wednesday, citing IRS officials. (snip)
“We believe the standard IRS protocol was followed in 2011 for disposing of the broken hard drive. A bad hard drive, like other broken Information Technology equipment, is sent to a recycler as part of our regular process,†an IRS spokesman said in response to a query from POLITICO.
Standard protocol, eh? If the IRS comes looking for your records, I wonder what their response would be if you said you kept your tax documents on your computer, it crashed, you threw it out.
(Fox News) “If the IRS truly got rid of evidence in a way that violated the Federal Records Act and ensured the FBI never got a crack at recovering files from an official claiming a Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, this is proof their whole line about ‘losing’ e-mails in the targeting scandal was just one more attempted deception,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said in a statement. “Official records, like the e-mails of a prominent official, don’t just disappear without a trace unless that was the intention.”
I hope that Issa and other Republicans will still attempt to go after all the backup servers for the IRS. Furthermore, maybe it is time to reach out to the NSA for the metadata for that time period, see where those emails were going to and coming from. Even a hardcore liberal has to admit that this conduct sure seem suspect. I’ll ask them, if this happened while Bush was in office, what would you thing?
Regarding that hard drive, IRS procedure, really, government records procedure, would require that a record be kept of how that hard drive was recycled. Where did it go?
Crossed at Right Wing News.
Lois Lerner was appointed to her position by GW Bush as a reward to her husband a well connected DC right wing lawyer
And Barack Obama was “appointed to his position” by millions of low-information liberals.
First off, again, only the servers need to be subpoenaed. The local machine hard drives are dime a dozen and hold no real data unless an internal investigation in to what websites are visited or what files are downloaded.
WHen a local machine’s hard drive crashes, a replacement is sent from the vendor, the old is removed, new is inserted and a new image is laid down. The old hard drive is either sent back to the vendor or it is destroyed by the agency.
If the investigation is intent on downloaded files, then the time is over as the hard drive is gone and they should have requested all machines when the investigation was started years ago.
THe servers however, will\should still contain a record of all emails sent and received through the agency. While “journaling” is not turned on by default, almost any legal\law agency turns it on due to FOIA and legal reasons.
The “journal” contains all emails. THe members of the IT should also be subpoenaed and put under investigation.